Editor’s note: Gene McKenna is one of UpTake’s founders and he believes in the power of the Wiki. Gene sees Wikipedia as a solid information source for travelers’ seeking information about other countries, cities and towns they plan to visit. The problem is he fears wikibullies are going to take over and squash the grass roots, open sourced information which is the basis of Wikipedia and the source of its rich information. This essay is his quest to stop wikibullying.
Wikipedia is now filled with bullies
I can hardly claim to be a Wikipedia Newbie – my first edit was Feb 18th, 2004 about Cesar Chavez. I’ve probably done a few hundred edits since then on maybe a dozen or two pages, and I have created several pages.
And that experience has taught me that Wikipedia has become a house of bullies.
Speedy Deletion
Back in 2004 Wikipedia was a very friendly place and contributions from just about anyone were welcome. In 2009, I challenge a newbie to create an article on Wikipedia and have that article exist for an entire week. Guaranteed, your article will be marked for “speedy deletion” within about two minutes of its creation.
I’ve had a page deleted for being ‘too commercial’ even when the page was describing a non-profit group of volunteers that have been operating a ski hill for over fifty years. When I put the page back up some Wiki-bully warned me that putting back a deleted page is “a sure way to piss people off around here”- as if I am I am not a person “around here” and as if I shouldn’t be upset that someone deleted my page!
Now that same page, having survived a month of its second life, is marked as “not notable” and may be deleted soon. Perhaps every elitist Wiki-bully learned to ski at Vail or Aspen, but where I am from, Kettlebowl is a pretty notable ski hill.
So I am learning to be a bully too! My photos were being deleted left and right. It didn’t matter if I checked the box that I totally, ultimately swear that this is my own work and I agree to share it with the world. If some Wiki-bully didn’t like it – poof! It was gone. So I have found that if I put it back with a terse comment in the description like “Don’t delete my photo again!!!!” it is more likely to be left undeleted. Now I’m a bully too!
‘Bot Bullies
A good way to tell how bad the bully situation is, is by counting the number of ‘bots’ that edit your page vs the number of humans. A ‘bot’ is a computer program that reads pages and makes changes automatically so a human bully doesn’t even have to bother with you. One bot exists solely to annoy me by changing statements like ’4th of July’ to ’4 July’. The name of this ‘bot’ even indicates that its creator sees himself as a bully – it’s called ‘Smackbot’. I imagine the creator of Smackbot was a kid that no one listened to in high school so now he is going to smack everyone around on Wikipedia. Way to go Smackbot-man!
Complex Rituals
Part of the problem, to be sure, is not that everyone on Wikipedia is a bully. I am sure that most of the heavy Wikipedia users are great people and they mean well. But they may forget that newbies aren’t born knowing the proper communication protocols of the wiki-community nor are they adept at wikipedia’s ridiculously crazy user interface and syntax.
For a newbie, it is not obvious, for example, that if you have a question about why some ‘smackbot’ changed your page or why your article about the greatest raptor conservationist in America is considered Unambiguous advertising or promotion, that the proper thing to do is to go to that person’s (or robot’s?) talk page, look past all the wonderful awards he has won, and edit his talk page to leave a question. (Actually, I still don’t know if that is the right thing to do.)
And if you do edit someone’s talk page, don’t dare get that process wrong, because some Wikipedians have extensive instructions on their talk page about the correct way to write on their talk page and they will clearly be upset if you don’t write on their talk page correctly. At least one of them made a useful widget to help ensure you can write on his talk page correctly.
Of course, dear Newbie, you know that when you edit someone’s talk page you should sign your name by typing ~~~~ – that is obvious, isn’t it? And when you go to upload that photo (that will soon be deleted) and you first login to wikipedia, you will then be told that you should really be logged in to wiki-MEDIA instead. What’s more inviting than having two make two new online accounts in order to contribute?
Britannica
Between the learning curve of Wikipedia culture, the Wikipedia UI and the tolerance of some of its bullies for people not already steeped in that culture … who has time for this?
Wikipedia is dead – the Britannica staff has taken over.
Click here to read Gene’s proposal for how to make Wikipedia more inclusive and Newbie-friendly.
