
Wikipedia Editor Says Site’s Toxic Community Has Him Contemplating Suicide - Tomte
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/wikipedia-editor-says-sites-toxic-community-has-him-contemplating-suicide
======
jrnichols
This is hopefully a wake up call, and the editor can take a step back and
remember that while he's passionate about it, wikipedia is a website.
sometimes taking a huge step back is what you need to do. i've had friends say
the same thing about Facebook. The environment became so overwhelmingly toxic
and negative that it was affecting them personally. Even I've had that happen.
Took a lot of un-liking pages and unfollowing constantly angry people and
bailing out of Facebook groups that were constantly argument ponds.

I'm glad the editor is doing better now.

~~~
astrodust
At least Facebook is something you can actively avoid. Wikipedia, for better
or worse, has become the de-facto source of knowledge on the internet.

Is there a way to solve the Wikipedia problem of toxic politics and it being a
battleground for opposing groups?

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
Don't use Wikipedia for contentious topics. I know I'm going into a minefield
when visiting the abortion or Donald Trump pages. Don't bother.

~~~
rvern
The articles on Donald Trump and abortion both seem very factual to me. They
might have inaccuracies, but I doubt there exists any more objective source of
information about Donald Trump or abortion on the Web.

------
Kenji
_The author of the email wrote Motherboard to say that he 'd been reached by
police and is feeling better_

Note this part of the article. If you publicly say you're suicidal, you have
policemen at your doorstep. And sometimes other consequences like being forced
to go to checkups and therapy. It may also have concequences like not being
eligible for gun ownership anymore, etc. So think twice before you discuss
your mental health in public. There's a place to discuss it, but that place is
not the internet under your real name. The last thing someone who is suffering
from a breakdown needs is police waltzing into their home and taking away
their rights.

~~~
quirkafleeg
You say "Note this part of the article", then ignore it yourself in order to
talk about something else.

It says: "he'd been reached by police and _is feeling better_ "

It does not say: "police waltzed into his home and took away his rights".

~~~
Kenji
If the police is inquiring about your wellbeing you "feel better" real quick
;)

Look, I made my point, what you do with it is up to you.

------
Animats
What gets people into trouble on Wikipedia is that they think it's a forum
system where they can write anything they want. It's more like submitting pull
requests to a major project on Github. You're changing something used by tens
of millions of people.

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mzw_mzw
Wikipedia is one of those systems, like Twitter, that almost seems like it was
intentionally designed to incentivize toxic behavior. It rewards clique
building and gives victory in any fight to whoever is the most stubborn and
has influential friends, regardless of the truth. We are going to regret
subcontracting so much of the job of compiling and sharing human knowledge to
it, guaranteed.

~~~
gcp
Reading a Wikipedia article on a subject you're actually very knowledgeable
about can be extremely painful.

~~~
brassic
Not as painful as trying to correct it.

~~~
PaulKeeble
There is a major issue here where objectively false facts are presented and
defended with a truly awful source and yet its uncorrectable due to the deeply
unhinged individuals that present their opinions as fact on Wikipedia and have
been promoted to the lofty heights that allow them to constantly undo any
change you might try to make.

I long ago stopped contributing to wikipedia, its written by an ever reducing
group of people who are not only uncivil but also quite often delusional. The
system its designed has excluded normal people.

------
thrillgore
If you really want to commit suicide for volunteering as an editor, you need
some time off.

~~~
astrodust
This kind of role can be felt as a struggle, something that can't be ignored
or put down.

It's too easy to dismiss this as something you can take time off from.

"Feeling depressed? Have you tried thinking happy thoughts?"

That's just as absurd and dismissive.

~~~
tpeo
You're doing a bit of hyperbole there. Depression is, according to the current
theories, due to a imbalance in neurotransmitters in the brain. Now, a
physiological constraint is much more binding than a behavioural constraint,
as nobody can be talked or conditioned out of it. It might be dismissive, but
saying that it is _as dismissive_ is too much.

I think you do have a point, meaning that this still might be a serious issue
for these people. But if they're really _compulsively_ checking a website
which often does nothing but make them feel bad and just can't ignore the
damned thing, they need help. From an actual therapist.

------
freshhawk
"This civility problem is nothing new, but it’s a persistent problem that
Wikipedia—and online communities in general—have yet to solve"

That is some naive technological solutionism right there, at least it's a
common one.

Real life communities have also not "solved" this problem. This is how humans
behave, this is what "connecting" people means sometimes. Especially when you
bring a lot of people together from all walks of life and ask them to share a
resource considered valuable. Sometimes that resource can just be "status"
instead of a famous online encyclopedia.

~~~
tnzn
Still, the stronger toxicity of online community is a thing. So is the
agressiveness in cars. Several studies have shown how anonimity and not seeing
the other person disinhibits agressive behavior

~~~
freshhawk
Yeah, I had a longer bit that covered that I cut out. The virtuality of the
interaction makes people less empathetic.

However it also caps the potential for harm, the worst case is doxxing and
bullying. In real life the worst case is lynching.

You can also turn off the internet and be safe, in real life you better be
able to run faster than they can.

This seems like a fantastic trade-off to me. Seriously, the worst parts of the
internet are fucking toxic as hell. The worst parts of the real world involve
war, sadism, slavery and torture.

Toxic online communities are basically the best human beings have ever acted
when in groups that large.

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nullc
This is over six months old.

Editing wikipedia is a great place to refine your use of stoicism...

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cylinder
How do people bring themselves to care so much about editing wikipedia
articles? Who on earth are these people?

~~~
eyelidlessness
Wikipedia has an enormous audience, and its contents are widely trusted
whether they should be or not.

If you care about the _subject matter_ of the article you're editing, the
potential for those edits to influence millions of people is extremely
valuable.

~~~
vacri
Your handle reminds me of the word 'cutlasslessness', the state of being
without a cutlass...

~~~
eyelidlessness
I definitely do not have a cutlass.

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Pulce
WHY is this flagged?

~~~
grzm
Enough users likely feel it's either not an appropriate submission for HN or
that it will lead to a great deal of non-constructive or flame-war-like
discussion. Many weeks of a large number of inflammatory threads have
understandably lowered the HN community's tolerance.

