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Tom Simonite writes at MIT Technology Review that the Wikimedia Foundation is rolling out new software trained to know the difference between an honest mistake and intentional vandalism in an effort to make editing Wikipedia less psychologically bruising. One motivation for the project is a significant decline in the number of people considered active contributors to the flagship English-language Wikipedia: it has fallen by 40 percent over the past eight years, to about 30,000.
Research indicates that the problem is rooted in Wikipedians' complex bureaucracy and their often hard-line responses to newcomers' mistakes, enabled by semi-automated tools that make deleting new changes easy. The new ORES system, for "Objective Revision Evaluation Service," can be trained to score the quality of new changes to Wikipedia and judge whether an edit was made in good faith or not. ORES can allow editing tools to direct people to review the most damaging changes. The software can also help editors treat rookie or innocent mistakes more appropriately, says Aaron Halfaker who helped diagnose that problem and is now leading a project trying to fight it. "I suspect the aggressive behavior of Wikipedians doing quality control is because they're making judgments really fast and they're not encouraged to have a human interaction with the person," says Halfaker. "This enables a tool to say, 'If you're going to revert this, maybe you should be careful and send the person who made the edit a message.'"
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 07 2015, @05:00PM
I suspect the aggressive behavior of Wikipedians doing quality control is because they're making judgments really fast and they're not encouraged to have a human interaction with the person
I suspect the aggressive behavior of Wikipedians is because they're powermad dicks who protect "their" pages from people who are not them.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Monday December 07 2015, @05:17PM
^ This.
Also, many of the major spats on Wikipedia had nothing to do with content quality, and everything to do with content political slant. Those are often confused by people who have a political ax to grind.
For example, how do you describe the violence that is going on in the land bordered by Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon? You could accurately call it terrorism against Israel, theft from Palestinians, criminal gang activity on both sides, war crimes on both sides, threatened genocide on both sides, and so forth. And you could write articles with any of those slants using high quality, well sourced, detailed information. Of course, an encyclopedia article is necessarily incomplete, so the question about what to leave out and what to put in means that there's always important information left out, and if you write with a particular slant in mind you can end up with a high-quality article that is lying by omission.
You can get a similar effect on the Wikipedia page of any candidate for major office.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by Adamsjas on Monday December 07 2015, @06:38PM
I agree, there is nothing so fiercely defended on Wikipedia as the political slant.
For a while I was signed up as a Wiki editor/submitter back in the day. Even when you included numerous citations, if the information didn't align with the ruling cabal's views, your changes would get reverted, and your citations would also be deleted.
Wiki is good for documenting anything non-political or non controversial. Anything else is pointless.
Then there is this: http://www.theverge.com/2015/12/4/9848432/peking-duck-fan-backstage-wikipedia [theverge.com]
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 07 2015, @07:00PM
The wake up for me wrt to this was the GamerGate article. I've been part of GG since the start and the Wikipedia article still pushes the feminist lie that the GG community is primarily focused on harassing women. Several sycophantic male feminists were even banned from the article because they were unapologetically maintaining a political slant after being warned.
(Score: 3, Informative) by K_benzoate on Monday December 07 2015, @08:12PM
This isn't a troll, it really happened. [theguardian.com]
Climate change is real and primarily caused by human activity.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 07 2015, @09:41PM
Which is why I also read the discussion pages. Others also read the discussion pages so I can also contribute to those seeking more knowledge on a subject by presenting it in the discussion pages. It's generally a policy that things on the discussion pages shouldn't be removed and so at least if something is more controversial than what the main page leads one to believe those who are interested enough can at least get introduced to the controversy from the discussion page which could give them enough to research the subject more if they are interested. The discussion pages are intended to discuss what should be included and what shouldn't and if you feel something should be included because it's relevant than you could mention it there. Even if it doesn't get included because someone else feels it's excessive at least introducing it there can get others who are interested in going beyond the main page exposed to it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 07 2015, @11:35PM
On the flipside I have seen articles reverted to be non-neutral accompanied by ad-hominem manufactured flaming of whatever hapless editor tried to make things NPOV in the first place, on the discussion page. A reader without critical thinking skills is in a poor situation on Wikipedia indeed, and the potential for that type of reaction is so great I have steered clear of contributing in well over 5 years.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 07 2015, @05:33PM
Yup. This sounds like yet another iteration of "I know, I'll use technology to solve an intrinsic problem with human nature!"; naive and usually fruitless. Any system left in place for long enough will frequently acquire an over-abundance of power-mad dicks because only power-mad dicks want to stick around wielding their power amongst other power-mad dicks, most sane people will find somewhere with less power-mad dicketry.
