
Craig Newmark donates $500k to reduce harassment on Wikipedia - The_ed17
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2017/01/26/community-health-initiative-grant/
======
guaka
I started editing Wikipedia in 2003. It was fun. Over the years it became less
fun, I gave up on participating and quite a few articles I had started ended
up being deleted.

I also often found myself looking for articles I knew had been on Wikipedia,
but had been deleted.

In December 2013 I had enough of the deletionism. I spent a few hours to set
up [http://deletionpedia.org/](http://deletionpedia.org/) \- to rescue
articles from deletion.

It doesn't deal with harassment, but it's a useful resource if you want to
find back something that was deleted on Wikipedia.

(The site had been set up before, but the original creator let it slip.)

~~~
tptacek
What are some examples of articles you've written that you feel definitely
shouldn't have been deleted?

~~~
Spooky23
A friend was a Commissioner of Public Works and prolific writer who authored
or expanded stub articles about infrastructure (reservoirs, dams, etc).

He attracted the ire of some wackjob when he referenced printed materials.
Given his somewhat unique position, he had some stuff digitized and posted,
and returned to Wikipedia a few months later to find that almost everything he
did was reverted.

I'm glad that people put up with the nonsense and contribute to Wikipedia...
but what a shit experience.

~~~
mirimir
> He attracted the ire of some wackjob when he referenced printed materials.
> Given his somewhat unique position, he had some stuff digitized and posted,
> ...

Were these published documents, which reviewers could independently obtain and
verify?

~~~
DanBC
> Were these published documents, which reviewers could independently obtain
> and verify?

That doesn't stop some of the people at WP from reverting everything. Which
means OP's friend is left to either leave it reverted, or trawl through the
various arcane dispute resolution / meta pages, arguing their case, building
consensus, to eventually get people saying it should be left in. Or saying it
should be left out because those meta pages sometime feel as random as tossing
a coin.

Unsurprisingly this optimizes for people who tolerate vast amounts of meta
bullshit, and not people who know what they're talking about and know what the
good sources are.

~~~
mirimir
I get that.

But facts ("Here's the catalog number in the New York Public Library, and how
to request it via interlibrary loan.") shouldn't require consensus.

~~~
JimmyM
That's true, but on Wikipedia they do.

Especially for cases like that - if someone has more 'sway' on Wikipedia than
you, they can (and will often) just say something like "Thanks for the source
- I'll verify and if it says what you think it says, I'll add it in to the
article." Then do nothing, ever again. In fact, unreliable citations, or
citations that don't actually say what the citer thinks they say, that can be
easily checked online are far more acceptable on Wikipedia than citing a book.

Inertia like this leaves useless pages like "Oplomachi"
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oplomachi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oplomachi))
live way after they should have been merged, as well as leading to the
deletion of useful pages/sections/references.

The major articles, which are more likely to get attention, tend to be less
dysfunctional than niche interests. That said, there are of course far more
articles relating to niche interests than there are major articles.

~~~
jacobolus
It’s not about someone having more “sway”. It’s about someone having more free
time to waste on an edit war.

~~~
Nomentatus
Oh, believe me, there is sway - there is a hidden hierarchy. If you think you
are equal in an edit war, and only need to be persistent, you're wrong. Can
you lock an article or part of one?

------
redsummer
"support the development of tools for volunteer editors and staff to reduce
harassment on Wikipedia and block harassers."

The only harassment I've seen on Wikipedia is from Little Napoleon long-term
admins who grind contributors down with petty bureaucracy.

~~~
chris_wot
You might want to review the debacle that was the Salim Mehajer article then.

~~~
nl
Do you have a reference? I'm interested.

~~~
542458
I think this is the incident in question:
[https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-May/0...](https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-May/084230.html)

There's a summary here, but it rather understates the whole thing - read the
above link first if you have time:
[http://motherboard.vice.com/read/wikipedia-editor-says-
sites...](http://motherboard.vice.com/read/wikipedia-editor-says-sites-toxic-
community-has-him-contemplating-suicide)

~~~
nl
Thanks.

That's... wow. I assumed it was something about the subject of the article
getting involved in harassment, but it doesn't seem to be.

I'm glad that the author got some help.

------
throwaway420
Not a huge fan of this.

The editors on Wikipedia wield a large amount of power in shaping the site.

When they go and make arbitrary decisions about the content on the site, and
users start calling out the editors for bias and bogus decisions, well now all
of a sudden the crooked editor can just cry "harassment and cyberbullying!"
and go a long way to shutting down rational criticism.

~~~
ClassyJacket
>the crooked editor can just cry "harassment and cyberbullying!" and go a long
way to shutting down rational criticism.

This is becoming a standard way of dealing with anyone who disagrees with you
online. Reddit has been ruined by it.

Someone sent you a PM? Harassment. Comment you don't agree with? Harassment.
Someone not sustaining your narrative? Harassment.