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23 Responses
A good reminder for us old Wikipedians. The lingo can also be a repellent. A newbie can easily take offence at being called a “vandal”, as if they were destroying cars and mugging old ladies, when all they have done is adding some links or uploading some pictures. Many resent formatted messages, all the more when they see two, three or four times the same one on their talk page, and will not read them. Which will prompt regulars to blowtorch them on the grounds of them having being warned.
Re pictures, and speaking as a Wikimedia Commons regular (you forgot the “Commons” part of the name), I wonder if something can be done to accommodate newbies. Copyright is a tricky subject. Even if you want to share a picture you personally took, you may not have the right to do so. Say you want to upload a nice picture of the Louvre Pyramid from your last trip in Paris. French copyright law does not allow you to do that: I.M. Pei, the architect, owns the copyright to the Pyramid; It does not matter that the Pyramid stands in the public space. Many people find it preposterous and do not understand why their picture is deleted, which leads to the situation you are describing in your article.
Eyes rolling… ever heard of taking it slow and easy? Or to look before you leap? I’m surprised you didn’t get blocked. No, I think Wikipedia is moving in a different direction, which doesn’t equate this childish remark as a “house of bullies.”
You have to remember that Wikipedia bore out of Nupedia, which was an expert written encyclopedia. The original idea was to build a reliable, comprehensive encyclopedia that anyone can contribute to, not necessarily one that got out of its way to take care of your “feelings”. The project has been around for almost a decade now, articles that are worth writing have been written, in fact the rate of article creation already peaked in 2006, it’s declining now. It’s quality not quantity, you have to work for you article.
Will it become a Britannica? Well I know Britannica is becoming like Wikipedia now that it accepts contributions. I wouldn’t say there the same yet, but the differences are closing.
Dude, maybe if you stopped trying to use wikipedia to generate spam about your favorite ski resort and your friend the raptor conservator you would have fewer problems with deletions. Seriously, take the ski hill. All you need to survive a notability challange is to point out a couple of reliable published sources. Have there been any newspaper or magazine articles written about this ski hill and the group that runs it? Is it mentioned in any books (you need more than a passing mention, but a few sentences will do) . You need somethig other than material published by the subject of the article (ie other than advertising copy). If none of this is true then a) the subject is not notable (by Wikipedia’s definition anyway) and b) your article is not verifiable because the information in it is not coming from published sources, which is a no no. I admit Wikipedia needs to do a better job of letting new users understand the rules, but the rules are necessary otherwise anyone could writen an article on anything, which would not make for much of an encyclopedia. There is bullying on Wikipedia but much of what people think is bullying is just over worked volunteers trying to enforce rules as best they can. In most cases if you take the time to ask for an explanation of the rules (rather than accusing editors of bad faith or bullying) you will get one. It may or may not help you save the article that was deleted, but it will help you in the future. The first piece of advice is that very few articles that cite multiple published sources (again not advertising copy or self published material) for the information in them ever get deleted.
Considering your article on Raptor Education is a straight copy/paste from their website, I’m surprised it wasn’t deleted before now. Ever heard of copyright infringement? You’re lucky you weren’t blocked, though if the rest of your articles are like that one, I imagine you will soon have a ton of “unhelpful” warnings to wade through.
I started two articles on Wikipedia this past week (“Junzo Shono” and “1946 Antarctica PBM Mariner crash”) and neither suffered any trouble, but that’s because I know how the system works. Wikipedia administrators are too quick nowadays to tag a new article for some kind of violation. There are two ways to successfully start a new article. One is to draft the article on a page in your userspace first, and then post it as a new article once completed. The other is to make sure that the new article is complete as possible, with all references, infobox, categories, lede, etc, before hitting “save page” for the first time.
Some of the remarks you made are valid and yes, Wikipedia’s usability has to be improved, which is being worked on by the community. When it began it was smaller, now it is the 7th most visited website in the world, the english wiki has hundreds of thousands of registered users, even if not all active, and thousands of contributions A DAY. This has grown a lot, and growing means it is more difficult to follow up, and more and more difficult to pay attention to every user, and spend hours and hours instructing newbies what to do and how to do it. Smaller projects might be more successful in this respect. Wikipedia is trying to be a reliable source – not just an open and free source. Which means there are a couple of rules you have to follow if you wnat to successfully contribute.
