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Wikipedia Advice

1. Advice For Beginner Wikipedia Editors

1.1. Summarized Advice For Beginners

Summary from Tetrapteryx:

  • Focus on the pages that get the most pageviews.
  • Do use mainstream sources.
  • Do use Wikipedia’s dispute resolution processes.
  • Don’t try to immediately overhaul high-importance articles, especially not without reliable sources.
  • Do start small.
  • Do focus on identifying specific problems, and suggesting specific improvements.
  • Don’t try to take on the world.
  • Do build a relationship with other editors, and with each other.

1.2. Helpful Wikipedia Manual Pages For Beginner Editors

There are a lot of manual pages that beginners could read. I recommend trying the Wikipedia beginners tutorial for anyone who is completely new to Wikipedia, and browsing whatever manual pages seem helpful. The purpose of this section is to list manual pages that I thought were personally helpful to me for understanding how Wikipedia works, how to edit, etc:

1.3. Focus On Editing What You’re Most Interested In

Advice: Only focus on writing or editing what you’re interested in. For the longest time, my reach exceeded my grasp when I wanted to learn literally everything. Unless you have a mindset like that, you can skip this section.

In 2021, I wanted to edit every under-developed Wikipedia article I had ever seen, even if those articles were not among the most interesting topics that I prefer to think about. In 2024, I significantly narrowed down the list of Wikipedia articles that I want to edit down to the ones that I am highly interested in anything. Although there are literally thousands of Wikipedia articles out there that I could use my time and effort to improve, it isn’t worth trying to work on all of them, because there’s many other things that I value doing in life more, which is namely, racing your family, and working to make money to support said family.

There are billions of different things and ideas that I could spend my time thinking about in this world. That being said, I’m the kind of person who wants to find out the top 1% most important things that I could possibly be thinking about at any given moment, and unfortunately, that is no easy task. But I do know that I’m not going to find any of that kind of must-know information inside a bunch of news outlets striving to make money by putting in front of my eyes whatever will catch my attention. They have a conflict of interest between making money with click-bait titles versus telling me what I should be thinking about.

1.4. Maximizing Impact And Outreach

One point needs to be stated before anything else: The most useful thing anyone can do on these articles is keep watch over them, and undo vandalism when it happens. The largest problem with most of the articles is that they aren’t being watched by anyone who cares about them. This means that people can remove chunks of sourced material without giving a reason, or add material without a source, and the changes often won’t be undone.

One of the most important ways to earn respect is by contributing to articles on a wide variety of topics, including those that have nothing to do with race or intelligence. Editors always are taken more seriously at Wikipedia if they appear devoted to improving a diverse range of topics, and the more friends you make on those articles, the more people you’ll have to potentially defend you if that becomes necessary. It’s also important to form a relationship with editors who care about improving race and intelligence related articles, since these are editors you might be interacting with periodically. The following are five editors who might be able to help you improve these articles, if you request their help in their user talk.

– Tetrapteryx, Advice for Wikipedia Editors

The Wikipedia reliable sources noticeboard (WP:RS/N) of occasional discussions that over the future of the sources and information stated and cited in wikipedia articles.

There is a strong correlation between how many pageviews an article has, and how many other articles link to it on Wikipedia.

1.5. Advice For Finding Sources

WP:THREE suggests that when writing an article, the three best reliable sources with the most significant coverage are often sufficient to prove WP:Notability (and thus inclusion) into Wikipedia and/or avoid deleting from Wikipedia.

We don’t need a complete article, we just need one which is capable of being accepted. We genuinely do not want perfection in drafts! We are sometimes shocked and surprised if we see it. What we want to do is to help folk leap the hurdle of acceptance. Once accepted then most new articles are found by way more editors and are worked on, sometimes badly, mostly well, by many more people.

As a draft, most other editors will not find it. Thus your only objective is to show that it is notable and thus that it is accepted. The entire treatise is not required.

You only need sufficient to prove notability. It is all still in the history. Nothing is lost.

From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Articles_for_creation/Help_desk

Recommendations of fast and convenient ways to find reliable sources to cite in Wikipedia articles?

It depends on where the sources for what you want to write about exist (or are available):

  • Yandex and Perplexity AI are a good start for finding publicly online information.
  • Google Books helps for books that have been scanned (and parsed) into its database.
  • Newspapers.com is good for writing information about local historical events and places.
  • The Wikipedia Library can help you access many sources for free which most people cannot access.
  • Google Translate helps for translating information that is only found in other languages.

If you’re unsure about whether a source will count as a reliable source or not, then you should check WP:RSP (Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Perennial sources).
If you can’t find the source listed there, then you should search the Wikipedia and Help namespaces with “Is X a reliable source?”

1.6. Advice For Writing

When creating or expanding wikipedia articles, the information that should be included into the article should simply be written as bullet points. You can later rearrange and tweak those bullet points into the paragraphs. By contrast, if you focus on writing paragraphs every time you read new information, then you divide your focus by constantly looking for the next thing to be included into the paragraph or by using cohesive devices, which can conflict between things that are already written or about to be written. These conflicts slow down the writing process. They don’t need to be completed until after you have found and paraphrased all the information that you want to the article to include.

Being the first person to create an article can give you some leverage over for styling the article according to your preferences. For example, being the first main contributor to an article can allow you to choose a preferred date style (unless the article subject’s location mandates a preferred style): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Dates_and_numbers#Retaining_existing_format.

To submit a draft for AfC review, add this template to the top of the draft: {{subst:submit}}.

Once you are an autoconfirmed user (achieved by making at least 10 edits and having an account that is at least 4 days old), it will be possible for you to create articles by simply moving drafts from the draft space or user space into the mainspace, provided that the page(s) are ready for the mainspace.

1.7. Other General Editing Tips

  • “WP:MANUAL_SHORTCUT_LINK” can also be used to refer to the Wikipedia manual pages, which is helpful for explaining why some changes are being made and can make the edits more likely to stay in place and be better while received. Links styled this way can be used in both edit summaries and talk pages.
  • Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia This page in a nutshell: When copying content from one article to another, at a minimum provide a link back to the source page in the edit summary at the destination page and state that content was copied from that source. If substantial, consider posting a note on both talk pages.
  • You should add the {{cn}} template to any claim that you think is likely to be true, but is missing a reliable secondary source. If you see claims that are unverified (and likely to be false), then you can just remove them. Wikipedia has an official rule that any claims without citations can be removed.
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_needed#When_not_to_use_this_tag Do not use this tag because you don’t understand a statement, or feel that “non-expert” readers are likely to be confused. Use {{Clarify}}, {{Explain}}, {{Confusing}}, {{Examples}}, {{Why}} or {{Non sequitur}}, as appropriate, instead.
  • To put multiple paragraphs in a list item, separate them with {{pb}}.
  • The pipe trick can made editing easier, but there is a caveat to it, when you’re using the pipe trick while editing wikipedia entries as (.wml) text files on your hard drive. Wikipedia always expands wikilinks that use the pipetrick, before saving the edit and rendering the text.

  • The {{wiktionary}} template could help you make a lot of new edits to Wikipedia.

    Example: {{wiktionary|objective|objectivé}}

  • Know the difference between these two:
    • {{wikt|cult}} (displays the wiktionary box).
    • [​[wikt:cult]] (displays inline wiktionary link).

  • On Wiktionary, the {{wikipedia}} template could help you make a lot of new edits to Wiktionary.

    Example: {{wikipedia|Objectivity}}

  • https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Template:quote-web
  • To link to Wiktionary, use the shortcut [​[wikt:]].

