I've had a lot of problems here trying to get them to fix issues in articles on Buddhism, on Planetary Protection and on Life on Mars. Each for somewhat different reasons so perhaps my stories here may be of interest for discussions of how to improve wikipedia?
In the articles on Buddhism, the current most active editors on various core topics such as Four Noble Truths, Nirvana (Buddhism), and Karma in Buddhism have what many would regard as a very eccentric approach to this topic.
They favour Western scholars who publish in often obscure academic journals over famous Eastern scholars such as Walpola Rahula (arguably the most famous scholar ever in recent times in Therevadhan Buddhism) and the 14th Dalai Lama also is regarded by Tibetans as expert in the Tibetan sutras and commentaries, getting his Geshe degree at a young age impressing everyone with his erudite knowledge and understanding.
But these are not regarded as good sources on Buddhism topics on wikipedia in these articles - their books and papers have to be backed up by articles by Western scholars saying the same thing. But Western scholars - with some exceptions who are excellent such as Richard Gombrich of course - those who are expert in Buddhist studies are fine - but the others - often Christian theologians, philosophers, sociologists, anthropologists and such like by training - often get things wrong.
They haven't got the many years of training in the sutras (typically seven years for instance for a geshe degree), many of them can't read any of the original languages of the sutras, and many of them are actually relying mainly on secondary sources themselves for their understanding of Buddhist writings.
I was not the editor there - I am not expert at all in Buddhist scholarship and am just a long term Buddhist myself. But I was trying to support another editor - but we gave up eventually.
The main problems there were
So in this way, three editors with similar views can go around wikipedia editing the articles as they wish, and typically with only one editor at most, often no-one still active, they encounter no or minimal resistance.
And the problem also is that their edits are based on many common misconceptions about Buddhism amongst westerners. So, that means that many readers will agree with the changes, because they don't know any better. Naturally as most readers will be Christian or live in a Christian country, and have maybe not much contact with Buddhists.
I tried to get this fixed, along with another editor, and it went to endless discussions and eventually they twice tried to ban me from the Buddhism topic area, and the second time, to ban me from the whole of wikipedia. This was just for writing on article talk pages as I did no substantial edits of the articles themselves (and only one minor edit - fixed one broken link).
The attempt to ban me failed, with some of them saying that they need to encourage discussion on talk pages, in preference to editing them, not ban people for discussing issues with the articles on the talk pages. But it was quite stressful for me at the time.
And it showed how very hard it can be to try to fix issues in wikipedia -which here were things that I think just about any Buddhist scholar, say at graduate level would agree with. For instance, just seems absurd not to regard Walpola Rahula's book as one of the best sources to use for introductory articles on Therevadhan Buddhism. And the Dalai Lama's books as amongst the very best sources for introductory articles on Tibetan Buddhism. It just made no sense - but they made a case that other wikipedian readers apparently found convincing, and there was nothing we could do about it.
I think that what could help a lot is if, somehow, you could have expert overview. Not sure how exactly. They can't have the last word on edits of course, or they would own the topic area. But in some way - that you would have first - experts who use their real names and are verified - so if someone is a famous Buddhist scholar for instance, you know for sure that they are.
That might help a fair bit already. To know who at least some of the editors are, for sure.
And - some way of dispute resolution where you don't just try resolution of conduct issues - but some way to get others to look at the actual content too.
The third party opinion approach just doesn't work, is broken, unless it is a very simple problem. Because has to be just two views and the third party just has a third view and is not expert.
And all the other arbitration processes - they are only based on conduct. It astonished me in the processes I've been involved myself so far. Nobody, at any stage in the arbitration, will take a look at the original sources. Same also in one case for article deletion discussion, one of my articles was deleted with none of those voting looking at the cited material.
And at the highest stages of arbitration you have to put forward the issue in just a few words and get judged by people who have dozens of cases to resolve each day, and spend a total of just a few minutes reviewing your case typically. It's fine for trolls, but no use at all for content disputes.
So, if there is some way you can get experts in the topic area involved - like graduate level or higher - that is for academic topics of course - and a process of arbitration and review that involves the reviewer being reasonably expert in the topic area - and actually reading the citations for the article. I don't know if that is possible, but if it was it would make a huge difference.
