I am Wizardman, a Wikipedia administrator, former Arbitration Committee member, and prolific editor. AMA

1. Why do most wikipedians fight so hard with the editors that do only a few edits, or that are not even registered? The statistics clearly show that hardcore wikipedians create articles, but most of the content comes from other people; often content of very high quality. Every time I make an edit to wikipedia in some bigger article, the edit is reverted. And no, it does not mean that my edits are of poor quality or controversial; after long discussions, those edits land there. But instead of going to improve some other article, I have to "guard" my previous input for a week or so and "have discussions" with long term wikipedians, who seem to believe that the fact that they did 1000 edits means that they are entitled to something (and those edits are often adding a comma somewhere, or fixing a link -> of course I dont claim that such edits are not needed).

2. Does the fundation even bother checking up what do other wikipedias do? I created an article on local wikipedia, that was deleted 3 times, before multiple discussions with admins, where they tried to waste as much of my time possible -> after all this spam, I wrote that I can contact the wikipedia foundation: one of the local admins resigned. I wonder if they even bothered to inform you, probably not (the whole thing happened around 2 years ago, I stopped editing the local wiki that time; the article is still there by the way).

3. Why is there so much deletionism? And what do you think about it?

edit: woohoo, my 3rd reddit gold - thank you, I would like to greet my friend Tom and wish you all a happy new year!

The line between deletionism and inclusionism is a much tougher one nowadays. I lean towards deletionism, and here's why: there are over four million articles on the site, some of which are on topics that are next to impossible to verify. This means that many topics are fully comprehensive and there are not as many articles to create, which is a reason many editors joined Wikipedia (it's why I did). By that same measure, many articles on major subjects, while they may not be well-written or well-sourced, they are generally comprehensive, meaning that adding information is not as easy as it used to be because guidelines have gotten more strict.

The biggest problem for new users, I think, is that there are so many more policies than before. The first article I wrote was a couple paragraphs with a few interwiki links and that was it. Nowadays it would have been tagged with biography of living people (blp) issues and sourcing issues, which would have probably irked me, or even possibly deleted despite me knowing the subject was notable. The vested contributors you note, people who have been editing for so long, can be an issue as well since they are so used to their way of doing things that they've forgotten what it's like to be a new user, something all longtime users are guilty of at times.

In your particular case, I would have to look through the backstory and the article to see what exactly happened.

I just want to say thanks for all the help on my college papers. I can't cite wiki, but it is still my first stop to get a feel for the topic.

You're welcome. I'm sure you know of the workaround, citing the sources we cite rather than Wikipedia itself, which can make some papers easier.

I used to contribute liberally to Wikipedia. One day, pages I had worked on started to be merged together into footnotes because they were interesting only to a small fraction (but still sizable in absolute terms) audience.

Then my photographs, posted with fair use rationales for their subject matter (such as the "Are you prepared for the Rapture" signs of the early 1990s in New England) began to be attacked for their lack of adherence to new policies.

Then my edits began to be reverted for lack of adherence to modern template usage guidelines.

As Wikipedia became more insular, I became more alienated until I just stopped.

How is Wikipedia going to address this isolationism?

The best thing I can say in response is that the wave of modifying guidelines and bringing old rules up to date is mostly over at this point. Between 08-10, however, I definitely remember that movement, especially with images, and it was a pain since there were users with entirely valid images who were no longer active. Not their fault guidelines changed. I can't say there's a simple answer to addressing isolationism other than just working on subjects you are fairly confident are not going anywhere, which I admit is a fairly poor answer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chamillionaire

What are your feelings as an arbitrator at the way this article is written? Specifically, as you scroll down to the 'Michael Jordan' article, does it rile your goat up at the farm the way it's narrated?

Even more specifically, how do you feel about people editing their own Wikipedia articles and giving play by plays on internal thoughts?

I just checked the Michael Jordan section for now, but after reading it I just deleted it. It's way too quote-heavy, the flow of sentences is poor, and it just bounces around, making it tough to realize it was just one event. That's not counting the only two sources being Youtube and "Theboombox.com", which I would not consider reliable.