  • To link to media on Wikimedia Commons, use the template: {{commons category|CATEGORY_NAME}}.

    Example: {{commons category|Kittredge Mansion}}

  • External links in Wikipedia articles typically include the “nofollow” attribute, so adding external links to Wikipedia articles does not improve the SEO of the websites being linked to.
  • You can link to sections within an article which will go to those sections without reloading the page by just prefixing the section name with “#” in the first component of wikilinks. However, if that section of the article is transcluded in a different page, then the wikilink won’t work. In such cases, you can just include the article name before the hashtag, and the wikilink will work inside the article and any articles that transclude that section of it.
  • If you are arguing with other editors to exclude something from an article, it’s usually probably a stronger argument to say “it’s redundant to include X because X is already implied by Y” than to say “it’s not necessary to include X because X is already implied by Y”.
  • To archive a webpage for the current date, you can go to https://web.archive.org/web/save/[URL-YOU-WANT-TO-SAVE] to make the Wayback Machine take a snapshot of the current state. This is what happens when you use the “Save Page Now form at https://archive.org/web/web.php.
  • The attribute |url-status=live can be added to some sources to toggle whether the live article or the archived version should be displayed first by default.

When using the same reference twice on Wikipedia, does the cite book or whatever template between the ref tags always have to come before all the other mentions that cite that reference? Or it is it possible to add a name attribute to the reference angular bracket, and then use the secondary naming tag before that one appears in the Wikipedia article file, like in a leading section?

It appears that order does not matter. However, I personally recommend creating and using a dedicated references section. It makes the article text look cleaner and thus easier to edit in the browser editor and text editor program. It also makes it easier to retrieve all the references needed for transcluding some section of an article into another article.

2. Biases On Wikipedia

2.1. Wikipedia Has Humanist/Leftist Biases

Wikipedia is an exhaustive, nonpartisan encyclopedia filled with (allegedly) balanced sources curated by thousands of attentive editors. De jure, it is supposed to aim to be neutral, unlike partisan opinionated narratives backed by weak, often false evidence instead. Unfortunately however, Wikipedia also has obvious biases, and especially left-learning political biases. These can be attributed to: 1. The partisanship of Academia, and 2. the membership of the mainstream media.

Wikipedia sometimes reveals its biases not by its outright falsehoods, but by the truths it looks past. For example, there is a page on “Christian supremacy”, defined as the belief that “Christianity is superior to other religions”. This is a strange definition, given that a belief in their own superiority is common in nearly every faith. There is no article on “Islamic/Muslim Supremacy”, although there is an article on Islamic extremism.

Sometimes, Wikipedia directly uses language to include bias. For example, conservative political figures/activists are nearly always labeled as such in the first sentence of their articles, whereas liberals are simply “journalists” without an ideology. As another example, some articles may include direct value judgements inside the articles.

Wikipedia Is Anti-White, Hypocritical, And Endorses Race Denialism:

Woke, Anti-White Wikipedia:

A good case can also be made that Wikipedia isn’t firmly biased enough on some topics. For example, Wikipedia tries to take a neutral stance on whether there’s a God or not. Many other philosophical, biological, economic, linguistic, etc articles should also take a firmer stance in favor of the truth.

I’ve noticed that many of the more left-wing sentences on Wikipedia are more likely to include multiple citations rather than the usual one or two for each sentence. It’d be interesting if some corpus compiled all the sentences from every Wikipedia article and sorted the senses by how many citations that they have. My prediction is that the censors that have more citations than usual will feature both citations that back up more statements and they will on average be more leftist than the average or most realistic public consensus perspective. I should Google and see if anybody has done any analysis or studies on this.

Another reason why we should expect there to be a correlation between sentences that present left-wing political views, and the number of citations that a sentence has is that political phenomena are easier to understand than technical STEM phenomena. If an editor is politically biased, then they don’t need to understand the details of whatever they’re siding with too much as long as they understand that the conclusion aligns with their beliefs, and that they can cite to reinforce their beliefs. When I’m reading articles about technical subjects on Wikipedia, I rarely see more than one or two citations for each sentence because these topics are much harder for most people to understand and they often require reading dense jargon-heavy academic books and papers in order to retrieve the citations.

Also see: Mentions of Political Extremism in English Wikipedia – David Rozado

Related: Wikipedia has Cancer: Why you should not donate to Wikipedia.

2.2. Reducing Humanist/Leftist Biases on Wikipedia

If you know that the material that you are reading has a bias(es), then you can account for it in your mind as you read it. But if you don’t know of a bias and you’re on the fence, then you can be persuaded towards the direction of the bias without realizing it. That’s where this section comes in handy. Before one can edit Wikipedia to project one’s worldview onto the encyclopedia and all who read it, one must understand how to counter Wikipedia’s bias and compete against other editors to project one’s vision onto the encyclopedia.

There are a lot of people, Wikipedia editors out there and people in general who will learn about Wikipedia guidelines and decide that they should blindly follow them and obey them even if they personally disagree with them. It’s one thing if you are agreeing or going along with them in order to not get banned or have your privileges restricted on the website. But it’s another thing when you uncritically accept that as part of your values and you assume that anything that opposes those values is a bad thing.

Some of the Wikipedia articles that get the highest pageviews can be thought as having a sort of “Overton Window” regarding how far they can be shifted towards wokism versus realism. The position of a Wikipedia article on a range of beliefs could also be called the status quo instead of the Overton window of that article.

If a Wikipedia page has not been edited in a very long time, like say several months or years, and there are very few people who are watching the page as indicated in the wiki statistics information there appears at the top of the article, then that means that you probably have more leverage in deciding what to do with Wikipedia pages. For example, if I believe that the first possession theory of property article should emerged into the original appropriation property article, then I can do that and probably no one would complain about it since neither article have been edited in years.

If you’re trying to edit an article to make it more non-partisan, it helps to prepare your edits offline with a text editor and computer files. When you’re finally ready to commit your changes to Wikipedia, you should do them all at once. This decreases the probability that opposing editors will see your edits and be able to act quickly on them, compared to if you make one edit at a time, and allow enough time to pass between edits for other editors to see the page(s) and revert them or otherwise reverse your changes.

It helps to sandwich multiple controversial edits between multiple non-controversial edits.

Often times, more authoritarian editors will roll back edits, while reverting good edits that were rolled back in addition to supposedly bad edits. If a Wikipedia user rolls back a whole bunch of bad edits that you disagree with, it can be beneficial to redo some of the less controversial and less questionably good edits. It’s also easier to do this task when copying, pasting, and editing wikipedia text inside a text editor.

Also see: Advice For Talk And Discussion Pages.

2.3. Practice Good OPSEC

If you have a website which reveals any of your biases, then you should avoid linking to it on your Wikipedia user page, even if it may be tempting. The userboxes on one’s Wikipedia user page can pose a potential doxxing risk.[1] If you’ve already mistakenly revealed either of these things, then it’s worth asking an admin to delete your Wikipedia user page and its page history. You may then recreate the userpage by pasting back in the information and userboxes that you want to keep, for which I recommend using an offline text editor. This should ideally be done before your userpage ever gets archived by an archival site of some sort.

Even if you have controversial POV, other editors will be technically obligated to respect your edits, as long as you follow Wikipedia’s guidelines, use rational arguments on talk pages and edit summaries, and don’t break any Wikipedia policies. Increasing my edit count and contributions to Wikipedia will also increase credibility, even when editing controversial articles. However, the Wikipedia establishment, admins, and community won’t hold back from applying double standards against you, if they want to.