~~~
matt4077
Reddit has been ruined by a mob of barely-literate jocks peddling fringe
conspiracy theories constantly threatening – but perpetually failing – to
leave.

~~~
akhilcacharya
The more time passes, the more I think GamerGate and it's adherents have
ruined almost every community I take part in.

------
smcmurtry
In 2012 I wrote my first Wikipedia article on the 50-person startup I was
working for at the time. I didn't include anything overly self-promoting, just
the basic facts and referenced some news articles. My article was immediately
nominated for deletion and a number of community members accused me of being a
"single purpose account", i.e. not interested in contributing, just
advertising. Needless to say I did not go on to create/edit more articles
after a welcome like that.

A couple of editors did come to my defence. I got the impression there was a
lot of internal conflict about this sort of thing.

Edit to add the following: The article:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecobee](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecobee)
Deletion discussion:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Ecobee)

~~~
koube
I think they have a point in that case. You didn't have any interest in
contributing until you had a startup you needed to promote. Also, unless your
startup is notable it's not supposed to have an article.

"If a topic has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are
independent of the subject, it is presumed to be suitable for a stand-alone
article or list... If a topic does not meet these criteria but still has some
verifiable facts, it might be useful to discuss it within another article."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability#Whether_t...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability#Whether_to_create_standalone_pages)

~~~
delhanty
I agree with the above.

However, from my experience in CAD, Wikipedia's notability and importance
ratings are strongly skewed towards open-source and against commercial
systems.

High-importance:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:FreeCAD](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:FreeCAD)

Low-importance:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:SolidWorks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:SolidWorks)

No disrespect meant to the FreeCAD folks, but that is definitely back-to-
front! The article on Solidworks lists 165,000 companies using the product as
of 2013. How is that low-importance?

The skew tends to be even worse against enterprise class systems.

~~~
razwall
Those importance ratings are utterly unimportant. In the vast majority of
cases, they are just the opinion of a single editor who looked at the article
for 10 seconds, and they only affect how the article is listed in some
automated report that nobody ever looks at.

------
briholt
The anti-online harassment industry is becoming a toxic den of snake oil
salespeople. Those offering "solutions" tend be politically-motivated cash
grabbers who line their own pockets by manufacturing vague and amorphous
problems to exploit society's genuine empathy.

~~~
WhitneyLand
Maybe so. But they do need a solution. What are the options?

------
vdnkh
> Blocking – making it more difficult for someone who is blocked from the site
> to return

If they're talking about IP bans on viewing Wikipedia here, this is a terrible
idea. If some troll gets banned on a college campus that will result in the
inadvertent ban of thousands of other connected to the same network. This line
strikes me as naive.

~~~
belorn
The first proposed suggestion is to send a cookie when a blocked account
logins and have it be sent if they logout and tries to create new accounts. I
personally doubt this will have a major effect on system which has user
accounts (like college campus) but libraries could get problems.

The second is to limiting the scope of a IP ban so that it only effects
specific user-agent strings, trying to only effecting the intended user.

The third suggestion is to create a cookie when a new account is created that
"counts" the number of times a new account is created on a single machine.

~~~
danarmak
Cookies as a security mechanism? Relying on people not knowing about
Ctrl+Shift+Del or incognito mode or user-agent chooser extensions or just
using different browsers? Who seriously thinks that's going to work?

~~~
crummy
These tools are never going to be perfect, just roadblocks. Many people don't
know those tricks.

------
redthrowaway
Toxicity, not harassment, has always been the glaring issue with the Wikipedia
community. Of course there are the occasional miscreants who look to
personally attack and harass people, but the entire _site_ seems to be
dedicated to finding the most lawyerly and acrimonious way to discourage
contribution.

Some of that is certainly warranted. When political topics are the target of
massive edit wars as each side seeks to enshrine their particular truth in the
public record, you need rules and enforcers and arbitrators. But it can get
extraordinarily toxic.

------
sergiotapia
Will this money be put towards reducing harassment from the moderators?
Wikipedia and it's gaggle of moderators make it difficult to add/remove
things.

Consider using an alternative such as:

[https://infogalactic.com](https://infogalactic.com)

~~~
mattcoles
I clicked random page a few times to see what was available and a lot of the
information seems to be lifted directly from Wikipedia anyway.

Also it all feels pretty silly with all the 'galactic' titles, at least
Wikipedia has an air of professionalism, despite the rampant bureaucracy.

~~~
sergiotapia
It just has an air of professionalism because you're used to it.

------
WhitneyLand
Is this talking about harassment by moderators? Serious.

~~~
racl101
That's what I'm trying to determine myself. Geez, talk about burying the lede.

------
sparkzilla
It's interesting that after 15 years of operation, Wikipedia does not
apparently have decent tools to detect harassment /sarc.

There will be a lot of discussion about the symptoms here, but the cause is
straightforward: Wikis are built through conflict, and much of that conflict
involves harassment, doxxing etc. Ask anyone who has tried to edit any major
page.

The real solutions to harassment are counterintuitive: Enforce full anonymity,
take measures to stop people and gangs "owning " pages, stop using a system
that lets any user at any level veto other user's edits, have a proper
editorial workflow, and many more. But none of these will never happen, so the
harassment will continue.

It should also be noted that the Wikimedia Foundation just raised millions of
dollars in its latest fundraising drive, and has millions more in the bank, so
it really doesn't need the money.

