Video is inaccurate. It was the result of a public request for comment. The actual final decision was made by an unrelated editor who goes by "Ixtal". 57 was just the admin who made the final edit after the comment period concluded. I don't know if RUclips allows direct links in comments, but you can see the RFC at this page: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Elections and Referendums/Archive 23. The section is called "RfC on leaders_seat election infobox parameter"
Another thing to notice about Number 57 is that he generally only edits obscure elections to align with his visual preferences, he never does it to any American or large European elections. Likely because he knows the opposition there will be too strong
Wikipedia is one of those areas where everyone should be thankful that annoyingly pedantic / obsessive people exist. As insufferable as they are, they do a fantastic job of making it reliable for the rest of us.
10:42 ah yes, the fantastic wiki phenomenon of "the information you added isn't formatted correctly, so i'm going to remove everything you added entirely instead of correcting it"
@@YellowJelly13 no, it doesn't; if you can explain every minute detail of how you should format the information (which they ALWAYS do in the edit notes), you can take the time instead to correct the formatting instead of just smugly nuking everything
7:55 "I don't see how outgoing/incoming members are relevant to an election"...Arguably, that's the MOST important thing. You know, the people actually elected or not?
57 had a point about removing badly sourced info, but lost the plot in the Botswana section. Just removing data you don't like is hard to defend, and outgoing members is demonstrably helpful and the design norm across wikipedia. But that said the other guy ("Markos") didn't help his case by being a scumbag too
I think the parameters should be kept and used. 57's rule seems designed to support his visual preference, not because it leads to more informative pages. Removing stuff like "leaders's seat" and "outgoing members" just makes the page less useful.
Seriously, making the wiki itself easy to navigate is relevant! If a wiki page is innacuate thats annoying, but at least i should be able to find my own sources and improve it with the relevant information thats why we have [citation needed]. If the page is impractical to navigate to and from then editors are less likely to spot mistakes and dubious talking points.
Having interacted with Numbert 57 in the past, I personally believe that they fall into the trap many other editors do: it's easier to simply remove unsourced information from an article than it is to find and add a source for it. I find this is especially the case for highly active editors who monitor thousands of pages at at time. On my side of Wikipedia, I've seen inexperienced editors add correct information only for it to be reverted because no source was provided. In this instance, where does the fault lie? Do we get peeved at the editor who added an uncited claim? Or do we lash out at the editor who (ironically) adds back in incorrect/outdated information in an effort to prevent new unsourced information from cropping up?
This was essentially what I was thinking as well. Rather than maliciousness, it seems more like a case of a "power user" trying to be quick and cast a wide net, rather than thoroughly investing in any single page. When combined with a personal preference for minimalism, the result is that they will be quick to remove things from infoboxes without much second thought.
@@nojrants "I am the most intelligent user about ALL of t hese subjects. No one could ever know more than I do, or have better sources." That's how he comes across to me.
@@UCKY5keep in mind that while the occasional editor is overzealous, the point of Wikipedia is that we can work together to correct and maintain things. Its only when someone like this becomes dogmatic in their editing style that we get problems (especially when they're versed enough to become admins)
@@UCKY5 To be fair, on traditional encyclopedias that people can't freely edit, the page would be written in its entirety by someone like Number 57 and then locked in place
Wow this was wild. Obviously I agree that info needs to be accurate, but Number 57 clearly has a minimalist preference and was far too eager to remove info in my opinion. I don't like his argument for Botswana at all. The entire concept of an infobox being "too cluttered", thus making the info "inaccessible" is just ridiculous to me. An extra link in the box doesn't suddenly turn the box into a mess where you struggle to read anything. Plus, you have to think about it from the perspective of someone going to this page to check things. People interested in this election are probably going to the page to see who was elected or not, that link is the type of thing they'd be looking for.
I had the same problem about a month ago, I spent like a day working hard to improve a bunch of elections just for it to get reverted for little no more reason than "I don't think this should be changed". Didn't even want to discuss it with me or find any common ground, just reverted. Needless to say I wasn't very happy. I am actually astonished I wasn't the only one who encountered this from them. I thought I was just an isolated incident, but this seems to be a much larger problem
To be a little conspiratorial, Wikipedia has a history of changing political pages to suit the preconceived notions of their parent company (Wikimedia) and yes I mean company. Any NPO which easily multiple times over the cost of running their service and STILL begs for money on said service is 100% for-profit. This move I think could be very well for elections in the future, that way administrators can lock pages and make them say as they wish under the guise of "It's what we did with all other elections, we only use information from the most scholarly sources".
yeah. Probably a childish overweight guy. Just going around ruining things that already were made. People like him are literally dragging down everyone down. If humanity didn't have to deal with a billion small bs problems every day we could start focusing on more important stuff.
It wouldn’t be a niche Wikipedia article without a random unarchived website source from 2002, and at least one major rewrite destroying what was once a decent article. Bonus points if it then ends up being used as a source by a RUclipsr. Great video!
When I found out about number 57 I rushed to his account to see if he had edited Paraguayan elections, what I found was that the man edits dozens of election articles a day and apparently that's all he does
Number 57 touched Barbadian elections too and made a mess of them. The last 2 elections were won entirely by one party, but the info box now has us looking like a one party state instead of having multiple but just having won nothing
@@jl63023 Oh god I just checked and the fucker has done the same to Grenada’s election page for the 2013 and 2018 elections, we look like a one party state too
This is why I retired from wikipedia editing. The longer and more established an editor or admin is, the more their edits are respected and accepted, even if they are downright idiotic and make the user-experience infinitely worse.
This reminds me of a classic Japanese saying: "Do not be fooled by a craftsman that claims he has 20 years of experience, when he really only has one year of experience, 20 times."
@@rx0102 It means that he didn’t learn anything, he simply did the same thing for 20 years. Most of the time as people spend time doing the same thing, they tend to get better at it, but this is meant to guard against assuming that they are better just because they have done it for so long.
I have a big problem with admins getting onto their own crusades like 57 seems to have done. It’s a role that should strive for objectivity. That’s very difficult to achieve if you have skin in the game, so to speak. The old adage of great power and responsibility applies.
57 is the sort of admin you remove and ban from admin for being insufferable, they can come back in 2 years if they can prove to the staff that they will be more amicable
Yes this is an interesting debate as well, and from what I understand it's actually larger than just Kubrick. There is/was a sizeable faction within the artistic biographies niche that is anti-infobox entirely, and they successfully rallied for an exception that creative personalities (mostly directors and authors) may have no infobox.
@@nojrants I remember seeing that, and the debate really sounded pretentious. "No Kubrick is an auteur! He should not have an infobox like the regular directors"
@@anne.andromeda I support the theory some had that the only reason they pushed for that was because they wanted people to read the info they themselves added to the page instead of just glancing at the infobox. Basically, attention seeking to a degree.
Whenever I read a Wikipedia article that I think looks really professional and objective, taking a quick peek at the talk page never fails to destroy that illusion.
@@the11382 It's a weird form of bias, because it's not necessarily the traditional biases based on politics or ideology (yeah there's some of that too), but on the personal preferences of whoever is willing and able to spend the most time writing and editing. I'm not even sure there's a word for that.
I like infoboxes. Them and maps make Wikipedia much more like historical atlases, which I love and have many of on my bookshelf. Writing papers in college I realized for many wiki pages of obscure historical topics have entire sections that are plagiarized, but honestly I prefer this situation to no info at all. Generally it is better to keep information rather than remove and make a page small, cause I can't look up another source when lines aren't there. I also find a lot of Wikipedia's issues to be the issue of lack of central control. I think most people like pictures and infoboxes more than I do, and its annoying when one rogue dude can do something just out of the blue on a whim
I agree, I consider infoboxes one of Wikipedia's main elements; it's something they're know for and the type of thing you go to Wikipedia to check. Also it's very true that many pages unfortunately have subtle plagiarism, or misinterpretations of the sources. I've seen a few instances within my own area of expertise (Soviet history) where I've checked a Wikipedia page out of curiousity or for quick reference, and noticed something false yet with a source. Then I see what the source is, and it's a book I read or even an author I know personally and think, "there's no way they said that". Sure enough, on the actual page cited it says something different. That's unfortunately something very hard to catch unless you are already very experienced in the topic.
All information is eventually plagiarised and there is nothing original under the sun. I wish people would realise this instead of blocking sharing and creativity. Copying others should be encouraged, not shunned.
It would be a huge burn if the other user wasn't also seemingly chronically online arguing on twitter and Wikipedia about article edits. Pot calling the kettle black
I think the purpose of an Encyclopedia should be that, but Wikipedia is hypocrite. In many Wikipedias, specially in mine (Spanish) it has many articles removed for not being "encyclopedic", or information in general, and their philosophy is literally "just being a source for the most important information". That's so subjective that it leads to good info being removed, abuse power admins and, in general, if it really tries to be an encyclopedia, why the hell wouldn't it include as much info as possible?
Even if 57 was right regarding the information, there were better ways at going about it than stealth editing a sh1tload of articles. Surely, there should be some method to prevent one guy from editing a buttload of stuff. Maybe have a bot which tallies admins editing articles by categories. If someone edits ~20 articles of the same "genre" in a single day, it might set an alert. Also the excessive amount of "admin talk" I read from him gave me a headache. You know that style of speech of appearing very formal while seething venom underneath, as they talk down to you.
