Dumb Shit on Wikipedia

[WhiteNight]

I especially love "Gamergate (harassment campaign)" because of the disambiguation page, almost certainly entirely created just to justify putting that there (the only other entry being an extremely obscure word that is not remotely ambiguously different). Agenda much?

Content issues aside, it is a somewhat interesting debate. A serious encyclopedia (which Wikipedia pretends it's trying to be) might not want to downgrade a serious scientific term, however obscure, as no longer a primary topic in favor of some short-lived Internet nerd drama, even though the latter is what nearly everyone going to the article is looking for. Avoiding recentism and all that. The current solution, a disambiguation page, was a way to split the baby.

I have a similar take on Anne Hathaway. 100 years from now, I suspect few will care about some early 21st-century Hollywood ditz, but new generations of Shakespeare fans will be eager to read about his enigmatic wife. But today most readers are looking for the actress. Perhaps the younger Farmers will live long enough to see them switched.

I don't understand the definition of 'far right' anymore.

The label can certainly be slapped on almost anyone or anything they don't like. On the other hand, bigger names such as Tucker Carlson, Ann Coulter, and Donald Trump himself are not yet categorized as far-right. Articles with too many eyes on them must fend the label off, while lesser figures are helicoptered only by the likes of GorillaWarfare.

There is a similar trend with QAnon. Politicians are tied to it based on what seem very flimsy connections. Is Mastriano a full-on QAnon adherent? I'm guessing not, and he probably just agreed with a few things Q posters said. For instance, the intro mentions supposedly damningly that he "has spoken at events that promoted QAnon"; so..., he was in the same room as someone who promoted Q? And this "promotion" might be next to nothing itself.

 

[RobertDole]

Just look at the article on Marjorie Taylor Greene. It's no longer enough to simply describe her as "far-right" and move on. Instead, you have to turn the entire lede into one long hate-filled screed, complete with a blow-by-blow recounting of all her transgressions:

I mean, yes, the lady is clearly extreme. But the amount of vitriol shown in those opening paragraphs makes it hard to take the article seriously, especially when so many sentences repeat essentially the same claims, just in slightly different words.

 

[BootlegPopeye]

I mean, yes, the lady is clearly extreme. But the amount of vitriol shown in those opening paragraphs makes it hard to take the article seriously, especially when so many sentences repeat essentially the same claims, just in slightly different words.

To me, she is just a Facebook Boomer mom and nothing more than the Republican version of AOC. Never understood why people got so worked up by her.

Citation 19 interested me, the claim that she expressed anti-catholic positions. It links to the ultra liberal America magazine which is run by the Jesuit order in America. She criticizes the bishops for the extreme pro immigration stance that they have, and faults them for the sexual abuse crisis. She is an ex-catholic, but those positions are really not that unusual nor particularly anti-catholic. So it takes the claim from America at face value as a statement of fact rather than just the opinion of one very slanted journal.

 

[AirdropShitposts]

I mean, yes, the lady is clearly extreme. But the amount of vitriol shown in those opening paragraphs makes it hard to take the article seriously, especially when so many sentences repeat essentially the same claims, just in slightly different words.

I've noticed this increasingly in a lot of articles, especially around topics like this, they know lots of people just read those opening paragraphs so they shove everything into it even though most of it is irrelevant to what people want to know and is repeated farther down. Just put her position and a bit about why she's famous like that she's said lots of controversial things and then anyone interested can read the five thousand pages under the "controversies" section.

Also it's trite to whine about the bias on Wikipedia but I've noticed lots of "controversies" for other current politicians gets scrubbed after a while as "not relevant anymore" when a lot of times it's the only reason I've ever heard about some faggot and instead the editors have filled their entry with a bunch of random shit they sponsored or signed that means nothing and nobody has ever cared about.

 

[cuddle striker]

To me, she is just a Facebook Boomer mom and nothing more than the Republican version of AOC. Never understood why people got so worked up by her.

