After seeing the DeskSpace Wikipedia page languish for most of 2009 with numerous inaccuracies (e.g. it does *not* require DirectX 9, it’ll run just fine on DirectX 8.1 thank you very much, and it is *not* usually distributed as a .ZIP file), I decided to take matters into my own hands and update the page myself.
Big. Mistake.
One of the Wikipedia Powers-That-Be, Wikipedia administrator Orange Mike, came down on me like a ton of bricks and blocked me from editing the page (and any other page on Wikipedia). Now, I understand that the founder of Otaku Software editing the DeskSpace Wikipedia page is seen by Orange Mike as a conflict of interest (ironic, given his history), and if that’s how he wants to police the DeskSpace Wikipedia page then that’s fine.
I also have no intention of getting involved in a long, drawn-out fight over something as silly as a web page, and I’d much rather spend my time spent helping the Otaku Software team cook up new versions of DeskSpace and TopDesk for our fantastic users, so I’m not going to appeal the block.
However, it worries me is that there’s inaccurate information on the DeskSpace Wikipedia page and I have no way to correct the mistakes. As an example, the DeskSpace Wikipedia page stated that DeskSpace requires DirectX 9. Despite it clearly stating that DeskSpace requires DirectX 8.1 on our system requirements page, and despite my *cited* changes to the DeskSpace Wikipedia page to reflect this, the page has since been changed back to state that DeskSpace requires DirectX 9.
I know I’m nitpicking, but what’s the point of having DeskSpace on Wikipedia if the information isn’t accurate, and what’s the point Wikipedia administrators policing edits if they’re not going to ensure the correctness of an article? Wikipedia is a great tool, but it’s all too easy for a topic to suffer because editors either can’t be bothered or simply don’t care enough to verify its accuracy.
At the moment I’m at a complete loss as to how I can fix this sad state of affairs, so if anyone has any advice on the best way to ensure the DeskSpace Wikipedia page is up-to-date and accurate then I’d really like to hear from you.
A block itself is not really such a big deal, you know. Your edits set off an “abuse filter” because of the username you chose (OtakuSoftware), which may have be taken to imply that you were editing directly on the behalf of an organization or that the account is in the control of more than one person.
If, on the other hand, you had begun with an unrelated username, no one would have thought you were related to the company, or for that matter, that you had a conflict of interest.
For my part, I think you do have a conflict of interest; I think you understand that. You can still be right about the changes. To get them added to the article, you can request an unblock with a username change. Then you can acknowledge the perceived conflict of interest and post the changes you want to make to the article in question to the talk page of the article, rather than directly making the changes yourself. There they can be reviewed by other editors, approved, and added to the article.
The administrator is not really at fault here; Wikipedia deprecates role accounts as a matter of policy.
I’ve no problem at all with being blocked (although another admin had politely requested I change my user name a few hours before, which could have avoided this whole mess). If that’s how Wikipedia is policed then that’s fine, and I don’t hold it against Orange Mike.
My blog post was more about calling out Orange Mike for not doing his job properly than complaining about being blocked. My gripe is that my changes were reverted without Orange Mike checking their correctness. The original article was factually wrong, and Orange Mike simply didn’t care. If my account name was a problem then he was well within his rights to block me and/or request I change my username. However, reverting the article to its previous state without even reading my *cited* changes smacks of laziness. You could argue that he reverted the article based simply on my username, but I think it’s entirely reasonable to expect an editor put in a little leg work before they take such drastic action. That another editor has now stepped in and started adding the changes back in says a lot about the way Orange Mike conducted himself. He obviously takes his role on Wikipedia seriously, he just doesn’t seem to want to put in the hard yards investigating changes before he ceremoniously deletes or reverts an article.
As I said before, I’ve no intention of fighting the block. What began a 15 minute activity to correct some mistakes will now involve me spending a whole lot of time fighting Wikipedia red tape. Given the reception I’ve already had, I think its safe to say that any unblock request is going to be denied. If it isn’t, then there’s a good chance some other tin-pot dictator is going to block me. Even if I manage to stay unblocked, correcting the accuracy of the article will involve me begging other editors to make changes. It seems like a *lot* of work to just to make sure a web page has the correct information. I understand that this is how Wikipedia works, and I don’t have a problem with the site having rules and processes to protect its integrity. However, I feel that it’s a waste of my time to navigate this convoluted process when I could be improving our software products instead. With the blog post and this long reply I’ve probably spent about as much time on the subject as I want to
It’s my hope that other users will take over the task of keeping the DeskSpace Wikipedia up-to-date and accurate. Editor Joshua Issac has started reverting my changes back in, so it seems like things are looking up.
James, my JOBS are things that pay me. One of my volunteer services is serving as an unpaid admin for Wikipedia, where our emblem of office is the mop-and-bucket. I clean up the debris, the graffiti and the spam (f you want to envision the role of a Wikipedia admin, combine the concepts of the Augean stables; Sisyphus’ rock; and Prometheus and the vulture — and remember we are all volunteers). You have an enormous conflict of interest in this matter, and the way to handle a COI is yes, asking disinterested third parties to make the edits you would like to see to this article. I’m sorry if that wearies you, but it’s the same standard everybody else is held to. I put in the hard yards every time I open my account and pick up my mop.
My rewards, of course, are enormous: I get my userpage vandalized almost daily, getting called f*ggot, commie, motherf*cker and k*ke on one of the most widely read websites on the planet, and I get whines like yours about how I should let you write your own copy on the article about your company. [James: But it's OK for you to do the same for your close friends, despite the obvious bias? Sigh.]
I do this because I believe in the concept, and I try my best to do it fairly (to the extent that I am occasionally accused of treason, heresy, class treason, and other thought crimes, by people on my own side of various issues that matter to me enormously).
I have much more fun hobbies, and a lovely wife and loving child. With this long reply to your blog post I’ve certainly spent far more time on the subject than I wanted to; but I am trying to explain the reality of how we are forced to work when all the work is done by volunteers like myself.
I’m sorry, but I think you’ve missed my point Mike. What I’m saying is that all your hard work will be for nothing if you’re not going to take the time and care to make sure you’re doing it right.
Just to be clear: I’m not whining about being blocked or not being able to edit the page. I understand the processes in place at Wikipedia, and I completely accept them.
Block me for conflict of interest? Fine. That’s the rules, and I completely understand. I have to ask other people in the hope that they’ll edit the page for me? Already tried that. If you’d spent even a little time looking at my edits, you’d have found that when I posted the changes I reached out to one of the pages editors. In my message to them I notified them of the changes, noted the conflict of interest, and asked them to remove any material they felt was objectionable (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Joshua_Issac under the “DeskSpace” topic). I tried to work with Wikipedia editors in good faith, and look how it turned out. I could try again, but I have no intention in getting involved in silly web page politics. Personally I feel that my time is better spent serving my customers.
My main issue is that your actions *reduced* the quality of the page, and forced other editors to step in and redo the changes. The edits I made weren’t spam or some attempt to deface the article, and you could have verified that simply by looking at them. To quote the editor who fixed the mess you made, I “added valuable, referenced information”. This didn’t seem to matter to you, and I doubt you even read the changes. You simply noticed that my username breached Wikipedia policy (ignoring another editors previous polite request to change the username in the process) and reverted the article.
I understand you’re doing all this for free, in your spare time, but because you didn’t do your job properly you made other volunteers work harder. If you take your contributions to Wikipedia seriously then that should be cause for alarm.
You have editorial control over what’s fast becoming the #1 repository of knowledge on the planet, and with great power comes great responsibility. *Please* take more care in the future.