2.4. Hide Your Biases

A lot of the active or prolific Wikipedia editors don’t state their biases, even if their left-wing, because it gives him an advantage for editing articles towards their point of view. There are some Wikipedia editors that openly display a bias in favor of left-wing ideas. This actually disadvantages them, since they’re showing their biases. However, most left-wing or left-leaning users don’t do that. No right-leaning editor should ever reveal their right-wing biases, since they only have much to lose from stating them on their user page and other places. Avoid including userboxes, links, and other information on your user page that may reveal your biases to other editors.[1]

Wikipedia editors who are left-leaning may think that they actually are actually “centrist”, since Wikipedia and The Establishment are so left-leaning in general. They are essentially deluded into believing that left leaning people and biases are actually centrist, when they’re not, and they are actually contrary to reality.

Anything that you say on Wikipedia can be used against you in discussions. This especially applies to your user pages and talk pages more than any other pages. Those are among the two most common pages that people will read first when they’re trying to learn about you and figure out what your interests, motivations, and biases are. If opposing editors can think of a way to point out your an experience, bias, or anything else, they probably will if it could discredit you in such discussions.

You cannot say that racial disparities in intelligence are caused by genetics under any circumstances. Merely saying that can be enough for an editor to get indefinitely banned or blocked without any warnings, any fair trial, or any hope of a successful appeal. However, you can absolutely say that there are observed IQ differences between races. Not even Wikipedia disputes this. The first paragraph of race and intelligence states that IQ has been observed to differ between races. If you do state this however, you will have to pretend that the IQ gap is environmental, lest you risk getting blocked without a warning. However, since the stable article version also says that the validity and reliability of IQ is disputed, you will have to put up with bad-faith debaters who deny IQ, if you insist that IQ is valid. It’s probably better to never state your position, unless it’s relevant to what you want to edit.

It has become increasingly apparent to me that the main consequence of putting anything of any significance on ones Wikipedia user page is to have it used as (invariably facile) ’ammunition’ against one in any ensuing disagreement.

I am who I am. That’s all you need to know.

– User:AndyTheGrump

2.5. The Problems And One-Sidedness Of ZC’s Indefinite Block On Wikipedia

  • I was given an indefinite block 12 hours after the report was made.
  • The block was indefinite rather than temporary.
  • The admin completely out rule, topic bands, even though the vast majority of my edits have absolutely nothing to do with contentious topics. This applies even more so to all my mainspace edits.
  • I didn’t even say anything controversial in the article mainspace.
  • Every controversial and non-sanctioned thing that I said was on talk and discussion pages.
  • The official blocking policy says I editors should be given a warning before they ever get blocked. But I was never given a warning at all.
  • It took me three days to understand the blocking policy, the appeal process, to understand why I did wrong, to write my appeal, to follow the procedure, to read and endure all the factually incorrect things what everybody thought and said about me.
  • The indefinite block was endorsed unanimously. Only one editor referred to anything that I wrote in my unblock appeal. And that person wasn’t even an actual administrator.
  • Instead of analyzing anything that I said in my unblock appeal, everybody justified endorsing the indefinite block simply because they don’t like the views that I have expressed off the wiki.
  • The indefinite block was endorsed from 10 to 1.
  • All it took was for me to make just one mistake (saying and mentioning anything about my website on Wikipedia) and for a few editors to just merely glance at the things that I’ve been off, wiki to want to file a report against me and for >90% the entire community to endorse the block, regardless of what I said, what I can do, and my sincere promise to never say forbidden beliefs on talk pages ever again.
  • None of the other editors who endorse the block care to evaluate what I could potentially contribute to Wikipedia. Even though I legitimately had the ability to add pages and make good contributions that everybody would want an ideals and encyclopedia to have, absolutely no one consider that in their decision on whether or not I should be blocked. Just because I had tap who believes, they had absolutely no interest in understanding what I could potentially contribute to the project, even if I was never ever going to express my taboo beliefs ever again and would’ve been willing to strike out or remove every mention to my website and every taboo thing that I have ever seen on Wikipedia. They don’t care. They don’t like my views, so they would rather exclude me and all my potential contributions from the project forever.
  • I could try to appeal again after waiting six months for a standard offer or even a whole year for the arbitration community block to revert into a normal standard block. But almost certainly, whoever evaluate site appeal would probably not choose to block me. And even if I was unblocked, a huge fire storm would be guaranteed to erupt and argue that I should remain blocked once more.
  • Even worse, when my appeal was rejected, my ban and block on Wikipedia became even more severe by morphing into a community ban and block.

If there was any action that had any equivalent, unforgivable analogy, it would be similar to what pedophiles faced by society once they’re caught once, even if they act was completely consensual and their partner loved them back.

2.6. Wikipedia’s Bias Towards Japanese Words Versus Chinese Words

From User:Kowloonese:

  • I have noticed a biased use of Japanese words over Chinese words in the English language. The strong bias is also clearly reflected in the Wikipedia especially on what are chosen for the article titles. The Japanese successfully added countless Japanese terminologies into the English language. Relatively fewer Chinese words were accepted by the English speaking population. The only exception was probably martial arts terminologies. Ironically even the term wushu failed to take its place as Chinese martial arts. The word kung fu is kind of an exception.
  • When a Westerner asks “What is this drink?”, the Japanese would answer “Sake”. When a Westerner asks the same question about a similar drink, the Chinese would answer “Chinese rice wine”. The word sake did not need to be in the English language because it could very well be Japanese rice wine, but somehow sake is more accepted than Japanese rice wine. Likewise, Judo could be called Japanese wrestling, Kendo could be called Japanese fencing etc.
  • There are many similar concepts in both Chinese and Japanese culture. However, the Chinese concepts always named “Chinese this” and “Chinese that”, but the Japanese equivalent concepts often get their unique names into the English Language. For example:
  • [EXAMPLE TABLE HERE]
  • Some Japanese terms are totally unnecessary in the English language. For example, issei, nisei and sansei literally mean first generation, second generation and third generation respectively when referring to Japanese Americans. Shouldn’t the terms 1st, 2nd, 3nd generation Japanese Americans be more descriptive than the unnecessarily arcane terms?
  • On the flip side of things, some English terms for Chinese concepts are totally inappropriate. For example, Chinese dragon and Western dragon have nothing in common; same problem with the Chinese lion and pheonix. These deserve their own unique names more than just Chinese this and Chinese that. Chinese words can barge their way into the English language like Japanese did if every Chinese person stops desperately finding a Western word to describe a Chinese concept. Those unnecessary mappings and erroneous translations were the main reasons why there were so much misunderstanding and confusions. A lung is not a dragon, then why call it Chinese dragon? A shi is not a lion, then stop calling it Chinese lion. The English language has so many loanwords from around the world. It probably can take in a lot more. The large number of Japanese loanwords is a proof that the Westerners are smart enough to learn new foreign concepts without matching with the old and familiar.
  • Though the root cause of these linguistic problems did not come from wikipedia, but the wikipedian article titles are promoting many unnecessary Japanese “contaminations” into the English language. Some examples of unnecessary esoteric wikipedian article titles include but not limited to issei, nisei, sansei, ie, etc.
  • My objection is not against the use of loanwords nor the tying of foreign conceptions into Western terminologies. A balance is needed somewhere. My rant is mainly about two inconsistent approaches used in wikipedia where the bias is clearly, obsessively and unproportionally leaning towards Japanese loanwords to a point where some of these loanwords are just unnecessary. But on the other hand, Chinese terminologies didn’t get their well deserved loanwords. It is like starving one to overfeed the other.
  • At this very moment, Chinese chess and Chinese abacus are redirected towards Xiangqi and Suanpan. So, one could think there are adopted as terms instead of the “Chinese this” counterpart. Solsticedhiver (talk) 20:49, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

3. Advice For Talk And Discussion Pages

3.1. Never Say More Than You Have To

Related: Wikipedia:You have a right to remain silent.

