That’s one example, but I mean less personal. Wikipedia isn’t a person.

For example:

I’m a big fan of Wikipedia. I spent countless hours writing articles in my early twenties. I stopped because the environment got more hostile as the site grew in popularity. I think that might have been necessary to address the influx of drive-by editing, but it still meant I stopped enjoying being a contributor. I don’t appreciate the constant asking for money — as far as I understand, they’re well off without donations.

There.

I think the misconception here is that criticism has to be mean and personal. As someone who celebrates the project’s ideals, giving criticism is an act of love.

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chris_wot 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

You think that's bad? I got permanently banned and I started many important things on Wikipedia - like the admins noticeboard, a number of Australia communities, and the [citation needed]. I wrote dozens of articles about Australian women - none of them gave a shit and so I'm not able to write about them any more.

They are, by and large, a bunch of horrible bullies and losers - many Wikipedians don't actually care about articles creation or actual content, they fiddle about with URL fixes and categorisation. There was one horrible human being called BrownHairedGirl who did all these things and almost destroyed the place before they got indefinitely banned also.

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ForOldHack 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

I disagree. She did not almost destroy the place, she successfully turned Wikipedia into an intellectual black hole encompassing the entire human history. There are only unprintable words to describe her vileness.

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andrepd 5 days ago | parent [-]

I'm gonna need you to elaborate on that.

	▲	chris_wot 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		She was removed as an admin for the most extraordinary level of bullying. She continued bullying right up to when she was finally indefinitely blocked. I was one of the people she bullied. She had a coterie of rabid followers and so was allowed to run riot for years. There were many, many good editors who left because of her behaviour. What did she do on Wikipedia? She "fixed" barelinks and did categorization work. On the former, she wrote a script that utterly buggered up links to the extent they were being cleaned up long after she was banned. On the latter, she was so toxic that she was eventually blocked for her actions on categories. She was a toxic editor who did virtually no editing of content on the site.

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throwaway2037 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Why did you get permanently banned? And what stops you from creating a new account?

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amiga386 5 days ago | parent [-]

> Why did you get permanently banned.

Ta bu shi da yu created the citation needed template: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Citation... (I remember that account name from Kuro5hin. Much respect!)

He edited under several accounts, all of which are permabanned: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Aussie_Article_Writer

Why? Because he'd earned an interaction ban (IBAN) from engaging with BrownHairedGirl, and he breached the ban: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&type=...

Whatever he said, it's been fully scrubbed, but it appears to have been commenting on BrownHairedGirl's not-yet-submitted Request for Adminship: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=1039021442#Piotrus...

How'd he get the interaction ban? Because another account of his and BrownHairedGirl were squabbling, and the admins have working eyes and brains, they could see he was doing the instigating: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=980273295#Proposa...

You're not meant to wind up or troll your fellow Wikipedians, even if they are combative dickheads who need taking down a peg.

What was the beef? That he was creating small subcategories for each suburb of Brisbane, and BrownHairedGirl goes off her nut at small categories.

BrownHairedGirl was eventually taken out by being needlessly combative about - of all things - Wikipedia's "small categories" policy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests...

> what stops you from creating a new account?

Wikipedians inevitably go back to their old stomping grounds, use their normal tone in discussions, repeat their same old habits and basically don't change. When they do that, they're very recognisable to the people they already spent 20 years interacting with. They out themselves as a sockpuppet of the original banned user, and they get banned again.

	▲	chris_wot 2 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Curious - and do you know what I got the one-way IBAN for? The answer is: nothing. I can assure you, I was not doing the instigating. Though I did comment on her RFA, not realising it was not yet submitted. There was never an appropriate review of my one-way IBAN, and nobody has been able to explain why this was done given her vile and ongoing obnoxious comments about myself. unless you consider her accusing me of "whining" to have been acceptable, something not a single person commented on. Also, I had been asking them not to comment on my talk page and had taken it to WP:AN/I. Not sure why you consider this to have been something that I was not allowed to ask for review about? I had no part in the scrubbing of that page. That was the ArbCom, for reasons only known to themselves. Probably instigated by then-arbitrator Beeblebrox, who was later suspended from ArbCom for disclosing ArbCom matters on an external anti-Wikipedia site. Also: I was not doing any editing of Brisbane categories. I don't know where you got that from. Furthermore, I have not edited Wikipedia since I was banned. If you are implying otherwise, then you are wrong.
	▲	ForOldHack 5 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Perfect! Wikipedia is an overflowing of dickheads. Perfect. It is the instutionalisation of dickheads. And @#$# the czar of the New York Subway system and the people who endlessly add retracted citations.

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squigz 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Why'd you get banned?

Also I don't think it's necessary to call people names.

	▲	chris_wot 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		I'm not calling her names - she was eventually banned for bullying.

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rkomorn 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> and the [citation needed]

Citation needed.

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ForOldHack 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

You have been trolled by Wikipedia troll bot(tm). - there are hundreds of thousands of them - the hypnotized never lie.

	▲	chris_wot 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		If you say so.

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chris_wot 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

You could look at the history.

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ForOldHack 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Act of love? It's simply he who yells the loudest gets to write history. The controversy around the George Galloway, and Wireds coverage of the glorification of NAZI platoons and war heros? There are some articles so bad-you cannot even bear to read. But at least there are a few nonsensical articles and BAJADON, bad jokes and other deleted nonsense. My favorite article is about black light power. Absolute and complete garbage. I think that is the true enshitification is they do not take out the trash.

I did find some of the vandals, and became good friends with a few. Some of what they write is side splitting humor, but also the alt-right has an amazing amount of power they are using to rewrite history.

I would never give them a thin dime.