Citation 19 interested me, the claim that she expressed anti-catholic positions. It links to the ultra liberal America magazine which is run by the Jesuit order in America. She criticizes the bishops for the extreme pro immigration stance that they have, and faults them for the sexual abuse crisis. She is an ex-catholic, but those positions are really not that unusual nor particularly anti-catholic. So it takes the claim from America at face value as a statement of fact rather than just the opinion of one very slanted journal.

eh, she's a Jack Chick Christian, she's gonna hate the papists. I can't remember if they quote the person's own statements online on there but if so, she's gone off on Catholics a few times publicly.

But really, in 20 years, it'll be like reading Sarah Palin's page today.

it's a testament to Big Oil, how high up climate change is on that list though.

@AirdropShitposts I only go to Rick Santorum's page to be reminded about the anal goo reference, I don't care about him in any other context. I hear you.

 

[Lucille Bluth]

Just look at the article on Marjorie Taylor Greene. It's no longer enough to simply describe her as "far-right" and move on. Instead, you have to turn the entire lede into one long hate-filled screed, complete with a blow-by-blow recounting of all her transgressions:

View attachment 3522684

I mean, yes, the lady is clearly extreme. But the amount of vitriol shown in those opening paragraphs makes it hard to take the article seriously, especially when so many sentences repeat essentially the same claims, just in slightly different words.

Its funny how being "neutral" is one of the site "guidelines" that users should "strive for", and many editors will sperg out on the talk pages if anything posted is "not neutral". But then you have pages like Marjorie Taylor Greene which showcase "neutrality" meaning shit.

In the spirit of tracking down more dumb shit, I decided to take a look at the articles with the most edited talk pages.
Congrats to Gamergate for making the Top 10. Surprised to see Sarah Palin right up there with Jesus. And at #19 we see... someone I've never heard of? Looks like some new age guru that presumably has a bunch of crazed cult members trying to edit his page? Also, gotta hand it to the tankies for their persistence in getting the "Mass killings under communist regimes" talk page into the Top 25.

1. Donald Trump 68,813
2. Barack Obama 46,872
3. Climate change 42,454
4. United States 32,824
5. Intelligent design 32,667
6. Jesus 31,179
7. Sarah Palin 28,547
8. Gamergate (harassment campaign) 27,790
9. Homeopathy 26,016
10. Race and intelligence 25,923
11. Gaza War (2008–2009) 25,180
12. India 24,904
13. September 11 attacks 24,538
14. Muhammad 24,179
15. Evolution 23,558
16. Circumcision 23,230
17. George W. Bush 23,172
18. Climatic Research Unit email controversy 22,696
19. Prem Rawat 22,351
20. Control of cities during the Syrian civil war 22,337
21. Catholic Church 21,887
22. Israel 21,553
23. Adolf Hitler 21,054
24. Abortion 20,663
25. Mass killings under communist regimes 20,358
26. World War II 20,105
27. Michael Jackson 19,744
28. Chiropractic 19,380
29. COVID-19 pandemic 19,291
30. Atheism 19,202
31. United Kingdom 19,105
32. International recognition of Kosovo 18,922
33. Anarchism 18,817
34. Thomas Jefferson 17,813
35. Jehovah's Witnesses 17,353
36. Syrian civil war 17,167
37. British Isles 16,769
38. List of best-selling music artists 16,422
39. Cold fusion 16,284
40. Libertarianism 15,525
41. George Washington 15,443
42. Wikipedia 15,274
43. United States and state terrorism 15,067
44. Transcendental Meditation 14,731
45. Israel and the apartheid analogy 14,717
46. Electronic cigarette 14,606
47. Russo-Georgian War 14,399
48. Ulysses S. Grant 14,393
49. Christianity 14,352
50. Canada 14,018
51. Julian Assange 13,752
52. Taiwan 13,741
53. Neuro-linguistic programming 13,438
54. Hillary Clinton 13,404
55. The Holocaust 13,334
56. Armenian genocide 13,136
57. Kosovo 13,052

#19 is from India, which made me remember that Wikipedia has a lot of Indian spergs, or at least, people interested in India because so many pages related to Indian/Pakistani topics are often subject to contentious edit warring.