Also that second half was just copied right from that source, so yeah, even if that was good writing it would still be gone.

As for people editing their own articles, it's a touchy subject. If they just want to make sure no one's making vandalism or libel, that's fine, but it's all too tempting for those people to want to whitewash their articles, keeping positive in while leaving out anything remotely negative. Improving an article is fine, but I have yet to see a famous person actually sit down and write a comprehensive, neutral, reliably sourced article on themselves.

That makes me happy.

Aaaaand, it's reverted:

http://i.imgur.com/xPVhbh4.png

Seems like Wizardman got told off, too. Wikipedia is such a nice, inviting place for potential contributors.

Edit: and the clusterfuckipedia begins. Whee.

Instead of deleting the entire section, why not just rewrite it? The Chamillionaire-Michael Jordan story is pretty well known in the basketball and rap scene. It has to be somewhere on Wikipedia.

If you can write it in your own words with reliable sources (which the section I deleted was neither) then by all means go ahead.

As an admin, do you receive any kind of monetary gain? I'm sorry if this sounds a bit ignorant, but are you on the Wikipedia payroll or something like that? Thanks. :)

Nope, everything on the site is voluntary. Working on the site has improved my writing ability greatly, but nothing in terms of money. Only people who are paid would be the Foundation staff, and they're usually busy with things outside of editing the encyclopedia.

What keeps you doing it without monetary compensation for your time?

Edit: just realise this looks a bit on the offensive, not meant in any way other than curiosity! :)

Originally just the drive of trying to create quality content solely for the sake of doing it. At the same time because I've seen so much I worry that leaving would cause articles I have worked on to atrophy and gradually become poor over time.

Hello, Wizardman. I was an administrator six years ago; sysopped in 2006, burnt out a little over three years after that. I think our paths may have crossed before but I don't remember ever speaking to you. I'm impressed that you chose to stick around for so long.

I've got a few questions for you:

1) How do you feel about teenaged administrators? I ask because, when I was sysopped, I was fourteen years old. I successfully hid my age my entire time at Wikipedia, but I always wondered what the reaction to my sysopping would be if I had been open about my age.

2) What made you run for ArbCom? By all accounts it's a thankless, tireless, and downright awful job and always draws the ire of Wikipedia Review. I certainly hope that your administrators are more well behaved than my class was...

3) Let's talk about biographies of living persons. The biggest wheel wars of my days stemmed from deleting/undeleting biographies of those still living. BLP as a policy was just starting to emerge as I left; how does Wikipedia handle BLPs now, and how does Wikipedia today deal with feedback from the subject of the article?

4) Has the deletion process been reformed? RFD was always controversial when I was around; it was strongly biased towards deletion and ultimately open to the whim of the closing admin.

Looking back, I think I was a poor administrator and I should never have been sysopped at age 14. I left Wikipedia around five years ago this winter, and I've always wondered how the site has changed since I left. I got desysopped due to inactivity, but I'd never think about asking for the tools back, or even reveal my account name; too much has changed since then and I'd rather distance myself from my internet past.

1. I'm not inherently against them. There have been 14-year old admins that act like they are 40 and 40-year old admins that act like they're 14, particularly the latter. That being said, I understand the objections to that. Whether you would have passed if you revealed your age really depends on the time period. Back in 06-07 you probably would have been fine, 09-11 there were a lot of opposers in that realm, and nowadays I don't think it would matter as much.

2. At the time, just the desire to help out, as well as wanting to help reform it, since 2008's ArbCom was rather poorly regarded. I like to think that I did a good job during my time there, though who knows what wikihistorians (if they ever exist) will say about that.

3. There's one in particular that I imagine you're referring to that I remember, and yes that one was a major mess. BLP went from a new policy to almost the most important one really quickly. Admins take that seriously, and if a blp is entirely unsourced or poorly sourced, it's dealt with. That being said, I don't think they do enough for the wishes of an article subject. If they request deletion and aren't -very- notable, then their wishes should be respected.

