User talk:Jimbo Wales

Skeptical Inquirer on Wikipedia

https://www.csicop.org/SI/show/is_wikipedia_a_conspiracy_common_myths_explained

Nice article. Key quote:

"So allow me to set the record straight. First off, Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia that is trying to be the repository of all knowledge; it is not Tumbler or Reddit or some other social network. Wikipedia has rules. Some of them are open to interpretation a bit, but for the most part the rules are discussed within the community of editors and usually enforced evenly."

"There is no 'they' on Wikipedia, only a 'we.' There are a few admins and senior editors who usually have the last word on an issue, but more often rules are enforced by consensus. The idea of a conspiracy of people who edit with an agenda (pro-skeptic or otherwise) is just unwarranted."

--Guy Macon (talk) 14:14, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

Yes, Fool some of the people all the time: If that author really believes there's no "they" deleting pages on Wikipedia, then I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell her, on layaway at US$1,000 per week; I'll even spell it with wiki-dashes as "Bridge–I–own–in–Brooklyn" so she knows it's official consensus. Too funny.-Wikid77 (talk) 17:49, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

We even have an article explaining why the above argument is a fallacy: Appeal to ridicule. --Guy Macon (talk) 18:55, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

Yikes, I thought the key quote (above) was a joke. I thought you already knew wp:DASH was forced by false consensus, like 8-7 !votes, and then "they" wp:Topicbanned the grammar expert whose vague !vote had been corrupted to support marginal majority. There's no way a large group of Wikipedians were so stupid as a real consensus to force dashes into hundred-year-old hyphenated terms. When seeing a bizarre policy, that is proof how a limited "they" group forced a false consensus. -Wikid77 (talk) 13:33, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

If you don't believe the CIA, Mossad or KGB has infiltrated Wikipedia then you're naive! Raquel Baranow (talk) 20:26, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

Evidence, please. --Guy Macon (talk) 23:11, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

I doubt the KGB has infiltrated Wikipedia, given that they ceased to exist in 1991. As for the others (and the KGB's successor agencies), I assume they are basically competent. Thus while there is no direct evidence it would be more of a surprise to find they did not take a role in shaping the content of a highly influential and openly editable source of information than to find that they did. Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 04:21, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

I always wondered who was that user who removed the word "Jew" from hundreds of pages. -Wikid77 (talk) 13:33, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

Right. There is no cabal. Sławomir Biały (talk) 23:43, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

Here's an example of a cabal manipulating an article to make people who deny the Jewish Temple was not on the Temple Mount look stoopid. Raquel Baranow (talk) 17:17, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

That looks like a pretty standard discussion among a group of editors about sourcing, weight, and relevance. --JBL (talk) 17:29, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

For superstitious reasons that part of the world has always been the cause of (edit) wars.[https://vimeo.com/50531435 Maybe we could nominate the best arbitrators for ambassadorships to war zones. 75.166.121.67 (talk) 19:16, 4 May 2018 (UTC)

• Ask other users who created many pages: I've only had a few thousand pages deleted which I created, but ask other users re deletions (check their "contributions" and then click at bottom "articles created"). After deletion of a page, it is difficult to show the page had been acceptable for a notable topic. For example, WP notes that I created a page, later deleted and re-created, as "Occipital condyles" (crucial in physical anthropology, plus fovea, to distinguish human fossil skulls from fossil chimps), but I do not remember what the original page said, nor why deleted as a crucial topic in phys. anthrop. (versus cultural anthropology). Among 555 pages which I created, I typically create pages for major topics (not garage-band songs), so the deletions are a warning for other users to beware false consensus to delete pages. Ask other users about deletion problems. -Wikid77 (talk) 16:30, 2 May 2018 (UTC)
• Whether you think there is a "conspiracy" depends on whether you think collaborative efforts by skeptical editors who happen to believe (correctly) that evolution and global warming are real, vaccines don't cause autism, etc. (I'm talking about WikiProject Skepticism and Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia) qualify as "conspiracies". They're certainly pretty out in the open by conspiracy standards, but they do have a clear goal--to improve the accuracy of Wikipedia articles and make sure they don't pretend both sides must always be equally valid. Every morning (there's a halo...) 21:32, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

Need policy wp:DUMBNOTCONSENSUS

Over the years, we've seen several people who are fooled into thinking some bizarre wp:guideline or even a peculiar wp:Policy is the result of large-scale community consensus. It is not; instead a head-strong group of people has manipulated the system (wp:GAME), canvassed support off-wiki or such, to claim a false consensus often less than 20 people to force a peculiar rule. If a rule seems really dumb (or "stoopid with 2 o's"), then it is almost certainly some type of forced, false consensus. The community at large is not that stupid; that is why assume-good-faith wp:AGF works so well for a large group responding in an wp:RfC proposal. There is, indeed, "safety in numbers" or when the community decides not to favor a better idea, then it is often a case of confusion over too many choices, as in a survey of suggested improvements with a hundred choices to prioritize. Otherwise, a dumb idea is not consensus, but rather proof of a forced false consensus somewhere. If unsure over a complex issue, then ask some subject-matter experts for their expert opinions on whether the ideas would be foolish. -Wikid77 (talk) 13:33, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

Is anything you've written in this thread intended to be comprehensible by other people? If not, then carry on, I guess. --JBL (talk) 17:04, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

Okay, so there are other reasons why some people have trouble deciding consensus discussions. For that reason, I think some wp:RfC discussions should run 90 days, rather than 30 days, and an admin candidate's wp:RfA should run 3 weeks in a low-key manner, where the first week would discuss issues, rather than dogpile !votes, and allow some "vacation" days where the candidate is not pressured to reply 14-nonstop-days, but skip weekends or other normal day-off time. The current bizarre 24/7 (24/14) discussion schedules are freakish, and a wp:SNOW close is often considered a liberation for users caught in the current 24/7 decision discussions. WP is really sending a message of freakish obsession to imply such discussions are expected to run 24/7, and a decision which ends on Sunday would somehow indicate the OP doesn't care "enough" when not online all-night Sunday. Perhaps the prior 24/7 discussion mode should be the subject of an wp:RfC to allow XfD discussions to run 11-day spans across weekends, or hold an RfC to extend RFA as 22-day, low-key discussion with delayed !votes after several days of think-first time. -Wikid77 (talk) 03:43/12:24, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

Except on Tuesdays. Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 04:24, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

Well, I guess RfA could be compared to the Star Trek fictional "Fizzbin" game, with so many other complex issues, so I warn candidates to expect to be rejected on 1st RfA and then plan extra months to try a 2nd RfA. Perhaps a better guideline would be wp:EXPECTSCIFI, where users would expect WP editing to seem like a Sci-Fi universe with many alien rules! Wikid77 (talk) 12:24, 3 May 2018 (UTC)