Is there any system for punishing Wikipedia's resident power-mad dicks?
Don't have any particular beef with wikipedia myself. The few edits that I've made to it (all anonymous, I don't have an account) are all still there, in whole or in part. Only know about the power-mad dicks behaviour second-hand but I don't find the idea surprising in the least. TVTropes (a site I edit a lot) certainly has more than its fair share of rules zealots who'll happily go around changing all your colours into colors (or vice versa) and all the other crap despite DBAA guidelines about it. Yawnsome, but an omnipresent evil when living in a universe not entirely populated by clones of myself.
(Score: 3, Funny) by jdavidb on Monday December 07 2015, @05:35PM
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 07 2015, @05:38PM
how many years it took to get the "Yogurt" article title renamed
That implies that is has been renamed. Yoghurt redirects to Yogurt for me (en.wikipedia.org).
(Score: 2) by GlennC on Monday December 07 2015, @05:47PM
Yoghurt redirects to Yogurt for me
That may be, but where does the WOOSH article direct to?
Sorry folks...the world is bigger and more varied than you want it to be. Deal with it.
(Score: 2) by Adamsjas on Monday December 07 2015, @06:40PM
Check Wikipedia in 5 minutes, and you will see it redirects to Obama.
(Score: 3, Touché) by maxwell demon on Monday December 07 2015, @07:19PM
To Whoosh, of course.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Monday December 07 2015, @06:14PM
Since the other response is just mocking you, I'll clarify. The article was originally located at "Yoghurt" a very uncommon English spelling. It took years to move it to the much more common spelling.
(Score: 3, Informative) by FatPhil on Monday December 07 2015, @08:42PM
It's still used by the national TV corporation: bbc.co.uk/food/yoghurt
It's still used by the largest distribution newspaper: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-19005/The-good-yoghurt-guide.html
Broadsheets use the spelling too: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-health/10563265/Theres-HOW-MUCH-sugar-in-a-low-fat-yoghurt-Skirting-the-Issue.html , http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/life/food/recipes/article4505513.ece
Recipe sites use it: http://allrecipes.co.uk/recipe/7310/homemade-natural-yoghurt.aspx , https://www.cookipedia.co.uk/recipes_wiki/Yoghurt
Producers and equiptment manufacturers use it: http://www.clandeboye.co.uk/yoghurt/ , http://www.yoghurtdirect.co.uk/
It's even more common in some other English speaking countries, like Australia and New Zealand.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Tuesday December 08 2015, @05:46AM
That's only because all these organizations refer to Wikipedia.
"It is easier to fool someone than it is to convince them that they have been fooled" Mark Twain
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 08 2015, @01:54PM
Do a google search for both and you will see one far outweighs the other in results.
You should also note that the h less spelling is accepted and routinely used in pretty much every English speaking country including Brittan and Australia. Where as the version with the h is rarely seen in the US or Canada. Therefore it only makes sense to use the version that is acceptable everywhere, and is much more common.
If you go look in the Oxford dictionary you will see that the even they agree the primary spelling has no H.
Or you can look at the actual source word, Turkish I believe. No H.
No matter how you cut it, it only makes sense to use the version with no H.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday December 09 2015, @08:50AM
Looking at Turkish is stupid. It doesn't have a "g" either. It has a g-bar, which traditionally, in particular when the word entered English, was transliterated as "gh". Modern attitudes to Turkish transliteration in no way alter words that are already in English.
Americans can have their "g" spelling, I have no problem with that, they've got their own spelling conventions already, one more makes no difference. However, they should stop trying to teach the English, Austrialian and New Zealand speakers of the language how to spell. (And if you actually do the googling, you'll find your claims about the popularity of the two spellings are pulled from your arse. Yes, "arse", not "ass". In .au, "gh" isn't just significant, it's the *majority*.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 09 2015, @03:32AM
It took eight years and eight Requested Move discussions, according to a proponent of "yogurt."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Born2cycle/Yogurt_Principle [wikipedia.org]
C.f.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Andrewa/Yoghurt_principle [wikipedia.org]
which recommends that "insignificant discussions should be avoided."
