ElenaFalco

Hi and welcome! I am mainly here as a researcher. If you have any questions, or would like to talk to me, get in touch ↓

I'm not really the person to ask about this

I can suggest User:WereSpielChequers, who has more experience with the higher levels of Wikipedia than I do. Serendi^podous 12:18, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for replying!

I am very happy to talk to the editor you suggested, and will not insist if you don't wish to be interviewed, but: I am not just interested in the "higher levels" of Wikipedia. I genuinely want to know about the everyday experience of editing Wikipedia, and how it changed over time.

One of the reasons I wanted to talk to you is that you seem to have been around for a while... I was looking at how people talked about Pluto when it was reclassified in 2006, and a 'Serendipitous' shows up here and there in the archives around that time already.

Again, if you have other reasons for not participating I won't insist or ask you to justify your choices – I just wanted to clarify that I have good reason to want to talk to you, if you are so inclined.

Thank you!

ElenaFalco (talk) 12:32, 16 March 2021 (UTC)ElenaFalco

I'm not really sure what to say.

Speaking from personal experience, the level of attack has died down significantly in the last decade or so, though that has more to do with the topics I cover. The debate about Pluto's reclassification was intense for a while but pretty tame by Wikipedia standards. A better example would probably be to look at Wikipedia's treatment of biographies of living people, or Gamergate. Probably the only attacks I get these days are from people who find out I'm a Wikipedian and lay into me for "Wikipedia's" sins against such and such an internet personality. (because of course, "Wikipedia" is a singular entity)

Just a hunch (again, like I said, I am not well versed in the topic) but Wikipedia basically operates on the principles of gameification. How does it maintain neutrality? By making neutrality the object of "the game" and those who break it into "cheaters." With everyone trying to one-up each other on their respective neutrality, the pages (theoretically) avoid bias. Gamaergate was a notorious failure of that system because the alt-right's MO is to game the system in their favour. And of course there is a massive structural bias in the fact that most Wikipedians are young, white and male. Serendi^podous 14:38, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

PS if you want to notify me on your page, do this: {{ping|Serendipodous}}

@Serendipodous: (thanks for the tip!) For what it's worth, I think hunches are interesting – they might not describe the full picture, but they contribute. And actually, one of the things I'm trying to understand is what neutrality means (beyond the basic NPOV formulation, that is). What do you mean by 'everyone trying to one-up each other on their respective neutrality'?

And, what happens to 'cheaters'? Is it the kind of game where you get a penalty if you cheat? Or is losing bad enough? ElenaFalco (talk) 15:33, 16 March 2021 (UTC)ElenaFalco

It depends. In a situation (all too common) in which it's one person against another person, then the debate is often won by whichever person has the will to keep typing. On the other hand, Wikipedia has system of dispute resolution which, for all its many, many faults, does keep the worst of the worst off the site. To avoid a dictatorship of the dedicated, you can call in for a third opinion, or call in the moderators for serious infractions. Eventually the troublemaker will be banned from the site, and then a self-appointed police force will fight off his sock-puppets. If you're interested in how Wikipedia, as you put it, fosters good practices in collective knowledge-production, I highly recommend you read that page I linked to.

As for the game, well, everyone wants to be right. The best way to be right on Wikipedia is to provide a reliable source that says you're right. The more people strive to be right, the more reliable sources they gather, and the better-cited an article becomes. Serendi^podous 16:05, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

Link to a fellow PhD researcher

Hi ElenaFalco, meet User:Wanderingpotato. You might want to share notes. We did an hour-long Zoom interview back in February. wbm1058 (talk) 16:56, 4 July 2022 (UTC)