More Bad Habits of Wikipedia Gatekeepers

Newly-elected congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was not notable enough for Wikipedia … until she beat the incumbent in the Democratic primary in New York’s 14th congressional district. Now she has her own Wikipedia listing.

How many other accomplished people have likewise been refused? Wikipedia currently shows 867,424 “Living People” (to put this in context there are currently 7.6 billion people in the world (with a median age of about 28)), very few of which would likely be known by most of us (although many of these people are athletes). Clearly there are millions more who are worthy of a Wikipedia listing, though it takes some initiative to prepare suitable material. But it must be that there are substantial barriers to getting that listing approved. Wikipedia itself cautions against preparing an article about oneself.

The Bad Habits of Wikipedia Gatekeepers

Wikipedia was a great idea when it was founded in 2001. For roughly its first decade it was a great tool. Not only was it useful as a free, online resource to get essential information that was mostly free of bias. And it was a means for people who have contributed ideas and created products and services to describe their contributions. Unfortunately, it has fallen on bad times because legions of people with too much time on their hands have used that time to bedevil mere mortals who dare to create additional entries. For example, we wrote the following description of our website TechnologyBloopers:
The website TechnologyBloopers in 2013 was created to chronicle the bloopers,[1]mistakes or misguided directions in design and implementation made in electronics, computing hardware, and software, calling them to the attention of the companies and individuals making them and asking that they be fixed. The website also chronicles the misguided hiring policies of many companies in the Bay Area [2] that insist on expanding in Silicon Valley [3] and so contribute to increasing the homelessness and the tent cities in Silicon Valley [4]. The website advocates to end homelessness in Silicon Valley and tries to feature opinions about the real reason why there are so many homeless people in Silicon Valley; [5] and has worked with artists and musicians in the Bay Area to produce Tent City Here We Come Again, a song about Tent Cities in the Bay Area.[6]
Technology itself does not create bloopers. The bloopers are the result of two kinds of human error. The first kind is “tops down”, i.e. organizational or institutional. It is the failure to create logical and reasonable policies and procedures. This creates a lot of “accidents going someplace to happen”. The second kind of human errors is “bottoms up”, namely the failure to understand human behavior and design the technology to deal with this behavior. Humans are creatures of habit, error-prone, sometimes lazy, etc., and these characteristics needs are taken into account in designing the technology.

For our pains the Wikipedia reviewer declined to allow this description, saying:
Submission declined on 10 May 2018 by David.moreno72 (talk).
This submission’s references do not adequately show the subject’s notability. Wikipedia requires significantcoverage (not just mere mentions) about the subject in published, reliable, secondary sources that are independent of the subject—see the general guideline on notability, the golden rule and learn about mistakes to avoid when addressing this issue. Please improve the submission’s referencing (seeWikipedia:Referencing for beginners and Help:Introduction to referencing/1), so that the information is verifiable, and there is clear evidence of why the subject is notable and worthy of inclusion in an encyclopedia. If additional reliable sources cannot be found for the subject, then it may not be suitable for Wikipedia at this time.
Declined by David.moreno72 22 seconds ago.Last edited by David.moreno72 22 seconds ago. Reviewer: Inform author.

When we asked Wikipedia about this gatekeeper, we find that he is a Master Editor entitled to display a Platinum Editor Star, and in 6.3 years has made 60,000 edits, or nearly 30 edits per day, so many would-be Wikipedia contributors have been affected, likely in a negative way.

Bad as this is, apparently the in-fighting among these editors is so intense that it triggered one of The Wall Street Journal’s front-page humor columns.

Will There be a Useful Truce Among Ads and Ad Blockers and Ad Blocker-Blockers?

AdBlocker Composite 600x500

History buffs may liken this situation to the spy-and-counter-spy among countries. It surely seems to us at Technology Bloopers to be a great waste of resources and a great inconvenience to the more than 3 billion current users of the Internet today. Most users have already been spoiled by the “free” goodies they enjoy in return for their viewing increasing volumes of advertising. This arrangement has been around for at least 150 years in newspaper and magazine publishing, although most of the important hard-copy publications make their revenue from a combination of subscription fees and advertising purchases. By contrast, the much more recent Internet is mostly free to users and paid for by advertisers. Some interesting exceptions are Wikipedia, language-learning site Yabla, and purchase or rental of plugins and themes for WordPress.  In the opinion of Technology Bloopers, there are many Internet sites for which users would pay reasonable fees, which would reduce the conflict among the titans of Silicon Valley. Google has contributed great gobs of technology but financed it heavily with ads. But users have had their fill of ads, leading to a rapid growth of ad blocking software. And some of the ads are so intrusive (the ones on SpanishDict.com are the worst in our experience, interrupting users with highly-distracting audio and  video) that they cry out for ad blockers … and boycotting of such sites in favor of more ones that are less obnoxious. The advertisers have been spooked by this software, leading to a rapid growth of software that undoes the blocking. Most recently Apple has jumped into the fray with its own ad blockers, which is a welcome counter-force, though actually Apple has its own ads buried in its Apps, so the only beneficiary is Apple, while Google loses business and consumers continue to be annoyed by ads.