User:Kalsermar/Onwiki
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I started on this project, like a lot of people, with enthusiasm and thought it would be a lot of fun to contribute to an encyclopaedia that is so well known and easy to use as Wikipedia. I knew full well that vandalism was a part of Wikipedia but I have come to learn after less than a year here that it isn't the vandalism that we need to worry about.
Wikipedia can be edited by everyone yet there are rules. Many of these rules seem well enforced and when I began here I didn't pay much attention to things outside my first area of expertise, namely astronomy. As I got more familiar with Wikipedia I ventured outside that area more often and that's when the problems started getting noticeable.
I found that, instead of a worldwide project of enthusiasts like myself, with the occasional vandal who adds foul language to an article because he or she has nothing better to do, Wikipedia is sadly populated by people who have no idea whatsoever what an encyclopaedia is about. People who instead feel that every minute detail about a person's life is noteworthy or who feel the need to vent their political anger on Wikipedia seem to be very much in the majority.
What I found was people intent on adding a president's bicycle accident to the encyclopaedia or have week long discussions on whether or not to include an error of speech in a biographical article. I found that the President of the United States is to be regarded in the same light as Osama bin Laden and grouped into a "category" of terrorists all the while edit wars are going on on articles about real terrorists for calling them terorists.
Then there's the people intent on adding insignificant details to articles. The distances to astronomical objects are noted in light year, parsecs but then in brackets the distance in exameters or whatever bull term they can find gets added too! Articles get filled with allegations, accusation and whatever else someone can find written somewhere on the internet. The word of a right or left wing nutjob gets elevated to "encyclopaedic content" and when A says it is so it gets noted. In order to give "all sides of the issue" we have equated the tragedy of 9/11 with the idea some imbeciles have that the Pentagon fired a missile at their own building. The moral equivalency on the pages of Wikipedia is sickening.
I have tried to add my two cents worth to these kinds of disputes in good faith believing that in the end rationality would triumph. Instead I have unfortunately become so involved in a few disputes myself with people who seem, unfortunately, to have all the energy and time in the world (not surprising I guess, educated people wouldn't waste their time on pettiness and vandalism) that my enthusiasm for Wikipedia has turned around 180 degrees into contempt. Wikipedia policy doesn't get enforced, vandals get multiple last warnings yet happily go on their merry way vandalising after a whopping 3 hour block and administrators seem more intent on keeping things "equal" between serious contributors and nutjobs in the name of political correctness or some ideal of "assuming good faith". Meanwhile, I get badgered by one editor who accuses me of "losing" an AfD and then vandalising, another accuses me of being a well known webmaster intent on promoting my website on Wikipedia and yet another goes on page long tirades with the skill of manipulating and twisting words and meanings that Machiavelli would be proud of.
Bottom line is that I have become very disillusioned with Wikipedia. Not because my point of view doesn't somehow "triumph" but because this project has lost its ability to be taken serious, if it had that at all to begin with.
I am not sure how long I'll edit these pages again or whether I'll turn my back on this project forever as it has, in my opinion, utterly failed in its objectives, namely to provide a freely accesible encyclopaedia.
