When there is a heated, with a lot of strong and exaggerated arguments on both sides, and I don’t know what to believe, or I’m overwhelmed with the raw information, I look at Wikipedia. Or even something that is not a current event, but the information I found on the internet doesn’t feel reliable.

I’m sure some would find flaws there, but they do a good job of keeping it neutral and sticking to verifiable facts.

  • antidote101@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    40
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    If you know the policies and how to find your way around Wikipedia, and are certain that you’re right - you can generally have the truth prevail (as long as you have reliable sources backing up your claims).

    The real trick is to know the policies and where to complain that they’re not being upheld. In your case you should goto the BLP noticeboard, and ask for an uninvolved editor’s help in figuring out how to, or whether the information should be added.

    This generally gets others interested in advocating for the truth.

    • 📛Maven@lemmy.sdf.org
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      1 year ago

      See, it sounds like that’s another way of saying “If you don’t have a ton of spare time and nothing better to do with it, don’t even try to edit Wikipedia”

      • antidote101@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        Depends whether your edits are consistently bad enough that they’re reverted every time.

        If so, then yeah, you shouldn’t be editing Wikipedia.

        • 📛Maven@lemmy.sdf.org
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          1 year ago

          I mean, the premise was “vindictive or mean editors who ‘own’ pages and refuse to allow changes to ‘their’ article”. The goodness or badness of the edits are not in question; there are editors who camp a page and find technicalities to revert anything that isn’t theirs or that they don’t like. Sometimes they don’t even find technicalities, they just do it, relying on their own reputation and your ignorance. The fact that one has to learn to do an end run around them and engage in wiki politics, hell, essentially learn an entire second legal system, to “have the truth prevail” for even a minor fact with citation is exhausting. It filters out good potential editors who nonetheless have no time to engage in the behind-the-scenes drama proceedings. It’s not like this hasn’t been a known issue for years now.

          • antidote101@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            2
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            Yeah, but like with anything in life - if you keep encountering the same problem over and over again, you should probably consider your own approach to be a factor in the process.

            So sure, there probably are vindictive editors, but if it’s a reoccurring theme, then something else might be at fault.