Never talk too much if you don’t have to. Especially on your own talk page, think of the shortest policy-consistent reply to most “accusations”. Outside of race and intelligence (R&I), that’s typically how new editors manage getting blocked. If you don’t do that, you can comment on as many discussions as you want. These are not typically very dangerous for right-wingers. Just don’t show your beliefs, biases, or power-level, if it’s not necessary.

If you want someone to stop posting on your talk page, you can request that they stop. In most cases, they should or must stop posting on your talk page, per WP:USERTALKSTOP. But one should also be careful not to abuse this privilege, per WP:SOMTP.

Participating in contentious Wikipedia talk page discussions is comparable to gambling. If you can successfully get the changes that you want (which depend on the policies and known sources), then it can be quite profitable for ensuring lasting changes. If you lose the arguments, then you will have wasted all the time that you spent on them. Sometimes, interacting on talk pages can help you understand wikipedia better.

Citing highly specific wikipedia policies usually won’t work in your favor.

Why doesn’t wiki software automatically sign people’s talk page comments, instead of having people do it manually?

Wiki software doesn’t automatically sign talk page comments for several practical and philosophical reasons:

  • Distinguishing comment types: Not all edits to talk pages are “comments” that need signatures. Users might be reorganizing discussions, adding templates, or making other maintenance edits where a signature would be inappropriate.
  • Technical flexibility: Manual signing gives users control over how and when they sign. Some comments genuinely don’t need signatures (like minor formatting fixes or automated bot messages), and forcing signatures everywhere would create clutter.
  • Encouraging mindful participation: Having to manually sign with `~~~~` makes contributors more conscious of their participation in discussions. It’s a small barrier that encourages people to think before posting and take ownership of their contributions.
  • Historical consistency: MediaWiki and other wiki platforms developed when the norm was manual signatures. Changing this now would break established workflows and muscle memory for millions of experienced editors.
  • User agency: The wiki philosophy generally favors giving users control rather than making assumptions about what they want. Auto-signing would remove that choice.
  • Technical complexity: Implementing smart auto-signing that knows when to sign and when not to would be more complex than it appears, especially considering the many edge cases and different types of talk page interactions.

Some wiki implementations and browser extensions do offer auto-signing as an optional feature, but keeping it manual by default preserves flexibility while maintaining the collaborative culture that makes wikis work effectively.

I accidentally forgot to sign my talk page post on Wikipedia. How do I sign unsigned comments? Is it even possible?

Yes, it’s definitely possible to sign unsigned comments on Wikipedia talk pages! Here are the standard ways to handle this: For your own unsigned comments:

  1. Add your signature manually - Simply edit the page and add `~~~~` (four tildes) after your unsigned comment. This will automatically expand to your username and timestamp when you save the page.
  2. Use the unsigned template - Add `{{unsigned|YourUsername|timestamp}}` after your comment. You’ll need to figure out approximately when you posted it for the timestamp.

The easiest approach is usually just to add the four tildes (`~~~~`) right after your unsigned comment and save the page. Wikipedia will handle the rest automatically.

If someone else’s comment is unsigned:

  • You can add `{{unsigned|IP address or username}}` after their comment
  • If you don’t know who made the comment, you can check the page history to see who added it
  • Sometimes you’ll see `{{unsigned-IP}}` used for anonymous IP editors

A few notes:

  • It’s considered good etiquette to sign your posts, but forgetting occasionally happens to everyone
  • Other editors might add an “unsigned” template to unmarked comments they find
  • For your own comments, adding `~~~~` retroactively is perfectly fine and commonly done

The Wikipedia community is generally understanding about unsigned comments since the signing system isn’t always intuitive for newer editors.

3.2. Know How To Phrase Your Statements

A lot of Wikipedia editors will argue similarly to robo-lawyers, and comment on the lack of experience of new editors and almost anything that can discredit opposing views as long as it stays within the Wikipedia rules and guidelines. Wikipedia editors may also say things in order to provoke the temper from other editors, because an editor who loses their temper will automatically lose the discussion favor of the opposing, passive aggressive editors. Wikipedia editors tend to load their messages with adjectives and adverbs, especially when they are going back-and-forth, so it becomes a general norm that everyone including yourself should do the same, if you want people to consider your edits just as strong as everybody else’s.

Related: Reliable Sources: How Wikipedia Admin David Gerard Launders His Grudges Into the Public Record – Tracing Woodgrains.

“Edit warring” is a term used to describe when editors who disagree about the content of a page repeatedly override each other’s contributions. “Discussion warring” could be a term to describe when disruptive editors repeatedly make many low effort or bad faith attempts to obstruct or hinder more constructive editors from editing.

It’s a good idea to not make multiple replies to the same user, because then they might only respond to one of your replies and then have responded to everything that you said, even when they really didn’t. Instead, if you have multiple points that you need to make, then it’s probably better to just make one reply at a time and make one argument after another so that they will be forced to address all of your arguments. Another thing is that if you make multiple arguments and a comment or reply, then they might only address one of the things that you said while ignoring everything else, and it will have the same problem. In both cases, it is better to just make one argument at a time. However, it’s also important to use your judgment. In some cases, it may be better to just lay out all your arguments at once when you’re trying to make a firm case for something. It is best to do this one you know that there is no one opposing you and when you’re less of a good idea, but not always if you were trying to challenge something. It depends on the context.

Whenever you are viewing a page on Wikipedia that is inside the Wikipedia (WP) space, you have to be careful about what you’re viewing. Just because a page is in the WP space and other editors link to it to support their views, that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s an official policy. It’s easy to miss some infobox templates which may appear at the top of some pages:

  • {{Information page}}: “This is an information page. It is neither an encyclopedia article nor one of Wikipedia’s policies or guidelines”.
  • {{Supplement}}: “This is an explanatory essay _. This page provides additional information about concepts in the page(s) it supplements. This page is not one of Wikipedia’s policies or guidelines as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community.”.
  • {{Essay}}: “This is an essay. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article or a Wikipedia policy, as it has not been reviewed by the community.”

If you are in a talk page discussion or debate and one of the talking points revolves around official Wikipedia policies, then you have to be careful to avoid citing a page in your favor that is technically not an official policy. For example, a user might link to WP:RSP to justify their citation of a perennial source that is generally reliable, according to past consensus(es). If you disagree, then you should point out that the Perennial sources page is not an official Wikipedia policy.

3.3. Dispute Resolution

If you are having a dispute resolution with another editor, then you probably won’t have too much trouble as long as you have a fairly high tolerance for handling unconstructive people and can remain civil for a while. If you are having problems with another editor, then following the advice from the following links will help:

If another user breaks WP:AGF (e.g. claiming that you’re lying), then you should notify them of the WP:AGF policy. Even better would be to include the {{subst:uw-agf1}} or {{subst:uw-agf2}} templates on their user talk page. If you have warned them two times and they proceed to violate WP:AGF a third time, then you can and should escalate the situation to the Administrator’s noticeboard, where an administrator could leave the {{subst:uw-agf2}} template on their user talk page. This will warn the other user that they will be blocked from editing if they violate WP:AGF another time.

WP:ONUS: The responsibility for achieving consensus for inclusion is on those seeking to include disputed content.

WP:DRNC: If the only thing you have to say about a Wikipedia edit is that it lacks consensus, it’s best to not revert it.

