LOL I started sme shit on reddit and got banned from two different subreddits back to back. Feel free to start some shit in this thread if you want too.

reddit.com/r/ReportTheBadModer

@freemo

Some sub reddit ban you if get too many upvote, moderator only allow link from there known ones site and top site.

Reddit is worst than Twitter and Facebook.

@admin @freemo You think that is bad? Wait till you discover #Wikipedia. They just deleted entire section about India from this page (check page history) :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideological_bias_on_Wikipedia

Reason given : WP:NotNews
When this was raised in Talk page, asking for reason, that was deleted as well. Reason given : Talk page is not a forum.

I kid you not.

@mukt

did you revert the edit? Wiki pedia allows you to revert edits and you can continue to rerevert it up to a set number of times, something like 2.. So in short you can boycott the change and your boycott would be honored.

Only way they can force the edit to go through despite your boycott is if a third person comes in and takes a side, in which case majority rules. If things get out of hand you can have a vote in the talk pages, and it mostly comes down to majority rule..

You say you tried bringing it up on the talk page and it got deleted as "not a forum"... but was this done by someone with authority?

I'm a wikipedia editor and I can come in and try to push the debate in the right direction. Often its a majority rules system so you can always just ask for assistance whens tuff like this happens.

In my eyes wik8ipedia is at least a democracy, no one is a dictator. Reddit however is dictator run which makes it less pleasant to me when you have mad mods since the power is concentrated with a few.

@admin

@freemo

You can revert it 3 times, and it is called editwar.
These senior editors are part of of a long established cabal - quite powerful and reportedly earning from editing malpractices. It isn't the first time I have run into them.

They were exposed in two Indian publications last year. A big controversy happened and the end result was that the publications, #Swaragmag and #OpIndia, both were banned as citations to wikipedia. The cabal lost just one account: DBigXRay.

@admin
@freemo

How powerful is this #Wikipedia cabal? Well, administrators are definitely involved - I can say this based on my own limited experience. And at least one vlue ticked birdsite journo from India has claimed that #JimmyWales is himself well aware of the issue - and ignores it, almost like he is a beneficiary in some way.

@admin

@mukt

Even a powerful cabal though cant circumvent democracy entirely. If you push for a vote you will usually get one and the cabal gets the same vote as everyone else.. The issue is just that they tend to command a lot of respect and have strong influence on the votes. But hey, thats democracy for you.

@admin

@freemo @admin

Based on what I have seen so far, I am certain that it is the vote where they have an advantage - they gang up.

In my run in with DBigXRay, just before he was banned, I had sought for opinion from a neutral third editor. A senior editor promptly commented the same day.

Wait, check my rants on the birdsite in this matter. One of the tweets is to silent Jimmy as well.

https://nitter.com/MuktTalks/status/1235493953295626241?s=19

@mukt

Ganging up to a win a vote is kinda the whole point of democracy :)

@admin

@freemo @admin

I agree.
However, I disagree wirh the notion that injustice done by a gang or mob is somehow better than injustice done by a single individual.

I deal with wikipedia not because that website suits my values, but because it is where the battle is.

@mukt the difference is that injustice done by a group of voters in a democracy voting against proper interests (the gang) has mechanisms for change. Its a democracy so you are free to create your own coalition of people who agree with you and then you have your own "gang" you can use to overthrow the other. There is a path and a mechanism there for you to fix the injustice.

However when it is done by a dictator, and a relatively small number of them, there is no such mechanism. You are beholden to their tyranny without any way to enact justice against it.

@freemo

What is easier to change : a small group, or a larger group?
Follow

@mukt In this case the large group, since the large group works within a democracy and each person has only one vote..

The small group is a dictatorship with absolute power. No matter how many people disagree with them their power remains the same.

So in this case the small group is far more difficult to change than the large group.

@mukt
Youd have to point out where the circular path is, not seeing it.

@freemo

1. democracy (is good because) has mechanisms for change.
2. large groups are easier to change (compared to small ones) because they are democracy

@mukt That wasnt what I said..

here is what I said

1. democracy is better than dictatorship.

2 Large groups voting in a democracy are easier to change than small groups in a absolute dictatorship position.

@freemo @mukt

These groups are large and well organised and lean toward one particular ideology. even if they lost one account, same guy will join again and promoted to same level very soon. Now the problem is most these guy work on it full time,i read one blog that added the analytics of user that did abusive edits, he only taken one day off in a year from wikipedia. I dont think people can come up with collation to fight these groups,they need to be broken from the top.

