it’s already been restored. The copyvio was removed from the history, and the good content is back. That’s what’s supposed to happen, and it did.
“This person has some authority. They did something with which I disagree. Therefore, everything they do is the result of ego and hunger for power.”
also… okay, let me edit this so I reply to everyone instead of flooding the thread.
Hank_Chapot – of course it’s still in Urban Dictionary. As far as I can tell, nothing ever gets removed from Urban Dictionary.
dadpolice - " We desperately need to fork it (minus the rules) and implement top-down leadership from from scientists, historians, etc., people who both understand the content of the articles AND how to run an encyclopedia. Anyone should be able to EDIT Wikipedia, but random users should not be given the power to create rules and vote on how to implement and enforce them." - Great! Are you gonna be in charge? Who decides which scientists, historians, etc get to administer the articles? Wikipedia encourages forking; take any or all the content you want, and a free copy of MediaWiki, and go to it! I look forward to seeing your work! Have you checked Citizendium? " It needs to be blown up and rules need to be enforced from the top down by competent professionals" - okay. Who’s gonna hire and pay 'em?
LearnedCoward - ow, that sucks. The anti-vandal bots do have a “click here to let us know if it was a false positive that a human can double-check” button; did you click that? The bots are imperfect, but they’ve got a very low (not zero, unfortunately!) false-positive rate.
RollinDoobiesUp: Sorry to hear that. Which article? What’d you try to add? Can we see?
popobawa4u: “a tree showing every edit ever made” - cool idea! What do you do about the vandalism and defamation? Because bozos gonna boze.
mnemesis - what were you doing with your userpage? There are a lot of people who try putting spam on there.
wanderfound - “deliberately” shit UI?
gellfex - as a matter of fact, there is an Article Wizard now. Interested?
ficuswhisperer: well, how is wikipedia to know that you really are the child of the person you describe? Bozos gonna boze, liars gonna lie. What if someone else claimed that he was their father instead? Who is Wikipedia to believe? I’d also be interested in knowing more about your other complaints. What articles were they?
aminorex: it really doesn’t help when you call the moderators “trolls”.
jannamark: as long as humans have relatively unfettered access to the internet, wikipedia will continue to exist in one form or another. Someone will mirror the database (which is explicitly encouraged) and then someone else will, and then someone else. And then someone will make their mirror updateable, using the open-source software. And then someone else, and then someone else. And then one of the updateable versions will become more popular than the others, and more and more people will start editing it. Eventually, that new version will become the new Wikipedia.
oldtaku - I’d be interested to know more details about your complaints. What specifically are you having trouble with?
bibliophile20: it’s a work in progress. Try your local library?
r3cgm - d’you mean scene.org ? There’s an article about it.
Medievalist - “article deletion obviates the point of wikipedia” - what about the hoaxes and copyright violation and spam and defamation and children making shit up? Should those all be left up in perpetuity? Where do you, Medievalist, draw the line?
everyone: no edits are lost forever. All edits can be restored (except for a bunch of the ones from early 2001, when the software was still in alpha). Bear that in mind when you get philosophical.
also, i’m just so pleased by how much of this thread turned into a conversation about hemovanadin.
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“Ignore the discussion about how the policy currently in place makes deletion too easy, how the technology means loss of page history, and instead attack the author’s motivations for posting in the first place”.
psst… your bias is showing.
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Mhmm…like editors who go through pagan-related pages, make snarky comments about make-believe, and put them up for speedy deletion…and often succeed. Not everything that happens on wikipedia is ego driven, not all of it is objectionable. However you seem to be dismissing a major portion of the problem. Like I said, when editors got into a deletion war with one of the founders, deleting his article again and again? That made the problem crystal clear.
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yeah, hold on, i’m still getting used to the boingboing interface.
the ‘deletion war with one of the founders’ - can you be more clear about that? I’ve got an idea about what you mean, but I’d rather be sure. As for the pagan stuff: again, can you be more specific?
orenwolf: i was some trouble figuring out who/what/where I’m responding to. That was supposed to be addressing one specific comment about how it’s all driven by ego and megalomania and rabies.
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I don’t have all the details at my fingertips and, humorously enough, the Wikipedia list of Wikipedia controversies doesn’t seem to list it. It broke out over an entry for a restaurant.
As for the Pagan Stuff? An editor by the name of Qworty, at least in the past, routinely went through listings of pagan authors and churches and tagged them for removal because it was all make believe. Wikipedia has a problem, it is bully-boy editors. That doesn’t mean all editors are problematic, or even the majority…but there are enough of them…and they don’t get stopped nearly often enough.
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That reminded me, I hadn’t checked the article on Charlemagne in a while!
The article has always been sparse on the “baptism or hanging” policy Charlemagne used on pagan towns he invaded, forcing the populace to choose between death or Christianity. It’s important, because “bringing Christianity to the pagans” was a major argument Charlemagne gave to the Pope to let him invade at will and not be interfered with by Rome. Currently paganism is listed as a reason for a law Charlemagne made (the baptism or hanging one), and it’s mentioned several times as the excuse he needed to invade various “neighbours”.
Paganism, or the “rooting out” of it, is listed as one of Charlemagne’s accomplishments under the “Church Reform” heading. The sentence as it stands in this writing is, “His reform focused on strengthening the church’s power structure, improving clergy’s skill and moral quality, standardising liturgical practices, improvements on the basic tenets of the faith and the rooting out of paganism.”
Wiping out religions and killing people is “reform”. Uh huh.
The religions of the baptised people before Charlemagne came along are not mentioned at all. Not even to link to.
Given that Charlemagne is kind of an infamous figure in pagan circles, that’s pretty astonishing.
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I’ve found that a good (IMO) article to Wikipedia standards, well-referenced, tends to a good rating from Google even if it’s off-Wikipedia.
Who knows if Google is really evaluating the article, just giving anything that looks like Wikipedia a “I’m with the Band” stage-pass, or if the pigeons like me.
Admittedly, it bounces an awful lot. At one point I had the fourth result for “Scientology vaults”, but it dropped to 3rd page a couple years ago for some reason. I should go HTTPS and see if that doesn’t help. (I can’t imagine the no-ip.biz domain helps.)
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Do you mean Discourse? That’s the commenting platform on BB but it’s used on many other sites as well. Best commenting/discussion platform I’ve seen. Many features, but they’re implemented in an uncomplicated way.
For example, you can respond or refer to multiple Discourse users within a single post by using the ‘@’ character. Type ‘@’ and Discourse will automatically pop-up an in-line user search. Continue typing that user’s name (the first two letters are usually enough) and it will show up.
@some_guy_who_edits: by default, a Discourse user will receive a notification of any ‘mention’ just as if it were a direct reply. You can change this in your notification settings.
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