3.4. Edit War Game Theory

If you are in or at risk of going into an edit war, the most important thing that you must avoid is going over three edits within 24 hours. If you decide that you’re going to go into an edit war, then you should never make the first revert. Due to the game theory of edit reversions, the first editor (editor A) to make the first revert is the most likely to go over three edits:

  • Editor A makes a revert. Editor B makes a revert.
  • Editor A makes their 2nd revert. Editor B makes their 2nd revert to counter Editor A.
  • Editor A makes their 3rd revert. Editor B makes their 3rd revert to counter Editor A.
  • If Editor A makes a 4th revert against Editor B (or anywhere on the same page), then Editor A could be banned from Wikipedia, due to WP:3RR, the three revert rule.

As soon as an admin notices:

  • Editor A will be blocked from Wikipedia for violating WP:3RR.
  • The article will be restored to the status quo ante-bellum.
  • Editor B and other editors will have free reign to edit the article however they want.
  • Editor A cannot do anything about it, due to being blocked.

If Editor A makes a 4th revert, then Editor B’s best course of action is to just let the article stay as is. Likewise, if Editor B knows that Editor A is likely to make a 4th revert, is unaware of the WP:3RR policy, and unlikely to stop edit warring, then Editor B can just let Editor A mess up.

One should not interrupt their opponent when their opponent is making a mistake. – Napoleon Bonaparte.

If you know that an enemy editor is likely to counter a revert and reciprocate an edit war, then there may tricks that you can do to avoid making the first revert. For example, if they add a new section to the article that you disagree with, then it’s better to just delete the section, rather than reverting their edit that adds the section, since that’s less likely to count as a manual revert by the wikimedia software. If intermingling edits were made in between the time when they add the section, then you can’t simply revert the first edit where they added the section, due to the conflicting editing history. So if you can just delete the entire section, then you will avoid making the first revert, which will ensure that the other editor is more likely to break the 3RR rule more than you.

Edit wars are undesirable from a social standpoint. They also look bad on your editing contributions history. However, this is an option that you could do if you just want to avoid bad edits from other editors. Edit wars should only be reserved if:

  1. You know that the outcome will follow in your favor (you are Editor B, not Editor A).
  2. You judge that it’s not worth the effort to stop the edit war by starting a discussion on the talk page.
  3. You know that the other editor is naturally disruptive and likely to mess up (which would effectively get them blocked, the easy way).

Even more ideally, you could just start a discussion on the talk page, and then other editors shouldn’t make changes to the article, per WP:STATUSQUO. That’s technically not an official Wikipedia policy, but it will make the other editor look bad if they try to edit while a discussion is in progress. Talk page discussions can be tedious and annoying, but they’re still generally more preferable to edit wars.

If you see an ongoing edit war, and you want to stop it sooner, rather than later, you can report it to the WP:AN3 noticeboard: Wikipedia:Administrators’ noticeboard/Edit warring. It’s a separate noticeboard that is dedicated exclusively for edit wars. It’s less well-known than WP:ANI, and thus less crowded with posts. WP:AN3 may thus be a faster way to get admins attentions, compared to WP:ANI.

As for WP:AN2, it used to exist, but was deleted in 2006, since a majority of editors decided that there was no reason for it to exist.

3.5. Taking A Break

If you need to take a break from Wikipedia and want to avoid thinking about it, then you can just log out on one device, and that will log you out on all of your devices. This will enable you to continue viewing Wikipedia, without having to see any discussion notifications, revert notifications, or user talk page notifications. It’s especially a good idea to do this if you’re currently involved in a contentious argument, and you just want to ignore it for a while, and/or cool down.

Per WP:SECURITY:

Wikipedia’s “Log out” link logs out all the user’s current sessions. If a logged-in device is lost or stolen, changing the password and logging out on another device may help to prevent future abuse of the account on the lost device.

3.6. Voting in Discussions, Debates, and Polls

Sometimes one can even say: “per nom” (i.e. nomination) or “per X” (i.e. some other commentator whose arguments you agree with).

Generally, you shouldn’t spend too much time if you don’t have to. Sometimes, it’s best to avoid specific arguments when Wikipedia’s policies for allowing or not forbidding something are unclear, since more specific arguments can be more vulnerable to refutation in replies. A very general response typically suffices. And one can always get more upfront if significantly challenged in the replies below your vote. Adding more replies as needed can also increase one’s edit count.

3.7. Advice For Edit Summaries

If you want to add information that you know is true, but only known anecdotally, then you should not state that you learn this information anecdotally in your edit. Admins or prolific Wikipedia editors are likely to review recent edits and will probably revert your edit if they if you say that you heard about anecdotally or through hearsay. Instead, if you want the information to be added and yet preserved, it’s better to just add it in and to attach a citation needed tag to the information that you want to add. This way, it’s explicitly marked that that information should have a reliable secondary source found and attached to it. And if the information is probably true or it sounds like that it’s probably true, then most people are unlikely to revert it.

In some cases not providing an edit summary is better than providing a vague one. In particular, avoid creating a redirect with an edit summary like “Created redirect page”, since that is less descriptive than the automatic summary that will be provided if the field is left blank.

https://xtools.wmcloud.org/editsummary https://xtools.wmcloud.org/editsummary/en.wikipedia.org/Zero%20Contradictions/0

3.8. Blocks, Bans, And Appeals

This is the most important page to read for figuring out what you to need to do if you are blocked and want to get unblocked: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Guide_to_appealing_blocks. Most of the other related pages to blocks aren’t as helpful or necessary for reading. If you could only read one page for getting unblocked, then that would be it.

Other Helpful Pages:

Among the designated contentious topics list, these are the only topics that I have any interest in to the point where I may edit them, and thus have to be really careful about editing:

  • Race & Intelligence: The intersection of race/ethnicity and human abilities and behaviour
  • BLP: Living or recently deceased subjects of biographical content on Wikipedia articles
  • Politics: Post-1992 politics of the United States and closely related people
  • Infoboxes: Discussions about infoboxes, and edits adding, deleting, collapsing, or removing verifiable information from infoboxes
  • Gender: Gender-related disputes or controversies or people associated with them
  • Article Titles And Capitalization

3.9. Other Talk Page Tips

If you ever decide to leave a discussion, it always helps to make the last point, if you can.

To stay updated on talk discussions, You can click “subscribe” at top right for small threads. If your name is linked (*usually with an @ before it), you’ll get a ping via {{ping|USERNAME_TO_PING}}. More Information: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Notifications.

You might get some people cranky at you for editing a statement at WP:AN/I after it’s been replied to. Best practice is to strike through anything you are deleting with a new comment appended (with a new time code) to add additional statements. That’s actually the best practice in all discussions on WP as it makes it easier for editors to follow the flow of the conversation without looking at diffs but on AN/I this requirement is somewhat heightened.

These documentation and template pages are helpful specifically for editing talk pages:

5. Specific Advice For Improving Wikipedia

5.1. Advice For Translating Foreign Language Articles Into English

My Proposed Algorithm For Translating Foreign Language Articles Into English, when you don’t know the foreign language: (given what I know as of (<2025-05-11 Sun>))

  1. Use the browser Google Translate browser add-on/extension to translate all the text into English.
  2. Copy all the English into a text editor.
  3. Edit it to fix obvious translation errors, as needed.
  4. Edit the text to include appropriate wikilinks. Use the {{ill}} Template:Interlanguage link accordingly for foreign language wikilinks that don’t exist on the English Wikipedia.
  5. Use Template:Langx to mark the text in the original languages, when needed.
  6. Translate each source into English:
    • Use the text from the citation templates saved in 2-wiki-markup-language-postings.wml.
    • Copy and paste the information into the parameters accordingly.
    • Be mindful of what text you place in the |trans and |trans-title parameters.
    • Some German words to be mindful of, when translating the sources:
      • unveränderte: unchanged.
      • Abschnitt: section.
      • Auflage des: Edition of the.
      • Abgerufen am: Retrieved on.
      • verfügbar: available.
      • Zum Beispiel: for example.
      • hrsg.: ed. (edition).
      • siehe: see.
      • siehe dazu: see also.
  7. Preview the wikitext output in a sandbox or the appropriate wikipedia section location.
  8. Publish if everything looks good.

