On May 6, 2006, at 9:18 AM, [email protected] wrote:
Have you ever given even a thought to those of us who read your encyclopedia? How come I never once heard the word "reader"? Could it be because the thousand or so hits a day are from editors only?
Doubtful, we're among the top 20 websites on the Internet. If you never hear us talk about the readers, you aren't paying attention.
I "stumbled" across Wikipedia looking for information on Plasma cosmology via Google. I was astounded at your so-called neutrality. Not only did the article define plasma incorrectly, the POV was obviously biased against plasma cosmology. Not to mention the very poor writing. So I really thought that one could make the necessary corrections but guess what? After spending an evening posting the corrections, they were simply reverted.
I don't know anything about cosmology. I do know something about bias--since you are biased towards plasma cosmology, perhaps neutrality is perceived by you as a negative bias? I know that Wikipedia tends to avoid giving undue weight to non-standard theories.
So did you research my complaint? Or did you just assume that because I complained I had to be in the wrong?
The following complains are almost never taken seriously because most of the people who offer them are kooks:
1. The admins are abusing their power, and I'm really a good editor. 2. My fringe scientific theory isn't fairly represented in Wikipedia.
You're offering complaint #2. I'll be square with you: we tend to be dismissive of people who offer complaint #2 because most of them are kooks. Proving you're not a kook requires calmness, civility, and refraining from being as much of a prick as you're being right now.
I confined my subsequent efforts to the talk pages, never fell for the revert trick, and when they started to remove stuff I wrote on the talk page, and I suggested that if they did that in the real world they would be taken to court, they blocked me. Twice.
Because such remarks are completely useless and counterproductive and only contribute to the perception of you as a kook. You're digging your own grave here, brother.
Does Wikipedia have any notion of what ethical behavior is?
Yes.
So you are a private company, and you can do as you damn well please. (Why the .org?)
Because we're a non-profit private company.
Your encyclopedia is not "free" it is run by the powers to be, You joke about the "cabel" but what do you do about it?
We joke about the cabal because it doesn't exist, despite numerous accusations from crazy people and repeat trolls that it does.
You support each other as if an admin can do no wrong.
We have some damn good admins. If we're weighing who we trust more, an admin, or some guy off the street who seems to be a physics kook, we trust the admin. So far you haven't been calm and rational enough to overcome that bias.
You have no control of the admins, and they don't expect any.
We've desysopped several admins in the past for abusing their privileges.
You have no ethics program in place. There is no such thing as ethics in Wikipedia. Ethics is a joke.
We don't think in terms of ethics because the problems facing Wikipedia are pragmatic, not ethical. Ethically speaking, the only concerns are (a) civility, (b) the right to fork, and (c) the right to leave. As long as we respect those three things, it would be perfectly ethical of us to, say, remove all mention of fringe scientific theories. It's not pragmatic of us to do so, but it's perfectly ethical.
Hell, it's perfectly ethical for Jimbo to just block everyone he doesn't like.
In the real world, the police are not above the law. They have to stop at red lights just like the rest of us. They cannot steal just like the rest of us. They are expected to set examples, their standards of conduct are actually higher than the rest of us. And they are accountable to the rest of us. But in Wikipedia, the police are accountable to no one. They can and do form groups which support each other.
Admins aren't police. Admins are people who can block people from editing a website and delete articles. To even compare admins to police is lunacy.