Also, people tend to just click and not think. If you get into a new community in real life, you first inquire or try to spend some time figuring out how the community life is going. You read the intstructions your new workplace gives you, or listen to your boss telling you about the rules before you start working. When you buy a new dvd player, I suppose, you start reading the manual if you don’t know how a dvd player works, right? Or you just try plugging in and hitting the machine if it gives you no picture? And call customer service right away that “YOU STUPID BULLIES THIS SHIT DOESN’T WORK”?
So why do you expect Wikipedia, an interface unknown to a newbie to accept everything you do right away, without YOU first looking around for a manual? There are help pages that describe how it works. How you sign a discussion page. Where to look for copyright issue explanation. Where to look for the deletion policy. WHY DON’T YOU READ THEM before calling the experienced users a bully? If you don’t know how a system works, go to those damn help pages and READ.
If you still don’t know what to do, ASK. It’s not that difficult.
And by the way, controversy: You ask how should a newbie know that you sighn talk pages with ~~~~, and then mock the user that explains this on the talkpage as an instruction for newbies?
)) That’s funny 
))
Rusty is right, you should write about things that can be verified from outside sources. Nobody wants to delete my articles on ancient Egyptians most people never heard of
because I’m working from books most Egypt-fans know.
BTW if you’re a native English speaker you probably never encountered a problem we non-natives often do: when I write about something that’s known in my whole country but no sources are in English, then some Brit or American too lazy to care about the rest of the world will question its notability. So you still have it easy
Need help with a wiki bully? So do I, lets work together E mail me at tim-wilson@live.com
Thanks for all the comments everyone. Yes, I agree I have a lot to learn about Wikipedia, it’s culture and it’s user interface. One of my main points that seems to be missed here is that it is that the learning curve of this culture and user interface are really intimidating.
I have been using wikipedia for five years and without serious, continuous investment in learning and keeping up, one feels very unwelcome. This severely restricts the pool of potential contributors. Many older citizens and many domain experts in our world are not going to contribute to Wikipedia in its current form and for that, we all lose out.
I have noticed since posting this (and probably because I have posted this) that one more article of mine has been flagged for not being notable. And I have noticed that one more picture of mine was flagged (incorrectly) as an orphan and as very subjectively as being of “poor quality”. Fortunately there are some great wikipedians out there who are standing up and explaining alternative views. I appreciate them.
Simple suggestions to make the process seem less like a group of bullies making subjective decisions about notability and “quality” might be to change the language from “this article is marked for deletion” to “this article is marked for discussion”. I believe that is a better description of what actually happens. The process of discussion is good and results in better articles. But the tools to have the discussion, the labels of “speedy deletion” and edits being done by “smackbots” add up to a really ugly experience for those who aren’t part of the clique.
@observer, I do believe your are looking at our page about the Raptor Education Group. We did not infringe on their copyright, instead we serve as a search engine, pick up the first few lines of the reviews and send our visitors back to their site for more information. Pat J.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability/RFC:Reevaluation#Journalists
Shows how disgusted prominent journalists are about how Wikipedia is. Using the terms “bullies” “purges” “book burners” “empire-building, wannabe tin-pot dictators” “doubters and deprecators” “bands of vigilantes”
“Wikipedia has completed the journey by arriving at an online equivalent of the midnight door-knock and the book bonfire”
RE:
“In 2009, I challenge a newbie to create an article on Wikipedia and have that article exist for an entire week. Guaranteed, your article will be marked for “speedy deletion” within about two minutes of its creation.”
I have a better story, from PC PRO, link above:
“For an example of the dark side [of Web 2.0] running out of control, though, check out Wikipedia…In the NYRB article Baker explains how Wikipedia continually struggles to repel vandalisation…but as a result is now ruled by bands of vigilantes who delete all new material without mercy or insight. This is such a strong claim that it needed checking, so I decided to attempt an edit myself…I wrote a roughly 100-word potted history of [The Political Quarterly]… within five minutes I received a message to the effect that this entry has no content…and has been put up for “express deletion…It seems Wikipedia has completed the journey by arriving at an online equivalent of the midnight door-knock and the book bonfire”
Look at how veteran editors justify but don’t change their behavior here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:The_Political_Quarterly#PC_PRO
>>>AFDS on an average day<<<
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ikip/AfD_on_average_day
76.5%, of all articles which were put up for deletion were created by editors who had 350 contributions or less when they created the article.
