At 05:12 PM 8/28/2013, Richard Fobes wrote:
The Wikipedia article titled "Electoral reform in the United States"
contains a heading "Electoral Reform Proposals" and then under that
heading is a section titled "Instant-runoff voting". Obviously this
needs to be broadened to "Election-method reform" with IRV being just
one kind of election-method reform.
Does anyone have time to do this edit? (I don't.)
If one doesn't know Wikipedia policy, it can be an exercise in massive
waste of time, or it might be useful for a time, and it's quite unreliable.
Basically, that there is what we might consider important information,
even information that, among the informed, is obvious and generally
accepted, is not enough for Wikipedia, by policy. Indeed, making up an
article out of your own knowledge or conclusions is called "Original
Research," quicklink WP:OR, and is prohibited. Everything should come
from Reliable Sources, but don't copy, except for short excerpts,
explicitly quoted, and attributed.
"Reliable Source" does not have the ordinary meaning, it is a Wikipedia
term of art. It means something independently published, and not
self-pubished by an author or advocacy organization or even certain
kinds of special-interest groups. Gaming the Vote, Poundstone, is RS. A
page on the rangevoting.org web site is not. Never cite anything to a
mailing list!!!
And, then, if someone reverts you, don't revert war, it can get you
blocked quickly. Don't use the Talk page to discuss the subject, but
only for evaluating suggested edits. Yeah, counter-intuitive, all right!
The cited article is atrocious.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_reform_in_the_United_States#Cost_of_problems_with_the_current_system
is one section.
It's "recentism." Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and is to be written, by
policy, from an "encyclopedic point of view." Everything in the article
is about recent situations or proposals or organizations.
There is less reliable source on this than on past reform movements.
The article appears to be written from a reformer point of view, very
possibly someone affiliated with FairVote.
The history of the article shows extensive editing by
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:DavidMCEddy. This user is not exactly
a single-purpose account (WP:SPA), but close, he's a reformer, writing
about election reform. He uses what appear to be self-published sources,
including FairVote. First step would be to take the article down to what
is reliably sourced. Much of the article looks like Original Research.
A chart showing the advocacy positions of organizations is close to OR.
Is that a reliable compilation? What were the standards for inclusion?
By the way, the first editor who edited the Talk page, and who worked on
the article, was Captain Zyrain. CZ was, at that time or thereabouts, a
FairVote activist, and was, he later told me, sent by FairVote to "take
me out." Unfortunately, he engaged in a conversation and said,
essentially, "OMG, I've been on the wrong side." He was subsequently,
under a different name, banned.
The article had a POV tag on it for years. That was removed by
DavidMCEddy unilaterally. That's not a violation of policy, but he
removed it first and asked questions later.... In his discussion of the
article, he appears to have had the intention of removing the appearance
that the article was a "sales pitch for Instant Runoff Voting." Indeed.
But he's not a sophisticated editor.
McEddy makes piles of small edits, also a sign of an inexperienced
editor. Yes, one should not make one huge edit, that is also rude. But
section rewrites should be done with a single edit, proofread before
saving....
The POV tag was added by Devourer09.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Electoral_reform_in_the_United_States&diff=455307060&oldid=455302714
This editor had five edits this year, so far, probably is not checking
his/her watchlist.
Recent edits:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Electoral_reform_in_the_United_States&diff=570492529&oldid=570491180
though it appears to be a sound edit, elimination possibly POV language,
was reverted by a power user, an administrator, "to revert block
evasion." That's standard practice if an editor is identified as evading
a block, to revert their contributions without considering them. Anyone
could revert that back. If they dare. I don't know that any serious POV
pusher is watching this article.
That reversion is odd. The IP was not blocked, there is no block log for
it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents&oldid=570593657#Harassing_an_administrator.3F
Arthur Rubin reverted this IP on a page not related to any of the
reverts of his edits.
Fascinating. Rubin maintains a page listing all the incarnations of this
IP editor, in his judgment. He's violating common advice to ignore
trolls. But this is what I've seen. Blocking an editor becomes a matter
of personal power, it's a contest of wills. And, generally, the IP
editor can continue as long as he or she wants. There is no reliable way
to block every edit, with all the options an editor has. If an
administrator gets an editor sufficiently pissed, this can go on for
years, at enormous cost in administrator time, and with collateral
damage. Range blocks can block an enormous number of users who have
nothing to do with the problem.
But this current editor hasn't been blocked yet, as far as I could see
(but the pattern does indicate this is the same editor with IP
previously blocked, I'd agree). I argued that an administrator should
never block an editor, except short-term in an emergency, and then
asking for independent attention, for attacking the administrator. I
haven't researched this case, I used to go into these in detail. You can
bet it wasn't popular.... The active core in Wikipedia did not want
*any* restriction on the power of administrators to do whatever they
please, so conflict of interest administration was, and probably is,
common. It's pretty normal, but the neutrality of the project required
more than that, and failure to understand this is a piece of why
Wikipedia is unreliable.
Even if Rubin was totally justified initially, he's created a user at
war with him. Did he ever attempt to resolve this? I don't know. I
worked with Rubin at one point, not a bad sort at all, by comparison
with certain others. But this kind of thing happens routinely, Wikipedia
burns out administrators, and they don't undertand why.
I need to stay away from Wikipedia. I see too much.
