Wikipedia talk:Why Wikipedia is not so great

"Bias"
We shouldn't throw jargon at unsuspecting outsiders...

Of course, it's not that important, the explanations being under the heading...but I think it looks better. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by VKokielov (talk • contribs).


 * It's not even accurate, as most users confuse editorial balance with editorial bias. Including the board.

IPA
The issue/position/argument form might be appropriate for this page, but it would tend to encourage "solutions" to be stated. Maybe better used on "replies".

Without it, it's actually impossible to keep positions cleanly stated. If people want to be able to take a very different position on any issue than anyone else, there needs to be a format for that.

"Blasphemy on Wikipedia"
This style is not entirely formal but Wikipedia ha became boastful of its profile and is lagging behind.Example is that you heard the word "shit".These pages itself are blasphemous

Why Wikipedia should never be taken seriously as a source of knowledge or research tool
. I have had first-hand experience of all of these things as an editor and am somewhat disillusioned with the WP project. I fear Wikipedia too often deserves the shaky reputation it has for reliability and objectivity. [Last comment redacted] --P123ct1 (talk) 00:26, 9 October 2014 (UTC)
 * 1) Every article is a work-in-progress, where facts shift constantly, sometimes from day to day as editors quarrel about what should be included.  So how can you trust what you read covers the subject adequately?
 * 2) If editors cannot write properly, how can you trust them to think properly?  Many articles are written in appalling English This is true
 * 1) It is supposed to be neutral, but POV-pushers are not always contained, so how can you trust the information to be unbiased?
 * 2) The combative, not to say poisonous, atmosphere in Wikipedia editing is driving good editors away, leaving the field open to POV-pushers and inexperienced editors who have no grasp of the basic principles of Wikipedia editing (WP:FIVEPILLARS).
 * 3) I am concerned at how some editors have no idea of what an encyclopaedia is, and seem to treat some articles as a series of opinion pieces.  This basic ignorance is worrying.
 * 4) Inaccurate facts can remain hidden for years, as there is no overall scrutiny. Pure chance governs whether inaccurate facts are picked up and corrected.
 * 5) Blatant inconsistencies within an article can lie uncorrected for months because of dithering and quarrelling among editors about how to handle facts.
 * 6) Edits are often inserted at random, making nonsense of reasoned passages.  Again, it is the luck of the draw whether these are picked up and smoothed out.
 * 7) Too many editors now are, frankly, illiterate. (Just look at some article Talk pages.)
 * 8) Even if editors are literate, many are ignorant about MoS rules. I have even seen edits made correct according to MoS reverted later to the incorrect version.  Quoting from citations is a free-for-all: the handling of quotations very often do not follow MoS rules.  Again, I have seen quotations written according to MoS reverted to the wrong version.
 * 9) It is easy to see why not all articles have an A-rating.  As a researcher I would not touch articles which did not have this rating.
 * 10) The citation method works well.  I would sooner trust what I read in a citation than what I read in a Wikipedia article.
 * P123ct1: What cheap thrill do you get from bashing Wikipedia? Shame on you. 202.69.240.126 (talk) 16:30, 19 February 2015 (UTC)
 * 202.69.240.126 please, IF you have a criticism in regard to a content presented, present that criticism directly so that it can be responded to. Please also see WP:NPA.  I have asked similar question in other situations but, in regard to the list above, On what point do you disagree?  As far as I can see there is nothing unreasonable that has been presented.  GregKaye 12:07, 12 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Too many editors now are, frankly, illiterate. (Just look at some article Talk pages.) I like your points but I must disagree with this, I think Wikipedia editors are too literate to the point of creating a divide between the elite verbose Wikipedia kings of editing and the average person, warded off by the fact that tons of things are jargon and rambling. No, Simple English Wiki doesn't solve this.
 * D10jxo (talk) 23:12, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

It was eye opening to discover this article. Example 1: My tiny edit and adding citation needed were summarily reverted by one of maybe 3 or 4 owners or gatekeepers. The reason given was that it changed the tone. The original paragraph said nothing that was in the cited article (which was a good one) the other source was a personal blog. Result: no change.