I agree that they probably could have been more transparent. As another admin pointed out in one of the comments, most of 57's major edits were given under the guise of "format", which might come across as deceptive when it's actually deleting some 60% of the page. Now from 57's perspective they were just doing their regular maintenance and didn't feel any need to announce it, but I do think that if they had made a discussion post on the election hub beforehand saying "hey I've noticed we have a problem across the French elections, let's see if we can tackle this issue and form a consensus on what to do" a lot of this would have been avoided.
Whether number 57's edits are correct isn't a matter of concern, what we can all agree that a single individual SHOULD NOT have that much influence over information, ESPECIALLY ABOUT POLITICS
@@GentlemanlyOtter You have the same capacity to change most pages as 57 does. The whole point is that the encyclopedia gets better as more people contribute.
if the info is demonstrably false it should be removed with extreme prejudice. no info is better than fake info. later on someone can fill it back in. everything else 57 did and said was extreme pedantry, but he's absolutely right in deleting the fake info unilaterally
I have interacted with someone like Number 57 on a National Football teams page who stated that including the teams results was not relevant information I was so shocked. And he claimed that since a page he made had been featured as the page of the day that it proved he was right. He came across like he had a huge ego. I just looked at the same page now (Peru's team) and the results are there. I guess he lost in the end.
Sports pages are the worst pages on all of Wikipedia. You have massive amounts of COI editors (fans) who add way too much run on the mill information. Most of the existing athlete articles should probably be taken to AFD because their only sourcing is their teams page and interviews with them.
@@karsonkevin2 Absolutely, there can be bloat for sure, but a teams results (National teams play ~10 times a year, only the past year is included) seem quite relevant
@@karsonkevin2here's one. The NHL division alignment pages are an absolute joke. The 2013 realignment obviously did a division name shuffle with Atlantic becoming Metropolitan and Northeast becoming Atlantic, but for some reason Wikipedia consensus thinks it's more reasonable to treat the current Atlantic division as the continuation of the pre-2013 Atlantic division, and thus also the successor to the old Patrick division, when literally none of the current division ever played in the Patrick division. I mean, you could take the stance (as I do) that division continuity year-after-year is dictated by mostly-consistent sets of teams playing in the same division, regardless of what the division is called in any particular year. You could also take the stance that division continuity doesn't exist and every year is a distinct year with distinct divisions, even if the divisions carry the same membership. This middle ground Wikipedia seemed to land on, where division continuity exists when the _name_ is consistent, even if the entire division membership has changed, is perhaps the most ludicrous of the three options. And yet here we are.
5:12 The secondary sources/historical analysis are what you're supposed to use on Wikipedia anyway. I feel like a lot of election pages break Wikipedia's rule against "Original Research", and also synthesize different sources to get their data
This is very true, I originally was going to bring this up in the video. Ultimately they shouldn't be diving into the newspapers themselves, but looking at a formalized aggregate of the sources
you should talk about the NOTA/invalid vote war where Number 57 pushed for results which dont match the offical ones (despite the threshold) in Serbia, Lithuania, Latvia & Bulgaria
There appears to have been conflicts all across the elections niche-I think there was also a debate regarding the removal of first round votes in elections that have them. But ultimately I stuck to these couple of examples because they seem to be the most exemplary and well-documented. If you have any information regarding that example though I'd love to hear more.
@@Liggliluff number57 created the templates used for election results and they are used anywhere but spain (which also the last country actually doing its own thing by including blank votes) I wonder If there was a spanish Rebellion against him?
@@nojrants Removing the info about first rounds would be incredibly stupid. I can't comprehend how someone could have such an idea. Such person shoul really not be Wikipedia admin or editor.
If I’m being honest, infoboxes should contain more to the side of information and not less, specially if its not present elsewhere within the article, human electoral system are complicated by design and while someone can say that less info looks “prettier” it might oversimplify too much and/or lose someone’s interest over learning about xyz topic that they may never read a single article otherwise.
Whats more annoying is this is already a solved problem. Wikipedia infoboxes use subdivisions, colour, clear delineation between pieces of information etc. To produce something very quick and easy to read and search through. Removing information will save, at best, like 2 or 3 seconds for someone scanning through the infobox for what they want. And at worst it makes them waste tons of time havint to scan the entire article because the simple number or name they want is buried in a paragraph somewhere.
Honestly there are a ton of pages that have absolutely bloated infoboxes. They aren’t supposed to represent all the information of the article; otherwise we wouldn’t have the body text, we’d just have infoboxes. The idea is to represent the key facts. Which members lost their seat in the election is not, in my opinion, a key fact.
Amazing video, I specifically remember looking up the 1848 French Assembly elections and being surprised at how little information the page (and the corresponding infobox) had-- Now I know the reason. Personally I would prefer Infoboxes to be as large and detailed as possible and necessary, while still concise. Wikipedia is supposed to be an online encyclopedia after all, and you use those to quickly and briefly gather information, sometimes at a glance, before moving on to more primary sources.
Number 57 seems to be one of those wiki admins who thinks that the role of an admin lets you wield a scepter, when really it's a mop. Also, deleting something wrong instead of actually fixing it is an unfortunately common practice among editors, and I hate it.
I am actually astonished I wasn't the only one who encountered this from them. I thought I was just an isolated incident, but this seems to be a much larger thing
As far as I can tell, Number 57 is almost ubiquitous in the elections niche, so if you ever edited any national election chances are good you'll interact with them
Information should *never* be destroyed. Inaccurate or simply wrong information should certainly be removed, but uncertain information or unreliable sources should simply be flagged as such, but the information left to view.
I agree, I personally err on the side of more information being a good thing. I think ideally those parameters should be displayed in the infobox, or at the very least, still preserved in the text. Therefore I found Number 57's removal of info from the box based on the fact that it wasn't in the text (thereby removing it entirely) to be unconstructive. People come to Wikipedia for that information, so removing it entirely just makes the page less functional and helpful, despite technically being correct to the guidelines.
I have seen several articles have large amounts of relevant information removed because of the "Wikipedia Beautification Movement," users who trim and delete information so that an article is more aesthetically pleasing. Despite my edits being on the receiving end, I don't think that this movement is entirely misguided. Not all notable information warrants being included in an encyclopedia. There are definitely articles where trimming content would, and has, improved readability. But like you mention in this video, often well-sourced, relevant information is deleted for aesthetics. Why is brief, well-sourced information on the etymology of my community's indigenous name deleted for the sake of "aesthetics" while the almost entirely unsourced and unverified History section reinstated?
There are so many articles that beatifully summarize events that occurred several years ago, but then for anything that happened within the last year or two, you get excruciating details from updates happening basically every day or week. Recency bias. There is no need to discuss every little thing happening with a topic just because it's recent. Wrestling and band articles are the absolute worst at this. You get great summaries of older events, but then every time a band member or wrestler sneezes in 2024, it gets a sentence.
@@B3Band I guess this is because people commonly go to Wikipedia to check news on things as they are ongoing. I do hope though that once the events pass they will go back and retroactively reflect on the event and summarize it.
Being informative, accurate, and useful should trump aesthetics any day of the week. Print encyclopedias are limited by the physical space they take up; this is not a limit for an online one, and thus shouldn't be a consideration. There is no such thing as too much information.
I am watching a 9-month-old probably outdated argument about some annoying Election Wikipedia Admin at 3 Am on a Friday, the RUclips rabbit hole is weird.
Fun fact german Wikipedia is missing many infoboxes, because early on german wikipedians didn't like them because if you can easily find the info people won't read the articles they wrote😢
i think on the whole, wikipedia is good, but has like, admin fiefdoms in some niches where garbo admins lead ruthless absolute monarchies and tyrannically conquer new articles this wikipedian admin imperialism, in my opinion, makes wikipedia even better. i mean, not for the average person that wants good information from a domain within the iron grip of one of these petty kings who deal only in suffering and misrule, but for those of us who like the funny stories this terminally online medieval realm of tyranny produces. even the concept of the *possible* existence of a wikipedian fruit empire run by a dictatorship that ruthlessly edited all of the citrus pages to their weird egotistical whims' desire is delightful to me. did such an empire exist? i mean, it *could* have, and the environment that makes such a goofy thing possible is, in my opinion, good. we must permit and cultivate this phenomenon like electronic, geopolitical bonsai trees.
@@iMajoraGamingI dont think so. (Internet. And wikipedia users, hang me if you want) but I think the matter isnt as severe as it seems, of course we cannot just prohibit the course of actions of admins but we should have a way to regulate them. The tales are funny, but they shouldn't be the only ones with the power to define the consensus. And of course they could be missing some really really fat pieces of history or importamt context while making their edits
as an occasional editor I absolutely despise the attitude of people like Number 57. they think just because an information isn't useful to them, that it isn't useful to anyone
I am glad someone else looks at this shit. I use wikipedia quite a bit and looking at edit wars and user info is sometimes more fun than reading the actual articles. I remember seeing a wiki war on Russian orthography iirc ( though it might have been on something else ) between a monarchist and a communist and one of the rewrites sourced a far right now defunct website that looked like it hadn't been updated since the 2000s visually speaking and even had to use an internet archive link, because apparently that's enough to establish a consensus that a bunch of reforms were hated.
oh my god thank you for covering this. Wikipedia Edit wars are hilarious. I was going to do a video on the Stanley Kubrick Infobox War that ended only a year or so ago. There was a years-long heated dispute entirely regarding the infobox, and it was whether or not to include it at all. I think it boiled down to the initial removal of it being human error, and someone else demanding that it stay without an infobox. Due to discussions being locked several times for cooldown periods, Kubrick simply had a photo of himself at the top of the page, because editors believed that Kubrick was too superior to be belittled by an infobox, and anyone wanting one is a dummy.
