User:Chris Chittleborough/ContraEnthusiasts

As Wikipedia grows in prominence, we become more and more attractive to people who have something to sell.

In some cases, this is an actual product, and they try to use Wikipedia for advertising; such edits rarely last long. Others who sell Search Engine Optimization services try to use Wikipedia, with minimal success.

The biggest problem is the non-commercial marketers: the people who sincerely believe that the world desperately needs to hear The Truth™ about 9/11 or homeopathy or whatever. Many of these ‘enthusiasts’ (nice euphemism, that) try to use persistence and/or numbers to overwhelm the defenders of NPOV at the relevant article(s); some even learn how to use Wikipedia's rules against the defenders, and quite a few manage to harass or bait the defenders of NPOV into leaving Wikipedia.

AFAICT, current Wikipedia rules and culture provide no good solution to the problem presented by these ‘enthusiasts’. Moreover, since we need to keep recruiting new editors, “Please do not bite the newcomers“ is still as important as ever, but hard to reconcile with deterring the WP:SPAs.

I was encouraged to see that one of our wiser admins, JzG, is thinking on similar lines. As usual, he puts things better than I can:[1], [2]

There is a problem here, but not an easy one to solve. A number of articles attract virtually no attention other than from POV-pushers; that leaves one or two good Wikipedians fighting the NPOV corner against all comers, and leads to burnout - at this point trolls will often come along to poke them with a stick. It happens that many (though by no means all) of these good Wikipedians are admins. Wikipedia, as a project, seems to have "delegated" management of POV targets to a people who are then considered expendable, or even considered the source of the problem, when burnout strikes. As they get more experienced, the POV-pushers become more adept at querulous argumentation, citing policy and constantly trying to establish a new "neutral" average between their POV and the current state of the article, a kind of ratchet effect. Cold fusion has twice been reverted to the 2004 FA version due to the pernicious effect of "fringecruft", there are many other articles where minority activists dominate the agenda. I've seen this at articles like Simon Wessely (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views), and user:ScienceApologist is one of the on-admins who is burning out fighting off the kooks. The bad news is, when that happens, the kooks will move in big time. Watching articles prone to kookery is a thankless task, I go back every couple of months to Crop circle (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) and sometimes I'm horrified at what's been done. This is not an especially healthy situation for the project, but these articles at the margins, the ones that form the core of the fringe cosmology obsessions, Remote viewing (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) and other paranormal subjects, simply don't get enough eyes to impede the POV-pushers, because most editors (rightly) can't tolerate the stupidity that goes on there. I also think some people are burying their heads in the sand and ignoring the fact that Wikipedia is now probably the number one most important place to promote your fringe view, mad theory, band or whatever. I don't know a good way to fix this. Guy (Help!) 21:14, 24 December 2007 (UTC)