Another thing to notice about Number 57 is that he generally only edits obscure elections to align with his visual preferences, he never does it to any American or large European elections. Likely because he knows the opposition there will be too strong
Wikipedia is one of those areas where everyone should be thankful that annoyingly pedantic / obsessive people exist. As insufferable as they are, they do a fantastic job of making it reliable for the rest of us.
7:55 "I don't see how outgoing/incoming members are relevant to an election"...Arguably, that's the MOST important thing. You know, the people actually elected or not?
57 had a point about removing badly sourced info, but lost the plot in the Botswana section. Just removing data you don't like is hard to defend, and outgoing members is demonstrably helpful and the design norm across wikipedia. But that said the other guy ("Markos") didn't help his case by being a scumbag too
Video is inaccurate. It was the result of a public request for comment. The actual final decision was made by an unrelated editor who goes by "Ixtal". 57 was just the admin who made the final edit after the comment period concluded. I don't know if RU-vid allows direct links in comments, but you can see the RFC at this page: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Elections and Referendums/Archive 23. The section is called "RfC on leaders_seat election infobox parameter"
10:42 ah yes, the fantastic wiki phenomenon of "the information you added isn't formatted correctly, so i'm going to remove everything you added entirely instead of correcting it"
@@YellowJelly13 You're missing the whole point of the site. Wikipedia is a community project that anyone can and is encouraged to edit and improve. Editing is everyone's job. If something is wrong but the information itself is correct, it's always better to fix what's wrong instead of removing it and doing nothing to add more info. Easily the worst Wikipedia editors are the ones whose whole edit history consists on looking for mistakes to remove instead of correct.
@@YellowJelly13 no, it doesn't; if you can explain every minute detail of how you should format the information (which they ALWAYS do in the edit notes), you can take the time instead to correct the formatting instead of just smugly nuking everything
yeah. Probably a childish overweight guy. Just going around ruining things that already were made. People like him are literally dragging down everyone down. If humanity didn't have to deal with a billion small bs problems every day we could start focusing on more important stuff.
I have a big problem with admins getting onto their own crusades like 57 seems to have done. It’s a role that should strive for objectivity. That’s very difficult to achieve if you have skin in the game, so to speak. The old adage of great power and responsibility applies.
I think the parameters should be kept and used. 57's rule seems designed to support his visual preference, not because it leads to more informative pages. Removing stuff like "leaders's seat" and "outgoing members" just makes the page less useful.
Seriously, making the wiki itself easy to navigate is relevant! If a wiki page is innacuate thats annoying, but at least i should be able to find my own sources and improve it with the relevant information thats why we have [citation needed]. If the page is impractical to navigate to and from then editors are less likely to spot mistakes and dubious talking points.
This is why I retired from wikipedia editing. The longer and more established an editor or admin is, the more their edits are respected and accepted, even if they are downright idiotic and make the user-experience infinitely worse.
This reminds me of a classic Japanese saying: "Do not be fooled by a craftsman that claims he has 20 years of experience, when he really only has one year of experience, 20 times."
Wow this was wild. Obviously I agree that info needs to be accurate, but Number 57 clearly has a minimalist preference and was far too eager to remove info in my opinion. I don't like his argument for Botswana at all. The entire concept of an infobox being "too cluttered", thus making the info "inaccessible" is just ridiculous to me. An extra link in the box doesn't suddenly turn the box into a mess where you struggle to read anything. Plus, you have to think about it from the perspective of someone going to this page to check things. People interested in this election are probably going to the page to see who was elected or not, that link is the type of thing they'd be looking for.
I had the same problem about a month ago, I spent like a day working hard to improve a bunch of elections just for it to get reverted for little no more reason than "I don't think this should be changed". Didn't even want to discuss it with me or find any common ground, just reverted. Needless to say I wasn't very happy. I am actually astonished I wasn't the only one who encountered this from them. I thought I was just an isolated incident, but this seems to be a much larger problem
To be a little conspiratorial, Wikipedia has a history of changing political pages to suit the preconceived notions of their parent company (Wikimedia) and yes I mean company. Any NPO which easily multiple times over the cost of running their service and STILL begs for money on said service is 100% for-profit. This move I think could be very well for elections in the future, that way administrators can lock pages and make them say as they wish under the guise of "It's what we did with all other elections, we only use information from the most scholarly sources".
