Why other people really hate Wikipedia administrators as well

Why I really hate Wikipedia administrators

August 26, 2009 at 2:40
http://g-liu.com/blog/2009/08/why-i-really-hate-wikipedia-administrators/ 

This post is part of a three-part series on the grievous deficiencies of Wikipedia administrators.

Wikipedia administrators have turned Wikipedia into an online totalitarian regime, and no one is doing a darn thing about it.

(Note: This does not apply to all administrators on Wikipedia.)

On a Wiki such as Wikipedia, there are 3 tiers of users: Regular users, Bureaucrats, and Administrators. Out of those 3 tiers, it’s the administrators that are the worst. If you are a regular user on Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons or any Wikimedia Project (Wikimedia Commons, Wikisoure, Wikibooks, etc), you’ll know what I’m talking about.

Administrators are supposed to be “helpers” and people who “clean up and perform maintenance” on the wiki. Apparently, the administrators who are on the Wikimedia Project’s wikis have abused this power so much that they can’t even be classified by the two phrases above. Instead, their function now is to bash users for making accidental edits and to find excuses to block users. On Wikipedia, I got blocked for “spamming” the Wikipedia Sandbox with a survey. Well, the sandbox is an area where people test wikicode and no one really cares what goes on it. Now, apparently, administrators spare no pages in their around-the-clock hunt for “vandalizers“. Some administrators have been so sucked in and addicted to this task that they literally stalk the people that make even the slightest trouble. One example of such a user is Either Way.  I made an edit on the Simple English Wikipedia and he said something about that on my user talk page. Then, I uploaded an image on Wikimedia Commons, which the user followed up with a comment. I make another edit on the English Wikipedia and still, Either Way is following me. I swear that these admins have developed secret admin-only tools to stalk and hunt down users.

Because of administrators, Wikipedia has turned into an online totalitarian regime, with administrators at the throne. Whether you know it or not, every time you log on to a wiki, there’s always one administrator who has his or her eye on you. It takes just one mistake, one wrong edit, and that administrator will be on your case before you even press the “save changes” button. How do they do this? Administrators use heinous “automatic users” called bots to accomplish the task of stalking down users (although the admins are barely human, they can’t possibly watch over millions of Wikipedia users). These bots are the administrators’ assistants, and thousands of them are crawling all over Wikipedia, and at the slightest bit of a mishap, they’ll leave a horrific message on your talk page and notify all the admins. Then all hell breaks loose.

Another notable conflict I’ve had with administrators was on Wikimedia Commons. I nominated one of my pictures, a panorama of Mount Rainier, for Featured Picture. I believed that it was such a good image that I used a few other user accounts under the same name to vote for it. Unfortunately, this kind of activity sticks out like a sour apple to Commons administrators, and I was promptly blocked. I would have been fine if the block was less than 3 days, but of course, those administrators have mental problems. They blocked all of my other accounts, blocked my main account (Deathgleaner), blocked indefinitely, and without any prior warning. Usually, users are given at least one warning if the offense hasn’t been committed before, and I have never committed any offense like this and I get blocked indefinitely by one administrator. Then, another administrator follows me just to rub it in my face, followed by another, then another, like an online pileup of football players. The administrators also put a notice on the voting page of my panorama saying what happened. This screwed people’s perception while voting and caused them to focus on the incident rather than the image. Yes, some of the comments did regard the image itself but I still believe there would be less opposing votes if the administrators hadn’t screwed up the voting page with numerous comments.

After my primary account, Deathgleaner, got blocked, I created another account so I could keep contributing, in a good manner, to the wiki. Yet, the administrators are so one-sided that they only see the bad stuff, and that was that the user account I was using to keep contributing was connected to my main account. The administrator wasted no time in blocking that account. It took me another three months to finally convince those biased admins to unblock my main account.

One of the most recent and ongoing conflicts happened on Wikisource. I was looking at the text for a book called Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe. When I found out the first chapter was formatted as prose, I promptly disagreed and changed it so that it was not formatted as prose. Of course, a nosy admin walks by my user talk page and leaves a note that basically said “prove it”. I gave him three very trusty sources and he still didn’t believe it, which got another administrator on the case. The debate escalated from there and resulted in me being blocked, for the millionth time. One of the admins said that I needed “special guidance” on editing and that my changes are “erratic”. The only person who needs special guidance and is erratic is that doofus who wrote the comment on my talk page! Now there’s a huge pileup of administrators’ dumb comments on my talk page, including one comment that said “I am going to block you for 14 hours so you don’t prevent us from carrying on with our lives”. Well, I doubt these admins have any “life” other than gluing their eyes to a computer monitor and trying to hold records for the most number of users blocked.

