Fear and Loathing at Wikipedia

Posted by Stropp on January 14, 2009

There have been quite a few posts and articles over the last few days about a storm over at Wikipedia.

Apparently there are some editors who have taken it upon themselves to remove articles about famous MUD’s from Wikipedia, and targeted one of the more famous MUD’s, Threshold.

The reason given by the article authors? Well, apparently the way to get ahead at Wikipedia — and by getting ahead, I mean being promoted from editor to administrator — is by making lots of contributions to the directory. Of course the easiest contributions to make are article deletions.

It also appears that the editor responsible for attempting to delete the Threshold article (it was deleted, but there is a new one back) had a history with the Threshold game. He was banned from it a few years ago for being underage.

So what happened?

According to CEO of Frogdice, the creators of Threshold, in an article called Wikipedia’s War on Gaming History and Threshold RPG, the Wikipedia editor embarked on a systematic campaign to get the Threshold article deleted by:

• making mods to the article, and when the original article authors showed up and fixed the changes by making additions, citations, and references, the editors banned the original authors.
• when the original authors had been removed, the editors proposed an AfD (Article for Deletion.) When people in favor of keeping the article showed up and voted against the deletion, they were also banned.
• despite 57% voting to keep the article, the admin responsible concluded that there was a consensus to delete the article.
• In all of this, the editors and admins simply did not follow Wikipedia’s guidelines for handling edits, AfDs, and even bannings. The engaged in the behaviour they were accusing the pro-Threshold people of engaging in. They were a law unto themselves.

The justification for all this bad behavior by the deletionists at Wikipedia is that the articles are not notable. In fact, the arguments go one step further and claim the information presented by the Threshold article writers lacks authority, even when the sources are notable folks in the industry like Bartle and Koster. (Check the article’s discussion page for details, if it’s still there.)

The irony of this argument is that Wikipedia itself should not be used as an authoritative source of information. Sure, Wikipedia is a great place to start if you need information, articles generally provide links to source material, but the info there should never be used as an authoritative source. Especially if you’re trying to hang a school report or PhD dissertation on it.

So while it’s great, and necessary, for Wikipedia to require notable and accurate sources, it’s also disingenuous and hypocritical for the editors to be demanding these sources, and when provided (Bartle & Koster references) claiming they’re not notable enough.

The editors are even quibbling that the launch date of Threshold that is provided by Threshold’s very own website is not authoritative. Come on, please.

Power corrupts; Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Lord Action,1887

Okay. So we know that there are always two sides to each story. The article I referred to was written by the CEO of the company that owns Threshold after all. However, there’s enough corroboration that I’ve seen, Bartle and Koster come to mind, that shows that something dirty was going on at Wikipedia.

The fact is that people, when given power over others, have a tendency to misuse that power in order to further their own agendas. There’s several metric tons of reports of psychology experiments that absolutely prove that fact that cannot be ignored. It’s also true that in any large enough group of people, there’s going to be some who are going to do the wrong thing.

Again what strikes me as odd is the notability requirements. I can go to Wikipedia and find information on nearly any subject that I have an interest in. I’ve spent hours going through dozens of pages related to Doctor Who, and found entries for TV shows that never made it past the first season, or even first few episodes.

Sure, they’re not going to want an article on how my cat is a fussy eater because he doesn’t like fish and prefers poultry and red meat. There’s got to be some value in an article, and yes, that’s what the editors are there to ensure.

Yet a computer game that has been going for 13 years is not notable, but Century City a TV show about lawyers in 2030 and that was canceled after broadcasting only 4 episodes ( 9 were made ) is notable. Go figure.

I think there are a lot of people questioning the value of Wikipedia when it comes to popular culture since what isn’t popular amongst the editors and administrators has a tendency to disappear.

Perhaps it’s time to distribute these large collections of information, backing them up so to speak, so that over-zealous and self-important individuals have less control over the destiny of history.

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