Having interacted with Numbert 57 in the past, I personally believe that they fall into the trap many other editors do: it's easier to simply remove unsourced information from an article than it is to find and add a source for it. I find this is especially the case for highly active editors who monitor thousands of pages at at time. On my side of Wikipedia, I've seen inexperienced editors add correct information only for it to be reverted because no source was provided. In this instance, where does the fault lie? Do we get peeved at the editor who added an uncited claim? Or do we lash out at the editor who (ironically) adds back in incorrect/outdated information in an effort to prevent new unsourced information from cropping up?
This was essentially what I was thinking as well. Rather than maliciousness, it seems more like a case of a "power user" trying to be quick and cast a wide net, rather than thoroughly investing in any single page. When combined with a personal preference for minimalism, the result is that they will be quick to remove things from infoboxes without much second thought.
@@nojrants "I am the most intelligent user about ALL of t hese subjects. No one could ever know more than I do, or have better sources." That's how he comes across to me.
@@UCKY5keep in mind that while the occasional editor is overzealous, the point of Wikipedia is that we can work together to correct and maintain things. Its only when someone like this becomes dogmatic in their editing style that we get problems (especially when they're versed enough to become admins)
@@UCKY5 To be fair, on traditional encyclopedias that people can't freely edit, the page would be written in its entirety by someone like Number 57 and then locked in place
It wouldn’t be a niche Wikipedia article without a random unarchived website source from 2002, and at least one major rewrite destroying what was once a decent article. Bonus points if it then ends up being used as a source by a RU-vidr. Great video!
When I found out about number 57 I rushed to his account to see if he had edited Paraguayan elections, what I found was that the man edits dozens of election articles a day and apparently that's all he does
Number 57 touched Barbadian elections too and made a mess of them. The last 2 elections were won entirely by one party, but the info box now has us looking like a one party state instead of having multiple but just having won nothing
@@jl63023 Oh god I just checked and the fucker has done the same to Grenada’s election page for the 2013 and 2018 elections, we look like a one party state too
57 is the sort of admin you remove and ban from admin for being insufferable, they can come back in 2 years if they can prove to the staff that they will be more amicable
Yes this is an interesting debate as well, and from what I understand it's actually larger than just Kubrick. There is/was a sizeable faction within the artistic biographies niche that is anti-infobox entirely, and they successfully rallied for an exception that creative personalities (mostly directors and authors) may have no infobox.
@@nojrants I remember seeing that, and the debate really sounded pretentious. "No Kubrick is an auteur! He should not have an infobox like the regular directors"
@@anne.andromeda I support the theory some had that the only reason they pushed for that was because they wanted people to read the info they themselves added to the page instead of just glancing at the infobox. Basically, attention seeking to a degree.
Whenever I read a Wikipedia article that I think looks really professional and objective, taking a quick peek at the talk page never fails to destroy that illusion.
@@the11382 It's a weird form of bias, because it's not necessarily the traditional biases based on politics or ideology (yeah there's some of that too), but on the personal preferences of whoever is willing and able to spend the most time writing and editing. I'm not even sure there's a word for that.
So, he's the reason all the charts I saw for each election are gone? What the hell. Enough with his minimalist idiocy, aesthetic preferences can't trump the fact that his edits omit information that is useful or at least interesting and relevant to an election.
Also, have you seen his talk as of late? He's getting a bit spicy, or getting flak and complaining about it. Though he did comment on the video more generally.
I have interacted with someone like Number 57 on a National Football teams page who stated that including the teams results was not relevant information I was so shocked. And he claimed that since a page he made had been featured as the page of the day that it proved he was right. He came across like he had a huge ego. I just looked at the same page now (Peru's team) and the results are there. I guess he lost in the end.
I like infoboxes. Them and maps make Wikipedia much more like historical atlases, which I love and have many of on my bookshelf. Writing papers in college I realized for many wiki pages of obscure historical topics have entire sections that are plagiarized, but honestly I prefer this situation to no info at all. Generally it is better to keep information rather than remove and make a page small, cause I can't look up another source when lines aren't there. I also find a lot of Wikipedia's issues to be the issue of lack of central control. I think most people like pictures and infoboxes more than I do, and its annoying when one rogue dude can do something just out of the blue on a whim
I agree, I consider infoboxes one of Wikipedia's main elements; it's something they're know for and the type of thing you go to Wikipedia to check. Also it's very true that many pages unfortunately have subtle plagiarism, or misinterpretations of the sources. I've seen a few instances within my own area of expertise (Soviet history) where I've checked a Wikipedia page out of curiousity or for quick reference, and noticed something false yet with a source. Then I see what the source is, and it's a book I read or even an author I know personally and think, "there's no way they said that". Sure enough, on the actual page cited it says something different. That's unfortunately something very hard to catch unless you are already very experienced in the topic.