Example 2: I added an infobox request on a biography talk page. Some "editor" removed the tag and said I had to discuss it in Talk for consensus! So nobody could visibly see that an infobox had been requested unless they waded to the bottom of talk. A troll came by and said that's right. Neither of these people had any previous contribution to this page. The troll turned out to be an editor/admin?

This exact issue was brought up at the Teahouse and nobody could believe this was still going on. Its a kind of low level bullying by people who think they know better based on having been around a long time.

Germsteel (talk) 05:42, 8 November 2020 (UTC)


 * I feel like Wikipedia is a virus in the sense that everything is slowly using information from it, therefore their info gets lower quality, but then the best alternative to that is Wikipedia. The more people use Wikipedia, the more that everything uses info from it. It's more of a spiral now that I think about it, and this isn't really worded well, but it's a huge problem. D10jxo (talk) 23:10, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

And why it should be
See User:Andrewa/what use is Wikipedia. Andrewa (talk) 11:27, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

Bullying
Just a note: I used to contribute a lot on WP but was essentially bullied off the site. The "personal interests" section touches on this problem but perhaps not enough.

A common scenario: Editor A takes an interest in article X and finds an area where he/she can contribute. Editor B who has been involved in X has a particular bias about it and does not like what A is contributing regardless of how well it is sourced. Soon editor B engages a couple of his/her buddies (often buddies whose only interest is to pick a fight) and begin a cloak-and-dagger edit war with A. Eventually an administrator may get involved but, rather than understand the discussion, simply looks at which side has the most supporters and joins in the bullying of editor A. Ultimately editor A is chased away.

Unfortunately some of this is a human nature thing and is unavoidable. However, it would help if the administrators followed perhaps some stricter principles to discourage the bullying. Obviously the first one is never to think that multiple editors who have been involved with an article for a long time are more knowledgeable or more objective about the article than somebody who has just recently started editing. It is tempting to think that way but it is frequently false. And equally important it is important for an administrator to admit when he/she does not really understand the issue at hand rather than just assume that the side with the most people must be correct. In my experience, if an administrator has to be a little biased, WP is generally better served by administrators being a little biased toward the little guy instead of the gangs of zealots. It is often emotionally difficult to think that way since there are so many malicious editors out there, but WP is not best served by only defending the zealots.

--MC
 * I was contributing a lot recently but basically got doxxed by a hostile user. He's a failed intellectual that was spit out the bottom of academia and now hangs out guarding pages about Southern Colorado and treating newbies like shit. But he gets barn stars for his photos so he's gold. 2600:1011:B01E:8161:6983:7189:589F:DDAD (talk) 15:38, 26 March 2021 (UTC)


 * Yep, Wikipedia has a growing population of control freaks, autists and people whp are blatantly WP:OWNing articles (or assisting editor friends who do). These people think they know exactly how the article should be formulated, and often they'll respond to new edits either by speedy deletions or by invoking some book, in print or something they found on Google Books, going like: "This is my inviolable RS, and to challenge it you have to find another prime RS that questions precisely this source, this exact claim". This is effectively a form of piggybacking on the statements of somebody else, even if those statements may well be outdated, questionable or half-invented. In my opinion many people who spend a lot of time on Wikipedia are neither really knowledgeable about the stuff they edit, nor willing to discuss the matter of the article - they just want it to be worded in a certain way.


 * Much of the essay here is at least five years old (I checked with the edit history) but things have been getting steadily worse over the last ten years or so. I used to have a proper Wikipedia profile, but I gave up on editing around 2012 because for several reasons it was becoming increasingly difficult to get anything useful done or lift the standard of an article. Landing in endless discussions with people who keep moving the goalposts, playing with words or invoking rare fringe examples against the wider lines of an argument, when they sense they can't defend their original point - that's not my idea of fruitful cooperation. There are still a great deal of very good articles on WP - mostly within topics that are not heavily controversial and where it's easy to get access to straight raw data/secure facts (for example "hard" natural sciences like physics, or movies and record albums) - but the overall aspirations of Wiki to be seen as a project meeting academic standards seem little more than a joke. :( And this is not going to improve unless there's a serious overhaul of the rules for editing and fact-checking (for one thing, the principle that "anyone can edit anything, even stuff they don't really know anything about" will have to go). 188.150.64.57 (talk) 00:59, 7 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Great points! Wiki-Scribbler 101 (talk) 19:08, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

Bureaucracy trumps academic research
I have been a defender of Wikipedia for years, probably because I wasn’t actively involved in anything more that small corrections. I have long encouraged friends of mine to pitch in and add their own expertise to various articles, but they have all insisted that the endeavor is anti-academic and hostile to legitimate experts in a given field. My recent experience only proves them right, which makes me rather sad.