57's point about infobox's needing to be short so people will read the full text is rediculous. The info he's removing in this case is navigational tools. The point is for it to send users to other pages they might be looking for, with pages in question having information that the page in question omits. Not to mention the personal attacks, I'd say it's unbecoming of an admin but it's sadly so common... As common as admins adding frivilous rules without discussion.
On normal websites, 57 would have been banned a long time ago. But not on Wikipedia - in that cesspool, the worst rise to the top and become admins. Like our special friend.
Honestly all I'm getting from this video and the comments is that a LOT of people have issues with specifically this guy (57). Why is this allowed to continue? ONE person being such a pain for basically the entire elections niche seems like it's better to just ban him from being an editor for a while. It really sounds like he slows the entire information gathering process down instead of boost it because he keeps everyone arguing about old information/discussing solely with him what should be done instead of looking up new information to add to pages.
The thing that annoys me is that 57 doesn't give a shit about essentially anything but themselves. Instead of fixing the boxes they would rather delete actual content and act as though their word is final
@@hughm1383 There's not much an issue with using a neutral term for somebody. Unless it warrants a correction (calling a man a "she") then this comment feels a little pedantic.
Wikipedia is infested with that type of editor, I've made simple uncontroversial edits before and someone obsessed with that one page undoes it instantly because of some arbitrary reason (not related to accuracy or sourcing), just because it's not how they personally want the page to look. It's a real problem cause few people care enough to put the time in to counter that kind of destructive, possesive editing, reducing the quality overall. Personally I have stopped editing Wikipedia now as a result of those people.
As a wikipedia editor since 2008, I need to admit - this platform is generating some weird, hidden demons while a dispute happens. You're turning into a wild animal that defends its territory and prey like a wildcat, honestly, I've caught myself having a faster heartbeat when somebody reverted my busy edit, it's very common on english wiki, but jesus, sometimes I think if it's my fault and I'm getting pissed off too quickly or if it's some wikipedia's werid phenomenon, just like with TikTok or Instagram influence on humans behavior and activation of hidden instincts. Sorry, I need to go, somebody demands a source to my edit.
Never use Wikipedia as a reliable source of religious, political, philosophical, or historical information. It's too often that theres someone in the creation of that page that is compromised on the issue at hand.
@@iratepirate3896 Idk about that one, I would more call it a bias in favour of Anglophone Liberalism, or even more softly than bias a "lens" that it projects everything through.
Interesting, I bet we will see a lot more edit wars soon given how many elections are occuring this year. Naturally, it looks like Number 57 is involved on the Pakistan election too, although not taking the lead.
truly an amazing 180 from "I guess he has a point accuracy in election results is important" to "jesus christ why does an admin go on a personal vendetta over infobox aesthetics?"
As far as memory goes, Wikipedia is supposed to be without bias. Thing is, Number 57's bias towards Minimalism and the Wikipedia Beautification Movement has obscured proper editing, in my opinion, and has undoubtedly resulted in the inaccessibility of information. And while he did give valid points about information, as stated in the video, I believe that was a cover to justify needless editing. What do you guys think??
Wikipedia is a lot more biased than people think. Encyclopedia Britannica is much less biased and much less opiniated. Wikipedia at times uses biased sources or sources that cites sources that cite Wikipedia(creating a circle of fake sources). I have also seen editors reject primary sources in favor of secondary sources as "more reliable".
Wikipedia tries to state what is fact and what isn't on pages regarding SCIENCE. You know, that ever-shifting fields where new, contradictory info is found every day with varying levels of validity. It's biased as all get out.
7:09 “The less information it contains, the more it serves its purpose” Well, I guess where he deleted info boxes completely, he took this principle to its extreme.
I mean, of course accessibility is important and Number 57 has a point, however I do think that he is doing this more because of personal preference rather than actual willingness to make the Wikipedia page better, as you showed in the beginning of the video, this guy has edited A LOT of election related pages to do the same information removal thing & I highly doubt that all of them had the same problem. When it comes to removing false information or simply ones without sources, I absolutely agree with him about removing them for obvious reasons, but it just does not enter my mind how when people showed this guy sources that are seemingly reliable, he would go on to ditch them and stuck with a... not so good website, of course as you wrote in 6:00 he might have had I reason to do that but why did he not tell us? He has this weird level of secretness that kinda says to me that the reason is probably not that good. Just one more thing, in the Botswana case, he says that he removed some links to make the page less crowded, however as we all had saw before, the page was completely fine, in fact I reckon that it was even more accessible due to it having more information, subsequently it was more reliable since we have got all that mapped out, nonetheless he removed some crucial information for a reason that does not even make that much sense, I just cannot wrap my head around this. So yeah, this Number 57 guy does not seem too professional to me, I would be fond of seeing how other Wikipedia Admins portray the situation.
The debate over the definition of "accessible" was really contentious during that debate, I think because it's something both sides could cling to as an objective justification for their preferences. I tend to agree with the side that more links in the infobox means more accessible. If the link is right there it literally can be accessed more easily. The argument of Number 57 and similar users was that if you remove more info, the box becomes more succinct, and thus is "accessible" in the sense that it's streamlined. In this regard, 57 focused on this idea that the box was "cluttered" when the link was there, thus making it unusable, but I personally cannot get behind that logic at all.
@@nojrantsWikipedia should rely more on expert advice to resolve those disputes. Surely there MUST be at least one editor, or even admin, with UX experience (namely in accessibility) who could very well present their professional credentials and give some input on the matter, based on… you’ve guessed it, sources. Making these decisions based solely on personal opinion is idiotic beyond belief and makes me lose even more faith on Wikipedia as a platform. Heck, it’s already more than 20 years old at this point, and UX courses have been all the rage for at least 10; we shouldn’t even be debating this kind of shit anymore. 🤦♂️
I saw a tweet that brought this video to my attention! As a Wikipedia editor I am now infuriated with Number 57's clear abuse of power. It's a complete shame that nothing has been done by this, but for those who are wikipedia editors among you we could try to establish a more productive consensus (since that is how Wikipedia operates) or perhaps file a report under Wikipedia:Requests for review of admin actions
This video perfectly exemplifies why any community moderated site will inevitable turn to shit due to bad actors with too much power. This is true for basically any forums with mods, also basically the worst thing about reddit, etc.
Another example of Wikipedia admins more often than not making the site worse because of their ego and stubbornness, whilst going after smaller articles they know will offer less resistance to their preferences. Thanks for the upload Noj Rants! I died laughing at that talk page war.
So Number57 reaction to this videos is (from the talk section of his wikipage) : Oh hooray. It's a shame they didn't point out the changes to the infobox guidance were a specifically recommended outcome of the RfCs in question (which made it look like I added it in unilaterally). Number 57 20:47, 15 January 2024 (UTC) To be fair, it much more balanced than I was expecting and it looks like RUclips commenters are a bit more discerning than those on Twitter. I am very much a minimalist when it comes to infoboxes, but had no idea it was so controversial. If the video creator is reading this, the reason I didn't use Nohlen & Stöver for the 1898 election is (a) the Roi et President source was already used in the article and (b) Nohlen & Stöver's figures are rounded, which look a bit odd when compared with a source that seems to have real numbers. Number 57 22:14, 15 January 2024 (UTC)
He is a useless troll that should be banned from WP for life. The policy of deleting entire sections instead of correcting them, or marking them disputed, means he is one of many disruptive and obfuscating editors.
bro said "To be fair, it much more balanced than I was expecting and it looks like RUclips commenters are a bit more discerning than those on Twitter. I am very much a minimalist when it comes to infoboxes, but had no idea it was so controversial." yeah your minimalist aesthetic preference kinda sucks bud
Huh, y'know sometimes seeing these vids I forget the debate is still ongoing and there are still folks who care enough to respond. Hopefully this leads to some forward progress on the issue actually being resolved...
This just proves why Wikipedia is rotten to its core. The title of Wikipedia editor is ludicrous because nobody can have expert knowledge in so many fields to even determine what information is sound and which is not. And unfortunately wiki editors are the last people you want to be wiki editors because they know just as much about each subject as the average person, but believe themselves to know more and their judgement to be better than others. Worse yet, since they don't get paid they only attract those who are either financially dependent on others or have such weird priorities that they'll forgo a normal life for internet clout in a small circle. They aren't normal, nor geniuses. They aren't successful, nor experts. They aren't truthseekers, nor interested in the topics they edit. Yet they partly shape and control our understanding of the world.
It's entirely run by people with way too much time on their hands, so of course they're going to use more words in their arguments. At one time I tried to fix obvious errors (basic self-evident factual errors, often contradicted by Wikipedia's own articles) just to butt heads with people who care more about procedure than actually being accurate. I gave up really quickly... I don't have the time or inclination to fight with people that obsessive.
If you even come close to something resembling an insult they pull out the Rules and you lose by default. eg. the Off-wiki attacks policy they brought up
So from my understanding from this video: -Wikipedia looks shit nowadays -There has been potentially citable sources/unsourced details in Wikipedia -Number 57 is a c word
I'm not sure I see the point of minimalist infoboxes at all. What you're looking for can be found in a couple of seconds even on articles with infoboxes two pages long. They're very clear and readable. I'd also wager that the majority of wikipedia use is to reference the infobox (or what should be in an infobox). I guess the new default layout might not give enough space for the main article, but to be honest, that's not an issue with the infobox, and minimizing the info in the box for that is making changes that severely harm all viewing methods to benefit one in a minor way.