All information is eventually plagiarised and there is nothing original under the sun. I wish people would realise this instead of blocking sharing and creativity. Copying others should be encouraged, not shunned.
Even if 57 was right regarding the information, there were better ways at going about it than stealth editing a sh1tload of articles. Surely, there should be some method to prevent one guy from editing a buttload of stuff. Maybe have a bot which tallies admins editing articles by categories. If someone edits ~20 articles of the same "genre" in a single day, it might set an alert. Also the excessive amount of "admin talk" I read from him gave me a headache. You know that style of speech of appearing very formal while seething venom underneath, as they talk down to you.
I agree that they probably could have been more transparent. As another admin pointed out in one of the comments, most of 57's major edits were given under the guise of "format", which might come across as deceptive when it's actually deleting some 60% of the page. Now from 57's perspective they were just doing their regular maintenance and didn't feel any need to announce it, but I do think that if they had made a discussion post on the election hub beforehand saying "hey I've noticed we have a problem across the French elections, let's see if we can tackle this issue and form a consensus on what to do" a lot of this would have been avoided.
Whether number 57's edits are correct isn't a matter of concern, what we can all agree that a single individual SHOULD NOT have that much influence over information, ESPECIALLY ABOUT POLITICS
@@OmnivorousOtter101 You have the same capacity to change most pages as 57 does. The whole point is that the encyclopedia gets better as more people contribute.
if the info is demonstrably false it should be removed with extreme prejudice. no info is better than fake info. later on someone can fill it back in. everything else 57 did and said was extreme pedantry, but he's absolutely right in deleting the fake info unilaterally
I think the purpose of an Encyclopedia should be that, but Wikipedia is hypocrite. In many Wikipedias, specially in mine (Spanish) it has many articles removed for not being "encyclopedic", or information in general, and their philosophy is literally "just being a source for the most important information". That's so subjective that it leads to good info being removed, abuse power admins and, in general, if it really tries to be an encyclopedia, why the hell wouldn't it include as much info as possible?
Number 57 seems to be one of those wiki admins who thinks that the role of an admin lets you wield a scepter, when really it's a mop. Also, deleting something wrong instead of actually fixing it is an unfortunately common practice among editors, and I hate it.
you should talk about the NOTA/invalid vote war where Number 57 pushed for results which dont match the offical ones (despite the threshold) in Serbia, Lithuania, Latvia & Bulgaria
There appears to have been conflicts all across the elections niche-I think there was also a debate regarding the removal of first round votes in elections that have them. But ultimately I stuck to these couple of examples because they seem to be the most exemplary and well-documented. If you have any information regarding that example though I'd love to hear more.
@@Liggliluff number57 created the templates used for election results and they are used anywhere but spain (which also the last country actually doing its own thing by including blank votes) I wonder If there was a spanish Rebellion against him?
@@nojrants Removing the info about first rounds would be incredibly stupid. I can't comprehend how someone could have such an idea. Such person shoul really not be Wikipedia admin or editor.
5:12 The secondary sources/historical analysis are what you're supposed to use on Wikipedia anyway. I feel like a lot of election pages break Wikipedia's rule against "Original Research", and also synthesize different sources to get their data
This is very true, I originally was going to bring this up in the video. Ultimately they shouldn't be diving into the newspapers themselves, but looking at a formalized aggregate of the sources
If I’m being honest, infoboxes should contain more to the side of information and not less, specially if its not present elsewhere within the article, human electoral system are complicated by design and while someone can say that less info looks “prettier” it might oversimplify too much and/or lose someone’s interest over learning about xyz topic that they may never read a single article otherwise.
Whats more annoying is this is already a solved problem. Wikipedia infoboxes use subdivisions, colour, clear delineation between pieces of information etc. To produce something very quick and easy to read and search through. Removing information will save, at best, like 2 or 3 seconds for someone scanning through the infobox for what they want. And at worst it makes them waste tons of time havint to scan the entire article because the simple number or name they want is buried in a paragraph somewhere.
Honestly there are a ton of pages that have absolutely bloated infoboxes. They aren’t supposed to represent all the information of the article; otherwise we wouldn’t have the body text, we’d just have infoboxes. The idea is to represent the key facts. Which members lost their seat in the election is not, in my opinion, a key fact.
Amazing video, I specifically remember looking up the 1848 French Assembly elections and being surprised at how little information the page (and the corresponding infobox) had-- Now I know the reason. Personally I would prefer Infoboxes to be as large and detailed as possible and necessary, while still concise. Wikipedia is supposed to be an online encyclopedia after all, and you use those to quickly and briefly gather information, sometimes at a glance, before moving on to more primary sources.
