Even worse. A lot of it just seems to be done by trolls.

Every now and again they have a big push to get more editors from more sections of society and normal humans, because a majority of the edits are done by a small amount of people, and these people spend so much time doing that that they don’t have much time for things like jobs, hobbies, socialisation, etc.

They are doing a great service, and most of them are great editors, but they are very very online and aren’t always interested in Wikipedia being a collaboration of people from all walks of life.

So they manage to get more random people to make an account and make their own first little edits, and then half those random people get yelled at for not following some hidden rules or for disagreeing with Big Mike who doesn’t like to be corrected or whatever and, surprise surprise, most people whose first experience editing Wikipedia never try again. The ones who stay are the dogged, determined ones, or the ones who don’t really care about criticism, and thus the cycle continues.

Seriously though, small time editors are absolutely essential to keep Wikipedia (reasonably) honest and unbiased. Literally anyone can contribute to the world’s biggest shared knowledge hub, and if you’re not a troll, a dick, a shill or an extremist then your contribution is really, really valuable.

If you see any page that has incorrect info, or anything that’s missing information that you know, or even some clunky grammar or out of date references, please do consider making an edit. There are a bunch of best practice guidelines on editing (that aren’t always very accessible) but the main ethos is to do what you can in good faith and don’t sweat the red tape. Someone else can come along afterwards and tidy formatting up or send you a message saying ‘hey, I’ve reverted your edit because you need a source / this type of source / you accidentally replaced the entire page on astrophysics with an emoji’, and they’ll link to the guidelines you need to follow if so.

I’d love to say it’ll be fun and chill and once you’ve realised how easy it is you’ll be evangelical about it. If you edit a totally innocuous page, it probably will be.

But it’s the internet, so there are all sorts of people including the knobs, so I’ll just say - by widening the pool of editors you will be benefitting Wikipedia whatever your actual edit is, and by ignoring any argumentative bastards you’ll be adding to the majority of Wikipedia editors who are normal human beings and not, well, argumentative bastards.

(Obviously if you are actually an argumentative bastard troll, no offence meant, I hope you have a great life but the applications to be a Wikipedia editor are sadly closed and honestly it’s not worth it 😀)

I can bring villainy and snacks, maybe some sandwiches or something?

Literally everybody can see exactly what was written, when, and from which IP address. Not only is that history maintained indefinitely on Wikipedia, it’s also downloaded by thousands of people around the world.

Everybody who has ever added a missing punctuation mark to a page is recorded in history, the specific date and time and page and action, accessible even if the world wide web goes down and Wikipedia ceases to exist.

I’m not sure if your ‘anonymous graffiti’ analogy is quite right, though I’m also struggling to imagine many places in my country where someone could graffiti on a wall and not be tracked down very quickly if necessary.

I get your point, but the 'real crux of the matter ’ is very much - what is the fediverse. That’s what an encyclopedia is for. It defines things.

Wikipedia is not the place to highlight or discuss the moral or legal standards that every entity must meet. That would be ridiculous.

Chicken soup is subject to at least 10,000 individual regulatory restrictions (no poisons, name must reflect content, pay this tax to enter this country, staff must be paid and free and blah blah, no more than x foreign substances, must not go rancid within this time frame, can’t be packaged in a paper envelope). Some, like the workers’ rights and fair pricing and amount of weird chemicals, are actually pretty important human rights issues that have very real, immediate effects of the health and wellbeing of various population groups.

Should they all be on the Wikipedia article for chicken soup? All of them? If so, I have news about the laws, restrictions, relations, challenges, emerging research, etc, into vegetable soup. And also tomato soup. And, in fact, every processed food. And if that looks a bit ridiculous, consider the ethical considerations of the tea industry. It’s horrific (source: I’m English). It’s been horrific for hundreds of years now and has literally ended nations, killed millions of people, and doesn’t look like it’s in the final stretch of being solved.

It is, therefore, probably too much to include on a page about a new cruelty-free brand of iced tea that’s just taking off. People would go to that page to read about that brand of iced tea, not tea in general, and certainly not the troubled history and socio-political scandals of the tea trade in general, unless they had a beef with the iced tea brand.

Which, I suspect, is what happened on the fediverse page. And I didn’t put the flags on the page, or remove the content, but I’m glad someone did.

Back in the day, we used to marvel at the mental fortitude of paramedics and war medics, who constantly see and deal with the most extreme accidents and horrors of humanity so that we, the public, don’t ever have to.

That burden does seem to have expanded rather. I legit think it might be less traumatic to triage and transport a selection of burns victims, traffic fatalities etc for a living than to moderate busy social media platforms.

At least in an ambulance you generally get fair warning what sort of unspeakable horror you need to attend next, and you can help them.

I suppose in the medical emergency industry you also don’t have to inform the disfiguring disease / patch of black ice on the road / tainted drinking water that ‘yep, sorry, you can’t operate here. Yes I know you’re just trying to get by but we do have a No Festering Gonorrhoea sign that you ignored before infecting this lady’.

TLDR: at some point community moderators (not the over zealous type) might need to be recognised as an emergency service

Someone put that on in the last 12 hours, and since then, some anonymous person just deleted the entire section lol.

I legit feel really grateful, I’d been going down a bit of a ‘either every source of information is corrupt and there’s no hope, or I’m losing my mind’ rabbit hole. I haven’t quite pulled the plug on Reddit yet, which may be contributing to that.

I prefer the whole ‘major additions and changes should be introduced in the talk section of a page so it can be discussed by the committee of reasonable good faith adults with lots of spare time and patience’ approach to Wikipedia editing, but in retrospect that may be a wee bit idealistic in current times. So the ‘one person complains and documents, another person flags, and another just deletes the entire thing’ is a process that may be a good compromise between The Way Things Should Be and how to edit Wikipedia with consensus and without being harassed by neo Nazis.