4. AfD seems fairly well-managed, though there are less commenters nowadays there so those that do generally tend to look things over and make an informed "vote", or at least I have to presume they do. AGF, after all.

You're more than welcome to return, but since it's been so long you'd have a lot to re-learn, since as you note Wikipedia was a much different place in 2006, and I'm glad I wasn't entrenched in the site at that point yet.

What's your opinion on the Chelsea Manning incident and its outcome?

Truth be told, that was an issue I purposely stayed away from on the site because emotions were so high and warring was so rampant. Usually in these types of issues it's easy enough to rename and modify pronouns to the subject's wishes, but because the change came down around the same time as the sentencing, and because so many sources were using the original name, it became a significant problem. Wikipedia has to go by verifiability, and sources were relatively split on what first name to use for Manning.

The ones that acted poorly were thankfully banned from that article area, and the end result was probably as good as was going to be found given all the moving parts over the preceding months. Someone who actively worked on that case or in that topic answer would probably be able to provide a much better answer, but that's how I saw things.

Why do you like the 1948 Cleveland Indians so much?

I'm a Clevelander through and through, and since that's the last time the Indians won it all, I wanted to turn those articles into quality pieces. Also, once I started doing that project, I learned that every ballplayer (every person when you think about it, for that matter) has a hidden story that I never would have learned and been able to post otherwise. (One was banned from the minor leagues for life, another had a cerebral hemmorhage on the ballfield).

What's your favorite spell?

Meteo and its 9999 damage. Too bad the summoning time is usually so long on it.

1. What was the toughest ArbCom case you worked on?

2. With the Scientology case, I kind of got the impression that the Committee threw some non-Scientologist editors under the bus to create the appearance of impartiality. There was certainly bad behavior on the 'anti' side, but in some cases it seemed like the Committee was stretching for the purpose of 'balance' (topic banning people who hadn't edited in years and whatnot). I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on that case.

1. I think you answered your own question with the second one. That one was incredibly tough.
2. That's generally the toughest part about being an arb, trying to draw the line between sanctioning those that did wrong without just attacking one side, since there's always two sides to any debate. If a case is significant enough to get to arbitration and it's not a simple user conduct case, it's very rare for it to be one-sided. Generally we do not sanction inactive users unless it's clear they're trying to hide out the storm, but in the Scientology case there were a myriad of single-purpose accounts and there were a huge amount of editors in the fray, and because it was so long-reaching we had to take a more draconian measure than what would normally be the case.

Sorry if that answer was rather haphazard, I remember the case but only vaguely and had to re-read the decision to make sure I was remembering it properly.

Thoughts on the 2013. Croatian Wikipedia controversy?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croatian_Wikipedia

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/2013_issues_on_Croatian_Wikipedia

This news somehow completely slipped by me, so I'm just learning of it now. Sadly, for different-language wikipedias, there are issues with what residents can or cannot write or what the government could allow. What saddens me as much as the clearly significant issue is the fact that, three months later, that RFC still doesn't seem like it has a straight answer on what to do.

How would you respond to someone who says that they don't trust the site because of

1) Ryan Jordan

2) Overstock.com/Patrick Byrne/Naked Short Sales

3) SlimVirgin/Linda Mack/Lockerbie bombing

all of which seem to point not to the 'anyone can edit' issue as being the real problem, but instead point to a lack of oversight of the 'people in charge'.

If strongly biased people who lie about their credentials to strongarm people can reach senior positions of power, how can we view WP as at all neutral?

This is admittedly a poor answer to the question, but the first thing I thought was that those issues are all from many years ago, and as I know not just from being on the site but from other commenters here, 2006 wikipedia and 2013 wikipedia are incredibly different places.

That being said, the lack of that top-level governance is both what allowed wikipedia to flourish and what causes the types of problems you mentioned. The best we can do is catch it when we find out about it.

How bad is graffiti on the site? With wikipedia being so easy to edit do you spend alot of time removing graffiti?

Is there any sort of system that flags up potential graffiti?

Does it ever annoy you when people won't accept wikipedia as a reliable source after all the amazing work you put in?

