Even if they made me feel better it is so temporary that I’d have to come again, and again. I’d rather go to a massage therapist who could also get the rest of my body too without the risk of vertebral artery dissection.
The best thing I’ve found for my back is slow, varied motions and stretches. I do tai chi and qigong and they really loosen me up.
I went to a chiro for a while and it did help but I think it was mainly because they'd have me do a fairly comprehensive set of stretches at the beginning of each visit. I stopped going to the chiro but I keep doing the stretches.
It seems to me that atlas orthogonal adjustment is more of a real thing offered than just getting your neck twisted, then again as someone who probably needs that (I had whiplash many years ago) I have no idea if the places near me have the equipment for it (or x-ray stuff needed) so that along with paperwork/scheduling has stopped me.
I think in this case MMO is another word for “people will people”.
IRL people talk behind each other’s backs, online they sockpuppet, spreading rumors and half-truths, or even outright lies. It’s always been like that, but places like Wikipedia have better transparency tools to track them down, better than trying to track what some people talked about over a cup of tea, or while walking their dogs in the park.
I will give some more info on what I saw at wikipedia, which arguable is common knowledge.
After I translated pages, I noticed people coming in to make small edits. I don’t mind those, but is baffled that people seem to be making meaningless changes all the time. Not to mention I am pretty sure I am more knowledgeable on said subjects than those “editors”.
I later realized that the number of edits and the number of edited pages count towards some arbitrary numbers which people can use to claim and move up the ladder of admin rights. It all made sense on why there are so many minimal edits performed by individuals. They are looking for low hanging fruit.
It soured my feelings toward wikipedia. I thought of it as a good volunteer project. Turns out some people play it as a numbers game. And they have enormous influence on the site.
Those people than use their power to suppress whatever they don’t like to see on wikipedia, similar to what OP posted.
By the way, to understand how absurd wikipedia’s system is, please take a look at the following news:
Why Emily St John Mandel asked for help getting divorced on Wikipedia
Well, edit count actually doesn’t matter at all in the scheme of admin rights, but some people think it to be some part of their ego. Getting admin rights is apparently exhausting and people usually oppose territorial people from getting admin. Also I’m curious how meaningless the edits were, copyediting is also important.
That was more than 10 years ago. Maybe the changes are indeed meaningful and maybe I was too young at that time. And I honestly don’t mind people making changes.
What made me quit was accidentally reading about wikipedia dramas and realized I was participating in a giant MMO in text. It was not a good feeling.
I do volunteer work to feel good. (Yes, really.) I still sometimes do volunteer work. Just not on wiki.
I know about those, and I have to partially disagree.
The number of edits limits were introduced to filter out people who had no clue, or wish to have a clue, about how Wikipedia worked. I remember having to spend some time on the latest edits page looking for vandalism, or searching for misspellings, or helping people with the formatting of their articles, to get to a minimum number of edits needed for some vote. I learned a lot during that time, and I think it was a reasonable way of achieving it.
Where it started getting out of hand, is when over time the minimum number of edits got increased, and increased again, and again… getting into silly amounts more fit for a bot than for an actual human.
I haven’t looked at it for several years, probably lost my voting rights long ago.
Why Emily St John Mandel asked for help getting divorced on Wikipedia
This isn’t absurd, it’s one of the safety mechanisms to keep a minimum of quality to the information included in the Wikipedia: to be a tertiary source.
Anyone can be a primary source; they might be the ones with the most knowledge… or some rando making stuff up. Wikipedia doesn’t have a panel of experts capable of judging this, or even people in charge of verifying the identity of anyone, so instead it simply rejects all primary sources as a rule.
Because of that, Wikipedia is based on secondary sources and their reputation, on people deciding to analyze, and verify more or less, what someone else is saying.
It isn’t absurd, it’s the only way to run a project where everyone can edit everything, including people totally clueless of the subject at hand… who can nonetheless report on the analyses done by secondary sources, help with the formatting, spell checking, or double check the validity of sources added by others.
I am pretty sure I am more knowledgeable on said subjects than those “editors”.
That’s the thing: you may be pretty sure, but Wikipedia has no way of knowing whether that’s true, and doesn’t even try to.
If you are more knowledgeable, you’re free to become a primary source and publish your stuff, whether through academic means or simply on a website.
If you’d rather apply your knowledge to analyzing the articles of others, you can become a secondary source just as easily, start a WordPress or Medium blog and go ahead… but don’t forget to cite your primary sources.