I agree, and personally I don't think much of the "minimalism" argument holds up. We know that the infobox is one of the main elements people reference, so I think people expect those fields to be used and filled out. The supporters of minimalism have argued that this makes the box "cluttered" or too messy to use, but I have a hard time buying that argument. At a certain point, like on those French Revolution-era election pages, I almost wonder if there's even a point to the infobox anymore. By 57's argument, a box with only two lines is very "efficient", but I personally am experiencing the opposite, as I now have a harder time finding what I'm looking for. This all started because I was trying to quickly pull up a couple French elections to see what the turnouts were, as a point of comparison in the next Russian election video I was writing, and that data point had been almost completely removed.
Yup, I had very long debates over an aestetic issue on Wikipedia years sgo. Literally all Wikipedias did one particular thing in one way, and in my language it was another way, that was rather pointless. I was even blocked over it for some time by admins who had an aestetic opinion in favour of keeping the difference. Then at one poiny it was just changed to the way it is in all Wikipedias.
Debates over aesthetics are difficult since they tend to be very subjective. I think that's why in this debate both sides tried to focus their arguments on "utility", "accessibility", or of being more closely aligned with the design principles. Personally I tend to defer to what presents the most information and is the most helpful to people; aesthetics shouldn't come before that.
@@nojrants The particular debate I am referring to was over the fact that on the Main page of that Wikipedia pictures that were in the Main Page infoboxes were put into image frames (those you get with "thumb"). Those frames were just put there for literally no reason.
Found your channel from the flag videos, but this was really cool! They should let you redo the Russian articles haha. Also just curious, what are the errors at 11:52
Thank you for the support! As I said in another comment, I will probably stay out of that debate, but I don't mind helping to direct others who are interested. Briefly, here are the problems I see on the 1906 infobox: The election technically began at the end of February (when the first electors were selected) and was scheduled to continue into April. Peripheral parts of the Empire voted as late as April or May, for example the city of Baku finished its election on 31 May. Technically, the election never really completed, as some regions were still working on their elections by the time the First Duma had already collapsed. The infobox glosses over all that and just writes "March", which I think is reductive. The point about "Kadet" is fairly self explanatory. I believe both "Kadet" and "Cadet" are fine in English, but the former is preferred usually, and at the very least be consistent and use one, not both. They write "All 497 seats" were up for election, but the electoral law actually announced there were 524 seats prescribed. De facto the actual number filled was more like 480 (due to the aforementioned votes not all being completed, people not showing up, etc). The Trudoviks and the Octobrists didn't fully exist at the time of the election, those are retroactive designations. During the election the deputies who became the Trudoviks were in actuality independent/undefined peasant deputies, who then after the Duma opened came to indentify as a group; the Trudoviks as a party were declared in October 1906. Similarly, if I remember correctly the Octobrists were originally just "rightists", who then became Octobrists during the First Duma. The Octobrists were never really much of a solid party during their existence. Now whether or not the numbers/names should reflect opening day, the totality of the Duma, or something else, is probably debateable. I consider the 124 seats being labeled as Trudovik to be too high. That might be including all proletarian/peasant deputies based on their occupation, or it might be including the Social Democrats (there was no SD fraction at this time, but in spirit they were SDs). Virtually everything I've seen, as well as my own research into the deputies, indicates a more accurate number is in the 90 to 100 range. Based on the transcripts of the Duma, you could make a good case there were 94 Trudoviks on 26 June (which is pretty much the end of the Duma), which is the number I settled on for the video on the election. Although again, that gets into the argument about how these elections don't cleanly translate into the modern format. It was a loose designation, and people were coming and going into the faction all throughout the 72 day convocation.
@@nojrants Wow thank you for the reply, I wasn't expecting such an answer so soon. Your channel is really great btw, awesome details and editing, and I appreciate the level of research you put in
Another fun one is "Mark Felton". This is a wiki page about a youtube "historian" who gets into long drawn out battles with wikipedia editors about trying to edit his own page to make himself look better.
I once edited in the cost of some older US naval ships and used the US government budget as a source. This angered everyone and it was quickly removed. IMO Wikipedia and other forums tend to become incredibly insular over time and you really cannot work to improve them without stepping on someones proverbial feet.
57 being the one who wrote the rule was an amazing twist
feels like corruption to me tbh. definitely not impartial enough to do something like that IMO
If Sheev Palpatine ran a wiki site instead of a Republic lmao
Pretty autocratic, isn't? 😂
That's how you know who's is the in right and who's in the wrong.
Video is inaccurate. It was the result of a public request for comment. The actual final decision was made by an unrelated editor who goes by "Ixtal". 57 was just the admin who made the final edit after the comment period concluded. I don't know if RUclips allows direct links in comments, but you can see the RFC at this page: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Elections and Referendums/Archive 23. The section is called "RfC on leaders_seat election infobox parameter"
Another thing to notice about Number 57 is that he generally only edits obscure elections to align with his visual preferences, he never does it to any American or large European elections. Likely because he knows the opposition there will be too strong
Thank goodness the french wiki community is so chronically online that they all piled onto 57 the second he touched some obscure 19th century election
@ohwellplaythecardsthatimgi9494
Ya I barely use Wikipedia but I dislike 57 cause of thus video
Wikipedia is one of those areas where everyone should be thankful that annoyingly pedantic / obsessive people exist.
As insufferable as they are, they do a fantastic job of making it reliable for the rest of us.
its worse in the german wikipedia there are multiple people of the green party that serve wikipedia as editors. ^^
@@meta6287 That is only a bad thing when there are not members of other parties that edit Wikipedia.
10:42 ah yes, the fantastic wiki phenomenon of "the information you added isn't formatted correctly, so i'm going to remove everything you added entirely instead of correcting it"
Makes sense, it's your job to submit information properly instead of expecting others to fix that for you
@@YellowJelly13 better having information badly displayed than no information at all
@@YellowJelly13 no, it doesn't; if you can explain every minute detail of how you should format the information (which they ALWAYS do in the edit notes), you can take the time instead to correct the formatting instead of just smugly nuking everything
lol pfp@@YellowJelly13
@der_metzgermeister if the information you have submitted wasn't added correctly nobody has any obligation to fix it for you, do it yourself
When the wikipedia page edit war is more intense than the election it is about.
E
E
One of the dominant issues in the 1898 french election was literally the Dreyfus affair, so I don't know if thats the case lol
7:55 "I don't see how outgoing/incoming members are relevant to an election"...Arguably, that's the MOST important thing. You know, the people actually elected or not?
I agree, that was a really bad argument on his part. Obviously it's relevant, it's not an accident it appeared in the box
57 had a point about removing badly sourced info, but lost the plot in the Botswana section. Just removing data you don't like is hard to defend, and outgoing members is demonstrably helpful and the design norm across wikipedia. But that said the other guy ("Markos") didn't help his case by being a scumbag too
The election is about who won and who lost.
Yeah just in gernal about any election or change of power... And what about the pass time of link jumping where you don't search just follow links?
I don't see how elections are relevant to an election.
If it wasn’t for all those brave elections, we’d all be speaking Wikipedia today
what happened
what happened
what happened
what happened
what happened
I think the parameters should be kept and used. 57's rule seems designed to support his visual preference, not because it leads to more informative pages. Removing stuff like "leaders's seat" and "outgoing members" just makes the page less useful.
Seriously, making the wiki itself easy to navigate is relevant! If a wiki page is innacuate thats annoying, but at least i should be able to find my own sources and improve it with the relevant information thats why we have [citation needed]. If the page is impractical to navigate to and from then editors are less likely to spot mistakes and dubious talking points.
@@percyvilebut the way user 57 does it isnt right, the infobox isnt really clutered because of two little links
@@jackyexyeah it's literally just two lines
Having interacted with Numbert 57 in the past, I personally believe that they fall into the trap many other editors do: it's easier to simply remove unsourced information from an article than it is to find and add a source for it. I find this is especially the case for highly active editors who monitor thousands of pages at at time. On my side of Wikipedia, I've seen inexperienced editors add correct information only for it to be reverted because no source was provided. In this instance, where does the fault lie? Do we get peeved at the editor who added an uncited claim? Or do we lash out at the editor who (ironically) adds back in incorrect/outdated information in an effort to prevent new unsourced information from cropping up?
This was essentially what I was thinking as well. Rather than maliciousness, it seems more like a case of a "power user" trying to be quick and cast a wide net, rather than thoroughly investing in any single page. When combined with a personal preference for minimalism, the result is that they will be quick to remove things from infoboxes without much second thought.
I wish there was a little bit of more freedom for editors.
@@nojrants "I am the most intelligent user about ALL of t hese subjects. No one could ever know more than I do, or have better sources." That's how he comes across to me.
@@UCKY5keep in mind that while the occasional editor is overzealous, the point of Wikipedia is that we can work together to correct and maintain things. Its only when someone like this becomes dogmatic in their editing style that we get problems (especially when they're versed enough to become admins)
@@UCKY5 To be fair, on traditional encyclopedias that people can't freely edit, the page would be written in its entirety by someone like Number 57 and then locked in place
Wow this was wild. Obviously I agree that info needs to be accurate, but Number 57 clearly has a minimalist preference and was far too eager to remove info in my opinion. I don't like his argument for Botswana at all. The entire concept of an infobox being "too cluttered", thus making the info "inaccessible" is just ridiculous to me. An extra link in the box doesn't suddenly turn the box into a mess where you struggle to read anything. Plus, you have to think about it from the perspective of someone going to this page to check things. People interested in this election are probably going to the page to see who was elected or not, that link is the type of thing they'd be looking for.
I had the same problem about a month ago, I spent like a day working hard to improve a bunch of elections just for it to get reverted for little no more reason than "I don't think this should be changed". Didn't even want to discuss it with me or find any common ground, just reverted. Needless to say I wasn't very happy.