In the area of planetary protection, I was a victim of a troll as I now realized. It went on for several weeks and ended up with all the content I've ever written on life on Mars and planetary protection for missions to Mars being removed from wikipedia by this troll, who managed to get support from other wikipedians who knew nothing about the topic, for his activity by constantly saying horrible things about me, and by making analogies with the Andromeda strain movie over and over. They then went on to delete material by other editors including editing away several short stub type articles in this topic area until Wikipedia had nothing left on planetary protection except just the one article here
Planetary protection
And they then edited that article as well until it was a complete jumble and didn't make much sense, adding content to it that had almost nothing to do with planetary protection.
I was finally rescued by a friendly admin who undid that merge away of interplanetary contamination. At which point they stopped and I was then able to edit that article back into shape and continue work on this article as well
Interplanetary contamination
So I'm happy about that topic area now, especially as I have also been allowed to add a short section on planetary protection to the human colonization of Mars article as well.
That again was hugely stressful. But this was pure trolling I'm now pretty sure. Unlike the Buddhism case which was a matter of sincere editors who genuinely thought that their Western sources are better for Buddhism articles.
The reason I'm so sure is that a year later he tried to delete my new interplanetary contamination article, starting a new merge discussion. I treated him as you are recommended to for a troll - I just answered rarely, like every day instead of right away. A genuine editor will keep going in that situation but trolls don't get the rapid feedback they want and get bored. He soon gave up and went away which confirms he was a troll pretty much 100%. If only I'd responded in the same way when he first did it before! But it had a good outcome, it is the main reason I'm now here on Quora answering questions here rather than trying to edit wikipedia - also before then - resulted in my Science20 blog and a couple of appearances on the Space Show - basically as a result of putting the deleted material up outside of wikipedia and then going on from there.
This though suggests - maybe wikipedia has a big problem with trolls.
I'm not sure what the solution is there.
One issue might just be the interface. It is rather out dated now - especially on the talk page. Nowadays people don't expect to have to enter wiki code to comment. Or to click edit and then scroll down possibly for pages to find the point where you enter your comment, and to then add the correct number of :::s. And also - for all your edits of your comment to appear in the talk page history.
Also would make a huge difference if as on facebook or quora - that just the first few sentences of a comment were shown, so you click each comment to expand it, if it is long.
All of this leads people to feel rather frustrated, they are already fighting against the interface - not that they would have been say five or ten years ago, but nowadays they are used to a much smoother editing experience. So I think that adds to a general level of irritation on wikipedia which may be part of the reason there is so very much by way of edit warring. And that in turn then attracts trolls and those with trollish tendencies.
It is just a thought.
This third example is for the Life on Mars article. I've been trying for a long time to get it up to date with recent research. But all my comments get hidden by the main editor of the page, who is basing it on research that mainly predates Phoenix in 2008.
The problem is - that google tends to favour old articles, and there's been a major change in understanding of the habitability of Mars since 2008.
He bases the article on these old ideas.
This article actually consists mainly of the material that he has hidden on that talk page for the last year or two, made into an article and written in a more journalistic entertaining style:
UV & Cosmic Radiation On Mars - Why They Aren't Lethal For The "Swimming Pools For Bacteria"
Again the problem is - only one editor who can become the main editor of an an article and they come to be treated by other editors as expert on that topic just because they have been editing wikipedia in that topic area for a long time, and have lots of friends on wikipedia who like them and support them and their edits just because they are friends. But they may not be so expert in the area itself, or may be out of date.
Not sure about the solution, but again if in some way you could have verified experts, who in some way can be gone to for help with content disputes - not as final word of course, just a respected opinion - and preferably several such so you can get a range of comments by respected academics expert in the area (for articles where scholarship and scientific research is relevant of course) - that could make a huge difference there I think.
Just a few thoughts.
More about these issues in my blog post about my experiences:
Why you often can't do anything in a wikipedia content dispute by Robert Walker on Random things
I just want to add that despite these bad experiences, I also know of many excellent articles there.