The principal problem, and a well-known one at that, is that the bureaucrats at the top—who, by their own admission, know little to nothing of the disciplines they monitor—spend their time enforcing Wikipedia “norms” with no regard to the content of the articles themselves. Most concerning in this process is that the “norms” they claim to defend are nothing more than the articles as they are already written. It is an appalling circular argument, to say that disagreement from outside Wikipedia is not acceptable, because Wikipedia's status quo already fully demonstrates that no outside information is needed. I have often thought I was Alice in Wonderland, when reasonable ideas were countered, not by an academic argument or even by a cogent thought, but an insistence that Wikipedia had already resolved the question.

My participation will not be missed, but the thousands of others who have walked away or who refuse to participate because of this BS are a real loss to the underlying goals that Wikipedia once espoused. MonteGargano (talk) 02:28, 24 February 2018 (UTC)


 * I completely agree. It's almost like a trending trickling effect; one person's negative feedback on an article inspires others too follow.   Wiki-Scribbler 101 (talk) 19:00, 27 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Some of these Wiki administrators may be receiving $200,000 annual salaries. They may have to justify keeping their pay by a show of force which is causing good editors to run for the hills. Wiki-Scribbler 101 (talk) 19:17, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

I have to agree with you. As I have read more in the actual literature I noticed that Wikipedia articles that are near and dear to lots of people (say the British Raj) read like propaganda; initially I blamed the sources but its a probably a small number of vested people on wikipedia that change or prevent change so it reflects what they think not what current research says. Germsteel (talk) 05:50, 8 November 2020 (UTC)


 * Well, Wikipedia editors are people. People are not perfect and they are not machines, they can have blind spots. Until you can come up with an alternative way to create 6 million articles, we'll have to rely on human beings, flaws & all. Plus, we are all volunteers so it's not like we have quarterly performance reviews. We all chip in to do what we can as best we can. Liz Read! Talk! 06:18, 8 November 2020 (UTC)
 * AI is knocking on our doors and soon human touch may be useless lol D10jxo (talk) 23:13, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

Rant?
Is it just me, or are there indeed some parts in the essay that qualify as ranting? Aditya (talk • contribs) 02:32, 18 October 2020 (UTC)
 * It's just you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1011:B01E:8161:6983:7189:589F:DDAD (talk) 15:41, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
 * No it's not just you. 2A00:23C4:41A:9601:5434:A757:6C1F:78F5 (talk) 02:03, 16 January 2023 (UTC)
 * its definitely not quite appropriate for wikipedia, but something about it feels refreshingly raw. Like a good jab into brush for once as opposed to beating around it. It's a good thing that this is classed as an essay, as otherwise it would be tossed to the AfD flames. MountainKemono (talk) 15:51, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

Criticism of Wikipedia valid- yet when balanced with the breath of content, from the cutting edge of science to trivia it is still valuable
I got involved in this website in the early days, actually had extensive conversation with Larry Sanger making the point that my being one dissertation short of a Columbia University PhD should not require I get approval for my contributions. So I used the ease of access here to take on a forensic practice that could have cost the lives of innocent suspects.

Only fifteen years ago, matching in situ finger prints was deemed to be an impresionistic gestalt by certified forensic experts, including the F,B.I, This was defended by those who made a good living testifying and convicting many. I first made my case based on statistics and epidemiology, but my arguments were removed by the professionals. I located a person who was doing his doctorate on this very subject, and had him join me in our effort. We prevailed, and while I'm sure this atavistic procedure would not have gone on for too long, I personally could have saved at least a handful of suspects from prison or worse.

Other issues I took on were less successful, as they are embedded in our kulture Kamph, where reason takes a back seat to political identity. One example of this was in the unfolding of the killing of George Floyd. I focused on the castigation and indictment of the trainee cop. I had watched the interview with his lawyer, which had the existing regulations overlaid. It defined his mandated action when a superior is seen as abusing a suspect. It said that he should mention it, and take verbal action. The next day a draft of the regulation was changed to eliminate verbal.