I am actually astonished I wasn't the only one who encountered this from them. I thought I was just an isolated incident, but this seems to be a much larger problem
@@lucask4377The saddest part is that Wikipedia pays an entire team of people to respond to emails and flatly deny that any of this is happening.
To be a little conspiratorial, Wikipedia has a history of changing political pages to suit the preconceived notions of their parent company (Wikimedia) and yes I mean company. Any NPO which easily multiple times over the cost of running their service and STILL begs for money on said service is 100% for-profit.
This move I think could be very well for elections in the future, that way administrators can lock pages and make them say as they wish under the guise of "It's what we did with all other elections, we only use information from the most scholarly sources".
Also the rule about info boxes with less info being better... Where does that stop? Is an info box with no information the best?
@@JamieElli As long as you can source some broken website from 2002 and a news article that quotes that website, it will stay.
This dude is insane. He literally just fucks up infoboxes with sourced information out of personal preference even if everyone else disagrees with him
Fr
yeah. Probably a childish overweight guy. Just going around ruining things that already were made. People like him are literally dragging down everyone down. If humanity didn't have to deal with a billion small bs problems every day we could start focusing on more important stuff.
There's a lot of editors like that. If you edit Wikipedia, you'll get into a lot of arguments because of people like that
It wouldn’t be a niche Wikipedia article without a random unarchived website source from 2002, and at least one major rewrite destroying what was once a decent article.
Bonus points if it then ends up being used as a source by a RUclipsr.
Great video!
Still traumatized by that imaginary king?
@@rippspeckdefinitey
When will be part two for the "Missing Mountains" series?
All I could think about during this vid was your imaginary king Wikipedia video xd
Love your videos!
When I found out about number 57 I rushed to his account to see if he had edited Paraguayan elections, what I found was that the man edits dozens of election articles a day and apparently that's all he does
What a sad person
Indeed it is. He's on the watch 24/7
Number 57 touched Barbadian elections too and made a mess of them. The last 2 elections were won entirely by one party, but the info box now has us looking like a one party state instead of having multiple but just having won nothing
That makes 10:14 even funnier.
@@jl63023 Oh god I just checked and the fucker has done the same to Grenada’s election page for the 2013 and 2018 elections, we look like a one party state too
This is why I retired from wikipedia editing. The longer and more established an editor or admin is, the more their edits are respected and accepted, even if they are downright idiotic and make the user-experience infinitely worse.
This reminds me of a classic Japanese saying: "Do not be fooled by a craftsman that claims he has 20 years of experience, when he really only has one year of experience, 20 times."
@@troodon1096 haha that's great. what is its original form?
Same here. And I had dealt with Number 57 directly - the epitomy of everything that is wrong with Wikipedia.
@@troodon1096can u elaborate i have audism
@@rx0102 It means that he didn’t learn anything, he simply did the same thing for 20 years. Most of the time as people spend time doing the same thing, they tend to get better at it, but this is meant to guard against assuming that they are better just because they have done it for so long.
For context, 57 is an ADMIN. He is one of only slightly under 500 active english users with complete permissions to the site. He is a true shut in.
He is the autistic aristocracy, the autistocracy
Don't worry, the video author mentioned it on 1:12.
@@Hans5958 Yes, he mentioned he was an admin but not the context of what that means within wikipedia.
That's bananas
I have a big problem with admins getting onto their own crusades like 57 seems to have done.
It’s a role that should strive for objectivity.
That’s very difficult to achieve if you have skin in the game, so to speak.
The old adage of great power and responsibility applies.
57 is the sort of admin you remove and ban from admin for being insufferable, they can come back in 2 years if they can prove to the staff that they will be more amicable
and once they're back and supposedly reformed, after a period of a couple of months they become an insufferable asshole again
There was once a giant edit war about whether or not Stanley Kubrick should have an infobox
Yes this is an interesting debate as well, and from what I understand it's actually larger than just Kubrick. There is/was a sizeable faction within the artistic biographies niche that is anti-infobox entirely, and they successfully rallied for an exception that creative personalities (mostly directors and authors) may have no infobox.
@@nojrants Wow that's kind of crazy. Infoboxes are Wikipedia's thing! To me that's like being against having pictures or something
I hate this argument do much. All people should have infoboxes in articles. I do not understand wierdos who want to get read if infoboxes
@@nojrants I remember seeing that, and the debate really sounded pretentious. "No Kubrick is an auteur! He should not have an infobox like the regular directors"
@@anne.andromeda I support the theory some had that the only reason they pushed for that was because they wanted people to read the info they themselves added to the page instead of just glancing at the infobox. Basically, attention seeking to a degree.
Whenever I read a Wikipedia article that I think looks really professional and objective, taking a quick peek at the talk page never fails to destroy that illusion.
I find talk pages more valuable than the article itself, especially in regards to Wikipedia's biases.
@@the11382 It's a weird form of bias, because it's not necessarily the traditional biases based on politics or ideology (yeah there's some of that too), but on the personal preferences of whoever is willing and able to spend the most time writing and editing. I'm not even sure there's a word for that.
@@troodon1096 Sure, however, if you look at an article about politics or religion, there is clear bias. The Wikipedia "elite" is progressive.
Autistic bias? 💀
I don't even mean this in a bad way, I can genuinely see someone watching the pages related to their hyperfixations like an eagle.
@@vlc-cosplayereditorial or semantic bias i'd call it.
I like infoboxes. Them and maps make Wikipedia much more like historical atlases, which I love and have many of on my bookshelf. Writing papers in college I realized for many wiki pages of obscure historical topics have entire sections that are plagiarized, but honestly I prefer this situation to no info at all. Generally it is better to keep information rather than remove and make a page small, cause I can't look up another source when lines aren't there. I also find a lot of Wikipedia's issues to be the issue of lack of central control. I think most people like pictures and infoboxes more than I do, and its annoying when one rogue dude can do something just out of the blue on a whim
I agree, I consider infoboxes one of Wikipedia's main elements; it's something they're know for and the type of thing you go to Wikipedia to check.
Also it's very true that many pages unfortunately have subtle plagiarism, or misinterpretations of the sources. I've seen a few instances within my own area of expertise (Soviet history) where I've checked a Wikipedia page out of curiousity or for quick reference, and noticed something false yet with a source. Then I see what the source is, and it's a book I read or even an author I know personally and think, "there's no way they said that". Sure enough, on the actual page cited it says something different. That's unfortunately something very hard to catch unless you are already very experienced in the topic.
All information is eventually plagiarised and there is nothing original under the sun. I wish people would realise this instead of blocking sharing and creativity. Copying others should be encouraged, not shunned.
"Enjoy your Friday night as all your others, on Wikipedia! Cheers." That was cold-blooded murder, Number 57 was K.O'ed
That was funny although a bit rich considering they're both in the same boat, arguing on a Friday night on Wikipedia
>Spends several hours in a meaningless argument
>"Maybe you should go outside once in a while"
Anyone who tops off a text wall that can be summarised with "tldr" with "go touch grass" has never seen the outdoors in years.
@@discipleofdagon8195not to mention ending such pretentious drivel with “Cheers!”, people who do that are the worst kind of insufferable
It would be a huge burn if the other user wasn't also seemingly chronically online arguing on twitter and Wikipedia about article edits. Pot calling the kettle black
Reverts your edit
Edits info
Reverts your edit
The True Wikipedia Experience
As long as the information is well organized, Wikipedia articles should try to contain as much sourced info as possible.
I agree
I agree
I disagree.
I think the purpose of an Encyclopedia should be that, but Wikipedia is hypocrite. In many Wikipedias, specially in mine (Spanish) it has many articles removed for not being "encyclopedic", or information in general, and their philosophy is literally "just being a source for the most important information". That's so subjective that it leads to good info being removed, abuse power admins and, in general, if it really tries to be an encyclopedia, why the hell wouldn't it include as much info as possible?
I abstain
Even if 57 was right regarding the information, there were better ways at going about it than stealth editing a sh1tload of articles. Surely, there should be some method to prevent one guy from editing a buttload of stuff. Maybe have a bot which tallies admins editing articles by categories. If someone edits ~20 articles of the same "genre" in a single day, it might set an alert.
Also the excessive amount of "admin talk" I read from him gave me a headache. You know that style of speech of appearing very formal while seething venom underneath, as they talk down to you.
I agree that they probably could have been more transparent. As another admin pointed out in one of the comments, most of 57's major edits were given under the guise of "format", which might come across as deceptive when it's actually deleting some 60% of the page. Now from 57's perspective they were just doing their regular maintenance and didn't feel any need to announce it, but I do think that if they had made a discussion post on the election hub beforehand saying "hey I've noticed we have a problem across the French elections, let's see if we can tackle this issue and form a consensus on what to do" a lot of this would have been avoided.
Whether number 57's edits are correct isn't a matter of concern, what we can all agree that a single individual SHOULD NOT have that much influence over information, ESPECIALLY ABOUT POLITICS
@@GentlemanlyOtter You have the same capacity to change most pages as 57 does. The whole point is that the encyclopedia gets better as more people contribute.
if the info is demonstrably false it should be removed with extreme prejudice. no info is better than fake info. later on someone can fill it back in.
everything else 57 did and said was extreme pedantry, but he's absolutely right in deleting the fake info unilaterally
@@simperinghamexcept you don’t, admins have privileges and sway
I have interacted with someone like Number 57 on a National Football teams page who stated that including the teams results was not relevant information
I was so shocked. And he claimed that since a page he made had been featured as the page of the day that it proved he was right. He came across like he had a huge ego.