I don't know what makes Sarah Palin so interesting, but her talk page has currently 65 archives filled with people debating needlessly on her political and personal life. For comparison, Donald Trump has 146, the vast majority of which were during his presidency, Obama has 83 and the United States is by far the most discussed country with 103 archives. Prem Rawat (#19) has 53 talk page archives. But the dude's a speaker/writer so I don't get how there can be that much to discuss on him.

 

[BootlegPopeye]

eh, she's a Jack Chick Christian, she's gonna hate the papists. I can't remember if they quote the person's own statements online on there but if so, she's gone off on Catholics a few times publicly.

But really, in 20 years, it'll be like reading Sarah Palin's page today.

it's a testament to Big Oil, how high up climate change is on that list though.

@AirdropShitposts I only go to Rick Santorum's page to be reminded about the anal goo reference, I don't care about him in any other context. I hear you.

Without any digging further, I am using the article they cited.

https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2022/04/29/marjorie-taylor-greene-catholic-242915?cx_testId=1&cx_testVariant=cx_1&cx_artPos=0&cx_experienceId=EXY1WS38N2HL#cxrecs_s

Which quotes from an interview given by Michael Voris, who runs the Catholic Militant organization (and no friend to America magazine). Now, if she were truly a 'Jack Chick Protestant' she wouldn't be speaking to Voris, and it's doubtful he would have had her on to begin with.

The point isn't to defend her or not, but they are using opinion pieces as statements of fact. The same article also shows part of Twitter thread of hers where she gives the reason she left the church - poor response to the sexual abuse crisis.

 

[cuddle striker]

Without any digging further, I am using the article they cited.

https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2022/04/29/marjorie-taylor-greene-catholic-242915?cx_testId=1&cx_testVariant=cx_1&cx_artPos=0&cx_experienceId=EXY1WS38N2HL#cxrecs_s

Which quotes from an interview given by Michael Voris, who runs the Catholic Militant organization (and no friend to America magazine). Now, if she were truly a 'Jack Chick Protestant' she wouldn't be speaking to Voris, and it's doubtful he would have had her on to begin with.

The point isn't to defend her or not, but they are using opinion pieces as statements of fact. The same article also shows part of Twitter thread of hers where she gives the reason she left the church - poor response to the sexual abuse crisis.

in the long run it doesn't matter anyway. they used an op-ed? typical shit

 

[Flaming Insignias]

Just look at the article on Marjorie Taylor Greene. It's no longer enough to simply describe her as "far-right" and move on. Instead, you have to turn the entire lede into one long hate-filled screed, complete with a blow-by-blow recounting of all her transgressions:

View attachment 3522684

I mean, yes, the lady is clearly extreme. But the amount of vitriol shown in those opening paragraphs makes it hard to take the article seriously, especially when so many sentences repeat essentially the same claims, just in slightly different words.

I like how they call White Genocide a “conspiracy theory“ while claiming that the “Trans Genocide” is 100% real. Because people cheering how whites will be a minority is only a conspiracy theory, but trannies flipping out because they can't groom children is anudda shoah.

 

[BootlegPopeye]

I like how they call White Genocide a “conspiracy theory“ while claiming that the “Trans Genocide” is 100% real. Because people cheering how whites will be a minority is only a conspiracy theory, but trannies flipping out because they can't groom children is anudda shoah.

How they made 'Great Replacement Theory' a massive White Nationalist 'dog whistle' is interesting - mostly it was some conservative activists repeating the things liberals and democrats said themselves. "You're finished, old white man" - how often have we heard some variant of that? This book is pretty well known and is nearly 20 years old -

..but it makes basically the same point. That demographics, largely driven by hispanic population growth, would overwhelm Republicans and make them a nearly regional party. I remembering reading some Democrats before 2016 say the Republicans could never win a Presidential election again. Now we see it isn't played out exactly how they thought it would. Hispanics are starting to become a troublesome demographic for Democrats, and this is almost entirely under a Trump lead GOP, not some Romney lead amnesty loving GOP.

