Wikipedia Pain

There are voices — some loud and well-respected — who argue that Wikipedia is deeply flawed, a hellscape of psychotic editors and contempt for expertise. I mostly disagree, but those voices deserve, at least, to be heard.

[Note: There’s a companion blog post, Sex Edit War!, about my own experience in a Wikipedia Edit War. (I won! It was fun!) I hope it’ll make some of this narrative more concrete.]

Background · If you look at this post’s Reference Publishing topic, you’ll see a lot of Wikipedia-related material. I was one of its early defenders against the early-days waves of attackers who compared it to a public toilet and its editors to the Khmer Rouge.

I should also disclose that, over the years, I have made some 2,300 Wikipedia edits, created seven articles, and (what makes me happiest) contributed 49 images which have been used, in aggregate, 228 times.

I say all this to acknowledge that I am probably predisposed to defend Wikipedia.

What happened was… · Somebody spoke up on the Fediverse, saying “I wonder if reporters know that Wikipedia hallucinates too??” I’m not giving that a link, since they followed up with a post asserting that ChatGPT is better than Wikipedia. Life’s too short for that.

Anyhow, I replied “The difference is, errors in Wikipedia tend to get systematically fixed. Sometimes it takes more work than it should, but the vast majority of articles are moving in the right direction a vast majority of the time.” Much discussion ensued; follow the threads.

Shortly thereafter, the redoubtable JWZ complained about an edit to his page and I spoke up noting that the edit had been reversed, as bad edits (in my experience) usually are. That conversation branched out vigorously, dozens of contributions. Feel free to trawl through the Fediverse threads, but you don’t have to, I’ll summarize.

Gripe: Bad editors · This kept coming back.

• Jamie Zawinski: I just find the culture of the editors intolerable.

• Ruben Schade: I didn’t want to draw the ire of those horrible admins.

• Dave Slusher: The editor culture demonstrably contains decision makers who ain't that bright and are pretty lazy.

I dunno. I don’t want to gaslight those people; if that’s the experience they had, that’s the experience they had. My own experience is different: The editors I’ve interacted with have generally been friendly and supportive, and often exceptionally skilled at digging up quality citations. But I think that these reports are something Wikipedia should worry about.

Gripe: Disrespect of expertise · By number and volume of complaints, this was the #1 issue that came up in those threads:

• Brian Dear: Pantheon published my book in 2017. For years I tried to add to the paltry Wikipedia entries for everything from PLATO, plasma panels, to early MUDs, instant msging, but no: Wikipedia editors deleted it all (“not authoritative”). Screw ‘em.

• Dan O’Neill: An editor argued with me about the history of my own company.

• Zawinski: Wikipedia specifically rejects domain experts until someone who knows nothing cites them elsewhere.

• Alex Rosenberg: So many mistakes in early pages about PS3 that I tried to get corrected as a primary source, but some random kiddie blogger's guess as to what an acronym stood for was more valuable to the editors.

I generally disagree with these takes. Wikipedia not only respects but requires expert support for its content. However, it uses a very specific definition of “expert”: Someone who can get their assertions published in one or more Reliable Sources.

I think that if you’re about to have an opinion about Wikipedia and expertise and citations, you should give that Reliable-Sources article a careful read first. Here’s why: It is at the white-hot center of any conversation about what Wikipedia should and should not say. Since Wikipedia is commonly the top result for a Web search, and since a couple of generations of students have been taught to consult but not cite it, the article is central to what literate people consider to be true.

Let’s consider the complaints above. Mr Dear literally Wrote the Book. But, I dunno. I went and looked at the PLATO article and subjects linked to it, and, well, it looks good to me? It cites Mr Dear’s book but just once. Maybe the editors didn’t think Mr Dear’s book was very good? Maybe Dear says controversial things that you wouldn’t want to publish without independent evidence? The picture is inconclusive.

As for Mr O’Neill’s complaint, no sympathy. Given the social structure of capitalism, the employees and leadership of a company are the last people who should be considered Reliable Sources on that company. Particularly on anything that’s remotely controversial.

Mr Zawinski is upset that the person who chooses citations from Reliable Sources “knows nothing”, which I take to be an abbreviation for “is not a subject-matter expert”. There’s some truth here.

When it comes to bald statements of fact, you don’t need to be an expert; If more than one quality magazine or academic journal says that the company was incorporated in 1989, you don’t need to know anything about the company or its products to allow “founded in 1989” into an article.

On the other hand, I think we can all agree that people who make significant changes on articles concerning complex subjects should know the turf. My impression is that, for academic subjects, that condition is generally met.

Mr Rosenberg, once again, is upset that his personal expertise about the PS3 is being disregarded in favor of material sourced from a gamer blog. I’d have to know the details, but the best possible outcome would be Mr Rosenberg establishing his expertise by publishing his narrative in a Reliable Source.

Bad Pattern · There’s a pattern I’ve seen a few times where a person sees something in Wikipedia in an area where they think they’re knowledgeable and think it’s wrong and decide “I’ll just fix that.” Then their edits get bounced because they don’t include citations. Even though they’re an “expert”. Then that person stomps away fuming publicly that Wikipedia is crap. That’s unfortunate, and maybe Wikipedia should change its tag-line from “anyone can edit” to “anyone who’s willing to provide citations can edit.”

Implications · This policy concerning expertise has some consequences:

1. The decision on who is and isn’t an expert is by and large outsourced to the editorial staff of Reliable Sources.

2. There are ferocious debates among editors about which sources are Reliable and which are not, in the context of some specific article. Which is perfectly appropriate and necessary. For example, last time I checked, Fox News is considered entirely Reliable on the finer points of NFL football, but not at all on US politics.

3. There are many things which people know to be true but aren’t in Wikipedia and likely never will be, because no Reliable Source has ever discussed the matter. For example, I created the East Van Cross article, and subsequently learned the story of the cross’s origin. I found it entirely convincing but it was from an guy I met at a friend’s party who was a student at the high school where and when the graphic was first dreamed up. I looked around but found no Reliable Sources saying anything on the subject. I doubt it’ll ever be in Wikipedia.

What do you think of those trade-offs? I think they’re pretty well OK.

The notion that anyone should be allowed to add uncited assertions to Wikipedia because they think they’re an expert strikes me as simultaneously ridiculous and dangerous.

Real problems · Obviously, Wikipedia isn’t perfect. There are two problems in particular that bother me all the time, one small, one big.

Small first: The editor culture is a thicket of acronyms and it’s hard to keep them straight. I have considered, in some future not-too-fierce editorial debate, saying “Wait, WP:Potrezebie says you can’t say that!” Then see if anyone calls me on it.

The big problem: The community of editors is heavily male-dominated, and there have repeatedly been credible accusations of misogyny. I have direct experience: I created the article for Sarah Smarsh, because we read her excellent book Heartland in my book club, then I was shocked to find no entry. Despite the existence of that mainstream-published and well-reviewed book, and the fact that she had published in The Guardian and the Columbia Journalism Review, some other editor decreed that that was insufficient notability.

At the time, I reacted by gradually accumulating more and more citations and updating the draft. Eventually she published another book and the argument was over. These days, in that situation I would raise holy hell and escalate the obstruction up the Wikipedia stack.

To Wikipedia’s credit, its leadership knows about this problem and gives the appearance of trying to improve it. I don’t know the details of what they’re trying and whether they’re moving the needle at all. But it’s clearly still a problem.

Once again… · I stand by what I said in December 2004: Wikipedia dwarfs its critics.

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