Original Research

My silence hasn't been for a lack of topics. Things have been changing at Wikipedia, as they do in any dynamic, thriving community. However, I've had more to occupy my time with than just the need to earn a paycheck in order to keep the cats fed and afford more books. Some of what happened in the last few days:

• Last Wednesday came down with a stomach flu. It continued thru Thursday.
  
• Friday was the day Yvette and go out for dinner.
  
• Saturday was spent visiting my parents. We gave my Dad his overdue Father's Day card and a present for his birthday. When I got home, instead of updating the blog I found myself writing a new article for Wikipedia, on the Ethiopian town of Hawzen -- which
  wasn't even close to what I had planned to work on that day.
  
• Sunday spent the morning at Yvette's church, at a fare-well party for the old pastor. Spent the afternoon at the Rembrandt exhibit at the Portland Art Museum. Although the exhibit was packed -- which was appropriate for one of the great artists of Europe -- funny how there were many more people for the exhibit of Egyptian artifacts last November. There's a point here, but I'm not quite sure what it is.

Meanwhile, the following notable events happened at Wikipedia:

• On 20 June was the first Featured Article put on the front page without an illustration: Final Fantasy VI. The forces against fair-use material got the upper hand in this round: so where are they when an article is being reviewed for Featured Article status, and peers insist on illustrations?
  
• In the last few weeks, there has been an increase in the use of arbitrary edits -- usually assisted by a bot. These include:
  
  • removal of the "spoiler" tag from several thousand articles;
    
  • systematic tagging of all fair use images for deletion by applying without concern for how these fair use images were applied -- or even thought;
    
  • the deletion -- then undeletion -- of a group of pages known as "Bad Jokes and Other Deleted Nonsense or BJAODN. Supposedly the reason for the arbitrary deletion was over some violation of the GFDL, or that BJAODN is not conductive to the goal of creating an encyclopedia, but anyone who's been around Wikipedia for more than 6 months knows the real reason was that some members of the community simply don't like BJAODN existing;
    
  • and turning articles on living people into single-sentence stubs on the grounds of something called "WP:BLP". We're not talking about a policy or an idea, or even a string of words with a cliched meaning -- the reason often given is simply these six characters, nothing more. And the perpetrators insist that this reason excludes them from offering any explanation -- or even allowing a discussion over the merits of this act. Disturbingly similar to the mindset the allegedly elected leader of a major country has about convicting people he calls terrorists -- only people who would support a terrorist would question whether he -- or his subordinates -- are accurate in their identification of terrorists.
  
  
• Then there was the reorganization of the #Wikipedia channel on IRC, which brought a different chorus to sing the same complaints that have been sung over the previous three arbitrary changes. I keep wondering about whatever happened to discussing things; yes, it is slow and messy, but when it leads to a decision, the decision sticks -- for example, no one argues over what to call a certain city on the Baltic Sea with a combined German-Polish heritage any more. This emphasis on deliberation was the strength and beauty of Wikipedia -- and I wonder if it is now gone.
  
• After a perpetual barrage of umpteen nominations, articles on the GNAA and Daniel Brandt have been deleted from Wikipedia. Regardless of the merits of these incidents, to everyone except the few who endorsed these acts this process was little more than one group forcing their decision upon the Wikipedia community with repeated nominations. I only hope those support these deletions realize what they have done when one of their cherished articles is subjected to the same battery of repeated nominations.
  
• Lastly, is the beginning of elections for new Wikimedia Foundation Trustees. I need to pay more attention to this, but I am already behind in evaluating this crop of candidates.

I don't want to fall into my usual rut of cynicism, but I can't help concluding that I thought hobbies were supposed to be fun -- or at least provide a sense of satisfaction.

Geoff



Technocrati tags: Online communities, Wikipedia

Labels: wikipedia