@freemo @mukt

The biggest problem which i see is being anonymous of the platform, Removing that will solve the most of the problem.

@admin

While anonymous users can make edits they cant vote. So ultimately they have no power to enforce disputed changes.

@mukt

@freemo @mukt

Senior anonymous editor can still revert your edits, its not just about the vote but the abuse which one will face after that. many people are unaware of the situation and trust wiki blindly think how it can be used to influence people.

i still dont know much about wiki editing but seeing the condition here in India, How it is abused openly and Wikipedia does nothing over it. that make me think about the situation.

@admin

youll have to point me to the rule that claims that. I have never once in all my years editing wikipedia seen someone gain priority on an edit based on seniority without invoking a vote first.

@mukt

@freemo @mukt

i dont know about the rules as i dont do any edits but i read a thread over twitter, it was more like investigation how whole mafia operated and controlled wikipedia. They can make any changes you want for money. off course top pages and official pages wont be touched everything else can be done.

i will link here still finding that thread.

@admin

Well yea, obviously if you have a alrge group supporting you in a democracy then your going to have the ability to execute on your agenda... calling a majority group a "mafia" seems unfair.

@mukt

@freemo @mukt

a large group abusing there power and attacking those who question them ‘mafia’s seems the right world. even adding misinformation about big individual based on wrong source. Not professional

@admin

regardless of semantics I do agree that a democracy where the majority of people in that democracy are abusive and support abusive policies is, of course, a problem.

That is the problem with a democracy, it is only as fair and as productive as the populace that votes in it. It relies on you improving the governance by improving the ability of the populace to make better voting choices.

@mukt

@freemo @mukt

You are right More people in editing scene can change things around even so maybe wikipedia has to change its policies but there are other caveat to this as well thing like its pretty complicated to do an edit and learn the wiki and amount of time one can give.

@freemo @mukt

here is thread that talk about whole wiki business in India

https://nitter.net/Soumyadipta/status/1235098631738281984

Every time the top editors approved the edits and they were never reversed. Even if somebody reversed it, they were brought back

https://nitter.net/Soumyadipta/status/1235109631170498560#m

@admin

I'm not so sure the issue is in policies, its just that we need better editors and thus voters.. There may be some sort of a decentralized technical solution that could fix it too. There are better systems than democracy in theory, but it would go beyondjust policy I suspect.

@mukt

@freemo @mukt

Well some amount of action needed from wikipedia and simple tools can help, so it will be easier to do edits.

and we need to rely more and more on decentralised tech, i think moodlenet project is right on that path.

Hope You know about that project.

@freemo

The issue isn't localized just to policies, or just to users. The issue is that policies are interpreted in each case as the cabal wishes.

There is a fericious battle going on right now on this article
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:2020_Bangalore_riots

One particular source, Times of India, was deemed unreliable for something senior editor wanted to keep out of the page, but other citations from it on the same page eere kept.

How on earth?

@admin
@admin @freemo
They deleted Gautam Bhatia's wiki page claiming that he wasn't notable a person.

He is spokesperson of BJP, and Indian MP. Decision was upheld by voting.

@mukt Notability by wikipedia standards has nothing to do with what job they hold, or how important they are. The criteria for notability in wikipedia is as follows:

People are presumed notable if they have received significant coverage in multiple published[4] secondary sources that are reliable, intellectually independent of each other,[5] and independent of the subject.

I just did a search for the name you mentioned to see if he looked notable by that standard. I only got 92 hits. That doesnt suggest much notability to me in terms of references. Moreover when I look closer at the references almost all of them are Primary sources (people interviewing him directly) and I cant find a single Secondary source (someone analyzing his career or interviews critically)..

At first glance I would possible vote he is not notable as well, however should someone provide atleast a dozen or so secondary sources I would be convinced to vote in favor of his notability.

@freemo

Lol!
The same person was deemed sufficiently notable when he was spokesperson of a small opposition party. Heck, there was a wikipedia discussion about deletion of his article even back then - the senior editors were of exactly opposite opinion back then.

Now, he changed party, and somehow became less notable.

@admin

I'm not claiming it isnt a messed up system and hard to change.. But a dictatorship garunteed by technological means is impossible to change short of legal means (which almost never happens).. If the owner ofa subreddit wishes to be malicious 100% of the community can disagree with him and it still wont change the power he has over that subreddit.

@mukt

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