Information should *never* be destroyed. Inaccurate or simply wrong information should certainly be removed, but uncertain information or unreliable sources should simply be flagged as such, but the information left to view.
I agree, I personally err on the side of more information being a good thing. I think ideally those parameters should be displayed in the infobox, or at the very least, still preserved in the text. Therefore I found Number 57's removal of info from the box based on the fact that it wasn't in the text (thereby removing it entirely) to be unconstructive. People come to Wikipedia for that information, so removing it entirely just makes the page less functional and helpful, despite technically being correct to the guidelines.
I am actually astonished I wasn't the only one who encountered this from them. I thought I was just an isolated incident, but this seems to be a much larger thing
As far as I can tell, Number 57 is almost ubiquitous in the elections niche, so if you ever edited any national election chances are good you'll interact with them
i think on the whole, wikipedia is good, but has like, admin fiefdoms in some niches where garbo admins lead ruthless absolute monarchies and tyrannically conquer new articles this wikipedian admin imperialism, in my opinion, makes wikipedia even better. i mean, not for the average person that wants good information from a domain within the iron grip of one of these petty kings who deal only in suffering and misrule, but for those of us who like the funny stories this terminally online medieval realm of tyranny produces. even the concept of the *possible* existence of a wikipedian fruit empire run by a dictatorship that ruthlessly edited all of the citrus pages to their weird egotistical whims' desire is delightful to me. did such an empire exist? i mean, it *could* have, and the environment that makes such a goofy thing possible is, in my opinion, good. we must permit and cultivate this phenomenon like electronic, geopolitical bonsai trees.
@@iMajoraGamingI dont think so. (Internet. And wikipedia users, hang me if you want) but I think the matter isnt as severe as it seems, of course we cannot just prohibit the course of actions of admins but we should have a way to regulate them. The tales are funny, but they shouldn't be the only ones with the power to define the consensus. And of course they could be missing some really really fat pieces of history or importamt context while making their edits
I have seen several articles have large amounts of relevant information removed because of the "Wikipedia Beautification Movement," users who trim and delete information so that an article is more aesthetically pleasing. Despite my edits being on the receiving end, I don't think that this movement is entirely misguided. Not all notable information warrants being included in an encyclopedia. There are definitely articles where trimming content would, and has, improved readability. But like you mention in this video, often well-sourced, relevant information is deleted for aesthetics. Why is brief, well-sourced information on the etymology of my community's indigenous name deleted for the sake of "aesthetics" while the almost entirely unsourced and unverified History section reinstated?
There are so many articles that beatifully summarize events that occurred several years ago, but then for anything that happened within the last year or two, you get excruciating details from updates happening basically every day or week. Recency bias. There is no need to discuss every little thing happening with a topic just because it's recent. Wrestling and band articles are the absolute worst at this. You get great summaries of older events, but then every time a band member or wrestler sneezes in 2024, it gets a sentence.
@@B3Band I guess this is because people commonly go to Wikipedia to check news on things as they are ongoing. I do hope though that once the events pass they will go back and retroactively reflect on the event and summarize it.
Being informative, accurate, and useful should trump aesthetics any day of the week. Print encyclopedias are limited by the physical space they take up; this is not a limit for an online one, and thus shouldn't be a consideration. There is no such thing as too much information.
Interesting, I bet we will see a lot more edit wars soon given how many elections are occuring this year. Naturally, it looks like Number 57 is involved on the Pakistan election too, although not taking the lead.
Never use Wikipedia as a reliable source of religious, political, philosophical, or historical information. It's too often that theres someone in the creation of that page that is compromised on the issue at hand.
Fun fact german Wikipedia is missing many infoboxes, because early on german wikipedians didn't like them because if you can easily find the info people won't read the articles they wrote😢
I am glad someone else looks at this shit. I use wikipedia quite a bit and looking at edit wars and user info is sometimes more fun than reading the actual articles. I remember seeing a wiki war on Russian orthography iirc ( though it might have been on something else ) between a monarchist and a communist and one of the rewrites sourced a far right now defunct website that looked like it hadn't been updated since the 2000s visually speaking and even had to use an internet archive link, because apparently that's enough to establish a consensus that a bunch of reforms were hated.