They are my goto resource for instance on facts about planets, asteroids, comets, space missions, if you want to know the precise details of every single Soyuz TMA mission to the ISS, chances are that wikipedia has them.
And - in those topic areas it tends to be accurate - and it also more importantly has many citations so you can follow up to find the original articles and news stories - and best of all, strongly favours citations that are not behind a paywall and that you can read instantly online.
Those aspects of wikipedia, particularly this emphasis on citing everything, are excellent. In that way it is is better for instance than Encyclopedia Britannica. If you end up on one of their articles, often there is no way at all to follow up to find more technical detail.
And - many articles are responsibly edited, have reached a good shape after maybe long debates and discussions.
Still I think they do have an ongoing problem with accuracy and with the collaboarativ process. And have a major issue attracting expert editors in some topic areas. They seem to me to have no expert editors in the area of present day life on Mars for instance. And very few in the Buddhism topic area compared to the number of articles there. I gather that in their articles on Hinduism they are also rather short on expert editors.
So - kind of patchy. And the issue definitely arises not because experts don't want to edit wikipedia, but they are often treated in ways that discourage them from participating. For instance a newbie editor who is doing graduate studies in Buddhism who had every single edit he did reverted over a period of weeks to an article on a topic he was expert on as he was studying it at postgraduate level. They were reverted by a long term editor of this topic area who claims to have a degree in theology (though you can't verify this) who doesn't seem to know that much about Buddhism. But who is a popular long term editor in this topic area with many friends who respect him.
I'm not sure what can be done there.
Other areas don't seem to have this problem at all e.g. some of the maths and music and general science articles I've bee involved with where the experiences of interacting with other editors have been great.
FIRST EXAMPLE - SINCERE EDITORS - BUT STRANGE IDEAS ON THE TOPIC
In the articles on Buddhism, the current most active editors on various core topics such as Four Noble Truths, Nirvana (Buddhism), and Karma in Buddhism have what many would regard as a very eccentric approach to this topic.
They favour Western scholars who publish in often obscure academic journals over famous Eastern scholars such as Walpola Rahula (arguably the most famous scholar ever in recent times in Therevadhan Buddhism) and the 14th Dalai Lama also is regarded by Tibetans as expert in the Tibetan sutras and commentaries, getting his Geshe degree at a young age impressing everyone with his erudite knowledge and understanding.
But these are not regarded as good sources on Buddhism topics on wikipedia in these articles - their books and papers have to be backed up by articles by Western scholars saying the same thing. But Western scholars - with some exceptions who are excellent such as Richard Gombrich of course - those who are expert in Buddhist studies are fine - but the others - often Christian theologians, philosophers, sociologists, anthropologists and such like by training - often get things wrong.
They haven't got the many years of training in the sutras (typically seven years for instance for a geshe degree), many of them can't read any of the original languages of the sutras, and many of them are actually relying mainly on secondary sources themselves for their understanding of Buddhist writings.
I was not the editor there - I am not expert at all in Buddhist scholarship and am just a long term Buddhist myself. But I was trying to support another editor - but we gave up eventually.
MAIN PROBLEMS
The main problems there were
- Huge number of articles on Buddhism - more than 4,000
- There are a fair number of expert editors in the topic area. But many are no longer active on wikipedia.
- Typical articles have only one or two active editors.
So in this way, three editors with similar views can go around wikipedia editing the articles as they wish, and typically with only one editor at most, often no-one still active, they encounter no or minimal resistance.
And the problem also is that their edits are based on many common misconceptions about Buddhism amongst westerners. So, that means that many readers will agree with the changes, because they don't know any better. Naturally as most readers will be Christian or live in a Christian country, and have maybe not much contact with Buddhists.
ATTEMPTS TO FIX IT
I tried to get this fixed, along with another editor, and it went to endless discussions and eventually they twice tried to ban me from the Buddhism topic area, and the second time, to ban me from the whole of wikipedia. This was just for writing on article talk pages as I did no substantial edits of the articles themselves (and only one minor edit - fixed one broken link).
The attempt to ban me failed, with some of them saying that they need to encourage discussion on talk pages, in preference to editing them, not ban people for discussing issues with the articles on the talk pages. But it was quite stressful for me at the time.