Many of these editors use aggressive violent words in deleting other editors contributions, including nuking, destroying, bombing, using a machete, etc.
If you look at all of the tools that editors who delete have, as the author above mentions it is phenomenal. Whereas I can think of maybe one or two tools which editors who save articles have. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Article_Rescue_Squadron is one group which is actively trying to balance this imbalance.
One editor said that some of these bullies are suffering from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irritable_male_syndrome Maybe he has something there.
This blog is listed prominently on:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/new_users
RE: TONY
Tony epitomizes this wikipedia bully attitude, he wrote:
Eyes rolling… ever heard of taking it slow and easy? Or to look before you leap? I’m surprised you didn’t get blocked. No, I think Wikipedia is moving in a different direction, which doesn’t equate this childish remark as a “house of bullies.”
Notice how Tony says that you should get blocked, and calls your statements “childish”. Typical bullying attitude. At the same time both Tony and Teemeah are saying there is no problem.
Tony, Teemeah, and Rusty should have this statement on his user page, and be forced to read it everyday:
This project does not exist to help editors grow a thicker skin. Our mission is to build an encyclopedia, not establish limits for low-level abuse that we think our volunteer editors should be willing to suffer. If we drive away more people than we attract, then it’s a genuine loss to the project and we should fix it rather than label those who would prefer to work in a civil environment as “thin skinned.” User:Cool Hand Luke
Until editors like Tony are blocked, leave, or are marginalized, edits on Wikipedia will continue to plummet.
Keep in mind that Wikipedia did not accidentally become this way, it was built this way. A company culture rarely starts at the bottom, it starts at the top. Jimbo Wales gave his blessing for certain editors to run Wikipedia a certain way.
RE:
“this article is marked for deletion” to “this article is marked for discussion”
This has been proposed several times on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion. Other deletion pages like Miscellaneous and Template are called discussion. The arguments are just as nasty.
RE: Patriciaj and observer,
Observers aggressive, bullying behavior is typical also:
“Considering your article on Raptor Education is a straight copy/paste from their website, I’m surprised it wasn’t deleted before now. Ever heard of copyright infringement? You’re lucky you weren’t blocked, though if the rest of your articles are like that one, I imagine you will soon have a ton of “unhelpful” warnings to wade through.”
Don’t hold your breath for any apologies or any change in behavior from observer for being proven absolutely wrong. The nominator of this article, will continue to put up articles for deletion too. (This is the unwritten rule on the internet, never apologize for a mistake, or second guess your behavior)
“One bot exists solely to annoy me by changing statements like ‘4th of July’ to ‘4 July’. ”
Wow, that *is* a big deal!
RE: Anthony
How is Patriciaj answer even an answer at all? If an editor looks at a new wiki page, looks at its reference and finds that they are exactly the same, then thats copyright infringement and it legally has to be deleted. How does Patriciaj’s response in any way change that, or prove it “absolutely wrong” as you claim?
To contact a bot operator you should:
1) Go to the talkpage of the bot and leave a message unless there are instructions to post elsewhere then follow the instructions
2) Wait a reasonable amount of time (at least 24 hours) unless the bot is actively going haywire.
3) If no response is given within a reasonable amount of time post a reminder that you have posted a message on the bot operator’s talk page (the operator should be listed on the Bot’s userpage)
4) If you still get no response within a reasonable amount of time and it is a sufficient problem with the bot to warrant community discussion you should post a message at WP:ANI (Administrator’s Noticeboard/Incidents), WP:ANI is one of the most read noticeboards on Wikipedia so you are practically guaranteed a response from someone. After posting an ANI thread you should let the bot operator know by posting a message on his talkpage letting him know he is involved in an ANI discussion.
5) If you have problems with civility with a bot operator you should go to WP:WQA (Wikiquette Alerts) first before going to WP:ANI. This is a mediation type step of dispute resolution that aims to resolve civility problems, though you may end up getting referred to WP:ANI in the end anyways.
If the bot is going haywire (i.e. breaking pages on a mass scale, doing things it is not designed to do) you should do the following:
1) Look for any ways to shut down the bot, some bots are coded to stop if certain pages are edited or messages are posted to their talk page.
