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Essay on editing Wikipedia
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Sometimes it is best for young editors to let certain issues, especially around privacy, be handled by mature editors.
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Sometimes there are disputes which are difficult to understand without a fairly broad life experience. Although some young editors are unusually empathetic and able to understand nuanced issues with wide-ranging real-world repercussions, and undoubtedly age and maturity do not necessarily go hand in hand, sometimes it's best to "leave it to the grownups."
This is particularly obvious when issues of privacy are involved. There is a tendency on Wikipedia to express "reasonable concern" over privacy actions such as oversighting of edits, redacting of real names and so on. But this is only a "reasonable concern" if one imagines that Wikipedia
is some kind of common property with US constitutional rights of free speech and US legal rights of freedom of information.
It isn't.
Wikipedia is an international private project.
Sure, a private project to which many contribute, run in a collegial way, and with a fair commitment to openness and due process, but in the end a private project.
Example: we can ban someone, and they have no recourse to any third party to appeal that ban. This is as it should be. How else could we ever enforce our core policies? Freedom of speech is a constitutional right in the US, neutrality is not constitutionally guaranteed. On Wikipedia these are reversed. This is just one example of the differences between Wikipedia as some people see it, and Wikipedia as it really is.
And the more life experience you have, and the more you have to lose (house, job, children), the more likely you are to recognise how actions online can impact on these things for other people. Publishing the name of a student may cause them some discomfort and distress. Publishing the name of an adult and thus giving resourceful attackers crucial information may contribute to causing them bankruptcy and completely destroy the lives of an entire family.
The bottom line is: if you are not comfortable with privacy-violating edits being removed from view, you are welcome to fork the content and set up your own project. Wikipedia is, in the end, only a website, after all; it's not like the world will end if one revision is oversighted because someone forgot to log in and they're worried about a credible threat of harassment. Nothing is lost to the encyclopaedia (the end product, the goal and the raison d'etre of the whole project), whereas there is a huge potential loss by allowing trolls to drive away those who enforce canonical policy by savagely attacking them outside of Wikipedia.
So sometimes the "grown-ups" will tell you that they are dealing with it, and it's none of your business. Arguing the toss is not going to help.
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- Adminitis
- Akin's Laws of Article Writing
- Alternatives to edit warring
- ANI flu
- Anti-Wikipedian
- Anti-Wikipedianism
- Articlecountitis
- Asshole John rule
- Assume bad faith
- Assume faith
- Assume good wraith
- Assume stupidity
- Assume that everyone's assuming good faith, assuming that you are assuming good faith
- Avoid using preview button
- Avoid using wikilinks
- Bad Jokes and Other Deleted Nonsense
- Barnstaritis
- Before they were notable
- BOLD, revert, revert, revert
- Boston Tea Party
- Butterfly effect
- CaPiTaLiZaTiOn MuCh?
- Complete bollocks
- Counting forks
- Counting juntas
- Crap
- Don't stuff beans up your nose
- Don't-give-a-fuckism
- Don't abbreviate "Wikipedia" as "Wiki"!
- Don't delete the main page
- Editcountitis
- Edits Per Day
- Editsummarisis
- Editing Under the Influence
- Embrace Stop Signs
- Emerson
- Fart
- Five Fs of Wikipedia
- Seven Ages of Editor, by Will E. Spear-Shake
- Go ahead, vandalize
- How many Wikipedians does it take to change a lightbulb?
- How to get away with UPE
- How to put up a straight pole by pushing it at an angle
- How to vandalize correctly
- How to win a citation war
- Ignore all essays
- Ignore every single rule
- Is that even an essay?
- Mess with the templates
- My local pond
- Newcomers are delicious, so go ahead and bite them
- Legal vandalism
- List of jokes about Wikipedia
- LTTAUTMAOK
- No climbing the Reichstag dressed as Spider-Man
- No one cares about your garage band
- No one really cares
- No, really
- No sorcery threats
- Notability is not eternal
- Oops Defense
- Play the game
- Please be a giant dick, so we can ban you
- Please bite the newbies
- Please do not murder the newcomers
- Pledge of Tranquility
- R-e-s-p-e-c-t
- Requests for medication
- Requirements for adminship
- Rouge admin
- Rouge editor
- Sarcasm is really helpful
- Sausages for tasting
- The Night Before Wikimas
- The first rule of Wikipedia
- The Five Pillars of Untruth
- Things that should not be surprising
- The WikiBible
- Watchlistitis
- Wikipedia is an MMORPG
- WTF? OMG! TMD TLA. ARG!
- What Wikipedia is not/Outtakes
- Why not create an account?
- Yes legal threats
- You don't have to be mad to work here, but
- You should not write meaningless lists
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