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Comment by rloc | Hacker News Reader

I tried once or twice to edit articles but was quickly rejected by editors that usually believe they sort of "own" the content. I've quickly become demotivated as explained in the analysis and never contributed again. Another problem is that when you think you've made an important and useful update you're never sure when someone will roll it back.

Some are spending a very big chunk of their time to make sure articles stay as they wish to. Being a former or an active editor on an article is not always related to how much you know about the topic but Wikipedia favorites the biggest editors. There is very little chance to convince if you're new unless you commit to spend a lot of your valuable time contributing which is not possible for everyone and not a good idea for most.

A very hard problem to solve.

Wikipedia is still great though with no real better alternative.

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I have learned that in order to actually contribute to Wikipedia, you have to treat it less like a collaboration and more like a battle.

You can't just contribute and consider it done. You have to be prepare to fight your way through, engage in edit wars, learn about the battlefield (the bureaucracy, the article sourcing) and in the end, if you fight long enough, you usually win.

You have to repeatedly, over and over, show that the other person (who 'owns' the article) is wrong, he will revert it, so you do a little dance of reverting and back, then you have to try to dig up some rule from the ruleset, and as I said, you will usually win because the other person gives up. Or he doesn't, but then some higher editor stumps him.

You are correct, and you know what happens? The people LEAST qualified to contribute contribute the most. Why? Because they have too much time on their hands, and can battle endlessly.

People with real knowledge usually have better things to do.

It is indeed a problem to not have enough time. Just throwing in some facts in an article is often not good enough, it must fit with the flow of the article and not repeat things that has already been said and be in order, and with references etc etc. Some people might not have the time for that additional work to make the contribution "good enough".

I haven't followed Wikipedia for a while but I assume that some rejected changes are due to that people throw in some changes that might be correct but are not worked on enough to fit in with the rest of the article. And one can't in general assume that someone else will do that work for you. Than the easy way out is often a revert instead of leaving a more unfinished article live.

I did most of my contributions to Wikipedia when I had that extra time.

I see the exactly opposite. There's so many poorly written wikipedia entries which read as "Fact. Other Disconnected Fact. Another Random Fact (except for fact, fact and fact)." I've made attempts at smoothing out the language in various articles, and it often gets reverted because someone's precious trivia was removed. If anything, it seems that wikipedians are loath to have anything "edited down".

right, and the problem is the people who are willing to engage in such a battle are a self-selecting group of people. the final product we see on the site, ends up being largely contributed by that group of willing fighters, and less those that have the most domain expertise.

Yes that's exactly what I experienced. A knowledge repository built upon who fights harder and who gives up first (in most cases due to lack of time arguing for every sentence) is kind of broken.

I do not think you are at all lying. However, why in the name of all that is holy would I ever do that? Literally, cleaning my toenails is a better use of my time than that. Doing my neighbor's taxes is a better use of my time. Getting high and watching the news is better use of time. It just seems so utterly hopeless and pointless to even try from what you say.

Why do you do this?!

Because you want the truth on Wikipedia, basically. When I want something to be written there, I am willing to push it through, dig up all the necessary references on Google Scholar (ultimately, references to papers are the best munition you can have) and argue about it.

But it isn't for someone who just wants to write a bit of his knowledge and let it go.

trouble is on some articles where the science is still up fo debate or sensitive you run up against the older editors whose word is law. Got to love a source being rejected as not credible when the same reference existed elsewhere.

It is a great site for facts or information where there is no ability to debate or need too, like top 40 songs, videos, and anime.

It would be premature to get to that stage, given the vast gap in quality (even in the english wikipedia, articles in many domains have glaring errors / omissions and nonsense in them). First you build the world, and only when it's become a zero sum game you fight over it.

Umm you're right that whoever cares more will usually win, but edit warring is a quick way to get yourself banned. There's a talk page right next to the "Read" tab. Use it and come to a consensus like a reasonable person. If you treat Wikipedia like a battleground, of course people are going to assume you aren't there to build an encyclopedia.

Nobody reads the talk pages.