And it showed how very hard it can be to try to fix issues in wikipedia -which here were things that I think just about any Buddhist scholar, say at graduate level would agree with. For instance, just seems absurd not to regard Walpola Rahula's book as one of the best sources to use for introductory articles on Therevadhan Buddhism. And the Dalai Lama's books as amongst the very best sources for introductory articles on Tibetan Buddhism. It just made no sense - but they made a case that other wikipedian readers apparently found convincing, and there was nothing we could do about it.
WHAT COULD HELP A LOT IF IT IS IN SOME WAY POSSIBLE
I think that what could help a lot is if, somehow, you could have expert overview. Not sure how exactly. They can't have the last word on edits of course, or they would own the topic area. But in some way - that you would have first - experts who use their real names and are verified - so if someone is a famous Buddhist scholar for instance, you know for sure that they are.
That might help a fair bit already. To know who at least some of the editors are, for sure.
And - some way of dispute resolution where you don't just try resolution of conduct issues - but some way to get others to look at the actual content too.
The third party opinion approach just doesn't work, is broken, unless it is a very simple problem. Because has to be just two views and the third party just has a third view and is not expert.
And all the other arbitration processes - they are only based on conduct. It astonished me in the processes I've been involved myself so far. Nobody, at any stage in the arbitration, will take a look at the original sources. Same also in one case for article deletion discussion, one of my articles was deleted with none of those voting looking at the cited material.
And at the highest stages of arbitration you have to put forward the issue in just a few words and get judged by people who have dozens of cases to resolve each day, and spend a total of just a few minutes reviewing your case typically. It's fine for trolls, but no use at all for content disputes.
So, if there is some way you can get experts in the topic area involved - like graduate level or higher - that is for academic topics of course - and a process of arbitration and review that involves the reviewer being reasonably expert in the topic area - and actually reading the citations for the article. I don't know if that is possible, but if it was it would make a huge difference.
ANOTHER EXAMPLE - VICTIM OF A TROLL
In the area of planetary protection, I was a victim of a troll as I now realized. It went on for several weeks and ended up with all the content I've ever written on life on Mars and planetary protection for missions to Mars being removed from wikipedia by this troll, who managed to get support from other wikipedians who knew nothing about the topic, for his activity by constantly saying horrible things about me, and by making analogies with the Andromeda strain movie over and over. They then went on to delete material by other editors including editing away several short stub type articles in this topic area until Wikipedia had nothing left on planetary protection except just the one article here
Planetary protection
And they then edited that article as well until it was a complete jumble and didn't make much sense, adding content to it that had almost nothing to do with planetary protection.
I was finally rescued by a friendly admin who undid that merge away of interplanetary contamination. At which point they stopped and I was then able to edit that article back into shape and continue work on this article as well
Interplanetary contamination
So I'm happy about that topic area now, especially as I have also been allowed to add a short section on planetary protection to the human colonization of Mars article as well.
That again was hugely stressful. But this was pure trolling I'm now pretty sure. Unlike the Buddhism case which was a matter of sincere editors who genuinely thought that their Western sources are better for Buddhism articles.
The reason I'm so sure is that a year later he tried to delete my new interplanetary contamination article, starting a new merge discussion. I treated him as you are recommended to for a troll - I just answered rarely, like every day instead of right away. A genuine editor will keep going in that situation but trolls don't get the rapid feedback they want and get bored. He soon gave up and went away which confirms he was a troll pretty much 100%. If only I'd responded in the same way when he first did it before! But it had a good outcome, it is the main reason I'm now here on Quora answering questions here rather than trying to edit wikipedia - also before then - resulted in my Science20 blog and a couple of appearances on the Space Show - basically as a result of putting the deleted material up outside of wikipedia and then going on from there.
This though suggests - maybe wikipedia has a big problem with trolls.
I'm not sure what the solution is there.
One issue might just be the interface. It is rather out dated now - especially on the talk page. Nowadays people don't expect to have to enter wiki code to comment. Or to click edit and then scroll down possibly for pages to find the point where you enter your comment, and to then add the correct number of :::s. And also - for all your edits of your comment to appear in the talk page history.