Vandalism is a lot less rampant than it used to be, since there are bots that get rid of the obvious junk almost immediately. There is still sneakier vandalism that users remove by hand though. It's an area I used to tackle back in the day, but I'm not really needed there now. A guy replacing a page with gibberish that lasts 30 seconds is not a major issue, an attack on a person that slips in an article undetected for months is a much greater issue.

As for annoyance, yes and no. There are articles on significant people that are crap, and significant people that are great. For example, our article on William McKinley is a great piece of writing, while James Buchanan needs a lot of work. Most academics these says seem to adopt the idea of use the sources they cite rather than Wikipedia itself, which I am fine with. The only ones that bother me are the ones that completely write it off and act like it's less reliable than a history textbook from 1990.

I know what you mean, I hate people who completely write off wikipedia. How do you even argue with these people? I'm all "Just wiki it! You'll see I'm right!" and then they reply with the old "Anyone can edit that and write what they want" and I'm always stressing the point that there are people like you waiting in the shadows ready to strike down the inaccurate and unfactual forces of evil. You can take an idiot to wikipedia, but you can't make him err drink wikipedia?

if people are that entrenched then there's no real way to argue with them. You can show them both the wikipedia article and another source, but they'd probably find a way around that.

What's the worst case of bad editing you've ever seen?

A few years ago I remember reading an article that I forgot the name of long ago, but apparently an ex saw it and threw in a bunch of paragraphs about how he needed to be a real man and pay his child support, as well as "the truth" about what he was up to. It had been in the article for at least a few months, and I was horrified at seeing that. I not only deleted the text but purged the revisions, which I very rarely had to do.

Hey, Wizardman. I, too, am a well-respected editor and administrator (and have also held another position beyond administrator), but I don't want to link my Wikipedia account to my Reddit account.

But I wanted to thank you for all your contributions to Wikipedia. People don't get enough thanks. Well, barnstars from time to time, but it's mostly disgruntled people complaining about their article getting deleted and such. I eventually burned out and most of my wiki-friends retired, and I have been inactive for quite some time now. And I kind of ran out things to work on. So thanks for the continual effort.

Is there really any reason I should come back?

Thank you. I'll answer your question with a question. Is there any subject you're passionate about that you feel isn't well-represented enough on the site, or something you could improve on? If so, simply concentrate on that. All too often users retire less from ragequits and more because it stops being fun, and I think getting too bogged down in non-article stuff contributes to that. It's why I try and write an article every so often just to keep me sane.

What about pages for companies that are nearly sales pitches rather than history and facts? Do those bother you? And how can they be altered to reflect actual history and reality?

Those do, since the point of the site is to be encyclopedic; there are other sites to send out PR info. The best way to clean them up is simply to find more objective sourcing, which is admittedly tough for some companies.

What is the funniest page on wikipedia.

Honestly I'm not sure, partially since if an article is humorous then it's probably not well-written and should be redone. I did find this essay humorous though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_climbing_the_Reichstag_dressed_as_Spider-Man

I'm teaching a freshman class next semester where I'd like the students to write articles for Wikipedia. How much research do you usually put in for an article? Is there a difference in the way you edit or approve the work of registered and unregistered users?

WikiNeedsYourPhoto's links will certainly help you out on your second question. For the first, it largely depends on the type of topic. For the athletes I've written about, I research as I write, so really I'm probably spending a split amount of time reading the articles and verifying that the sources say what they're supposed to versus actually writing it in an encyclopedic manner.

That last phrase is key if you're doing student assignments, since very frequently I will see student submissions come in that read like college papers. That's not really they're fault as that's how they write all their other papers, so they're used to it; making that transition I would imagine is the toughest part for students.

What do you predict will be the next "Wikipedia?"

In terms of another encyclopedia, it's way too early to tell, probably nothing in the near future unless some sort of mobilewiki is created.

In terms of what will be the next big crowdsourcing website that creates something out of nothing, it surprises me that TVTropes is still not a top 1,000 website in terms of view, since that's more addicting than Wikipedia is by a long shot.

