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by mikhailfranco 960 days ago
Agree, I had one very bad experience on Wikipedia. It was not a controversial or political subject area. I reverted ~30 bland look-at-me copy pasta contributions that might have belonged on the category page, but certainly not on every instance page. Obviously the right thing to do. Not controversial - or so I thought...

Some jumped-up self-appointed 'editor' appeared as-if-by-magic, made an obviously stupid decision to keep all the copy pasta, backed it up with a kangaroo court of 1 or 2 buddies weighing in on the Talk page, and that was that - 30 polluted pages.
2 comments
jugad 960 days ago
> backed it up with a kangaroo court of 1 or 2 buddies weighing in on the Talk page

If they had a couple of other editors backing them up, then it doesn't sound all that "jumped up" to me. Sounds more like you are playing with a different set of rules in mind.

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denton-scratch 960 days ago
> and that was that - 30 polluted pages.

This happens. Unless you're heavily-invested in the subject of an article, you can just shrug and move on, no? There's over a million articles you can choose to edit.

And by the way, when you made your edits, were you appointed to the position of editor, or were you a " jumped-up self-appointed 'editor'" as well?

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mikhailfranco 960 days ago
I moved on, it was many years ago. But now that you mention it ... :)

No, I was doing everyday wikigardening of pages that were well-known to me. The 'editor' was jumped-up and self-appointed in the sense that: they were not the original poster of the copy pasta; they had no previous record of creating or editing those pages; they had a bezillion WP edits (indicating an almost full-time obsession with editing random pages); and they had no rational argument against my common-sense application of normal WP rules & style guidelines.

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denton-scratch 960 days ago
> obsession with editing random pages

I've been editing since about 2005, so I have a lot of edits (but nothing you could describe as a bazillion). They would seem fairly random, because I edit when I find a page that needs improving. Arguably, it's more likely to be "obsessive" if the edits are not random, but all in one subject-area.

Also, I revert crap edits when I find them, usually when I was not the original poster. You don't have to be the original poster to revert a crap edit; and if you were, there's a smell of edit-warring and proprietorship.

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