WS1 was steaming along, had very decent participation, before getting derailed and vanished by Proboards with no explanation. I gaze with contempt at little punks that secretly complained to Proboards help desk about who-knows-what we supposedly did wrong. Those punks should come here and speak up if they want credit for taking WS1 down. They won't be blocked for that.
Yet another example of the essential truth of Wikipedian politics: "that will never happen". I've said it and seen it said by others, far too many times.
ericbarbour wrote:Generally agree with all the above. I'll keep adding my own occasional injections of hydrochloric acid to this forum, so long as I can stomach rehashing facts and rumors from such a well-documented dysfunctional "cult thing".
It remains COMICAL to me, that Wikipedians continue to deny they have serious internal problems. Even David Miscavige isn't that stupid and clueless. Wikipedia--and everything relating to Wikipedia--draws in very petty lunatics and makes them think they "have some kind of power".
I haven't gone thru the archives of Jimbotalk and captured the visible censorship since June 2016. There are probably, no make that unquestionably, several dozen new examples of censorship and outrageous lies in the past year-plus. I really hate going thru that vast pile of narcissistic shit-talk, it's a big job and only makes me want to strangle idiots like Smallbones, Guy Chapman, Jytdog etc. Bad stress results. Would anyone else be willing to do it?
(PS--moved this thread to the WO area and merged it with an existing thread.)
I completely agree. With so many supposed educated people they seem completely clueless on basic social engineering and how changes in society (such as the current climate of hating the American Flag and anti monument movement in the US) can effect something like Wikipedia when you have such a narrow social grouping of users.
Virtually any active editor can tell you that the people who are attracted to Wikipedia largely follow the same social views, have the same social interactions, have largely the same kind of thinking, etc. For example, the population of Wikipedia editors is most white, male between 22-30 and mostly from the United States or United Kingdom. Of course there are exceptions, but that is by far the largest user group. Most of these are socially limited which is one reason why the editing atmosphere is so bad and why community members are openly hostile. A lot of them are current generation college students or relatively recent graduates and the WMF very heavily recruits more of the same users, which never made complete sense to me why they focus so much attention on busy college students. They would be just as well off by recruiting educated retirees who have lots of free time and a wealth of knowledge.
FWIW I posted this on my blog. Seen it on every internet community I can think of--especially Wikimedia "communities". And Wikipediocracy is not immune to it.
Why do these communities end up dominated by weirdos? Especially the niche ones?
The reason is time. It is weirdos and neurotics that are most disposed to spending all their time posting online, so they end up generating the majority of the content.
Think about it. If you’re a successful parent, why would you spend hours a day on Mumsnet? Your kids are fine, and if your mental health is, too, you’ve probably got better things to do than spend your time on a web forum. If you’re a talented artist, you probably spend your time actually making art rather than discussing technique online. Top amateur athletes are too busy actually training and playing to spend five hours a day on a forum for their hobby.
The people actually taking action are walking the walk. The people talking are doing just that. And, given their lack of action, the talkers have more time to talk.
Most of the content is produced by the talkers, not the walkers. Some communities have adopted the term “keyboard warriors” to refer to those who are all theory and no practice. They end up dominating the discussion.
Another reason is that neuroticism is very compatible with the format of web forums. Remember the definition we used above? People with neurotic tendencies don’t fare too well in real-world scenarios, and so they take refuge in online communities. 4chan is famously proud of its “autists”.
You end up with two forces pushing neuroticism in web communities: the greater propensity of neurotics to post, and the suitability of web forums to neurotic personality traits.
.....
Online communities don’t just foster neuroticism; they make it go viral.
It would be fine if web forums provided a space for neurotics to communicate among one another. But remember how Mumsnet grew: the volume of content they had brought them to the top of every Google search for parenting. Remember how I found College Confidential: they were “the world’s biggest college forum”.
Neurotics spur the growth of online forums through pure volume of content. Regular people get dragged in to these communities through web searching.
You’re probably familiar with some version of this effect if you’ve done any research into something new. You’ll often unearth a new subreddit by doing a search for some technique or question. Or you’ll come across a niche web forum where someone asked the same question you have.
And at least half the answers are stress-inducing ‘solutions’ dripping with anxiety. Try again with a different question: same result, this time on another forum.
The regular person starts to ask themself: am I not worried enough? All these parents don’t let their kids go one block away from the house without supervision. All these kids have 5.0 GPAs and are getting Harvard rejections. All these guys are saying I’ll embarrass myself at pickup basketball until I’ve spent 10,000 hours shooting free throws by myself.