Also would make a huge difference if as on facebook or quora - that just the first few sentences of a comment were shown, so you click each comment to expand it, if it is long.
All of this leads people to feel rather frustrated, they are already fighting against the interface - not that they would have been say five or ten years ago, but nowadays they are used to a much smoother editing experience. So I think that adds to a general level of irritation on wikipedia which may be part of the reason there is so very much by way of edit warring. And that in turn then attracts trolls and those with trollish tendencies.
It is just a thought.
THIRD EXAMPLE - OUTDATED SCIENCE
This third example is for the Life on Mars article. I've been trying for a long time to get it up to date with recent research. But all my comments get hidden by the main editor of the page, who is basing it on research that mainly predates Phoenix in 2008.
The problem is - that google tends to favour old articles, and there's been a major change in understanding of the habitability of Mars since 2008.
He bases the article on these old ideas.
This article actually consists mainly of the material that he has hidden on that talk page for the last year or two, made into an article and written in a more journalistic entertaining style:
UV & Cosmic Radiation On Mars - Why They Aren't Lethal For The "Swimming Pools For Bacteria"
Again the problem is - only one editor who can become the main editor of an an article and they come to be treated by other editors as expert on that topic just because they have been editing wikipedia in that topic area for a long time, and have lots of friends on wikipedia who like them and support them and their edits just because they are friends. But they may not be so expert in the area itself, or may be out of date.
Not sure about the solution, but again if in some way you could have verified experts, who in some way can be gone to for help with content disputes - not as final word of course, just a respected opinion - and preferably several such so you can get a range of comments by respected academics expert in the area (for articles where scholarship and scientific research is relevant of course) - that could make a huge difference there I think.
Just a few thoughts.
More about these issues in my blog post about my experiences:
Why you often can't do anything in a wikipedia content dispute by Robert Walker on Random things
MANY ARTICLES ON WIKIPEDIA ARE EXCELLENT
I just want to add that despite these bad experiences, I also know of many excellent articles there.
They are my goto resource for instance on facts about planets, asteroids, comets, space missions, if you want to know the precise details of every single Soyuz TMA mission to the ISS, chances are that wikipedia has them.
And - in those topic areas it tends to be accurate - and it also more importantly has many citations so you can follow up to find the original articles and news stories - and best of all, strongly favours citations that are not behind a paywall and that you can read instantly online.
Those aspects of wikipedia, particularly this emphasis on citing everything, are excellent. In that way it is is better for instance than Encyclopedia Britannica. If you end up on one of their articles, often there is no way at all to follow up to find more technical detail.
And - many articles are responsibly edited, have reached a good shape after maybe long debates and discussions.
Still I think they do have an ongoing problem with accuracy and with the collaboarativ process. And have a major issue attracting expert editors in some topic areas. They seem to me to have no expert editors in the area of present day life on Mars for instance. And very few in the Buddhism topic area compared to the number of articles there. I gather that in their articles on Hinduism they are also rather short on expert editors.
So - kind of patchy. And the issue definitely arises not because experts don't want to edit wikipedia, but they are often treated in ways that discourage them from participating. For instance a newbie editor who is doing graduate studies in Buddhism who had every single edit he did reverted over a period of weeks to an article on a topic he was expert on as he was studying it at postgraduate level. They were reverted by a long term editor of this topic area who claims to have a degree in theology (though you can't verify this) who doesn't seem to know that much about Buddhism. But who is a popular long term editor in this topic area with many friends who respect him.
I'm not sure what can be done there.
Other areas don't seem to have this problem at all e.g. some of the maths and music and general science articles I've bee involved with where the experiences of interacting with other editors have been great.
About the Author
Robert Walker
Writer of articles on Mars and Space issues - Software Developer of Tune Smithy, Bounce Metronome etc.Studied at Wolfson College, Oxford
Lives in Isle of Mull
4.8m answer views110.3k this month
Top Writer2017, 2016, and 2015
Published WriterHuffPost, Slate, and 4 moreHuffPost, Slate, Forbes, Newsweek, Business Insider, and Science 2.0