What's your favorit article that you've worked on?

Favorite's a tough one, since the ones that I wrote that are the largest I generally had some help on. If I had to pick, probably Harmon Killebrew, since when I began to work on it, the article looked like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Harmon_Killebrew&oldid=221336392

Needless to say, that helps virtually no one. The article is night and day, and it provided a challenge since, unlike those ballplayers who are mired in controversy, Killebrew was just some guy with a fairly uninteresting life who happened to hit a boatload of home runs, and just from that the end result was a nice article.

I often find pages which have notes at the top indicating that the topic is not significant enough to have an article on Wikipedia and is being considered for deletion. My question is, why delete these articles? If there's nothing wrong with the article itself (accuracy, neutrality etc) then what's the harm in keeping it? If I, a random person searching for information on a subject, happened to find that article, then it clearly has a use. Is storage space just a lot more tight than I think it is?

The storage isn't the issue, it's the verifiability more than anything. If something has legitimately good sources and is accurate/neutral, it's not going to be deleted unless there's a major fluke. I know when I delete an article, I make sure there's a reason for doing so.

What is your source of income and how many hours per day do you spend editing stuff on wikipedia? :)

I have a 40-hour week job like many others, so my hours per day is minimal during the work week, but I spend quite a few on the weekends, since I have projects on the site keeping me busy.

I feel like people need training on how to read Wikipedia. The high traffic article are generally comprehensive and consistent, but when you get into more mundane and lower traffic articles, no one will be watching them and verifying changes that are made. Whenever I go on a Wikipedia'ing binge, I inevitably stumble upon someone's pet project that is full of forum style debate material and unreliable sources.

So Wikipedia only seems to be as good as the ratio between editors and pages. Yet that ratio is decreasing. The number of editors remains about the same, but the number of articles is still increasing. And will continue to increase indefinitely, as history progresses.

Does this mean that a Wikipedia with any shred of credibility is doomed?

That is a major problem with the site. Yes the popular articles are entirely fine, but it's the next layer down where many of the problems are. Imagine if you could write about whatever and it never got deleted; we'd have twice the articles and twice these issues, at a minimum. With a lack of editors, it will be tougher and tougher to get articles managed.

i wouldn't say the site is doomed, the best we can hope for is that Wikipedia returns to being a bit more niche, and by extension the vandals get bored of it.

Wizardman, long time no see old friend!

Hey! Been a while.

What is your favorite Wikipedia page of all time?

Favorite out of four million is not easy, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Museum_of_Bad_Art is fairly fascinating.

[deleted]

That's a major issue, more so than vandalism itself. It's why I'm not a fan of wiki-mirrors, since they update infrequently if they do at all, and if they do a database dump at the wrong time, then the edit is stuck. There's really no way to make the site 100% vandalproof to prevent that without greatly reducing editing or editors, so it's something editors have to do their best to find and clean up quickly.

What do you do to an article if there is controversial issue about the facts?

It depends on what you mean, so it's difficult to answer. If you mean there's a dispute on whether an event or a piece of an event happened, then we have to go by Verifiability. So many people edit to try and add the "truth" onto articles, but the problem is that it's not a question of whether or not something is truthful; we have to go by what's in sources, and for certain articles that can understandably be a pain.

To what extent is the future of Wikipedia just going to be paid advocacy? I am mostly looking at articles about modern politics and geo-politics.

This is something that greatly concerns me in the future. At this point, the site is well-established in culture, so people know that if they have a wikipedia article on themselves, their company, or whatever, people are going to read it, and the temptation to make the article in their style is there. I think it already happens more than people want to admit in the business world. Politics I'm actually less concerned about in this regard, since enough people regularly track those kinds of articles and can generally smell any advocacy quickly enough.

How do you feel about the trend toward the bulk of edits being done by fewer people? Is that worrying or just a natural progression?

It is troublesome, since bringing in new users has gotten a lot tougher, partially due to guidelines becoming more stringent. There's enough people in this AMA noting having difficulty making edits to show there's an issue there.