Some will turn away. I’m glad the teenage version of myself was able to do that with college applications. But some percentage, possibly a very high one, will get sucked in to the neurosis themselves. Perhaps they’ll sign up, and continue to read content in these forums. Repetition makes truth, and soon they’ll be thinking neurotically, too. They’ll start posting similar answers, to be found by the next unsuspecting web searcher. Repetition makes virulence.
The cycle repeats itself, and the neurosis spreads.
This is a basic memetic effect. The meme is neurotic thinking. Might it be the case that becoming anxious and stressed about one aspect of our lives carries over into others? Perhaps. Take a look at social media recently, and think about whether it’s becoming more or less neurotic. Especially since the election.
Be careful what you’re consuming. And don’t be a keyboard warrior.
I think generally speaking there are some real life Management principles that help to explain this. I personally find it funny that these are mostly well known as are the things to fix them, but the WMF and the community, although many have degrees, continue to claim they have no idea why the projects are declining or how to fix them. A couple examples:
- Maslow's hierarchy of needs: people can only ascend to a higher level in an organization if they have filled each of the lower levels. This rule typically looks for 5 things people "need", all of which can be found in the Wikipedia community. Physiological (sustenance, shelter); Safety (freedom fro harm, security, stability); Social (family, friends); Esteem (respect, appreciation); Self improvement (growth, learning). The more of these things people have, the more they strive to get to the next level in an organization, the less of them they achieve, the less motivated they are to climb the ladder. In this case, you cant be an admin unless you have done some pre-admin work, you can't be Arbcom or functionary without being an admin, etc. Each level in Wikipedia is usually pretty negative in each of the 5 areas, so few want to do more of the next level and many of those are there for the wrong reasons.
- There are 2 types of team roles that are usually seen in an almost every organization.. Constructive and destructive. The culture of the organization and the leadership styles of those in charge of the organization generally reflect which of the 2 types are rewarded in an organization. Examples of Constructive include people who are encouraging of others, seek information, give information freely, initiate discussions and positive change, etc. Some examples of destructive roles are those that block (literally in this case) others, people who are aggressive, people who dominate discussions or push their own agendas, recognition seekers, etc. As we can see, most of the admins on Wikipedia have achieved what they have on the project through being a destructive role and most of those who are constructive roles usually get pushed out or denied promotion (for lack of a better term) by the destructive ones.
Sounds good to me--and it's not as if any of this isn't well-known in psychology circles. Any "real business" or "real nonprofit charity-thing" would have similar problems, but if they allowed the problems to dominate their operations, it might kill the organization eventually. Only Wikimedia can function and bring in donations while also being totally, horribly mismanaged--all those people giving them free content makes it work. "Exploitable free labor". Also the hallmark of a religious cult.
ericbarbour wrote:Sounds good to me--and it's not as if any of this isn't well-known in psychology circles. Any "real business" or "real nonprofit charity-thing" would have similar problems, but if they allowed the problems to dominate their operations, it might kill the organization eventually. Only Wikimedia can function and bring in donations while also being totally, horribly mismanaged--all those people giving them free content makes it work. "Exploitable free labor". Also the hallmark of a religious cult.
But that is something what is complete clear! Every sect, a hippie community, loses the reality. I know that, because I have lived in hippy community's when I was young. Most hippies were stoned all the day, or lunatics, or drunk, or all three, so Wikipedia was like coming home for me. They have made on Wiki a complet subculture, with there one rules, there one habits and that have became the real world for them. That is the reason you can't convince them with evidences, because if you do so, you are crazy, or you harassed them! And because they are in the majority they always win, and gets there majority lunatics bigger and bigger. Till you come to the point WP-Nl is now, there are only lunatics left, and not they start to fight each other. Till no one is left. These systems eat themself at they end.
Graaf Statler wrote:But that is something what is complete clear! Every sect, a hippie community, loses the reality. I know that, because I have lived in hippy community's when I was young. Most hippies were stoned all the day, or lunatics, or drunk, or all three, so Wikipedia was like coming home for me.
This reminds me of an article Sonoma Magazine recently ran, about two of the earliest communes. Both started with high ideals and lots of enthusiasm; both fell apart in a remarkably ugly manner.
I was trying to think of something nasty to say about Steve McGeady, but he's keeping a REALLY low profile these days. Haven't heard or seen a peep since 2015. Maybe he's realized he blew it. And his little f(r)iend Greg Kohs is now going to blow his website up.