The thing that annoys me is that 57 doesn't give a shit about essentially anything but themselves. Instead of fixing the boxes they would rather delete actual content and act as though their word is final
@@hughm1383 There's not much an issue with using a neutral term for somebody. Unless it warrants a correction (calling a man a "she") then this comment feels a little pedantic.
oh my god thank you for covering this. Wikipedia Edit wars are hilarious. I was going to do a video on the Stanley Kubrick Infobox War that ended only a year or so ago. There was a years-long heated dispute entirely regarding the infobox, and it was whether or not to include it at all. I think it boiled down to the initial removal of it being human error, and someone else demanding that it stay without an infobox. Due to discussions being locked several times for cooldown periods, Kubrick simply had a photo of himself at the top of the page, because editors believed that Kubrick was too superior to be belittled by an infobox, and anyone wanting one is a dummy.
Wikipedia is infested with that type of editor, I've made simple uncontroversial edits before and someone obsessed with that one page undoes it instantly because of some arbitrary reason (not related to accuracy or sourcing), just because it's not how they personally want the page to look. It's a real problem cause few people care enough to put the time in to counter that kind of destructive, possesive editing, reducing the quality overall. Personally I have stopped editing Wikipedia now as a result of those people.
7 месяцев назад
57 seems like the worst person to grab a beer with.
As far as memory goes, Wikipedia is supposed to be without bias. Thing is, Number 57's bias towards Minimalism and the Wikipedia Beautification Movement has obscured proper editing, in my opinion, and has undoubtedly resulted in the inaccessibility of information. And while he did give valid points about information, as stated in the video, I believe that was a cover to justify needless editing. What do you guys think??
Wikipedia is a lot more biased than people think. Encyclopedia Britannica is much less biased and much less opiniated. Wikipedia at times uses biased sources or sources that cites sources that cite Wikipedia(creating a circle of fake sources). I have also seen editors reject primary sources in favor of secondary sources as "more reliable".
Wikipedia tries to state what is fact and what isn't on pages regarding SCIENCE. You know, that ever-shifting fields where new, contradictory info is found every day with varying levels of validity. It's biased as all get out.
Honestly all I'm getting from this video and the comments is that a LOT of people have issues with specifically this guy (57). Why is this allowed to continue? ONE person being such a pain for basically the entire elections niche seems like it's better to just ban him from being an editor for a while. It really sounds like he slows the entire information gathering process down instead of boost it because he keeps everyone arguing about old information/discussing solely with him what should be done instead of looking up new information to add to pages.
As a wikipedia editor since 2008, I need to admit - this platform is generating some weird, hidden demons while a dispute happens. You're turning into a wild animal that defends its territory and prey like a wildcat, honestly, I've caught myself having a faster heartbeat when somebody reverted my busy edit, it's very common on english wiki, but jesus, sometimes I think if it's my fault and I'm getting pissed off too quickly or if it's some wikipedia's werid phenomenon, just like with TikTok or Instagram influence on humans behavior and activation of hidden instincts. Sorry, I need to go, somebody demands a source to my edit.
On normal websites, 57 would have been banned a long time ago. But not on Wikipedia - in that cesspool, the worst rise to the top and become admins. Like our special friend.
I saw a tweet that brought this video to my attention! As a Wikipedia editor I am now infuriated with Number 57's clear abuse of power. It's a complete shame that nothing has been done by this, but for those who are wikipedia editors among you we could try to establish a more productive consensus (since that is how Wikipedia operates) or perhaps file a report under Wikipedia:Requests for review of admin actions
This is a classic example of how inadequate Wikipedia is as a source. Any historian will tell you of debate among historians for information and how our understanding constantly changes but Wikipedia creates a dominating narrative despite dubious citations and interpretations.
Yes this is a valid concern. I think ideally Wikipedia should give a zoomed out look, presenting both sides of a historical argument if there is one, but what I noticed is that there's technically nothing stopping a user from writing a page based solely on one side of that debate. I've noticed this within my own area of expertise (Soviet history), where a page is well cited and written, but relying heavily on one historian's opinion (probably not from malice, but just because that is the author the user has looked into/is aware of). Adding a contrary perspective is then an up-hill battle, since it now appears as though you are going against an established, well-cited page.
Wikipedia is the superior approach to knowledge when compared to the previous approach... reading encyclopedias. And let's not pretend as if historians don't run around with their own severe biases and aren't constantly fighting over what is or isn't correct historic information.
Which is why Number 57 was right in removing unsourced information from election articles. Some of it was downright false and created, as you said, misleading domminant narratives (Dreyfus election, for instance).
@@undolf4097 why would it be, do you think people who haven't even made the slightest endeavor into studying history would sit around ping-pong fighting over details in Wikipedia articles about ancient history? Charged present-day topics aside, it seems to usually be academic or semi-professional people I'd describe as historians who are fighting in the mud pits of ancient French election Wikipedia articles. The thing is that we are just not yet used to seeing science being done in this way instead of through exchange of angry papers between these people, published in obscure academic journals.