I had the image from the TV program, that I wanted to include in making my case that he had been following the existing law. It was removed, and the person who did it said, "I'm removing it to protect you" He meant that after my decades of participation, I could be banned from Wikipedia.

The comprehensive nature of edits (content) even with the cogent criticisms of this Essay, still make the diverse views worth while. One of the most contentious issues of our society, that of racial differences in IQ, are covered under multiple titles. There are extensive articles from scholars on both sides, with their arguments fully summarized along with their complete theses referenced.

The multiple languages made possible a cogent analysis of a Film made in Germany in 1943, but it was a fictional city that had never been taken over by Hitler, even though he authorized the film to be made. I wrote this to a scholar who became a friend "If you recall you watched and commented on the German film "Ich klage an" one of the only people who was willing to deal with the paradox of Hitler sponsoring a film promoting humane euthanasia.  Since the few months that you watched it, it's been removed from the internet, which is a loss as it forced the viewer to deal with internal contradiction."

In the interim I want to the German Wikipedia article, had it translated, and got a much more extensive analysis of this film, that led to my connecting with eminent scientist Robert M. Sapolski.

The defects that described in this essay should be addressed, but the universal access to this cornucopia of knowledge can be admired and also preserved — Preceding unsigned comment added by Arodb (talk • contribs) 00:28, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

Sealioning to block Wikipedia article changes
Sealioning By Wikipedia editors, not someone seeking to change an article, on talk pages demanding several levels of references, dismissing references, then saying we have 6 existing references saying something different than what is the proposed change. And arguing ad nausium and then claiming “This is going nowhere productive.” By closing the talk page topic.

Sealioning is driving away people who would otherwise contribute.

Using scholarly research based on a fraction of social media messages from an interest group to mislabel the entire group
Multiple Wikipedia articles on social groups have their first paragraph linking that group to negative traits, negative social groups using references based on a slanted selection of social media posts.

In any large social media group, there will be a tiny number of biased hateful messages. Social researchers have published cherry picked selection of those messages then by confirmation bias equate the entire social group as a biased hateful social group.

In turn, the publications of said social researchers are used as quality sources to mischaracterize the social group Wikipedia page.

That slant gets repeated in the media.

A Wikipedia discussion needs to be held to determine if research based on cherry picked social media messages is a viable quality reference source.

Otherwise, Wikipedia is an echo chamber of slanted opinionated topic pages.

If i can find 100 bigoted messages disparaging French football fans on an England sports social media site, can i publish an article saying that all English sports fans are bigoted against French people? Then use that to change the Manchester United Wikipedia page lead paragraph to be “Manchester United is an English football team whose fans are bigoted against French people.”

This example is what happens to many political and social Wikipedia articles.

Wikipedia should be more selective in citations specifically those based on a contrived set of troll social media messages in a much larger group of messages.

This is no different than a for profit corporation putting positive spin in its Wikipedia article. It is done for political and social gain.

Wikipedia Fundraisers-They have money...and they
Wikipedia has plenty of money, but hoards its money and is corrupt. Funny how this page is "protected"

The moderators are all paid off using various tricks(see above) and Google funds a lot of this "effort." The new "Snopes"

Cocoablini (talk). 01:29, 29 September 2021 (UTC)


 * citation, Google which manipulates SEO and content and political preferences, also uses Wikipedia for content The entire business model is a #COIN as their moderators get secret pay offs and benefits Cocoablini (talk). 01:42, 29 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Allegedly, $200,000 annually to bully good editors. Wiki-Scribbler 101 (talk) 19:19, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

, I looked at the article you linked, and I don't see anything about "secret pay offs and benefits." There's a complaint that Wikimedia employees get employee benefits like free gym memberships (the sort of thing many companies provide), but the editors (which includes admins) are volunteers, and don't get anything. BubbaJoe123456 (talk) 19:37, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

Cocoablini (talk). 01:29, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

Much of this essay seems outdated
I know that essays are meant to reflect the views of only one or just a handful of editors, but I don't feel this essay serves readers as much as it once did, as a number of its complaints have been addressed, are outdated, or are outright no longer true. For instance:

I've just removed the following:

"Wikipedia can run so slowly as to become unusable for editing or for consultation. PHP is simply not a fit basis for a serious online service of this scale."