Graaf Statler wrote:But that is something what is complete clear! Every sect, a hippie community, loses the reality. I know that, because I have lived in hippy community's when I was young. Most hippies were stoned all the day, or lunatics, or drunk, or all three, so Wikipedia was like coming home for me.
This reminds me of an article Sonoma Magazine recently ran, about two of the earliest communes. Both started with high ideals and lots of enthusiasm; both fell apart in a remarkably ugly manner.
That was how it was Eric, only most times we were inside because of the weather in Holland. I think we heard about the hippy mouvment when I was 15 years old the first time. Soesterberg, the American base was close by. And the bars were in Zeist, de Dorpstraat and and many boys how came there were very disapointed and frustrated American solders about the Vietnam war. And there were also American guys how had escaped service obligation. They brought the hippie culture with them to Holland. In that Dorpstraat was what we called a kraakpand, a squatting house. and close by one De Brouwerij, en op De slotlaan Lambiek. And in this strange mix I grew up. Later I went to Greece, Crete. It was a mix of drugs, girls, dreaming of a better world, it was the time of the Red Army Faction, the Storming of the Bastille, De Maagdenhuis occupation. Nobody went to school, it was a complete subculture. With all its dreams and ideals of a better world.. But it sound more romantic than it was, from all my friends I am the only one who is still alive. It was often dirty, cold. Drugs, alcohol, suicide. One of them tried to stop the train. LSD. A other jumped from the roof of a flat. It was the best for him, his body was finished. Drugs, alcohol, heroine. A other, 34 year old, they found him dead in his flat. Did we life? I think very, very intens. But our ideals were we nights were talking about with the music of Leonard Cohen on the back ground? The time of Thorens turntables and REVOX tape recorders, music was extreem important, and often naked girls, because free seks was also a part of that culture?
I think it was only a mouvement, a time picture, a reaction on the Vietnam war. And nothing more, like Wikipedia is too. Not something with a future.
Graaf Statler wrote:But that is something what is complete clear! Every sect, a hippie community, loses the reality. I know that, because I have lived in hippy community's when I was young. Most hippies were stoned all the day, or lunatics, or drunk, or all three, so Wikipedia was like coming home for me.
This reminds me of an article Sonoma Magazine recently ran, about two of the earliest communes. Both started with high ideals and lots of enthusiasm; both fell apart in a remarkably ugly manner.
I was trying to think of something nasty to say about Steve McGeady, but he's keeping a REALLY low profile these days. Haven't heard or seen a peep since 2015. Maybe he's realized he blew it. And his little f(r)iend Greg Kohs is now going to blow his website up.
Last I saw in September, he was still reading the site. Whether he's posting in the private forums, I know not.
"In the long run, volunteers are the most expensive workers you'll ever have." -Red Green
"I am a dark bouquet of neuroses..." - Jerry Holkins, Penny Arcade
In general, I think the whole WEB2 generation fades away, just like the hippie mouvment. The gils took there cloths on and got kids, the boy's wanted a home and a car and a family, and slowly slowly the complete hippy sceen changed in respected civilians. And I think the same will happend with the wiki boys and girls. They simply have no time anymore for wikishit.
From the hippie movement are some diehards left, most are ended in the middle, like me. In there heart a hippie, but i like a 5 star hotel the most. What happend in all hippie community's was, they started all whit dreams of a better worlds. Make love, no war. But slowly the wrong people came in. Stated to deal drugs, what was forbidden, you had to share them. Food was stolen, fights about girls because of jealousy started. And dirt. Hippie community's were extreem dirty. There were always discussion about cleaning up, people who left the kitchen in a chaos, and the bathroom. And at they end nobody cleaned anything up. At least in Greece the people didn't smell, because the community's were close to the sea, they swim and often there were douches at the beach. But in Holland....
Most of theme left, like I did. We have sworn for many years throughout Greece afterwards. But in Holland we say het verstand komt met de jaren., with age comes wisdom, and we went back. I haven't been for years in Greece, I don't know if I ever go back. because, they are playing hippie now. A very strange view on how it was.... But I was in Greece after the Mathala hippie hype.
But the there are many parallels. The ideals, the communities were the future with sharing everything, Girls, man, drugs, food, and the kids raised by the community, everybody was dad and mam, but after a time slowly all the ideals fade away. And nobody believed in the end in the project, and left all his dirt everywhere and started to fill his pockets. Because everybody did, and at the end they left, most times with a fight. (I didn't, I just left.) I have seen this from the start to the end, and later again on Startpagina. What I told before on WR-2. Nice link.