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Wednesday December 09 2015, @05:57AM
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Wednesday December 09 2015, @06:00AM
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 07 2015, @05:53PM
Not to mention the whole insider/outsider divide. I once tried to make changes to someone's pages on a topic to correct factual errors many of which were the kind, "So-and-so thought X," which were citations to books and scholarly articles. Well, the owner reverted all of them as "vandalism." So I went to the talk page and asked why my particular edits were reverted and it was met with, "because the sources disagree with you," which isn't vandalism. So I said they didn't as the very next sentence and provided the full paragraph that was quote mined, one of which was the effect of "[...] which is why many people believe X. However, such an idea is misguided because [...]" or flat out made up, such as citing to a page without the cited text at all or on a different topic. Well, that went nowhere, so I escalated it to their dispute resolution services. I presented my evidence, including scans of the pages and other things. He or she countered with the idea that I had faked the scans and whatnot and that his or her copy was different than mine, but offered no hard facts. Surprise, surprise, the person sided with the "owner" because he was more credible than me because the editor had made more edits in the area, and the like, and he or she didn't need to go to the trouble of getting his or her own copies of the book and checking those. Those changes stayed on the Wiki for years, until that editor irked of the wrong people and was forced out. After that, someone else edited the page to correct them.
Interestingly enough, last time I checked, the whole dispute was nuked from orbit: the article edits, the talk page edits, the dispute pages are all gone and don't appear anywhere in the history. I literally went through every revision to find them on the pages and nothing. After talking with different people, I've discovered that such actions from the very top happen more frequently than most realize. The best way to find them is comparing dumps, but most people don't care enough to do that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 08 2015, @03:10AM
"Interestingly enough, last time I checked, the whole dispute was nuked from orbit: the article edits, the talk page edits, the dispute pages are all gone and don't appear anywhere in the history. I literally went through every revision to find them on the pages and nothing. After talking with different people, I've discovered that such actions from the very top happen more frequently than most realize. The best way to find them is comparing dumps, but most people don't care enough to do that."
Wikipedia says that they generally aren't not supposed to delete things like that. On the one hand I understand that they do have to save space and bandwidth to some extent. On the other hand doing it too often will cause them to lose credibility.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 08 2015, @03:34AM
err ... they generally aren't supposed to delete pages like that *
Anyways, like you said, comparing dump files of mirrors will generally fix that. Perhaps someone can create a mirror that specifically only stores things that Wikipedia deletes. This serves a few purposes.
It draws more attention to historical discussions that have been deleted by highlighting them since that's all that this server contains. This provides a source specifically organized for people to either casually browse around for anything that ha been deleted (without being distracted by everything else) or to look for something in particular that may have been deleted or to see if anything has been deleted regarding a specific topic. The Streisand effect.
It helps ensure that historical discussions are stored for longer periods of time.
It helps us better quantify how often things get deleted and to better statistically track trends that can help us better determine why things get deleted and if there are any possible slants that play a role.
The server doesn't have to be burdened by everything that hasn't been deleted. It can compare different dumps from different mirrors to look for things that have been deleted and store only those that have been. This can help centralize funding so that the amount of funding it receives from those that contribute can be based on how important people think it is to contribute to this specific cause without their funds being distracted by other causes (ie: the more general cause of mirroring all of Wikipedia). It's almost like having different independent mirrors store different parts of Wikipedia instead of just having Wikipedia itself and every independent mirror trying to store all of Wikipedia and having to create a line where past material gets deleted and so all of these independent mirrors avoid distributing the burden of storing different information on different mirrors. An independent mirror that stores what has been deleted is one that focuses on the parts that Wikipedia itself and independent mirrors no longer have the storage to store.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 09 2015, @02:51AM
Pages, or their revision history, aren't truly deleted from Wikipedia. They're just hidden from public view. Hence, storage space is not saved (except by those who mirror the site). Deleted material can be undeleted; it's a simple matter of bureaucracy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Oversight/FAQ#Tools_for_hiding.2Fremoving_edits [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_policy#Undeletion [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 09 2015, @05:44PM
It sounds like what happened to the edits was the "Oversight" where they didn't show up at all. But I think the claim that "all" edits were converted to be highly dubious. Does that mean all the edits with Jimbo's SSN in them (the original reason for oversight) and other doxing were put back up too?
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Tuesday December 08 2015, @01:14AM
Yep, dealt with one once that didn't like the fact that a character on a TV show was supposed to be gay but was changed by executive meddling. Provided citations from the writer, the director, and the actor, even provided links to the deleted scene where the character talks about this to his friend which was on the director's website, result? Attempted to ban me.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.