 

[Zbk3VmLfujjzjxBd43tL]

How they made 'Great Replacement Theory' a massive White Nationalist 'dog whistle' is interesting - mostly it was some conservative activists repeating the things liberals and democrats said themselves. "You're finished, old white man" - how often have we heard some variant of that? This book is pretty well known and is nearly 20 years old -

View attachment 3523086

..but it makes basically the same point. That demographics, largely driven by hispanic population growth, would overwhelm Republicans and make them a nearly regional party. I remembering reading some Democrats before 2016 say the Republicans could never win a Presidential election again. Now we see it isn't played out exactly how they thought it would. Hispanics are starting to become a troublesome demographic for Democrats, and this is almost entirely under a Trump lead GOP, not some Romney lead amnesty loving GOP.

It's because a lot of the early writers on the Great Replacement explicitly did claim it was Jewish-led/explicitly anti-white as opposed to the version that's finally gaining traction today where the racial context is limited to how they're importing a voterbase from the Third World (and often it's mentioned how bad it is for legal immigrants, non-white citizens, etc). This is obviously just a red herring/association fallacy, but because "reliable sources" say it's true, then it clearly is.

 

[The REAL Hatsune Miku]

Just look at the article on Marjorie Taylor Greene. It's no longer enough to simply describe her as "far-right" and move on. Instead, you have to turn the entire lede into one long hate-filled screed, complete with a blow-by-blow recounting of all her transgressions:

View attachment 3522684

I mean, yes, the lady is clearly extreme. But the amount of vitriol shown in those opening paragraphs makes it hard to take the article seriously, especially when so many sentences repeat essentially the same claims, just in slightly different words.

Seems like a serious, unbiased attempt to catalogue the career of the representative, rather than a vitriolic chimpout angrily typed by an addle-brained Wikipedia addict, or so I've been led to believe.

At this point, political, religious (or lack thereof), and ethnic bias on Wikipedia has become so translucently admitted in what should be an impartial reference that this stuff no longer gets a rise out of (or surprises) me. I used to think that the autists who edit Wikipedia, because it's an encyclopedic website, would be the type to be obsessed with impartiality and proper phrasing, but I suppose because anyone with an agenda and enough time on their hands can become a prolific editor, I shouldn't be all too surprised that those who draft articles use them to promote a specific narrative.

 

[Corpun]

Reading the NYT's article they have citied as "proof" he is far-right is baffling. The reasons they have for labeling him far-right are:

1. He questioned the 2020 election integrity
2. Is against masks and vaccines
3. Q-anon

So I guess you don't have to actually have any far-right beliefs to be labelled as one now? They've painted a typical conspiratard boomer you could find in any midwestern town as a dangerous neo-Nazi. How is this not considered libelous?

it takes the claim from America at face value as a statement of fact rather than just the opinion of one very slanted journal.

When it comes to people with the wrong ideas that have Wikipedia articles any source goes pretty much.

You want to call someone anti-LGBT, look for any random alarmist blog by some partisan group where they are quoted saying gays have a pedo problem.

 

[AnOminous]

I've noticed this increasingly in a lot of articles, especially around topics like this, they know lots of people just read those opening paragraphs so they shove everything into it even though most of it is irrelevant to what people want to know and is repeated farther down. Just put her position and a bit about why she's famous like that she's said lots of controversial things and then anyone interested can read the five thousand pages under the "controversies" section.

It's a pretty standard stupid Wikipedia trick to put blatant editorializing into the lede even when it doesn't show up in the actual article and not even a token attempt is made to cite anything to support it.

Seems like a serious, unbiased attempt to catalogue the career of the representative, rather than a vitriolic chimpout angrily typed by an addle-brained Wikipedia addict, or so I've been led to believe.

I more or less agree with the general concept that MTG is a babbling, raving lunatic and a Qtard, but that kind of shit isn't remotely appropriate language for an "encyclopedia," something Wikipedo has long since given up even a pretense of being.

I used to think that the autists who edit Wikipedia, because it's an encyclopedic website, would be the type to be obsessed with impartiality and proper phrasing, but I suppose because anyone with an agenda and enough time on their hands can become a prolific editor, I shouldn't be all too surprised that those who draft articles use them to promote a specific narrative.

They've either converted or driven off those autists. It's now troons and woketards, autistic or not, and instead of being autistically obsessed with accuracy, they've gone to the dark side and are autistically obsessed with pushing the "right side of history."

 

[S.C.U.D.]