I just looked at the same page now (Peru's team) and the results are there. I guess he lost in the end.
Sports pages are the worst pages on all of Wikipedia. You have massive amounts of COI editors (fans) who add way too much run on the mill information. Most of the existing athlete articles should probably be taken to AFD because their only sourcing is their teams page and interviews with them.
@@karsonkevin2 Absolutely, there can be bloat for sure, but a teams results (National teams play ~10 times a year, only the past year is included) seem quite relevant
@@karsonkevin2here's one. The NHL division alignment pages are an absolute joke.
The 2013 realignment obviously did a division name shuffle with Atlantic becoming Metropolitan and Northeast becoming Atlantic, but for some reason Wikipedia consensus thinks it's more reasonable to treat the current Atlantic division as the continuation of the pre-2013 Atlantic division, and thus also the successor to the old Patrick division, when literally none of the current division ever played in the Patrick division.
I mean, you could take the stance (as I do) that division continuity year-after-year is dictated by mostly-consistent sets of teams playing in the same division, regardless of what the division is called in any particular year. You could also take the stance that division continuity doesn't exist and every year is a distinct year with distinct divisions, even if the divisions carry the same membership.
This middle ground Wikipedia seemed to land on, where division continuity exists when the _name_ is consistent, even if the entire division membership has changed, is perhaps the most ludicrous of the three options. And yet here we are.
5:12 The secondary sources/historical analysis are what you're supposed to use on Wikipedia anyway. I feel like a lot of election pages break Wikipedia's rule against "Original Research", and also synthesize different sources to get their data
This is very true, I originally was going to bring this up in the video. Ultimately they shouldn't be diving into the newspapers themselves, but looking at a formalized aggregate of the sources
There are exceptions for primary source. Election figures is one of them.
@@thastayapongsak4422 Which makes sebnse. Also, as someone who also picked 57 randomly, I object to that person sullying the number.
you should talk about the NOTA/invalid vote war where Number 57 pushed for results which dont match the offical ones (despite the threshold) in Serbia, Lithuania, Latvia & Bulgaria
That does sound interesting and could be an interesting topic too
There appears to have been conflicts all across the elections niche-I think there was also a debate regarding the removal of first round votes in elections that have them. But ultimately I stuck to these couple of examples because they seem to be the most exemplary and well-documented. If you have any information regarding that example though I'd love to hear more.
@@Liggliluffit was more like two smaller skirmishes on the discussion pages (on bulgaria & latvia) than full blown twitter battles
@@Liggliluff number57 created the templates used for election results and they are used anywhere but spain (which also the last country actually doing its own thing by including blank votes)
I wonder If there was a spanish Rebellion against him?
@@nojrants Removing the info about first rounds would be incredibly stupid. I can't comprehend how someone could have such an idea. Such person shoul really not be Wikipedia admin or editor.
its insane how much wikipedia admins are just arbitrarily changing articles for little to no good reasons.
If I’m being honest, infoboxes should contain more to the side of information and not less, specially if its not present elsewhere within the article, human electoral system are complicated by design and while someone can say that less info looks “prettier” it might oversimplify too much and/or lose someone’s interest over learning about xyz topic that they may never read a single article otherwise.
Whats more annoying is this is already a solved problem. Wikipedia infoboxes use subdivisions, colour, clear delineation between pieces of information etc. To produce something very quick and easy to read and search through. Removing information will save, at best, like 2 or 3 seconds for someone scanning through the infobox for what they want. And at worst it makes them waste tons of time havint to scan the entire article because the simple number or name they want is buried in a paragraph somewhere.
Exactly. A blank page is pretty, but not very useful. Being useful, informative, and accurate should always trump aesthetics.
@@troodon1096 couldn’t agree more
@@troodon1096Honestly blank pages aren't even pretty
Honestly there are a ton of pages that have absolutely bloated infoboxes. They aren’t supposed to represent all the information of the article; otherwise we wouldn’t have the body text, we’d just have infoboxes. The idea is to represent the key facts. Which members lost their seat in the election is not, in my opinion, a key fact.
Amazing video, I specifically remember looking up the 1848 French Assembly elections and being surprised at how little information the page (and the corresponding infobox) had-- Now I know the reason. Personally I would prefer Infoboxes to be as large and detailed as possible and necessary, while still concise. Wikipedia is supposed to be an online encyclopedia after all, and you use those to quickly and briefly gather information, sometimes at a glance, before moving on to more primary sources.
The 1893 French election has now gone full minimalist and someone removed the infobox entirely
It's back now. Oddly, I checked the Talk page and it was basically empty... I guess a certain someone got embarrassed and deleted everything
Number 57 seems to be one of those wiki admins who thinks that the role of an admin lets you wield a scepter, when really it's a mop.
Also, deleting something wrong instead of actually fixing it is an unfortunately common practice among editors, and I hate it.
The super passive aggressive way Wikipedia editors argue is ✨️GOLD✨️
I am actually astonished I wasn't the only one who encountered this from them. I thought I was just an isolated incident, but this seems to be a much larger thing
As far as I can tell, Number 57 is almost ubiquitous in the elections niche, so if you ever edited any national election chances are good you'll interact with them
Μαρκος Δ: "I did not pop out of nowhere"
*proceeds to pop out of nowhere*
Number 57 needs to get a hobby that isn't editing Wikipedia election articles
Information should *never* be destroyed. Inaccurate or simply wrong information should certainly be removed, but uncertain information or unreliable sources should simply be flagged as such, but the information left to view.
I agree, I personally err on the side of more information being a good thing. I think ideally those parameters should be displayed in the infobox, or at the very least, still preserved in the text. Therefore I found Number 57's removal of info from the box based on the fact that it wasn't in the text (thereby removing it entirely) to be unconstructive. People come to Wikipedia for that information, so removing it entirely just makes the page less functional and helpful, despite technically being correct to the guidelines.
I firmly believe there is no such thing as "too much information" and the only valid reason to remove it is if it's flat out factually wrong.
Plop one of those cheeky [citation needed]s in there or maybe even a [source?]
This is the great war between the two views of Wikipedia : Inclusionism vs Deletionism
"information should never be destroyed" *immediately lists reasons why information should be destroyed*
I have seen several articles have large amounts of relevant information removed because of the "Wikipedia Beautification Movement," users who trim and delete information so that an article is more aesthetically pleasing.
Despite my edits being on the receiving end, I don't think that this movement is entirely misguided. Not all notable information warrants being included in an encyclopedia. There are definitely articles where trimming content would, and has, improved readability.
But like you mention in this video, often well-sourced, relevant information is deleted for aesthetics. Why is brief, well-sourced information on the etymology of my community's indigenous name deleted for the sake of "aesthetics" while the almost entirely unsourced and unverified History section reinstated?
There are so many articles that beatifully summarize events that occurred several years ago, but then for anything that happened within the last year or two, you get excruciating details from updates happening basically every day or week. Recency bias. There is no need to discuss every little thing happening with a topic just because it's recent.
Wrestling and band articles are the absolute worst at this. You get great summaries of older events, but then every time a band member or wrestler sneezes in 2024, it gets a sentence.
@@B3Band I guess this is because people commonly go to Wikipedia to check news on things as they are ongoing. I do hope though that once the events pass they will go back and retroactively reflect on the event and summarize it.
Surely Wikipedia was never meant to be beautiful? Presenting information is all it needs to do, beauty surely has little to do with it.
@@B3Band Documenting events as it happens is good. It can be rewritten later after it has passed with less effort.
Being informative, accurate, and useful should trump aesthetics any day of the week. Print encyclopedias are limited by the physical space they take up; this is not a limit for an online one, and thus shouldn't be a consideration. There is no such thing as too much information.
I am watching a 9-month-old probably outdated argument about some annoying Election Wikipedia Admin at 3 Am on a Friday, the RUclips rabbit hole is weird.
Fun fact german Wikipedia is missing many infoboxes, because early on german wikipedians didn't like them because if you can easily find the info people won't read the articles they wrote😢
Number 57; obey the law!
Markos; what law??
Number 57; my law!
Literally him when He made up His own results in bulgaria
57 genuinely sounds like a very very sad virgin
@@AaronTheGreat________ average Wikipedia editor
So in other words Wikipedia is just being Wikipedia and the admin(s) are being the petty tyrants internet admins tend to be notorious for being.
i think on the whole, wikipedia is good, but has like, admin fiefdoms in some niches where garbo admins lead ruthless absolute monarchies and tyrannically conquer new articles
this wikipedian admin imperialism, in my opinion, makes wikipedia even better.
i mean, not for the average person that wants good information from a domain within the iron grip of one of these petty kings who deal only in suffering and misrule, but for those of us who like the funny stories this terminally online medieval realm of tyranny produces.
even the concept of the *possible* existence of a wikipedian fruit empire run by a dictatorship that ruthlessly edited all of the citrus pages to their weird egotistical whims' desire is delightful to me. did such an empire exist? i mean, it *could* have, and the environment that makes such a goofy thing possible is, in my opinion, good.
we must permit and cultivate this phenomenon like electronic, geopolitical bonsai trees.
@@iMajoraGamingI dont think so. (Internet. And wikipedia users, hang me if you want) but I think the matter isnt as severe as it seems, of course we cannot just prohibit the course of actions of admins but we should have a way to regulate them.
The tales are funny, but they shouldn't be the only ones with the power to define the consensus.
