Editing Wikipedia

[AlanFry1]

Hello all,

I'm not sure if any of you have encountered this bizarre editing strategy at Wikipedia, where I've tried to correctly edit a few incorrect articles about the Lea Valley lines and its connections with sources, to only be slammed down by about 20 editors each time.

Have any of you had problems trying to contribute to Wikipedia also and if so how do I get around these buffers :roll:

 

[507021]

Hello all,

I'm not sure if any of you have encountered this bizarre editing strategy at Wikipedia, where I've tried to correctly edit a few incorrect articles about the Lea Valley lines and its connections with sources, to only be slammed down by about 20 editors each time.

Have any of you had problems trying to contribute to Wikipedia also and if so how do I get around these buffers :roll:

I know exactly how you feel, WHL. I used to edit on there but I gave up, I spent ages formatting a rolling stock article but then someone comes along and decides it has to be done "their way" and even deleted additional information I'd researched in the process. I did it all again as I'd done it and sure enough, they decided it had to be "their way" again. I filed a complaint and nothing was done about it, so I left.

If it's one thing about Wikipedia I can't stand, it's the users who think they "own" articles and if anyone edits it they don't like it.

 

[telstarbox]

Not all sources are equal...

 

[Wyvern]

Firstly discuss it in the article Talk Page

Or then contact the person directly who keeps reverting you.

Or appeal to an administrator

 

[krus_aragon]

I've done a fair deal on editing Wikipedia articles over the years, without getting myself stuck into any edit wars. Without looking at your disputed contributions, here are a few pointers:

*Quote and cite your information. Several railway pages have paragraphs on (e.g.) what rolling stock has been used when on a particular line, without giving any evidence.

*Keep your information relevant. Listing all the services and calling patterns at station X isn't particularly useful to readers, it quickly goes out of date, and the same information is easier to view through the likes of OpenTrainTimes.

*Find your niche, and don't start on the big articles. I cut my teeth a decade ago slowly improving stub articles on a few local disused stations. I had the time to learn what I was doing without any other editors belittling me, and when I asked the wiki:UKRail group for feedback on my improved efforts, it was largely constructive.

 

[krus_aragon]

Additionally: if you'd like more detailed feedback, pm me the names of some of the articles you've edited, and I'lk take a look.

 

[Wilts Wanderer]

About 10 years ago I greatly extended the stub article on the Waverley Route, including much information about the route, services and rolling stock, generally taken from Ian Allan and Xpress Publishing titles and referenced.

A few years later I was rather amused to go on the Disused Stations website and discovered much of my original article had been copied verbatim onto their own webpages! As the info was correct I had no issue with this but it did make me wonder what rights a Wikipedia contributor has over the content they provide. (Presumably little or none.)

 

[Darandio]

About 10 years ago I greatly extended the stub article on the Waverley Route, including much information about the route, services and rolling stock, generally taken from Ian Allan and Xpress Publishing titles and referenced.

A few years later I was rather amused to go on the Disused Stations website and discovered much of my original article had been copied verbatim onto their own webpages! As the info was correct I had no issue with this but it did make me wonder what rights a Wikipedia contributor has over the content they provide. (Presumably little or none.)

Wouldn't there also be similar rights with taking and reproducing the content from the titles you mentioned above?

Genuine question, i've no idea.

 

[Wilts Wanderer]

I think Wikipedia's Creative Commons licence allows text to be copied for external use and presumably any edits are made under those conditions.

Incidentally several paragraphs of my text still appears on the Disused Stations website... Amazing how long digital information remains. That was a well-spent evening in my university dorm

 

[SpacePhoenix]

I'm surprised that there isn't a completely separate wiki covering railways and model railways (unless there's one I'm not aware of). If you take any tv series, a lot of them have separate wikis where articles go into a lot more detail then an article on wikipedia would go

 

[steamybrian]

I have been regularly editing Wikipedia for many years but in doing so have had many disagreements with editors.
Any disagreements I have also highlighted the problems on "talk page" which have been resolved by other editors.
A common fault is that "citation" must be given even though that source may be wrong. So your "gen" may be correct but the source is wrong but the editors take the wrong view that the written word is correct.