No agendas here, just oddities. Why upload the same picture twice? Does this small article that already has several pictures of crab dip really need it?

Article | Archive

The sharp-eyed among you may notice Animal Control star Pamperchu's poopy diaper microwave on the article for "microwave oven" (section "residential use"):

Direct link to image, username that uploaded it was "Pamperchu" and it's marked as "own work" so I'm sure he uploaded it himself. It's the exact same picture from his legendary poopy diaper microwaving post.

 

[Elbow Greased Strength]

Direct link to image, username that uploaded it was "Pamperchu" and it's marked as "own work" so I'm sure he uploaded it himself. It's the exact same picture from his legendary poopy diaper microwaving post.

NGL I'd love to see a photo of KingCobraJFS on the Goth subculture page.

 

[Becky McDonald]

I have a similar take on Anne Hathaway. 100 years from now, I suspect few will care about some early 21st-century Hollywood ditz, but new generations of Shakespeare fans will be eager to read about his enigmatic wife. But today most readers are looking for the actress. Perhaps the younger Farmers will live long enough to see them switched.

I disagree here, not for that particular example, but in general.

Right now, we're in a time period where we have something in abundance that virtually no other era in history had access to; video footage, and lots of it.
Barring virtual reality, film is by far the closest medium we have to actually seeing famous people in the flesh, and for those that aren't around any more, they are a time capsule. A tiny bit of their soul permanently encased in film. Film shows us the actual person on screen as themselves, outside of their principal filmography. We know their opinions, their ambitions, their tastes, stuff that even the most well-researched biographer wouldn't be able to find out about the stars of 2 - 300 years ago.

When you think of William Shakespeare for instance, you don't think of the real man from Stratford who came up with and wrote all his plays; you think of the near-mythical aura surrounding him and his work. Because we have no photos of him and certainly no films, only paintings, along with prints and copies of those paintings. He never wrote an autobiography. All we have is his work, and a general image of him.

Because of this, people from an era after the invention of the film camera have tended to persist in the general consciousness longer than those who weren't. Possibly the oldest example we have is Charlie Chaplin; super-common name, but because of his work and his image, it's likely he'll always be the most significant Charlie Chaplin throughout recorded history despite being born in 1889. Who else from 1889 has history remembered? That's right, Adolf Hitler. And he was the first German leader to really appear on TV and in film, as opposed to his predecessors.

My point is, the screen has given a greater legacy to certain people than any other invention, and we can't know for sure if your average film or TV star will disappear from public consciousness in a century or two. The problem is not enough time has really passed to see this in action, but there are some historical examples starting to appear.

Columbo for instance - it's been 52 years since it premiered, and 54 years since the first pilot. It's still as relevant as ever, despite the last episode coming out 19 years ago. Someone looking up Columbo today still likely wants the TV series with Peter Falk, and it's probable it'll last a full century at least.

 

[AirdropShitposts]

I randomly clicked onto Emily Bazelon's article from another one and sure enough they added the "transgender article controversy" as the longest section of her article, mostly sourced to PinkNews:


But that's not why I'm here, I looked at the Talk page to see if there was sperging about the trans thing but found something even more amazing, whatever the fuck this is in response to the article mentioning that Bazelon had interviewed Ginsburg in 2009:

 

[AnOminous]

I randomly clicked onto Emily Bazelon's article from another one and sure enough they added the "transgender article controversy" as the longest section of her article, mostly sourced to PinkNews:

So fucking typical of Troonpedia. You can have a decades-long career in journalism but if you once pissed off some tranny piece of shit, that is now forever the most important and "encyclopedic" part of your whole life. Fuck troons and their vandalism.

 

[Becky McDonald]

So fucking typical of Troonpedia. You can have a decades-long career in journalism but if you once pissed off some tranny piece of shit, that is now forever the most important and "encyclopedic" part of your whole life. Fuck troons and their vandalism.

Alternately, you can have a decades-long career in journalism, but if you decide to become a tranny piece of shit, that is now forever the most important and "encyclopedic" part of your whole life.

See: Bob Tur.

But don't worry, I'm sure screeching about Orange Man on Twitter has the same amount of impact as covering the 1992 LA Riots.