|
|
|
|
|
|
by effingwewt
3421 days ago
|
|
|
Anecdotal, but what here isn't now: I used to edit as well after noticing how incredibly wrong some of the less popular but obviously wrong articles were. Until one day I made some anonymous corrections with proper sources properly cited. I would see my edits immediately undone. I went back and re-did my edit, rewording it to be clearer, and explaining my citations, assuming I was at fault and if I simply corrected MY mistakes the edit would go through. It did not, and this time I was notified I had attempted to vandalize said page and would be banned from making further edits if I persisted. I went on to create an account and try and argue my points civilly in the talk page, to no avail, and being attacked by the article's caretaker (who by the way knew ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about the article's underlying facts/science, anything). After this I left the editing of wikipedia to people with far more patience than I, and I really believe after seeing other talk pages with glaring errors on the wiki article, that this is the modus operandi for many of these "caretakers". You step on their territory and they shoo you away as quickly as possible(they get so bad and pedantic with their arguing they call themselves "wikilawyers"). Still upsets me to this day that when I see an obvious mistake such as a bad date, misspelling or other easily identifiable misinformation I can't be bothered to do more than wonder about what the poor soul who tried to correct it went through. /rant |
|
|
I understand where you're coming from. I've edited for items such as the citation having nothing to do with the content, and seen it reversed and gone through the same thing. Sometimes something as simple as "show me where I can find this in your citation" brings more than civil discourse -- it brings obvious animosity and is countered with straw man attacks or other logical fallacies. I think people have psychological and emotional needs, and some have a need to feel important, dutiful and powerful. This is where they satisfy that need.
Another problem is I think people in authority--sometimes very smart people--draw conclusions that they haven't properly thought about.