Also I don't really want to do that. It's just a necessity, otherwise your text gets immediately reverted. While when you stick with it and revert it back, you actually have a chance

> You can't just contribute and consider it done. You have to be prepare to fight your way through, engage in edit wars, learn about the battlefield (the bureaucracy, the article sourcing) and in the end, if you fight long enough, you usually win.

And this is why only fundamentalists and paid editors edit Wikipedia. I spent days with such battles on a certain Wikipedia page only to have one "senior" editor come around and essentially say that I was wrong (no explanation given) and revert the changes. It's a completely useless waste of time. :)

This is something Jerry Pournelle used to complain about. He edited some pages relating to the US space program. Events in which he took part or knew the people involved. Then he'd come back a month later and find the page had been edited again with the incorrect information re-inserted. Eventually he just gave up.

And then there are political problems. The Tyson affair is a good example - Neil deGrasse Tyson spent many years spouting made-up quotes supposedly uttered by political opponents (Like this one, for instance - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_jG5kKfacY). Eventually someone compiled all the nonsense and it was something of a mini-scandal. The wiki editors refused to allow any mention of it on his page, so the whole affair is mostly down the memory hole now, just like they intended.

Wikipedia is good for historical references (pre 1900 or so), and a good place to start if you just don't know anything about the thing you're looking up. But to rely on it for anything that's the slightest bit controversial is daft.

> Wikipedia is good for historical references (pre 1900 or so), and a good place to start if you just don't know anything about the thing you're looking up.

Whenever I see people say stuff like this I mentally replace what they said with "Wikipedia is a general-knowledge encyclopedia." Not a dig at you, but this should have always gone without saying.

The problem is wikipedia is wrong and/or incomplete more often than a general knowledge encyclopedia.

IIRC research has shown that this isn't true. Britannica had a higher error rate. It is flatly absurd to claim that wikipedia is less complete than any other encyclopedia,which are all under 1% its size. Wikipedia's isn't 99% anime junk.

The deGrasse Tyson talk page discussion about his "made up quotes": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Neil_deGrasse_Tyson/Archi...

The "famous person tried to contribute to stuff they were involved in" thing comes up a lot.

The wikipedia answer is that they want published sources that people can cite and review.

This seems a bit crazy when the famous person is someone you respect and trust, but as soon as self-publicists, frauds and quacks get involved, this becomes a useful guideline. And of course you can't have one rule for some and another rule for the rest.

> This seems a bit crazy when the famous person is someone you respect and trust

Bingo. Just because the person in question may even be the topic of the article, it doesn't mean that person can't be biased or want to spin things a certain way. By requiring citations and sources, you're providing some validity and "proof". Granted, sources can be faked too, but the level of separation works to minimize much of that. The faking of sources isn't something that would be very common anyways.

It sort of falls back on the Perfect Solution fallacy. You can never have a perfect solution so you have to choose the "least bad" option. The option with the least drawbacks or negatives.

"And of course you can't have one rule for some and another rule for the rest."

We can (and do) have recognition only for some (and not just for everybody, i.e. "the rest"). It may be a flawed solution, but that is how things work in the real life.

Perhaps editors should have their status revoked after a random period of time, to keep things fresh?

I suppose the problem with that is ensuring that the system 'promotes' enough normal users to fill the gap; again, random assignment might work. Sort of like an online equivalent of Athenian democracy.

People might be keener to be active editors if they receive an unexpected invitation to participate, but with the understanding that it might only last a week.

"I tried once or twice to edit articles but was quickly rejected by editors that usually believe they sort of "own" the content."

I have experienced this as well. It is difficult to believe and truly inexplicable, but there is some perceived status related to editing articles and making contributions to wikipedia.

It is very safe to generalize the young, white, male keyboard commandos who are staking out their turf in this way.

In the meantime, actual adults with real contributions to make (and normal, grown-up lives to lead elsewhere) cannot do so. In response to a child comment, below, No, no I will not learn to play the game and learn the tactics needed to bully my edits through.

They explicitly don't want original research, so knowing about the topic is only helpful for judging primary and secondary sources. Most experts should be writing primary sources rather than Wikipedia articles.

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