~~~
DanBC
> Wikis are built through conflict, and much of that conflict involves
> harassment, doxxing etc. Ask anyone who has tried to edit any major page.

Wikipedia has tainted the well. Places like Meatball wiki were really good for
a long time.

------
netman21
I wish he would donate $500K to filtering scams from Craig's list.

~~~
pinnbert
Instead of typing on Hacker News, why not become successful and do it
yourself?

------
nl
I'm reading the harassment report[1] and I'm having trouble understanding it.

Of those surveyed, 38% said they had experienced harassment. I understand that
bit.

Then, those who had been harassed or witnessed harassment were asked to
identify the type of harassment. Of these, one of the least common types is
"hacking", with an _average_ of 2.69 times.

I don't understand what that is saying. Each person who was harassed was
hacked 2.69 times on average??! How can that be possible?

[1]
[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/52/Harassme...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/52/Harassment_Survey_2015_-_Results_Report.pdf)

------
Nomentatus
What hasn't been said is that Wikipedia has adopted an explicitly narcissistic
goal, of being embarrassed by being the only wrong source the fewest possible
number of times (namely never) - as opposed to doing the best job of
accurately informing more people, more of the time; even if the data is new,
or uncommon. I've had the New York Times rejected as a source because it just
wasn't prestigious enough, and deleted. Which is charming if there's a better
contrary source, but there wasn't. This goal is not compatible with that of
being a very widely sourced, and very current encyclopedia. It is quite
compatible with ossification.

------
Sir_Cmpwn
I can't believe a half a million dollars is necessary to reduce harassment.
I'm all for reducing harassment online but that much money could make a
serious difference applied in a different way. Look at Wikimedia's report on
harassment (which this is in response to):

[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/52/Harassme...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/52/Harassment_Survey_2015_-_Results_Report.pdf)

There's room for improvement but not a half a million dollars worth of room
for improvement. I suppose people will donate to what's important to them,
though.

~~~
anigbrowl
_that much money could make a serious difference_

To what, things you care more about? You could make the same argument about
anything. It would be one thing if you were critiquing the administrators of
Wikipedia deciding to allocate resources to this - since they are answerable
to a variety of stakeholders - but when you critique someone for choosing to
_donate_ to alleviate a specific problem then I fail to see how that's any of
your business.

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
Everyone is open to criticism for their actions. I'm free to disagree with
this person just as much as you are free to disagree with me about it.

~~~
anigbrowl
Sure, but I notice a distinct absence of any justification for why your
concerns should hold a higher priority, which says to me that you consider
harassment to be an issue of inherently low importance.

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
That's a real asinine assumption to make. I explicitly said in my comment that
harassment is a worthy cause, but that a half a million dollars is excessive.

~~~
anigbrowl
By what standard? How much do you think would be appropriate to spend on this
issue?

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
A calculated sum based on an objective analysis of the needs of the situation
to fit the financial requirements of specific action items.

~~~
MBCook
How do you make an objective measure of the financing required to fix
harassment problems to a reasonable degree?

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
The same way you actually fix the problems. By figuring out the steps you need
to take, and estimating their cost. If you can't do that then how are you
going to fix the problems even when you do have the money?

~~~
ericd
Having worked on anti-abuse/fraud work, I think $500k is light for a site the
size of wikipedia. It takes people working full time to create and modify the
systems to stop it.

------
WikipediasBad
This is a great donation by Craig. I fully support it. I also think there
should be more legitimate alternatives to Wikipedia and some more competition,
but there is not unfortunately.

I've tried to edit Everipedia which bills itself as an alternative to
Wikipedia like other alts like rationalwiki etc and although they have a long
way to go to get their software and UX up to par, their premise is pretty
cool. They want to have a live updating branch of wikipedia always on their
site in real time to edit and fork by their own community. I'd say the best
alternatives so far are Everipedia, RationalWiki (if you can call this an
alternative), and smaller projects that are niche like Stanford Encyclopedia
of Philosophy. There should be more legitimate ones in my opinion though.

------
ThomaszKrueger
I wonder if there is a larger issue here. I see parallels with sites like
StackOverflow - it was fun and productive in the beginning, now there seems to
be an army of users and moderators on the ready to shut down questions they
don't like for whatever reason.

------
kaslai
I was hoping that this was a donation intended to lessen Wikipedia's nagging
for donations...

------
toodlebunions
Wikipedia has almost as many trolls as social media.

------
swayvil
In my experience the editors of Wikipedia definitely deserve to be harassed.

------
aaron695
Is Wikipedia getting worse - No

Is Wikipedia losing editors - Yes, because it's 99% done. The work is not
there.

Do people not like the fact what they think is important gets rejected - Yes

Do they blame that on harassment - ?

I really think this is solving a problem that doesn't exist.

Wikipedia is winding down not ramping up.