5.3. How To Change The User Access Level Required To Edit A Page

There is a page on Wikipedia that keeps getting vandalized. I am only an extended confirmed user. What should I do if there should be a change to the user access level required to edit the page?

If you believe a page needs stronger protection than what’s currently in place, here are your options:

Request protection at the right venue:

  • Go to Wikipedia:Requests for page protection (WP:RFPP)
  • Explain the vandalism pattern you’ve observed and why you think the current protection level is insufficient
  • Administrators will review your request and decide whether to apply semi-protection, extended confirmed protection, or another level

What to include in your request:

  • Link to the page
  • Brief description of the vandalism (what kind, how frequent)
  • Links to recent examples in the page history if possible
  • Why you think the current protection level isn’t working

In the meantime:

  • Continue reverting vandalism when you see it (using the undo button)
  • Report persistent vandals at Wikipedia:Vandalism reporting (WP:AIV) if they continue after warnings
  • Make sure vandals have been properly warned on their talk pages before reporting

As an extended confirmed user, you can still edit pages with extended confirmed protection, so you’re able to help maintain the page. Administrators are generally responsive to protection requests when there’s clear evidence of ongoing disruption that the current protection level can’t handle.

If you want to gain rollback user rights, then you need to either request them from an administrator, or become an administrator yourself.

5.5. Algorithm For Finding Images To Upload To Wikipedia Commons

The most efficient and ideal process for finding images to upload to Wikipedia Commons is to:

  1. Download the Wikipedia mobile app.
  2. Click on the places tab, and in the bottom center of the screen.
  3. Look for places near you or places where you’ve been that have Wikipedia articles and their locations on the map (sometimes the exact geographic coordinates will be slightly off, and it would be worth correcting them if you know how to).
  4. Open up Apple or Google maps and route the path from your location to the site location (if you aren’t already there).
  5. Take high-quality photos of the featured landmark.
  6. Upload the best photo(s) to Wikipedia comments under a CC0, CC BY, or CC BY SA copyright license.

Alternatively, you could look up the location’s website’s contact information on Apple or Google maps and ask the location maintainer(s) if someone could take photos of the site and email or send them to you under one of those three copyright licenses.

5.6. Organizing Information In Articles

All the pages on my website are meticulously organized via headers, sections, and subsections, similarly to an encyclopedic style. Many of these webpages are quite long, since they each cover a broad range of different topics. I had to spend dozens of hours figuring out how to organize all the information across these pages. I eventually became an expert at organizing information across large articles of text via optimized section titles, sections, subsection indentations, paragraphs, sentence orders, and optimized groupings of related information.

Due to my acquired experience, whenever I see a Wikipedia article, I’m able to see all sorts of organizational improvements that could be made to articles that most other people are not able to see, even if the article has had thousands of edits made to it and hundreds of editor watching the page(s) on their watchlists. I think it’s nice that I was able to acquire an ability that enables me to contribute and improve the encyclopedia, in spite of the cognitive limitations that I have, which prevent me from being able to read large amounts of verbose and wordy text (hence why I spend so much time reading summarized information from Wikipedia, instead of reading original sources).

In general, out of 8 million articles on the English Wikipedia, there’s probably thousands of articles which get less than 10,000 views each month which could have their section, paragraph, and sentence orders optimized beyond what they currently feature. I’ve seen and optimized many such articles myself, but I can see or edit every article out there. This indicates to me that more Wikipedia editors need to learn how to organize information better.

Articles which get tens or hundreds of thousands of views tend to already be organized into their most optimal orders, so they have little room for improvement.

5.7. Confronting Wikipedia On A BLP Article As The Subject

If the subject of a BLP article disputes the claims in the article, they cannot edit the article directly because that would be a COI. They might be able to file a WP:BLPREQUESTDELETE for the article, but they are unlikely to succeed in getting the article deleted if there are enough sources that talk about them which pass WP:GNG (general notability guidelines). If they dispute information that’s written in the article, and they choose to edit or remove such information, then they would have to prove their identity to the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF), so that Wikipedia’s administrators can verify that they are who they say that they are. The best route for doing that would be WP:UAA, the Usernames for Administrator Attention Noticeboard. According to Doug Weller, WP:AN would also work for a situation like this. For an example of someone who is alleged to have impersonated the subject of a BLP to heavily edit or delete a BLP article, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Jordan_Lasker#Request_for_Edits_or_Deletion.

This is a perfect demonstration of the wisdom that is to be obtained by the phrase, “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog”.

5.8. Answers To Specific Questions About Wikipedia

Although the Wikipedia app is supposed to give a better experience than Wikipedia on the mobile, I dislike how the Wikipedia app doesn’t allow the convenient header folding that’s possible when using Wikipedia on the web browser.

Answer: Wikipedia mobile app has a button in the bottom left corner that you can press to show the table of contents of the current article that you are viewing. This is indeed better and superior to Wikipedia on mobile web browsers.

What is the difference between Wikipedia tags and Wikipedia templates?

Let me explain the key differences between Wikipedia tags and templates: Tags in Wikipedia are basic HTML or XML elements used for formatting text and structuring content. They look like `<tag>content</tag>`. Common examples include:

  • `<ref>` for references/citations
  • `<blockquote>` for quoted text
  • `<nowiki>` to prevent wiki markup interpretation
  • `<code>` for computer code

Templates, on the other hand, are more complex pre-formatted content modules that use curly braces like `{{template name}}`. They serve many purposes:

  1. Creating infoboxes (those structured info panels at the top of articles)
  2. Creating navigation boxes
  3. Adding standardized messages (like “citation needed”)
  4. Formatting data consistently (like dates or coordinates)
  5. Categorizing articles

For example:

  • A tag might look like: `<ref>Smith, John. “Article Title” (2020)</ref>`
  • A template might look like: `{{cite book|author=Smith|title=Book Name|year=2020}}`

The key difference is that tags are basic HTML/XML elements for structuring content, while templates are more sophisticated Wikipedia-specific tools that can include complex logic, parameters, and standardized formatting. Templates help maintain consistency across Wikipedia and make it easier to update common elements across multiple pages simultaneously.

What would most likely happen if I remove a {{AFC submission}} line from a page in my userspace on Wikipedia, after the AFC submission was declined, and the source code has a comment saying “Do not remove this line”?

If you remove the `{{AFC submission}}` template from a declined Articles for Creation (AFC) submission in your userspace on Wikipedia, here’s what would most likely happen:

Immediate technical effects:

  • The page would no longer appear in AFC-related categories or tracking lists
  • It would stop showing the AFC submission banner/notice to other editors
  • The decline notice and reviewer comments would disappear from the page display

Likely consequences:

  • Generally acceptable: Since it’s in your userspace, you typically have broad discretion over your own draft pages
  • No automatic penalties: There’s no automated system that will block or warn you for removing it
  • May complicate resubmission: If you later want to resubmit through AFC, you’d need to re-add the template anyway

The “Do not remove this line” comment: This comment is likely there for organizational purposes - to help maintain the AFC workflow and tracking system. It’s not a strict policy enforcement, but more of a guideline to prevent confusion in the review process.