2) If no way to shut down the bot exists block it if you have administrator privileges otherwise post a notice at WP:AN (Administrator’s Noticeboard) or WP:ANI about what is going wrong.
3) Post a message on the appropriate user talk page to let the bot operator know about the problem. (bot’s talk page unless directed otherwise)
This article is right on. The wikipedia fanboy nazis are entirely out of hand. I’ve had them reversing my articles about a street name in a city when I was standing in front of the freaking street sign with my smart phone observing the event. Somehow someone felt that they knew better, from the other side of the planet.
These people really need to err on the side of more eyes, more hands, and more brains on the project and sacrifice their culture and decorum to promote that. It’s rigidity for rigidity’s sake, not because it contributes to the proceedings. It’s to the point where it’s becoming a religion, where priests feel they must stand between you and God.
DariusMDeV, not quite sure what the hell you’re going on about in your second comment.
However, regarding the first comment, maybe if you had taken the time to listen to the people trying to delete your page, rather than getting frustrated at them and disregarding them as “fan-boy Nazis” you would have realized that wikipedia isn’t interested in having an article for EVERY SINGLE street in the world, regardless of whether they exist or not. Subjects DO actually have to have some claim to notability….
A nice surge of aggressive Wikicretins here in the comments. Demonstrates your point well. I personally dislike Wikipedia – wouldn’t even blink if it died tomorrow. It’s wonderful for useless stuff. Except that fascist editors are removing the useless stuff. The not-so-useless stuff? I’ve yet to see a decent article. So, essentially, this means Wikipedia has become a parody of itself. No more adding ‘not notable’ things, and unable to improve existing ‘notable’ things because vigilant idiots are vigilant. A possible solution would be to kick/ban/shoot all the Nazis, but time constraints and the class/caste system make it impossible. However, for all such who come by this comment: Do the world a favor and kill yourself in an amusing and painful manner. Just kidding. Please don’t. The world would miss you. No, really.
I suspect that most of the true wikibullies would be a lot less aggressive if they had to deal with other people in person. It’s amazing how much less civil people can be when they’re spewing their bile safely behind a computer keyboard.
Dear McKenna, I am a veteran editor of Wikipedia too. I just found out your article today. It is right on the spot. The replies of “wikibullies” only confirm it. Do not be impressed by the copyright and notability arguments, they are just lame excuses. Copyright infringement does not justify deleting an article, and notabiliy is a “rule” that was written by a microscopic minority of wikibullies to legitimize their bullying. All the best.
I have had my own issues with Wikipedia. An ex-boyfriend of mine that I knew in real life also edited the site, and one day decided to start harassing me on there. I knew it was him due to what he was saying, he was saying things that only I told him. The administrators wouldn’t do a thing, they decided to take his side, yet I made a new account and since we liked some of the same TV shows I had continued to edit some of the articles on the TV shows that we both liked and he decided to claim I was stalking him, even though I was not editing every article he was editing or following him around. I then got blocked for stalking, they refused to listen to me so I made another account and edited articles on things that I liked that he didn’t like. He found my username and of course posted about it, and I got blocked for sockpuppetry, yet the fact that he posted about me having a new account when I never edited any of “his” articles (it seems nwo that people own articles on there), I was blocked for sockpuppetry. They would not listen to my appeal, even though I never once vandalized or did anything, yet he vandalized and because his IP address they traced was similar to mine since we lived in the same vicinity they decided that I was doing all of this myself and blamed EVERY “bad” edit on me. I am now through with using Wikipedia, the site was good back in 2005 but since 2009 it has seemed to be overrun by a bunch of power hungry, ignorant, assholes. I am never using that site again, and now I can see why professors don’t accept Wikipedia as a source, they probably knew about the kind of people that run the site and that’s why they won’t accept it as a source, since some Wikipedia users like to keep saying the sky is purple and will keep changing your edit if you fix it and correct it, and these users are administrators that will tell you to fuck off, and I’m saying this from experience. I have officially stopped using the site completely in 2010, in 2009 the crap with the users started even though I was a member since 2005, but they were too ignorant to realize that I was not making any bad edits at all or any of the other facts that I posted, and it’s their loss now since I will never fix an article on there again thanks to the assholes that are on there.
I know how you feel I left Wikipedia for those reasons. And in all honesty I realized that Wikipedia isn’t as ‘reliable’ as I thought.