It's entirely run by people with way too much time on their hands, so of course they're going to use more words in their arguments. At one time I tried to fix obvious errors (basic self-evident factual errors, often contradicted by Wikipedia's own articles) just to butt heads with people who care more about procedure than actually being accurate. I gave up really quickly... I don't have the time or inclination to fight with people that obsessive.
If you even come close to something resembling an insult they pull out the Rules and you lose by default. eg. the Off-wiki attacks policy they brought up
So from my understanding from this video: -Wikipedia looks shit nowadays -There has been potentially citable sources/unsourced details in Wikipedia -Number 57 is a c word
This video perfectly exemplifies why any community moderated site will inevitable turn to shit due to bad actors with too much power. This is true for basically any forums with mods, also basically the worst thing about reddit, etc.
57's point about infobox's needing to be short so people will read the full text is rediculous. The info he's removing in this case is navigational tools. The point is for it to send users to other pages they might be looking for, with pages in question having information that the page in question omits. Not to mention the personal attacks, I'd say it's unbecoming of an admin but it's sadly so common... As common as admins adding frivilous rules without discussion.
This is the exact reason people distrust Wikipedia as an information conglomeration by it's admins. It's gonna get a whole lot messier if it keeps going like this
Another fun one is "Mark Felton". This is a wiki page about a youtube "historian" who gets into long drawn out battles with wikipedia editors about trying to edit his own page to make himself look better.
7:09 “The less information it contains, the more it serves its purpose” Well, I guess where he deleted info boxes completely, he took this principle to its extreme.
What makes this very, very stupid is that one side is saying "We need info boxes to provide good visuals", while the other side is saying "if the info is wrong, just delete everything." Clearly the solution is to use the correct information to rebuild the visuals, but no, these people are too stupid for that.
I'm not sure I see the point of minimalist infoboxes at all. What you're looking for can be found in a couple of seconds even on articles with infoboxes two pages long. They're very clear and readable. I'd also wager that the majority of wikipedia use is to reference the infobox (or what should be in an infobox). I guess the new default layout might not give enough space for the main article, but to be honest, that's not an issue with the infobox, and minimizing the info in the box for that is making changes that severely harm all viewing methods to benefit one in a minor way.
I agree, and personally I don't think much of the "minimalism" argument holds up. We know that the infobox is one of the main elements people reference, so I think people expect those fields to be used and filled out. The supporters of minimalism have argued that this makes the box "cluttered" or too messy to use, but I have a hard time buying that argument. At a certain point, like on those French Revolution-era election pages, I almost wonder if there's even a point to the infobox anymore. By 57's argument, a box with only two lines is very "efficient", but I personally am experiencing the opposite, as I now have a harder time finding what I'm looking for. This all started because I was trying to quickly pull up a couple French elections to see what the turnouts were, as a point of comparison in the next Russian election video I was writing, and that data point had been almost completely removed.
So Number57 reaction to this videos is (from the talk section of his wikipage) : Oh hooray. It's a shame they didn't point out the changes to the infobox guidance were a specifically recommended outcome of the RfCs in question (which made it look like I added it in unilaterally). Number 57 20:47, 15 January 2024 (UTC) To be fair, it much more balanced than I was expecting and it looks like RU-vid commenters are a bit more discerning than those on Twitter. I am very much a minimalist when it comes to infoboxes, but had no idea it was so controversial. If the video creator is reading this, the reason I didn't use Nohlen & Stöver for the 1898 election is (a) the Roi et President source was already used in the article and (b) Nohlen & Stöver's figures are rounded, which look a bit odd when compared with a source that seems to have real numbers. Number 57 22:14, 15 January 2024 (UTC)
He is a useless troll that should be banned from WP for life. The policy of deleting entire sections instead of correcting them, or marking them disputed, means he is one of many disruptive and obfuscating editors.
bro said "To be fair, it much more balanced than I was expecting and it looks like RU-vid commenters are a bit more discerning than those on Twitter. I am very much a minimalist when it comes to infoboxes, but had no idea it was so controversial." yeah your minimalist aesthetic preference kinda sucks bud
@@CarewolfThat's more than being a troll. It's on the verge of vandalism. There are some really, really weird editors out there who have anything but good intentions. I always have to think of the Scots Wikipedia where one person made thousands of articles without knowing the Scot language. That's not being a troll, that's vandalism. Not if it's intentional or not is another question, including in this dude mass editing election pages for "reasons". But it's still a type of vandalism. Especially if they then lock the pages after being done, that's just the cherry on top
Huh, y'know sometimes seeing these vids I forget the debate is still ongoing and there are still folks who care enough to respond. Hopefully this leads to some forward progress on the issue actually being resolved...