Best practices:

  • If you’re abandoning the AFC process entirely, removing it is usually fine
  • If you plan to continue working on the draft for future submission, it’s better to leave it
  • You could also move the draft to a different subpage in your userspace without the template

The main thing to avoid would be removing the template and then immediately resubmitting the same content through AFC, as this could be seen as trying to circumvent the review process.

Is there any policy or recommendation on Wikimedia Commons that license plates of cars in the picture must be blurred out or censored somehow for privacy reasons?

Based on my search results, I can provide you with information about Wikimedia Commons’ policies regarding license plates and privacy:

  • No specific policy requiring license plate blurring: Wikimedia Commons does not appear to have a specific policy that requires license plates to be blurred or censored in photographs. In fact, there are extensive collections of license plate images on Commons, including categories for license plates from various countries and regions.
  • General privacy considerations: Commons does note that “other restrictions may apply” including “privacy rights” when reusing content, but this appears to be more of a general disclaimer for reusers rather than a requirement for content hosted on Commons itself.
  • Personality rights policy: Commons does have a personality rights policy that addresses privacy concerns for people in photos, noting that “putting a black or blank strip over someone’s eyes in a photo or pixelating a face may not sufficiently protect their right of publicity”, but this appears to focus on human subjects rather than license plates.
  • Extensive license plate collections: The search results show that Commons actually hosts substantial collections of license plate images, including detailed categories for different countries and types of plates, suggesting that license plates are not considered problematic content that needs to be censored.

The approach appears to be that license plates, being visible in public spaces, are generally considered acceptable to photograph and share, unlike faces of identifiable people which receive more privacy protection. However, individual contributors may choose to blur license plates in their own uploads for personal privacy reasons, but this would be a personal choice rather than a Commons requirement.

Is it hard to delete Wikipedia articles that have had a past AfD consensus for “Keep”?

Yes, quite hard. A prior “Keep” consensus at Articles for Deletion (AfD) creates significant institutional friction:

  • Procedurally, relisting at AfD is technically allowed, but the community norm is that you need new reasons or changed circumstances – not just disagreement with the prior outcome. Nominations that simply re-argue old ground get quickly closed as “relist too soon” or “no new arguments.”
  • In practice, the bar rises with each Keep outcome. Two or three Keep closes make deletion almost untouchable through AfD. Regulars will cite the prior discussions and the nomination is likely to be closed early.

Alternative routes exist but are also difficult:

  • MfD / CfD / FfD – only relevant if the page type changed
  • Speedy deletion (CSD) – criteria are rigid and a prior Keep typically signals the article doesn’t qualify
  • PROD – can be contested by anyone, and a prior AfD almost always will be
  • BLP/BLPROD – applies only to biographies of living people with zero sourcing, and even then a prior Keep complicates it

The main exception: if something genuinely changes – the subject is shown to be entirely fabricated, a court ruling makes the content legally untenable, or clear evidence emerges that the original Keep was based on false information – deletion becomes much more viable. Consensus can change, but it needs a real reason to.

I am trying to make Arbitration enforcement action appeal to get unblocked from editing Wikipedia on my user talk page. Should {{subst:Arbitration enforcement appeal}} be placed inside {{{{unblock}}? If not, then what’s the best syntax for structuring my appeal?

No, they are separate — do not nest one inside the other. Place `{{unblock}}` first, then put `{{subst:Arbitration enforcement appeal}}` below it on your talk page. The `{{unblock}}` request asks a reviewing administrator to initiate the community discussion; the AE appeal template below it is what the reviewing admin will copy to AE or AN.

So the structure on your talk page should be: 

{{unblock|reason=I am appealing an arbitration enforcement block. Please see my appeal below.}}

{{subst:Arbitration enforcement appeal
| Appealing user = YourUsername
| User imposing the sanction = AdminUsername
| Sanction being appealed = Brief description + link to sanctions log/discussion
| Reason for the appeal = Your text here
}}

One procedural note: you are expected to notify the administrator who imposed the enforcement action of the appeal, and then replace the relevant placeholder text with a diff of that notification — the appeal may not be processed otherwise.

I am blocked from editing Wikipedia (except on my talk page). There is an ongoing administration noticeboard appeal to determine whether I should be unblocked, but I can’t comment on it because I’m blocked. If I write a message(s) on my talk page directed towards someone who is misrepresenting my views in the appeal discussion by pinging them, would that be an abuse of my talk page privileges?

The short answer: it’s a gray area, but it’s risky and admins may not look favorably on it.

What the policy says Talk page access for blocked users exists specifically so they can appeal and participate to some degree while the block is active. The intended purpose is quite narrow. Abuse of appeal processes, personal attacks, or impolite conduct may lead to the removal of talk page access and/or widening of existing blocks.

The specific problem with what you’re describing Pinging someone to your talk page to correct their characterization of your views in a noticeboard discussion is not the same as filing an unblock request. Admins reviewing the situation could reasonably view it as an attempt to participate in a discussion you’re blocked from participating in — just through a side channel. The fact that the noticeboard appeal is actively ongoing makes this more fraught, not less. It could be read as trying to pressure or influence a participant in the appeal, which looks bad regardless of whether your correction is accurate.

What would be less risky If someone is genuinely misrepresenting your views, the cleaner move is to post a correction on your talk page addressed to reviewing admins generally (framed as part of your appeal), rather than pinging the specific person making the claims. That way it’s clearly appeal-related speech rather than an attempt to engage in the noticeboard discussion by proxy. You could also ask a neutral third party to note the misrepresentation in the actual discussion on your behalf, which Wikipedia does allow, though it’s generally discouraged.

The distinction admins will draw is between “correcting the record for those deciding my appeal” (acceptable) and “engaging with the discussion I’m blocked from” (not acceptable). A direct ping to the person misrepresenting you looks more like the latter.

If someone striked out my vote regarding an essay on Wikipedia because I was blocked, can I unstrike the strikeout syntax if I am unblocked?

There’s no explicit Wikipedia policy page directly addressing this exact scenario, but the answer can be reasoned from established norms:

Generally, yes, you can remove the strikeout from your own comment once unblocked — with some important caveats. The unstriking must not be done under block evasion.

Once you’re unblocked, that restriction is lifted and you’re a full editor again. Restoring your own comment by removing the strike markup is a minor edit to your own previously-made statement — not adding new content — and is generally considered acceptable by convention.

However, a few things to consider:

  • If the discussion is still open, removing the strike is uncontroversial and almost certainly fine. Your !vote can then be weighed normally.
  • If the discussion is already closed, editing a closed AfD or RfC is strongly discouraged regardless of reason. It would have no practical effect anyway, since the closer would have already discounted or noted the struck comment.
  • If someone reverts your restoration, don’t edit-war over it. Raise it on the talk page or ask the admin who struck it.
  • The underlying question of whether your original comment itself was appropriate (e.g., if the block was related to the very discussion you voted in) could still lead other editors to re-strike it, and that’s a separate dispute you’d need to resolve through discussion.

Can other editors strike out my comments if I request to be voluntarily blocked, simply because I don’t want to be distracted by editing anymore?

This is a nuanced situation. A voluntary/self-requested block is still a block, and the same technical rules apply — but the reason for the block matters significantly to how other editors would treat your prior or concurrent contributions.

The short answer is: it’s unlikely editors would strike your comments for this reason, and doing so would generally be considered improper.