 

[krus_aragon]

About 10 years ago I greatly extended the stub article on the Waverley Route, including much information about the route, services and rolling stock, generally taken from Ian Allan and Xpress Publishing titles and referenced.

A few years later I was rather amused to go on the Disused Stations website and discovered much of my original article had been copied verbatim onto their own webpages! As the info was correct I had no issue with this but it did make me wonder what rights a Wikipedia contributor has over the content they provide. (Presumably little or none.)

In contributing to Wikipedia, you license your contributions to be freely used by anyone, with a proper citation/reference.

Last summer I looked through a recently published local railway book, and found a few paragraphs very familiar. They were nearly word-for-word taken from a Wikipedia article I'd contributed to!

 

[CarlSilva]

A mate of mine gave up editing on there after a while. Too many people on that site who think they own it. I edited a page about someone, but someone else kept changing it back, and after a few other people did the same edit, somebody who must have reckoned they were even more clever than all of us, locked it from further editing.
I know sometimes people go too far on it, but even small, sensible amendments get messed with and moaned about.

 

[northwichcat]

Someone removed three sentences I added to a page about a politician claiming the sources were unreliable - one was the Huffington Post, which had already been used as a source three times and one was a blog site. I then found an Evening Standard article which said practically the same thing as the blog site and added them back in using the Huffington Post and Evening Standard as the references and they removed my edits again!

I also had an unusual experience after editing the article of a living person. I added that their place of birth was Gloucestershire and added a reference (which stated place of birth as Stroud, Glos) and got told the reference didn't replicate what I added! After explaining Glos means Gloucestershire on the discussion page they got annoyed and stated the person isn't well known enough to have their own Wikipedia page and requested that the page got deleted, which it did. That in turn meant around 30 other pages got deleted because they related to other people equally well known to the one which was removed.

 

[krus_aragon]

Someone removed three sentences I added to a page about a politician claiming the sources were unreliable - one was the Huffington Post, which had already been used as a source three times and one was a blog site. I then found an Evening Standard article which said practically the same thing as the blog site and added them back in using the Huffington Post and Evening Standard as the references and they removed my edits again!

I also had an unusual experience after editing the article of a living person. I added that their place of birth was Gloucestershire and added a reference (which stated place of birth as Stroud, Glos) and got told the reference didn't replicate what I added! After explaining Glos means Gloucestershire on the discussion page they got annoyed and stated the person isn't well known enough to have their own Wikipedia page and requested that the page got deleted, which it did. That in turn meant around 30 other pages got deleted because they related to other people equally well known to the one which was removed.

Wikipedia (and its editors) are much more stringent with articles on living people because the of the danger of being strung up on a libel case or similar. You may already be familiar with Wikipedia's policy page for such articles. I'm only passingly familiar with it, as I've concentrated on technical or historical articles.

 

[CarlSilva]

Not sure whehather this one was real or not, but I had to laugh.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Not sure whehather this one was real or not, but I had to laugh.

Whehather...?

 

[northwichcat]

Wikipedia (and its editors) are much more stringent with articles on living people because the of the danger of being strung up on a libel case or similar. You may already be familiar with Wikipedia's policy page for such articles. I'm only passingly familiar with it, as I've concentrated on technical or historical articles.

I remember an episode of Dave Gorman's Life Is Goodish where he said there was a made up claim on Wikipedia which a couple of local newspaper articles had copied. Then when he removed the claim someone added it back in using one of the local newspaper articles as a reference.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

I remember an episode of Dave Gorman's Life Is Goodish where he said there was a made up claim on Wikipedia which a couple of local newspaper articles had copied. Then when he removed the claim someone added it back in using one of the local newspaper articles as a reference.

How did that matter eventually resolve itself...or did it?

 

[northwichcat]

How did that matter eventually resolve itself...or did it?

When he appeared on a TV program and said a claim on Wikipedia about him was wrong it would have provided a more reliable reference than a local newspaper who had copied from Wikipedia.