I mean, of course accessibility is important and Number 57 has a point, however I do think that he is doing this more because of personal preference rather than actual willingness to make the Wikipedia page better, as you showed in the beginning of the video, this guy has edited A LOT of election related pages to do the same information removal thing & I highly doubt that all of them had the same problem. When it comes to removing false information or simply ones without sources, I absolutely agree with him about removing them for obvious reasons, but it just does not enter my mind how when people showed this guy sources that are seemingly reliable, he would go on to ditch them and stuck with a... not so good website, of course as you wrote in 6:00 he might have had I reason to do that but why did he not tell us? He has this weird level of secretness that kinda says to me that the reason is probably not that good. Just one more thing, in the Botswana case, he says that he removed some links to make the page less crowded, however as we all had saw before, the page was completely fine, in fact I reckon that it was even more accessible due to it having more information, subsequently it was more reliable since we have got all that mapped out, nonetheless he removed some crucial information for a reason that does not even make that much sense, I just cannot wrap my head around this. So yeah, this Number 57 guy does not seem too professional to me, I would be fond of seeing how other Wikipedia Admins portray the situation.
The debate over the definition of "accessible" was really contentious during that debate, I think because it's something both sides could cling to as an objective justification for their preferences. I tend to agree with the side that more links in the infobox means more accessible. If the link is right there it literally can be accessed more easily. The argument of Number 57 and similar users was that if you remove more info, the box becomes more succinct, and thus is "accessible" in the sense that it's streamlined. In this regard, 57 focused on this idea that the box was "cluttered" when the link was there, thus making it unusable, but I personally cannot get behind that logic at all.
@@nojrantsWikipedia should rely more on expert advice to resolve those disputes. Surely there MUST be at least one editor, or even admin, with UX experience (namely in accessibility) who could very well present their professional credentials and give some input on the matter, based on… you’ve guessed it, sources. Making these decisions based solely on personal opinion is idiotic beyond belief and makes me lose even more faith on Wikipedia as a platform. Heck, it’s already more than 20 years old at this point, and UX courses have been all the rage for at least 10; we shouldn’t even be debating this kind of shit anymore. 🤦♂️
Yup, I had very long debates over an aestetic issue on Wikipedia years sgo. Literally all Wikipedias did one particular thing in one way, and in my language it was another way, that was rather pointless. I was even blocked over it for some time by admins who had an aestetic opinion in favour of keeping the difference. Then at one poiny it was just changed to the way it is in all Wikipedias.
Debates over aesthetics are difficult since they tend to be very subjective. I think that's why in this debate both sides tried to focus their arguments on "utility", "accessibility", or of being more closely aligned with the design principles. Personally I tend to defer to what presents the most information and is the most helpful to people; aesthetics shouldn't come before that.
@@nojrants The particular debate I am referring to was over the fact that on the Main page of that Wikipedia pictures that were in the Main Page infoboxes were put into image frames (those you get with "thumb"). Those frames were just put there for literally no reason.
Greetings from Russia! Not exactly in relation to this conflict, but I’ll tell you a similar case on Russian Wikipedia. There is one unpleasant admin there who is PROUD of deleting information and entire articles about ACTORS who do dubbing. As you understand, foreign products, such as Turkish TV series or American cartoons, are very popular in Russia, so dubbing actors are literally a way for a Russian person to touch these works. We have quite a lot of dubbing actors, although there is a small problem with the fact that some proven, seasoned actors are almost always used. But this admin HATES dubbing and prefers Russian dubbing to Russian subtitles. He can be understood, but his position led to the fact that, with the full connivance of the administration, materials that tell about which actor voiced what where were significantly reduced or completely removed, or the Wikibox that clearly shows which actor will voice which role was removed.
A particularly fun Wikipedia War is Maize vs Corn on the English wiki. There have been 6 different discussions over the past 17 years about if the page should be called Corn. Oldest June 2007. Newest is February 2023.
Another example of Wikipedia admins more often than not making the site worse because of their ego and stubbornness, whilst going after smaller articles they know will offer less resistance to their preferences. Thanks for the upload Noj Rants! I died laughing at that talk page war.
truly an amazing 180 from "I guess he has a point accuracy in election results is important" to "jesus christ why does an admin go on a personal vendetta over infobox aesthetics?"
Many Wikipedia admins seem to remove absolutely anything that don’t have a source. You could say apples are usually red and they’d take it down because it didn’t have a Oxford essay from 60 years ago saying apples are usually red.