All this administrator activity on Wikipedia and other sites has pissed me off. I have almost stopped editing on Wikipedia because I can’t do so peacefully. The administrators only exist for the purpose of framing users and causing more trouble rather than settling it. They have framed so many users that their reputation has changed from people who help other users to people who block users. In fact, these administrators have turned Wikipedia into a Neo-Nazi regime, and they treat the rest of the Wikipedians like Jews in World War II. The only way to stop such horrendous injustice towards non-admins is to dethrone the administrator position. Talking to admins is useless, they’ll only call in other administrators to help take down the talk. Sure, Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia that anyone can edit, but it’s only free if we don’t have any nagging administrators patrolling Wikipedia every second of every day.

Perhaps you’re a user on Wikipedia who’s had a similar story. Please share it with me so I can back up my claim (or maybe it’s just me). If you hate Wikipedia’s administrators, feel free to leave a comment saying “I HATE WIKIPEDIA ADMINISTRATORS”. Feel even more free to list off the usernames of such admins and I will happily post them on my blog.

UPDATE: Great news. I have found out that Wikipedia and other similar wikis don’t allow freedom of speech, even for people in the United States. First of all, that’s an infringement on the Constitution, and second of all, I guess that’s the reason why I get block threats from Either way and other such dirtbags. I swear that it was administrators who took away this right in order to promote a more uptight community. And now I’m blocked on Wikisource for saying that I hate administrators. Those administrators have no sense.

And here’s another thing to think about… it seems that blocking should be used as a last resort, not a first option. Apparently admins only respect that when they want to. Another example of how Wikipedia’s “government” has gone to the dogs.

Why I really hate Wikipedia administrators, Part II

August 31, 2009

http://g-liu.com/blog/2009/08/why-i-really-hate-wikipedia-administrators-part-ii/

This post is part of a three-part series on the grievous deficiencies of Wikipedia administrators.

Last week’s post generated a lot of controversy. Here are some more events that have happened to me since I posted my previous post:

1. I posted this announcement on my user pages at Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons etc.:

Those who read English will appreciate Why I really hate Wikipedia administrators, which appeared to me at a search on the keyword Wikipedia on Twitter. Some rare gems in this post. Dereckson | ( d) August 27, 2009 at 07:05 (EST)

What happened next was that people obviously noticed, and it generated a few clicks to my blog. I also had a comment in the Wikitext code that said:

“No, either way, don’t touch. This was on the Fr.Wikipedia Bistro at Wikipédia:Bistro and since all the content here is CC and GFDL licensed, I have the right to reproduce it here.

“You have better things to do with your life than patrol Wikipedia 14 hours a day. I suggest you leave this page alone and quit stalking me.”

Someone noticed this on Wikispecies and decided to delete my user page, delete my talk page, block me indefinitely; without contacting me about it. Their reason: “personal attack.” To this day, that evil administrator still hasn’t contacted me about why he blocked me indefinitely. I had to email him since I couldn’t even edit my talk page, and I still don’t understand how telling someone not to edit (touch) my user page gets me blocked indefinitely for a personal attack. As if you get thrown into jail for life for telling a police officer to “leave me alone.”

2. I find out that Wikipedia’s rules are stricter than I ever imagined. The admins have created all these little inconspicuous rules so that they can frame innocent users and block them. One user said to me: I believe that there is a policy[!!!] allowing a link to copyrighted works. Who really cares? All you’re doing is linking and you can get in trouble for that? (And I quote: “Linking to copyrighted works is usually not a problem, as long as you have made a reasonable effort to determine that the page in question is not violating someone else’s copyright. If it is, please do not link to the page.”) WTF, Wikisource.
3. It seems like everything on Wikipedia, etc. is a privilege. That includes editing your own user page, as if someone suddenly comes up to you and says “it’s a privilege to decorate your own house.” You and your stupid ass rules, administrators.

I also received many comments from Wikipedia, etc. administrators, all claiming that I was wrong and that I did the wrong thing. Here are some of their comments:

“There is some need for regulation, otherwise you get people replacing pages with ‘_____ SUCKS MY PENIS’. If you don’t support some kind of structure, you’re socialist. And socialists suck.” –Matt Ventura

“About your ‘freedom of speech’, you’re using it in your blog. Nobody avoids you to write this…But when users leave comments to your blog, you’ve the right to delete spam, hateful comments or any comment you don’t want.

“The real freedom of speech is the right to seek, to receive and to impart information and ideas. Not to publish what you want everywhere.” –Dereckson

“You apparently also missed that Wikipedia is a private project. Thus the notion of freedom of speech is irrelevant. You have no more right to edit Wikipedia than you have to get printed in the New York Times.” –Mathieu P.

“Voting multiple times in the FP in Commons is one of the biggest sins you can commit on Commons.” –senate

Everyone seems to be touching on the point that I cheated in the Featured Picture voting at Wikimedia Commons, and that my block was completely justified by my “big sin” that I committed.

