User:Thebiguglyalien/Stray thoughts

Everyone has their own collection of thoughts and observations about Wikipedia, so here's mine.

Civility and conduct

 * There are some really mean, nasty, bitter people on Wikipedia. There are also some really kind, thoughtful, pleasant people on Wikipedia. The former get more attention, but that doesn't mean they're larger in number. See also: real life.
 * Anyone who uses phrases like "civility police" or "tone policing" is almost certainly going to cause problems in regard to civility and tone.
 * Creating a sockpuppet account is the dumbest thing an editor can do. It's so easy to just... not do that. Once you get caught, any goodwill you could have salvaged is gone.
 * In many instances, "retired" or "semi-retired" translates to "still active but wants attention".
 * One should always be wary of professional opinion-havers. While there are good reasons to edit in other namespaces, the probability of issues drastically increases if an editor's most edited namespace is not mainspace.
 * Cliques and in-groups are incompatible with collaborative projects. Destroy them.
 * "More heat than light" is an old Wikipedian phrase. It roughly translates to "there's a legitimate issue here, but we're not competent enough to address it. The resulting discussion ended with unbecoming conduct, but we're too cowardly to address it."
 * "Don't template the regulars" is sometimes misused to deflect criticism. The purpose of the essay is to explain the flaws in default user warning templates. It encourages other forms of discussion on user talk pages when there is an issue. Attempting to avoid scrutiny with "don't template the regulars" is all but a confession of guilt.
 * If an editor is doing something inappropriately, there's a responsibility to correct them. If they're allowed to continue doing it, the behavior only becomes more entrenched, and everyone who didn't say anything shares some of the blame the next time it happens.
 * When someone justifies a unilateral action with Ignore all rules, it's a confession they knew they were doing something wrong. Ignoring all rules is for when the community has agreed that applying a certain guideline would be detrimental, not for when one person wants to violate it with impunity.

Neutral point of view

 * Editors who edit heavily in national/ethnic disputes (Armenia-Azerbaijan, India-Pakistan, Israel-Palestine, etc) are rarely here to build an encyclopedia. Even the ones who are will still trend toward disruption and inappropriate point of view editing.
 * When a civil POV pusher is caught, their response is almost always some variation of one of three things: "I'm being censored!", "Have you considered that [more reliable source] is also biased?", or "As long as each individual edit is permissible then there's no larger problem".
 * The more an editor feels the need to announce that their personal views diverge from mainstream scientific/political/social views, the more trouble they're going to cause with point of view editing.
 * Controversy and criticism sections just about never benefit an article.
 * There's a concerning style of editing in which some editors insist on negative content in an article before it can be considered neutral. Specifically working to put negative content in an article simply because it's "too kind" or "too laudatory" isn't neutrality, it's point of view pushing.
 * The louder someone proclaims that they're fighting systemic bias, the more likely they are to simply be trying to right great wrongs or otherwise push their own point of view as the "unbiased" truth. Systemic bias on Wikipedia is fought through painstaking encyclopedic work, not by picking fights.
 * If someone feels so strongly about a political/philosophical belief that they have to display their position on their user page, they are almost certainly not capable of editing neutrally in that area. Such edits should be closely scrutinized.
 * If someone insists on their userpage that Wikipedia or its coverage of a topic is not neutral and needs to be fixed, you can rest assured that they are incapable of editing neutrally.
 * The ideal editor is indifferent, uncaring, and amoral regarding any subject they write about. If someone thinks they are doing an act of public service by revealing how good or bad something is—even if writing only straight facts—they are not a good fit for Wikipedia.

Maintenance, sourcing, and writing

 * Most backlogs are difficult to solve because each aspect of an article affects the others. In most cases, improving every aspect of one article is more efficient than improving one aspect of many articles.
 * Sourcing discussions often conflate academic scholarship and literature reviews versus peer-reviewed opinion pieces. The latter are not nearly as reliable as the former.
 * If an edit summary begs you not to undo the edit, there's a good chance the edit needs to be undone.
 * Every editor should seek review of their work from time to time. That's where you learn best practices and discover areas for improvement in your editing that you didn't even know about. Peer review, good articles, and featured articles all offer this at different levels. If no one ever looks over an editor's work, odds are they're doing a few things wrong without realizing it.

Administration and organization

 * WikiProjects are rarely helpful when you need them, but they're great at creating issues through ownership of content and infighting. They are at their best when they gather several editors to work together toward a specific, measurable goal.
 * For a project that puts so much emphasis on policy and procedure, very little is done to teach new editors best practices. The most common practice is to let them get each thing wrong one at a time and then maybe fix it after the fact.
 * In the News is nothing more than a small group of editors handpicking their favorite news stories with no regard for encyclopedic merit, lasting significance, or avoiding original research.
 * No one is going to get started on that project you all have been discussing. If you want it done, then just do it. Once there's inertia, then maybe others will be willing to help, but don't get your hopes up.
 * The Wikimedia Foundation is like an abusive landlord. It hosts your space, but it tries to manage the details of how you act in this space, and it expects entry and involvement whenever it pleases. It also puts signs in your yard asking for money on your behalf, but it keeps the money for itself.
 * The WikiEd program is nothing more than a paid contribution program, where the editors are paid in grades instead of money, and this is reflected in the quality of the edits.
 * Administrators will inevitably fall from grace if they think there is grace associated with the role.