 | To all inexperienced editors who may stumble onto this page, this is a warning. Do not waste your time on this site. If you persist here, it will steal your time, it will steal your energy, it will steal your very soul. This site is run on nothing but false pretences. The rules and guidelines here, while eminently sensible as written, are ultimately worthless. The admins charged with the task of ensuring they are followed, in the majority, simply will not do anything about disputes unless its a very easy task they can resolve in 5 minutes, and in the minority, will do much much worse, either through their arrogance, their ignorance, or any of the other human flaws that with some of these people while eminently obvious, are not discovered in the selection process. And it's a job for life, so there's no point pointing them out after they're made admin. The majority of editors here who you will get into disputes with if you are remotely normal, are on the whole, total self-interested hypocrites, and that's just the people who generally edit here as a hobby, never mind all those who have more dubious motives for being here. If you get into a dispute with someone here that is not resolve-able in 5 minutes, and the outcome is still not satisfactory according to your right thinking mind, then forget it, you've already lost. If you can handle that, fine, carry on here. If you can't, then leave now. On no account should you labour under the false impression that on Wikipedia there is any time or patience to sort out long running or difficult disputes, except in the crudest possible ways. There are people here who have been doing the same thing, the exact same thing, for years now. A classic example. What would you say if I told you a single editor is allowed to systematically search for and edit the use of a particular term either through replacement or indeed complete removal, to ensure all Wikipedia pages, every single one that used it, matches his world view, which is very much a minority outside his tiny country of origin. Does that surprise you as something that would be tolerated on a site that has thousands of editors who are all apparently collaborating to build an international encyclopedia? No? Well, get used to it. What he does isn't technically block-able on a 5 minute reading, and all other options fully resemble talking to a brick wall, while the aforementioned admins do their stuff, or rather, just don't. That's why he's still here, still doing it, after all these years. He gets away with it not because he's smart, but just because he's simply learnt through trial and error that if he doesn't slip up and do something that on a 5 minute exam is seen as block-able, he's never going to be bothered, except of course by the thousands of people, including all the hundreds who chose to use the term in their own contribution to the mass theft that is this site, who quite rightly object to what he does because it's a disgusting abuse on several levels, but who are not suitably versed in the general complexities of wikilaw, and will invariably either fall foul of the 5 minute rule, or just walk away. Because one thing's for certain, he's not going anywhere, and he will wait years if necessary before re-attempting a change he previously couldn't quite pull off the 1st, 2nd, even 3rd time previously. It's a Golden Ticket, a free pass to personally influence the world's 8th biggest website on a massive scale. Who's going to pass up that opportunity? I guarantee that the Dalai Lama himself would not succeed in making any progress in that dispute. And there are other examples. So many in fact, that for this site to ever be advertised as a successful project, is a bit of a joke. The truly sad thing is, you have to waste 4 years of your life to be able to see it. Don't presume that the values and beliefs you hold, such as logic, fairness, neutrality or even basic respect, are shared by anyone who is already well established here, not least the people elected to the highest venue of dispute resolution. I've just been through their process, and their 17 man body has expended barely 100 words on it in public. Many of their errors are just obvious from the position of someone who, as the person being examined, knows the story behind each and every cited dispute, each and every critic's own tale of woe. Many other errors are suspected, and despite me seeking clarification, remain unanswered. I've seen people put more words into a discussion about what background colour to give a certain table than they have put into this process. If the intention was a deliberate insult, a calculated slap in the face of someone who has given so much to this project, then it worked. I sincerely hope they did more in private, but wikileaks aside, when there's no summary of that put out there, then it's worthless. Certainly to me, and definitely to you. All this on the back of the most recent outrage, finding out that its considered perfectly fine to compare hard working editors who've never damaged an article in their lives, to members of the Westboro Baptist Church. If you're disgusted at that thought, good, it means you're still a decent human being, and have not yet been corrupted by this site's perverse sense of morality. I've learnt all this through nearly 4 years here, I'm giving you the benefit of my experience free of charge in the spirit of humanity. 4 years is a long time to waste, there's a hell of a lot of things you can do with that time to actually improve the world, or even just your own life, rather than waste it here on the general two-faced self-serving fakery that passes for civil discussion on this site. If you carry on and don't heed it, and don't have the sort of temperament which barely 5% of the world's population would possess, then don't say I didn't warn you. I say all of this as someone who passionately believes in the site, its rules and guidelines, as written. |