First of all, how is voting multiple times necessarily a big sin? Voting in Commons is done online, and all the nosy admins are watching. It’s much easier to remove a sock-puppet vote online than it is to remove one in, say, a presidential election.

Yes, I screwed up the vote, but I still don’t believe in an indefinite block for such a vote. You can’t prove it’s a big sin. It is my belief that “little” infringements like minor vandalism can be justified by short blocks and “big” or repeated infringements can be justified by longer and/or indefinite blocks.

Administrators only exist for one purpose: framing, then blocking users. Then, when someone writes about them, they start throwing stupid ass arguments trying to defend themselves and promote their Nazist ways. They also love to jump to whatever conclusion is on their stubborn mind, like “No, either way, don’t touch” = personal attack = indefinite block. Administrators are crazy, rampant, mentally incompetent “leaders” that have framed hundreds if not thousands of innocent users like me. Unless they learn to accept their mistake, it will always be my belief that these administrators are evil, satanic beings that have no life other than spending fourteen hours a day in their dark rooms stalking users.

Published by Geoffrey Liu

Currently studying at the University of Washington, for degrees in Computer Science and Music. Web development has been my passion for many years. I am also greatly interested in UI/UX design, teaching, biking, and collecting posters.

http://g-liu.com/blog/2009/08/why-i-really-hate-wikipedia-administrators-part-ii/

http://g-liu.com/blog/2009/09/why-other-people-really-hate-wikipedia-administrators-as-well/

Part III

September 2, 2009

This post is part of a three-part series on the grievous deficiencies of Wikipedia administrators.

I’ve been complaining recently about how much I hate Wikipedia’s administrators. When I wrote my first blog post here about why I really hate these admins, all comments I got were against me. Well it turns out that all these comments were made by administrators trying to defend themselves. Guess what, admins? Other people hate you too. Here’s a blog post I found that highlights some of the fallacies of administrators on Wikipedia:
This post first appeared on thewebservice.co.uk under the title “The Problem with Wikipedia”, and was written by mrwebservice. It has been edited by Deathgleaner for use on this blog.

Wikipedia sucks.

Why do I say this?  Obviously I’ve just had yet another bad experience with the self-professed Gods who “manage” the encyclopaedia… but is this a case of sour grapes or evidence of a fundamental problem? One or even a few incidents and you get a little irritated, but a bizarre attitude seems to be endemic to Wiki’s mods. So let’s take a look at just why Wikipedia sucks quite so badly.

Who wants to be a Wikipedia moderator?  Why would you want to do it?  How would you find the time?  Why would you be bothered?  Here are the reasons:

1. You want to contribute something of value to the human race: knowledge.  A noble thought.  But why not just contribute in the normal way?  Because you are a prolific contributor and want to feel a little important.
2. You have a burning hatred of “spammers” and pranksters who leave their trail of junk contributions and links wherever they go.  You fight the good fight and think of yourself as a crusader against spam.  And you have the badges on your profile page to prove it.
3. You have acres of spare time and don’t know what to do with it.  You may be old or unemployed and debating on forums does not carry the import or weight of helping to manage the most used encyclopaedia in the world.
4. You have a personal agenda to follow and you need the power to carry it through.  Knowledge is power and you have the keys.

Now, let’s take a pinch of all these attributes and mix them together. What do we end up with?  I’ll tell you what.  A trumped-up & twisted little troll so filled with their own self-importance they are about to explode.

The two breeds of Wikipedia Moderators

In general, though, there are two types of Wikipedia moderator.

Wikipedia Moderator #1: the instigator with a vested interest

This is maybe the most dangerous breed.  They have established a small reputation and perhaps following on Wikipedia through their collection of at best pedestrian and at worst moronic contributions.  For whatever reason they have staked out a claim on a small patch of Wikipedia and see it as “theirs”.  They were there first.  Their material should stay.  They’ve seen off countless spammers and weak revisions and are invincible.

These moderators will pounce on any revisions you make and systematically delete them.  They may even try and delete whole articles you’ve written.

Wikipedia Moderator #2: the spam-hater with the itchy mouse finger

Although the instigators are pretty depressing, I think it’s actually these people that are the worst.  These moderators cycle through the whole of Wikipedia looking for things to delete.  Because they spend their time cycling through all the articles nominated for deletion, they don’t really have any specialism (other than being a tenacious “crusader”, with “left-wing” views so potent they actually make Hitler look like a hobbyist)

These jumped-up jobsworths who were misinformed about their lineage can’t comprehend what they’re reading 99% of the time and are happy to just keep clicking away.  Delete-delete-delete.  They’re doing everyone a service, after all.  Where would Wikipedia be without them?  It would be a seething link farm filled with “original research” and garbage.  Every time something is deleted, the moderator has brought some good back to the world.  The criterion for deletion is simple: if it’s been nominated, rip it out.