@yhubtfufvcfyfc Sorry I'm not sure what happened to your comment. It seems to have disappeared while I was writing this, so maybe it was mistakenly struck by the spam filter. But I hope you still see this reply. I agree, Number 57 could have been a lot more transparent. Deleting some 60% of an article under the guise of "formatting" is bound to cause confusion, as can be seen by the numerous people saying it should have been discussed first. The edits to the French elections, while I think good intentioned, also could have been more robustly researched. If you're going to overhaul a page in the name of removing "false info", you should be introducing a strongly researched alternative-there still being errors or a paucity of sources on the "improved" version undermined 57's argument. Likewise, going through the many examples, they seemed to be focused on simply deleting the "false info" rather than fixing it. Almost always their edits were just summarily deleting rather than replacing. While you could argue it's urgent to remove misinformation as soon as you see it for a really important election, the more constructive edit in my opinion would have been to spend some time on each election, replacing/keeping as much as you can with new sources/research. My intuition is that this is a result of "power users" trying to be quick but not necessarily thorough, combined with 57's clear preference for minimalism-if you believe infoboxes should be as short as possible, you're not going to miss the info once it's gone. And I agree, while probably good intentioned, their actions may go against the spirit of the project. Removing agreed-upon parameters from a page because you prefer a simplier box goes against the generally agreed upon use of those boxes; deleting the info because of a technicality ("info must be in the article if included in the box") also goes against the spirit of that guideline. Changing the documentation, while technically legal, appeared a little deceptive to me and I'm not sure that would have stood under increased scrutiny. Obviously the Twitter brigaders should have assumed good faith as well and not blindly reverted, since there were incontrovertible problems with the original. Likewise, Markos and others argued their case especially poorly, resorting to ad hominems and other nonsense, which only served to vindicate 57. Perhaps if done civilly and through the correct channels, this would have been very different. Anyway, thank you for the comment! I appreciate hearing the perspective of other Wikipedia admins in this matter.
I removed the comment for the time being since I wasn't sure if I would be completely comfortable with everything I said if it was connected to my Wikipedia name. I believe all the issues I mentioned are real, but I may have been partially projecting issues with other users onto Number 57. I'll probably put out an updated version of the comment after a good night sleep. Also I found the RfCs on the WikiProject talk page after making the comment which changes things a lot for me and puts them in a lot better light. Finally it seems like Number 57 has a small message for you on their talk page.
@yhubtfufvcfyfc That's fair, I can understand that completely. Just wanted to make sure you didn't think I deleted your comment, since I've had problems with the spam filter in the past removing good comments. The discussion about removing the parameter in December 2022, as well as the RfC in February 2023, are both linked in the description. My intention was not to say they unilaterally or illegally changed the rule. I ended up cutting a lot from that part of the video since it was getting long, but maybe I could have made that more clear. At most I would say it was slightly deceptive, because at least as far as I can tell, the rule change wasn't the focus of the RfC but was added onto it. Rather, it was an RfC about keeping/removing the parameters, and a couple days after the closure Ixtal wrote: "Updating close based on concerns raised on my talk page...Editors are encouraged to include appropriate guidance on when to use the parameter". You can also see the rule idea was mostly floated after the fact, with Number 57 bringing it up pretty much as one of the last messages; people signed onto the idea of updating the documentation, but I'm not sure they would all agree to that interpretation or Number 57's implementation. So again, I didn't mean to frame the rule change as malicious, but rather I push back on the rule being settled practice. Although perhaps as an admin you might have more experience regarding if any of that is irregular or not.
@nojrants I could be missing something, but isn't N57's use of the rule still kinda contrary to Wikiquette? The guide says the infobox should augment not replace, the obvious implication being if it's not in the body it should be added there. But he uses the rule to justify deleting stuff. He also specifically added a disclaimer in the documentation only to the parameters he thought shouldn't exist, after failing to have them deleted entirely, thus in practice giving him a license to remove those parameters anyway. Removing those parameters was not what the RfC agreed and it contravenes common practice
57's interpretation of the RfC seems like subterfuge to me. The spirit of the consensus was that those parameters should be used, but after being outvoted he essentially asked for an exception. Then he uses the exception to stop the parameters from being used. So yes he had an RfC but he's following it in a "malicious compliance" sort of way.
People look at the infobox for quick and relevant information and navigation, and they shouldn’t be minimalist for the sake of being minimalist. Removing info from it with the excuse that the info needs to be stated in the article is completely pointless. 57 needs to put his personal preferences aside.