– as per WP:SLOW, this isn't a problem Wikipedians are expected to worry about; in 2022, I'd imagine bandwidth capabilities for many editors have increased to the point where this just isn't a concern anymore.

For reference, WP:SLOW came into existence in 2006; this essay was written in.

The complaint that "Wiki markup is great, but it is not accessible to most users" links here, to the creation of the visual editor in 2013; as the hatnote on that article states, "The Wikimedia Foundation's May 2015 study VisualEditor's effect on newly registered editors found that VisualEditor does not aid any additional new users to begin editing, does not improve editor productivity, and does not improve new editor retention." A lack of familiarity with wikitext markup isn't one of the reasons new editors get turned away, we've proven.

"More than one thousand pages are deleted from Wikipedia each day." – "pages" is a general term. Per Wikipedia's statistics, just 250 mainspace articles are deleted each day; which, for an encyclopedia of 6,467,456 articles, is a surprisingly low number. This statement was added in 2014 with no citation, and even if it was true then, it isn't now.

"If you have correctly internalized rules of English capitalization, spelling, punctuation or typesetting, you end up making trivial corrections rather than focusing on errors of content. Grammatical proofreading is sadly necessary, but there's simply no way to reward these valuable users in the present regime of controls." – ? This seems to pre-date WP:ENGVAR, and also, we do have the option to thank editors.

"Only the most abusive administrators – perhaps 2% total – have their statuses removed." – no citation for this; also doesn't make note that the number of active administrators on Wikipedia was, last time I checked, falling. I'd say the admin situation of the early to late 2000s isn't that of 2022.

"There's not enough grounding in Wikiquette to explain that reverts without comments are inconsiderate and almost never justified except for spam and simple vandalism, and even in those cases comments need to be made for tracking purposes." – This also seems to predate another policy, WP:3RR.

"There's no hierarchy of regular, senior, topical editors to make final rulings on extremely complex matters, e.g., by forcing two with very different views to agree." – We've got the Administrator's Noticeboard and Dispute Resolution boards now, as well as RfCs.

There's other stuff further down the essay that could maybe do with reworking. It's true that a lot of the issues described here still exist, have done since Wikipedia's inception, but I wonder that this essay doesn't have as much of a leg to stand on as it once did.--Ineffablebookkeeper (talk) (&#123;&#123;ping&#125;&#125; me!) 14:53, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Well...be bold, as mentioned on this page :). Lectonar (talk) 15:11, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
 * when I boldly have the time, I'll boldly use it to edit :')--Ineffablebookkeeper (talk) (&#123;&#123;ping&#125;&#125; me!) 11:32, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

The Unfairness and Discrepancy between the Rulers of Wikipedia
I think this and Why Wikipedia is so great are stupid articles/essays but I will bring up that Wikipedia is ruled by a bunch of middle aged white men. This isn't saying that I'm "wOkE" because to be frank if that demographic likes editing more than say, women of color, I can't change everybody's mindset, however it is important to note that much of the English Wiki is dominated by a fairly narrow viewpoint D10jxo (talk) 23:08, 24 November 2023 (UTC)


 * Moderators biased perhaps??? Wiki-Scribbler 101 (talk) 19:03, 27 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I am pleased you stated my suspensions. I am pulling my monthly donations untill i see change. Not because of your statement, it is because my personal experiences as an editor on this platform. Wiki-Scribbler 101 (talk) 19:06, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

Removal of a unnecessary and inessential small section.
The removal of the "Governments" section should be considered, as the current example lacks the requisite notability to warrant a dedicated section. Should the retention of this section be deemed necessary, it is important to expand its scope to encompass various nations that have engaged in interference with Wikipedia. Presently, the inclusion of a singular, limited example appears disproportionate, undue and unnecessary. 182.183.39.216 (talk) 18:55, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

Editor numbers
This page previously had a wildly out-of-date graph showing editor numbers. I replaced it with a current one, which has been removed. Here's the image, should anyone wish to restore it or use it elsewhere. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:20, 6 March 2024 (UTC)