And of course they could be missing some really really fat pieces of history or importamt context while making their edits
The clearly heated discussion at 8:57 constantly being filled with “have a nice weekend” and “enjoy your evening” is extremely Wiki-esque lol
as an occasional editor I absolutely despise the attitude of people like Number 57. they think just because an information isn't useful to them, that it isn't useful to anyone
The reddification of Wikipedia.
nah, people have been battling it out like this on wikipedia longer than reddit has been around
Wikipedia IS massive reddit but with a controlled and limited entry meanwhile Reddit is a wikipedia where anyone can spew disinformation
How the hell has nobody escalated this to the Arbitration Committee yet?
That's what I was thinking! Did no one bring up a case through the system? Or file a case about his behavior?
It's fun to see a Twitter mutual inspire such content.
I am glad someone else looks at this shit. I use wikipedia quite a bit and looking at edit wars and user info is sometimes more fun than reading the actual articles. I remember seeing a wiki war on Russian orthography iirc ( though it might have been on something else ) between a monarchist and a communist and one of the rewrites sourced a far right now defunct website that looked like it hadn't been updated since the 2000s visually speaking and even had to use an internet archive link, because apparently that's enough to establish a consensus that a bunch of reforms were hated.
With great power comes great responsibility. It seems our friend Number 57 has gone mad with power and must be stopped at once
/!\ BEWARE /!\
Number 57 is currently an enemy of the LULZ
Proceed with caution.
this video is amazing i wish every video on youtube was like this : the suspense, the editing, the plot twists. everything.
Thank you! I appreciate the support
This was hilarious! Love the editing on this one
Thank you! I appreciate the support
oh my god thank you for covering this. Wikipedia Edit wars are hilarious. I was going to do a video on the Stanley Kubrick Infobox War that ended only a year or so ago. There was a years-long heated dispute entirely regarding the infobox, and it was whether or not to include it at all. I think it boiled down to the initial removal of it being human error, and someone else demanding that it stay without an infobox. Due to discussions being locked several times for cooldown periods, Kubrick simply had a photo of himself at the top of the page, because editors believed that Kubrick was too superior to be belittled by an infobox, and anyone wanting one is a dummy.
This just popped in my recommanded.
This is un ironically the greatest video I’ve seen in my lifetime.
Have a sub bro!
Thank you! I appreciate the support
Users like Number 57 made me lose faith in Wikipedia. Any ol’ crazed admin can just decide what the truth is
57's point about infobox's needing to be short so people will read the full text is rediculous. The info he's removing in this case is navigational tools. The point is for it to send users to other pages they might be looking for, with pages in question having information that the page in question omits. Not to mention the personal attacks, I'd say it's unbecoming of an admin but it's sadly so common... As common as admins adding frivilous rules without discussion.
On normal websites, 57 would have been banned a long time ago. But not on Wikipedia - in that cesspool, the worst rise to the top and become admins. Like our special friend.
Wikipedians having edit wars whilst the Skibidi Toilet article is successfully getting a Good Article nomination
All the good editors and map-makers (myself included) hate Number 57.
His antics keep going too. You need to make a sequel.
Honestly all I'm getting from this video and the comments is that a LOT of people have issues with specifically this guy (57). Why is this allowed to continue? ONE person being such a pain for basically the entire elections niche seems like it's better to just ban him from being an editor for a while. It really sounds like he slows the entire information gathering process down instead of boost it because he keeps everyone arguing about old information/discussing solely with him what should be done instead of looking up new information to add to pages.
Wikipedia drama always a fun topic. Enjoy your evening. Cheers!
**passive aggressively** Cheers!
Markos: Remember to keep it civil, cheers.
Also Markos a couple messages later: REMEMBER TO GO OUTSIDE ONCE IN A WHILE
Go outside and touch grass. Have a blessed day~
The thing that annoys me is that 57 doesn't give a shit about essentially anything but themselves. Instead of fixing the boxes they would rather delete actual content and act as though their word is final
"himself", not "themselves"
@@hughm1383 we don't know if its a he or she
@@witchilich then you weren't paying attention. There was a photo of him.
@@hughm1383 i wasn't sure so i used a neutral pronoun. i think it's okay
@@hughm1383 There's not much an issue with using a neutral term for somebody. Unless it warrants a correction (calling a man a "she") then this comment feels a little pedantic.
Wikipedia is infested with that type of editor, I've made simple uncontroversial edits before and someone obsessed with that one page undoes it instantly because of some arbitrary reason (not related to accuracy or sourcing), just because it's not how they personally want the page to look. It's a real problem cause few people care enough to put the time in to counter that kind of destructive, possesive editing, reducing the quality overall. Personally I have stopped editing Wikipedia now as a result of those people.
reply with ascii dongs on their talk page. Works a treat.
As a wikipedia editor since 2008, I need to admit - this platform is generating some weird, hidden demons while a dispute happens. You're turning into a wild animal that defends its territory and prey like a wildcat, honestly, I've caught myself having a faster heartbeat when somebody reverted my busy edit, it's very common on english wiki, but jesus, sometimes I think if it's my fault and I'm getting pissed off too quickly or if it's some wikipedia's werid phenomenon, just like with TikTok or Instagram influence on humans behavior and activation of hidden instincts. Sorry, I need to go, somebody demands a source to my edit.
The good thing about wikipedia, is that we can always find solace in the fact that it's going to be changed back the day he dies or leaves. Cheers!
Never use Wikipedia as a reliable source of religious, political, philosophical, or historical information. It's too often that theres someone in the creation of that page that is compromised on the issue at hand.
Especially political information is often biased and opiniated.
Even the creator of Wikipedia said it's politically biased to the far left.
@@iratepirate3896 Idk about that one, I would more call it a bias in favour of Anglophone Liberalism, or even more softly than bias a "lens" that it projects everything through.
On a funny note something very similar, a wikipedia war has broken out over the Pakistani 2024 elections infobox
Interesting, I bet we will see a lot more edit wars soon given how many elections are occuring this year. Naturally, it looks like Number 57 is involved on the Pakistan election too, although not taking the lead.
"enjoy your Friday night as all others, on Wikipedia!" was the winning move imo
this editing is unhinged i love it
A masterpiece video!! PLEASE more like this!!!
Thank you!
truly an amazing 180 from "I guess he has a point accuracy in election results is important" to "jesus christ why does an admin go on a personal vendetta over infobox aesthetics?"
As far as memory goes, Wikipedia is supposed to be without bias. Thing is, Number 57's bias towards Minimalism and the Wikipedia Beautification Movement has obscured proper editing, in my opinion, and has undoubtedly resulted in the inaccessibility of information. And while he did give valid points about information, as stated in the video, I believe that was a cover to justify needless editing. What do you guys think??
Wikipedia is a lot more biased than people think. Encyclopedia Britannica is much less biased and much less opiniated. Wikipedia at times uses biased sources or sources that cites sources that cite Wikipedia(creating a circle of fake sources). I have also seen editors reject primary sources in favor of secondary sources as "more reliable".
Wikipedia tries to state what is fact and what isn't on pages regarding SCIENCE. You know, that ever-shifting fields where new, contradictory info is found every day with varying levels of validity.
It's biased as all get out.
Don't know where you heard it wasn't supposed to be biased... if that's one of their goals, it's one they've clearly failed at.
7:09 “The less information it contains, the more it serves its purpose”
Well, I guess where he deleted info boxes completely, he took this principle to its extreme.
Great video, I was actually wondering this myself
The misuse of the word 'Falsified' ruined my evening, thanks for that
At best it was good natured data that just had errors, 57 made it sound like it was a deliberate forgery lol
I mean, of course accessibility is important and Number 57 has a point, however I do think that he is doing this more because of personal preference rather than actual willingness to make the Wikipedia page better, as you showed in the beginning of the video, this guy has edited A LOT of election related pages to do the same information removal thing & I highly doubt that all of them had the same problem.
When it comes to removing false information or simply ones without sources, I absolutely agree with him about removing them for obvious reasons, but it just does not enter my mind how when people showed this guy sources that are seemingly reliable, he would go on to ditch them and stuck with a... not so good website, of course as you wrote in 6:00 he might have had I reason to do that but why did he not tell us? He has this weird level of secretness that kinda says to me that the reason is probably not that good.
Just one more thing, in the Botswana case, he says that he removed some links to make the page less crowded, however as we all had saw before, the page was completely fine, in fact I reckon that it was even more accessible due to it having more information, subsequently it was more reliable since we have got all that mapped out, nonetheless he removed some crucial information for a reason that does not even make that much sense, I just cannot wrap my head around this.
So yeah, this Number 57 guy does not seem too professional to me, I would be fond of seeing how other Wikipedia Admins portray the situation.
The debate over the definition of "accessible" was really contentious during that debate, I think because it's something both sides could cling to as an objective justification for their preferences. I tend to agree with the side that more links in the infobox means more accessible. If the link is right there it literally can be accessed more easily. The argument of Number 57 and similar users was that if you remove more info, the box becomes more succinct, and thus is "accessible" in the sense that it's streamlined. In this regard, 57 focused on this idea that the box was "cluttered" when the link was there, thus making it unusable, but I personally cannot get behind that logic at all.
@@nojrantsWikipedia should rely more on expert advice to resolve those disputes. Surely there MUST be at least one editor, or even admin, with UX experience (namely in accessibility) who could very well present their professional credentials and give some input on the matter, based on… you’ve guessed it, sources. Making these decisions based solely on personal opinion is idiotic beyond belief and makes me lose even more faith on Wikipedia as a platform. Heck, it’s already more than 20 years old at this point, and UX courses have been all the rage for at least 10; we shouldn’t even be debating this kind of shit anymore. 🤦♂️
I saw a tweet that brought this video to my attention! As a Wikipedia editor I am now infuriated with Number 57's clear abuse of power. It's a complete shame that nothing has been done by this, but for those who are wikipedia editors among you we could try to establish a more productive consensus (since that is how Wikipedia operates) or perhaps file a report under Wikipedia:Requests for review of admin actions
This video perfectly exemplifies why any community moderated site will inevitable turn to shit due to bad actors with too much power. This is true for basically any forums with mods, also basically the worst thing about reddit, etc.
