User:PhilOSophocle

This is my main page. Do not leave comments for me here; use my talk/discussion page located here instead.

Wikipedia is handy for a large quick reference manual, but in basic terms, it sucks. It's really nothing more than an open-source website & forum, not an encyclopedia. Letting just any idiot edit an article is ridiculous as it leads to much misinformation & disinformation, usually due to "truth by fiat", in which a group of people get together to decide what version of the story they intend to defend as "fact".

There is a lot of "bullying" on Wikipedia by people who take over the unspoken "administration" of particular WP article(s) and typically have cadres of friends, usually at least one of whom is a true WP "admin", which is a person of some echelon of power within WP. It's these friendships that create the fiats, like online streetgangs essentially who decide what you're going to read in the articles and that's that regardless of the facts. Also, it's not uncommon to see people use "sockpuppets", where they operate 2 or more accounts and pretend that all the accounts are different users.

Then there are users who have read the various WP policies and who quote them when cornered and use them like lawyers use the law to twist the situation into what they want to shut down opposing viewpoints. They start by telling you you're wrong and they have reverted the edits, then when you revert their edits, they accuse you of "vandalizing" the site just because you changed it to something they don't like, whether it's the truth or not. If you persist, they then report you to a grievance board and you are then tried by ambush. You typically think you've lost even when you win. What these bullies don't realize is that the basic foundation of WP is that anybody can edit; it's democracy in action, so if you have a problem with someone's edits, that doesn't mean they're always wrong and you're always right.

And it all starts because you saw something and dared to participate in the process as WP encourages!