Have you ever seen a piece of vandalism on the site and thought it was actually funny? If so, what was it/

One in a great while something will be clever enough that it gets a laugh out of me, but that's maybe one out of every 10,000 pieces at best, and I usually forgot about it the next day.

Hi Wizardman! Fellow Wikipedian here (username PinkAmpersand). Think we've chatted once or twice; I definitely asked you a question at your RFB.

Anyways, whenever I see your name around the wiki, I'm reminded of that bit Colbert did when he poked fun at you, Carcharoth, and Newyorkbard's usernames. So, my question for you is: Do you think the community elects a disproportionate number of arbitrators with goofy usernames? This year we've got GorillaWarfare, Floquenbeam, and Beeblebrox, to name a few. I, for one, think it's a nice sign that we're still able to not take ourselves too seriously, but it's always amused me.

(For those wanting to judge for themselves, here is a list of all the arbitrators to date. [Note that a lot of the usernames are in italics after the real names.])

I think it's less that people go out of their way to do so and more that it's just representative of the Wikipedia population as a whole. Not many use their real names, and those that do likely shy away from something like ArbCom. Can't blame them.

I remember the Colbert bit well, of course. Spat my drink out first time I watched it.

What made you choose the name wizardman?

It was a name I had way back in the day on another site and thought I would use it. As for why I chose it originally, I hardly remember since it was so long ago. Figured it was simple, and more importantly, no numbers or dated references.

What are some of the features you'd like to have in Wikipedia or MediaWiki (the software that powers Wikipedia)?

Do you develop softwares of any kind? (Asking because I'm a web developer and curious)

Do you have a personal use for Wikipedia?

Honestly, why do you do what you do?

1. The only thing I hoped for a couple years ago was potential access to sources I could not otherwise use. Since then there is a movement to provide references to long-term editors, and I now have access to Questia, which allows me to write on more important articles that I otherwise couldn't touch (well, I could, but I wouldn't be able to do much)

2-4. Nope, now that I'm no longer in school not as much as I once did from a reader's perspective, and I do it to provide knowledge that otherwise would have been lost, as I'm positive some of the articles I've developed years ago would still be 2-3 sentences long today.

If I wanted to download Wikipedia, media and all text how large would that be compressed and uncompressed?

WikiNeedsYourPhoto gavea solid answer, but to clarify it would depend largely on what wiki. If you are including all Wikimedia Commons sounds and images with the English Wikipedia dump, for example, we're talking terabytes upon terabytes.

We're always told to never use Wikipedia for 'real' research. In your view, how much of what is on Wikipedia is solid fact?

I'd say a fairly good amount of it in the areas I work in, but if you are implying "solid fact" as "clearly sourced" content, then that is one of the weaknesses of the site, as I do find more often then not fairly well-written articles where noting or little is cited, and that ruins the article from a research perspective.

What articles have caused the biggest edit wars during your tenure?

The current politicians always have back-and-forth wars, there's no way around that. The biggest edit war though, shockingly, was not an article itself, but the question of whether or not to link birth dates and death dates in articles. It was even brought to arbitration.

Why does Wikipedia refuse to ask for goverment funding?

Would you like Wikipedia to be dependent on a government? I certainly wouldn't.

What he said.

When do you believe Wikipedia will be widely accepted as a valid source academically?

If it has not already then it's probably not going to be. Too many old-school academics are too hardlined in their old ways to make the transition.

Are you a wizard?

Yes. And I am also a man.

Why are you always asking for money?

I personally don't. As for Wikipedia, because there are no ads and they have such a huge amount of servers, they need what they can to keep things running. Besides, ads would compromise the integrity of articles of places that are advertising.

Is it true that a lot of the stuff on Wikipedia is actually bullshit?

In terms of things being flat out wrong, no. Most articles are fairly truthful. In terms of people trying to slip in their point of view and creating bias in articles, that's something that happens a bit more often than any of us would like.

It's why we push the inline citations on the site. If there's a claim you can't believe, go ahead and check the source to make sure.