Another example of Wikipedia admins more often than not making the site worse because of their ego and stubbornness, whilst going after smaller articles they know will offer less resistance to their preferences.
Thanks for the upload Noj Rants! I died laughing at that talk page war.
I love how there are 2 types of Wikipedia users, people who just read And people who also write And are like a community
The entire thing can be summarised as “one loser on Wikipedia made a bunch of other losers angry because they are all losers.”
It's always so fascinating to me when people hijack random aspects of wikipedia
So Number57 reaction to this videos is (from the talk section of his wikipage) :
Oh hooray. It's a shame they didn't point out the changes to the infobox guidance were a specifically recommended outcome of the RfCs in question (which made it look like I added it in unilaterally). Number 57 20:47, 15 January 2024 (UTC)
To be fair, it much more balanced than I was expecting and it looks like RUclips commenters are a bit more discerning than those on Twitter. I am very much a minimalist when it comes to infoboxes, but had no idea it was so controversial.
If the video creator is reading this, the reason I didn't use Nohlen & Stöver for the 1898 election is (a) the Roi et President source was already used in the article and (b) Nohlen & Stöver's figures are rounded, which look a bit odd when compared with a source that seems to have real numbers. Number 57 22:14, 15 January 2024 (UTC)
Number 57 truly is a man who has no life.
He is a useless troll that should be banned from WP for life. The policy of deleting entire sections instead of correcting them, or marking them disputed, means he is one of many disruptive and obfuscating editors.
bro said "To be fair, it much more balanced than I was expecting and it looks like RUclips commenters are a bit more discerning than those on Twitter. I am very much a minimalist when it comes to infoboxes, but had no idea it was so controversial." yeah your minimalist aesthetic preference kinda sucks bud
Huh, y'know sometimes seeing these vids I forget the debate is still ongoing and there are still folks who care enough to respond.
Hopefully this leads to some forward progress on the issue actually being resolved...
lol i am so glad the recommendation algorithm brought me here a couple days after searching "wikipedia inclusion vs exclusion debate"
This is very high quality content for a small channel. Can't wait to see more of what you do!
Thank you! I appreciate the support
This just proves why Wikipedia is rotten to its core. The title of Wikipedia editor is ludicrous because nobody can have expert knowledge in so many fields to even determine what information is sound and which is not. And unfortunately wiki editors are the last people you want to be wiki editors because they know just as much about each subject as the average person, but believe themselves to know more and their judgement to be better than others. Worse yet, since they don't get paid they only attract those who are either financially dependent on others or have such weird priorities that they'll forgo a normal life for internet clout in a small circle.
They aren't normal, nor geniuses. They aren't successful, nor experts. They aren't truthseekers, nor interested in the topics they edit. Yet they partly shape and control our understanding of the world.
Fortnite
Battle pass @@r3ked272
10:55
"The Template will decide your fate."
*"I **_am_** the Template."*
The funniest thing about Wikipedia drama is how politely-worded all the arguments are.
It's entirely run by people with way too much time on their hands, so of course they're going to use more words in their arguments. At one time I tried to fix obvious errors (basic self-evident factual errors, often contradicted by Wikipedia's own articles) just to butt heads with people who care more about procedure than actually being accurate. I gave up really quickly... I don't have the time or inclination to fight with people that obsessive.
If you even come close to something resembling an insult they pull out the Rules and you lose by default. eg. the Off-wiki attacks policy they brought up
So from my understanding from this video:
-Wikipedia looks shit nowadays
-There has been potentially citable sources/unsourced details in Wikipedia
-Number 57 is a c word
it's mostly by a bunch of people who edit how they see fit haha
It gets worse when sources cite sources that cite Wikipedia, creating a circle of fake sources.
57 seems like the worst person to grab a beer with.
I'm not sure I see the point of minimalist infoboxes at all. What you're looking for can be found in a couple of seconds even on articles with infoboxes two pages long. They're very clear and readable. I'd also wager that the majority of wikipedia use is to reference the infobox (or what should be in an infobox). I guess the new default layout might not give enough space for the main article, but to be honest, that's not an issue with the infobox, and minimizing the info in the box for that is making changes that severely harm all viewing methods to benefit one in a minor way.
I agree, and personally I don't think much of the "minimalism" argument holds up. We know that the infobox is one of the main elements people reference, so I think people expect those fields to be used and filled out. The supporters of minimalism have argued that this makes the box "cluttered" or too messy to use, but I have a hard time buying that argument.
At a certain point, like on those French Revolution-era election pages, I almost wonder if there's even a point to the infobox anymore. By 57's argument, a box with only two lines is very "efficient", but I personally am experiencing the opposite, as I now have a harder time finding what I'm looking for. This all started because I was trying to quickly pull up a couple French elections to see what the turnouts were, as a point of comparison in the next Russian election video I was writing, and that data point had been almost completely removed.
Yup, I had very long debates over an aestetic issue on Wikipedia years sgo. Literally all Wikipedias did one particular thing in one way, and in my language it was another way, that was rather pointless. I was even blocked over it for some time by admins who had an aestetic opinion in favour of keeping the difference. Then at one poiny it was just changed to the way it is in all Wikipedias.
Debates over aesthetics are difficult since they tend to be very subjective. I think that's why in this debate both sides tried to focus their arguments on "utility", "accessibility", or of being more closely aligned with the design principles. Personally I tend to defer to what presents the most information and is the most helpful to people; aesthetics shouldn't come before that.
@@nojrants The particular debate I am referring to was over the fact that on the Main page of that Wikipedia pictures that were in the Main Page infoboxes were put into image frames (those you get with "thumb"). Those frames were just put there for literally no reason.
This is why teachers always used to tell us not to use Wikipedia as a source. Well, thanks for the tea on this.
You can use Wikipedia to find sources if you're doing research on something
Use it as a general direction, and read the citations for actual researching.
Yeah you should instead use textbooks that are even worse sources
I hope I never meet a Wikipedia editor in real life. Ever.
you are the first person ever to misspell I
💀
I’m so glad that other people know about Number57, when I first encountered him changing election pages it was very frustrating
Found your channel from the flag videos, but this was really cool! They should let you redo the Russian articles haha. Also just curious, what are the errors at 11:52
Thank you for the support! As I said in another comment, I will probably stay out of that debate, but I don't mind helping to direct others who are interested. Briefly, here are the problems I see on the 1906 infobox:
The election technically began at the end of February (when the first electors were selected) and was scheduled to continue into April. Peripheral parts of the Empire voted as late as April or May, for example the city of Baku finished its election on 31 May. Technically, the election never really completed, as some regions were still working on their elections by the time the First Duma had already collapsed. The infobox glosses over all that and just writes "March", which I think is reductive.
The point about "Kadet" is fairly self explanatory. I believe both "Kadet" and "Cadet" are fine in English, but the former is preferred usually, and at the very least be consistent and use one, not both.
They write "All 497 seats" were up for election, but the electoral law actually announced there were 524 seats prescribed. De facto the actual number filled was more like 480 (due to the aforementioned votes not all being completed, people not showing up, etc).
The Trudoviks and the Octobrists didn't fully exist at the time of the election, those are retroactive designations. During the election the deputies who became the Trudoviks were in actuality independent/undefined peasant deputies, who then after the Duma opened came to indentify as a group; the Trudoviks as a party were declared in October 1906. Similarly, if I remember correctly the Octobrists were originally just "rightists", who then became Octobrists during the First Duma. The Octobrists were never really much of a solid party during their existence. Now whether or not the numbers/names should reflect opening day, the totality of the Duma, or something else, is probably debateable.
I consider the 124 seats being labeled as Trudovik to be too high. That might be including all proletarian/peasant deputies based on their occupation, or it might be including the Social Democrats (there was no SD fraction at this time, but in spirit they were SDs). Virtually everything I've seen, as well as my own research into the deputies, indicates a more accurate number is in the 90 to 100 range. Based on the transcripts of the Duma, you could make a good case there were 94 Trudoviks on 26 June (which is pretty much the end of the Duma), which is the number I settled on for the video on the election. Although again, that gets into the argument about how these elections don't cleanly translate into the modern format. It was a loose designation, and people were coming and going into the faction all throughout the 72 day convocation.
@@nojrants Wow thank you for the reply, I wasn't expecting such an answer so soon. Your channel is really great btw, awesome details and editing, and I appreciate the level of research you put in
The section where the two admins just have a huge spat was really well-done, laughed so much.
Wikipedia beef is something so surreal
It is weirdly intense
Wikipedia editors and Reddit mods often go crazy with the little power they have.
As someone who edits election pages on Wikipedia, this is something ive experienced.
What a good vid, great work, im gonna check the rest or your content
i cant believe what i ive just seen
Thank you! I appreciate it
Another fun one is "Mark Felton". This is a wiki page about a youtube "historian" who gets into long drawn out battles with wikipedia editors about trying to edit his own page to make himself look better.
I once edited in the cost of some older US naval ships and used the US government budget as a source. This angered everyone and it was quickly removed. IMO Wikipedia and other forums tend to become incredibly insular over time and you really cannot work to improve them without stepping on someones proverbial feet.