[bawolff]

Not directing this comment at you, but to the other children of this thread:

So much criticism of wikipedia seems to come down to: wikipedia did X. I think X is wrong. Other people don't see it that way. I don't want to spend the time proving my point. How dare wikipedia not just take me, a random internet stranger, at my word.

All i want to know is how do y'all think it could possibly work differently? Everybody thinks they are right. Nobody intentionally is wrong. Obviously if you just show up, unwilling to explain why you are right or unwilling to accept compelling counter arguments to your point, its not going to go your way. Why would anybody think it would?

[erichocean]

Some people are activists; most people are not.

Activists are willing to invest orders of magnitude more time, energy, and discomfort into winning. They are willing to break most social norms to have their narrative become the default. They're willing to suppress facts that would support alternate narratives. They're willing to put their thumb on the scale when inconvenient facts are unavoidable. Et cetera.

Non-activists are not willing to do any of those things.

It's not about right or wrong, it's about activism: who engages in it and how much.

But sure, let's let the activists win—or force everyone to become activists to "compete". I'm sure that'll make the world a better place.

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Or we could ban activism since it is fundamentally anti-social bullying behavior. Maybe make a "code of conduct" that prohibits it. Just spitballing here…

It's pretty simple to identify activists mechanically (and at scale): they are in the fat part of the power law for contributions. Simply limit people's ability to contribute and et voilà !, the activism problem has been vastly reduced, if not eliminated. Non-activists now have a chance.

[bawolff]

There are already various rules against engaging engaging in various types of bad faith behaviours. Like all disciplinary systems it is far from perfect of course, but it exists, and people get banned for behaving inapropriately every day.

Most people at the top of the power law are not evil people. Its difficult to be both prominent and evil. The real pov pushers tend to keep a lower peofile to avoid discovery. That doesn't mean prominent people dont have beliefs, everyone does, but most people can have beliefs and behave appropriately.

I think your real objection is its more difficult to argue with an experienced person who is willing to devote more time. Which is true. It is after all why in the real world expensive lawyers are worth the money.

But why is that a bad thing. If another person simply has researched the topic more than you, they should win the argument. That is life, the more effort you put in, the more likely you get a positive outcome.

If you really believe power users are more likely to behave in bad faith or maliciously, i'd like to see some proof, because i highly doubt its true.

[framperz]

I think that's an interesting point on activism. It's more than just individual activists though, there are also corporations/businesses - I can't think of the number of times I've heard people talk about hiring a team/contractor to revamp/clean up a corporate Wikipedia page, or an individual's Wikipedia page.