Wikipedia is the entry point for people totally clueless about a topic, aimed not towards presenting knowledge, although it does some of that, but mainly towards presenting where to learn more.
It isn’t a perfect system, ideally you’d hire a panel of experts and have them curate all content… but that comes with a whole set of problems, that would never have let Wikipedia reach the size it has as fast as it has.
Keep in mind the original Encyclopédistes took 19 years to publish a single edition with little over 70,000 articles, while the Wikipedia has grown to 6.7 million articles in just 22 years (Size of Wikipedia as of Nov 2023)… plus some more in a bunch of different languages.
I’ve checked it now, and I see the permission systems have been changed since I was last seriously active on Wikipedia.
Somewhat ironically, I’ve now found a years old notification for a deletion vote… which I couldn’t take part in, because at the time I was busy almost dying. Funny how these things work.
As someone who only tried making some random corrections here and there and wasn’t all that “in” in the whole editing world, over time the experience was miserable enough that I simply don’t bother anymore.
More than once I tried correcting the Finnish version of some pages on a specific subject that had pretty blatant misrepresentations of what the source material actually said (as in they actually ended up claiming the opposite of what the source or the English page said), and my edits were reverted by some “power admin” who was treating the pages on that subject as their personal fiefdom. They refused to have any sort of rational discussion about it, and it turned into them just using obscure (to me, anyhow) Wikipedia policy references to get their way and I simply couldn’t be arsed to figure out how to get around this particular asshole.
As someone here in the comments said, “people will people.” Too many Wikipedia admins are in it simply for the feeling of power, and Wikipedia’s frankly quite complicated policy is used more as a weapon against people who dare encroach on their turf rather than as rules for ensuring good-quality pages.
Edit: also, am I the only one who keeps accidentally clicking on Lemmy’s “delete comment” button when meaning to edit a comment? Why in the everliving fuck doesn’t it ask for confirmation?
I’ve had personal experience dealing with them and they’re by far the worst and most narcissistic individual I’ve had the displeasure of interacting with.
They modded several subs, including r/advice and /offmychest. They were incredibly touchy and prone to calling people stupid for not understanding their convoluted rules. I got banned for responding to a post that they deemed to be on the wrong sub. They didn’t have time to create a copy-paste to redirect people to what they thought was a more appropriate sub, but they did have time to write individual replies about how stupid I am and how I should have learned (not to question them, I guess?)
In addition, extensive evidence was presented during the case, backed up by analysis from Jayen466 in the workshop, that Wifione was likely a reincarnation of an editor who was blocked for extensive sock-puppetry in 2008, after abusing dozens of accounts to conduct a similar campaign over a period of several years which included threatening editors who persistently challenged the abuse. Arbitrators were sufficiently satisfied by the evidence of sock-puppetry that they passed (by a majority of ten to two) a finding of fact stating that Wifione was likely a sock-puppet, and thus that the account was created in violation of a block.
No, my suggestion is you should have left the title as is and your only modification should have been to add “Wikipedia” at the beginning to make it clear what community was concerned.
Wifione has edited Wikipedia to the advantage of the IIPM and to the detriment of its competitors, in a manner consistent with attempts to optimise search engine results. (See Jehochman's evidence and Harry Mitchell's analysis.)
Passed 12 to 0 at 12:11, 2015-02-13 (8 years, 8 months, 25 days ago) (UTC−5)
Sock puppetry
Following a review of Jayen466's evidence and a historic CheckUser result, the Committee considers it likely that User:Wifione is a sockpuppet of User:Empengent, formerly Mrinal Pandey. The User:Wifione account was created and operated while Empengent (talk · contribs) was blocked.
Passed 10 to 2 at 12:11, 2015-02-13 (8 years, 8 months, 25 days ago) (UTC−5)
Endless disputes
Commentary – varying from constructive criticism to ad hominem remarks – about Wifione has been posted in many forums on many occasions over five years without resolution. Forums include: Wikiquette assistance ([11], [12], [13]); the Administrators' noticeboard, ([14]); the Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents ([15], [16]); Jimmy Wales' talk page ([17], [18], [19], [20]) and Editor review/Wifione [21]).
Passed 12 to 0 at 12:11, 2015-02-13 (8 years, 8 months, 25 days ago) (UTC−5)
He’s just a mentally ill attention seaker and probably has some form of obsessive disorder.
He’ll be back, there’s no doubt.
It’s best to fade this news into the background as fast as possible so he gets nothing out of it.
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