Why the two breeds are bad for anyone with anything to say

These two types of moderator work together.  Step one: the instigator with the vested interest notices you and starts causing problems.  Once the instigator has nominated something for deletion, or you’ve got into an argument with him about something that’s already been deleted, like some evil genie in a bottle, the spam-hater with the itchy trigger finger pops up.  If something’s been nominated for deletion, “click” goes the spam-hater, and it’s gone.  They don’t think twice.  They are crusaders, after all.

You can’t Complain about Wikipedia Moderators

Wikipedia is “not a democracy” and there’s no higher order to complain to when things go wrong – just a seething collective of no-hopers who have formed alliances and like nothing more than slapping these laughable phallic symbols all over the place:

That’s right.  You want to play by the rules and you’ve done your research.  Your revisions are accurate and you have the links to prove it; your article was neutral and you want to argue your case; you’ve done your research and you actually followed Wikipedia policy.  The trouble is, all of these policies are open to considerable interpretation, and there are so many rules and guidelines that there will always be something to throw at you.  Remember, it’s not about debate.  The decision has been made.

Wikipedia is essentially the biggest committee in the world.

Wikipedia is a big committee.  And committees are crap.  Everyone knows that.  There are 1,614 admins on the English Wikipedia at the time of writing which is both a massive amount of people to be generating red tape and also a bizarrely minuscule number of people when you consider the millions of pages Wikipedia contains.  So we’re really talking about the cream: the most mean-spirited, petty people on the planet.

Let’s hunt down and destroy Wikipedia moderators

I would like to hear of anyone and everyone’s bad experiences of Wikipedia.  Perhaps we should all band together and form our own collective of Anti-Wikipedians.  Any Wikipedia moderators with an axe to grind can go elsewhere.  I have a rigid set of rules and guidelines in place and what that boils down to is I don’t like Wikipedians and I will delete your comment and glue my own banners all over your smug, self-regarding faces.

— END RE-BLOG —

This post received many comments which cursed administrators. Here are just a few:

They don’t give you reasons for deleting your content until you complain to them, and then it’s usually some lame excuse, then if you do exactly what they say, THEY STILL DELETE YOUR CONTENT. I hate Wikipedia and I think it should burn.

So true, Wikipedia is full of Nazi’s that’s why I quit. Most of the vandalism is done by so called admins them selves, I post an article and they delete it (vandalism) saying we don’t feel we need that. So if I write an article about something video games related a person who doesn’t know anything about video games or the internet deletes it?

As a former Wikipedia contributor with 2K+ edits and 50+ created articles, I couldn’t agree more with what you said! Looking back, the idea is fatally flawed.

I tried to put up a photo which i took myself and it was deleted using ‘copyrighted’ as a excuse. Copyrighted..? My own image..? That doesn’t make sense. I even tried to edit one article by inserting only one sentence using ‘credible’ sources and yet what happens: deleted. I was surprised by how quickly deletions take place. This one was only a matter of minutes. Those people must stay glued to their screens 24/7 looking to see if anyone has added anything so it can be deleted.

The criteria for using Wikipedia totally sucks. You have to do this; you have to do that; and, when you comply – there is another rule to follow.

If one of their people writes an article about YOU or your business, THEY get exclusive right to control the content. They also have a ‘blocking’ policy that prevents you from contributing if you threaten them with legal action. So, basically, they can totally misrepresent your source of income, possibly causing a loss of business, and then lock you out from complaining about it.

I had a run in with some today, it seems that they don’t have to follow rules or guidelines, can make up their own rules on the spot and ban people who are trying to stop vandals (or for any other reason they like). i have been trying to stop vandals and have been banned for a day because of it…the way the admins act completely defeats the point of having rules and guidelines to follow.

WIKI[PEDIA] is entertainment for losers without a job. It’s not an open community, in fact, anything you add gets deleted or reverted by some looser admin who thinks it only goes his way.

Wikipedia began a rapid toboggan slide down a very slippery slope with the advent of moderation. It is ironic that moderators, putatively introduced to remove the bias (in addition to misinformation, poorly written content and spam) from Wikipedia, have instead replaced user-contributed bias with their own, moderator-contributed brand of heavy-handed chauvinism, pettiness and personal agendas.

Exactly, administrators. It’s not just me, it’s all the regular users. Administrators, you have bashed us non-admins enough. You think you know everything. You think you’re perfect. You think the world revolves around you. You think of all this bullsh*t that’s not true, and when a regular user makes ONE TINY EDIT you just have to throw a bunch of stones at that user and mess with him/her, don’t you? So follow the rules like everyone else does and quit being retards, you administrators.