The rationale for striking blocked users’ comments in discussions is to discount contributions made as block evasion — i.e., editing when you’re not supposed to, typically after being blocked for disruptive behavior. Blocks are used to prevent damage or disruption to Wikipedia, and striking a blocked user’s !vote reflects that their continued participation was itself the problem.

A voluntary block for self-imposed distraction management is the opposite situation: there’s no misconduct, no evasion, and no editorial concern about the legitimacy of your contributions. If an editor struck your comments solely because you’re voluntarily blocked, that strike would have no legitimate basis — you weren’t blocked from participating in that discussion, and your comment predates or is unrelated to the block.

If someone did strike your comments in that context, you’d have a reasonable case to revert it and, if contested, raise it at the relevant noticeboard. The closer of any discussion would also be unlikely to discount a !vote struck for that reason.

One practical note: if you request a block while an AfD or RfC you’ve commented in is still ongoing, it may be cleaner to simply not edit further in that discussion rather than formally requesting a block, since the block status itself can create ambiguity that invites exactly this kind of dispute.

6. Edit Counts

6.1. Edit Privileges And Stats

Once you surpass 1000 edits, other editors can add you to the Missing Wikipedians list, if you haven’t made any edits within a year and nobody knows why you’re gone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Missing_Wikipedians

If you have made 1000+ edits on the English Wikipedia, then you are among the top 49,000 - 73,000 most active editors on the English Wikipedia. In other words, there are only 49,000 - 73,000 other people in the world who have made as many edits as you have, depending on which metric you use.

Related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_Wikipedians_by_number_of_edits#List_of_Wikipedians_by_number_of_edits

6.2. Advice For Increasing Edit Count

  • The fastest way to increase your edit count on Wikipedia would be to learn how to use the tools and gadgets for making multiple changes to multiple articles at the same time. This will make it make any Wikipedia editor look more prolific than they actually are, can increase their account to unlock special editing, privileges, and can increase one’s social status.
  • Creating welcome pages and talk pages for other users who don’t have one can also help increase your edit count.

Wikipedia tools for making multiple concurrent mass edits to multiple pages include the AutoWikiBrowser and the JavaScript Wiki Browser (JWB). Using AutoWikiBrowser (AWB) requires administrator approval. There are less than 3000 Wikipedia users in the entire world who have access to AWB. So before you could ever think about using it, you’d need to make at least 250-500 total mainspace edits, and probably more than that if many of your edits are small, minor, and/or low-quality. It will also be more difficult to get approved to use AWB if you have a questionable reputation on Wikipedia, or are in conflict with many other Wikipedia editors. Intuitively, I would think that the administrators would probably approve someone who has made over 1000-2000 high quality edits and has a good reputation on Wikipedia.

As of 2025 August 28, I’ve never done any mass edits myself. However, if you need to do mass edits, then I predict that the JavaScript Wiki Browser is probably the easiest way to accomplish this, since it doesn’t require the administrator approval of the AWB.

Bots can also do mass edits, but all bots have to be approved by administrators.

6.3. Edits vs Utility

Pre-reading: A Critique of “Utility”.

Let’s think about utility with respect to the number of edits that one makes on Wikipedia. Making more edits does of course correspond with greater contributions. But not always, since the number of edits doesn’t necessarily indicate how much any editor contributes as a whole.

  • A person’s effort can be greatly exaggerated in their edit count via automated edits, like the kind done with auto wiki browser.
  • Some people spend more time on talk pages and namespaces outside the mainspace for articles.
  • Some people who have high edit counts also have negative value towards the encyclopedia, since they promote left-wing propaganda and such.
  • Some people may also have lots of edits on their user page(s) just because they like editing their own pages, even though these edits may not actually provide much or any value for anyone else besides themselves.
  • People who mainly add well-cited and non-controversial content to the site tend to make edits that are less controversial and less likely to be reverted by other editors. That would mean that a smaller fraction of their edits were due to fighting in edit wars, which can inflate an editor’s edit count to make it seem that they have contributed more than they really have.

Perhaps the best estimate of any individual person’s overall contributions to Wikipedia is to examine:

  • The number of manual edits that they have made without automation.
  • The average amount of text that they add to Wikipedia.
  • Which namespaces they usually make their edits in.
  • Estimate the user’s biases and how much benefit or damage they do towards promoting correct truths?

This is another great example of how utility is difficult to measure and quantify in a meaningful and indisputable way.

6.4. Manual Edits Vs Automatic Edits

It takes only a moderate commitment to edit, but it takes a serious commitment to write. Manual edits are far more impressive than automated edits because those are the edits that actually add content to the site. They’re the whole reason why the encyclopedia is worth reading at all in the first place.

Steve Pruit is overrated in my opinion. He is certainly a far more prolific editor than most others, and I appreciate the work that he’s done on the site. However, most of his edits were automated. The only reason why his edit count is so high is simply because he’s obsessed with finding large numbers of edits that he can automatically do. Goodhart’s Law applies here. It would be more appropriate to measure the prolificness of editors by how much quality work they are able to produce manually.

Chiswick Chap (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Chiswick_Chap) is a far more impressive editor in my opinion. He has made over 320,000 manual edits to Wikipedia, and he currently has the 140th most prolific number, measured by the number of edits (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_Wikipedians_by_number_of_edits). Almost all (or all?) of the editors who have more edits than Chiswick Chap made automated edits.

7. Ideas For Reforming And Improving Wikipedia In An Ideal World

7.1. Larry Sanger’s Reform Proposals

Regarding Larry Sanger’s Nine Theses:

Hammersoft’s Principles For Editing.

WikiProject Intellectual Diversity has good overall goals. It also has a policy scanner which finds pages that editors interested in reform and true neutrality should check and give input on.

7.2. Distinguishing Truth And Value

Wikipedia should have the added requirement that leading sections of Wikipedia articles cannot contain value claims unless they are part of someone’s quotation. Wikipedia should only feature truth claims. Wikipedia states value claims in some articles, such as:

Although many people may deny it, these value claims and other biases and focuses in the articles, contribute to establishing a strong left-wing humanist bias across the entire encyclopedia.

Articles should be written in one sentence per line.

7.3. Reforming Notability Guidelines

The selection biases of the mainstream media are a key reason why the notability guideline on Wikipedia are unwarranted for building a rational encyclopedia. Just because a lot of supposedly credible media outlets establishment writers write about a topic, phenomenon, person or event, that doesn’t necessarily mean that most people should direct their attention towards it. The notability guideline makes Wikipedia more vulnerable to the selection biases of fake news.

7.4. Emphasizing Pragmatospherian Rationality

NOTE: If possible, it may be worth seeing if a superior set of encyclopedic editing policies could be adopted for Grokipedia while it is still young. It will be easier to influence Grokipedia’s policies now, rather than later when they get further developed and settled, perhaps in unfavorable ways.

I feel like that Wikipedia in general draws the line between logical implications and original research in the wrong place. There are many obvious things that Wikipedia will prevent from being stated on their site, supposedly qualifies as original research, even though it’s an obvious implication. And since there is not clear boundary between the two concepts, the no original research policy is often of used to remove things that may be right wing or anti establishment. Many/more logical implications should arguably fall under WP:COMMONSENSE.

Reasons why I don’t care as much about following the strict Wikipedia guidelines or policies about stating what’s written in Wikipedia articles as much as more prolific editors:

  1. I don’t believe that most so-called reliable sources are truly reliable in the way that left-wing people believe them to me.
  2. Most people are delusional to some extent on many or most current social issues. It makes less sense to base content on consensus or what people, when most people are not intelligent.
  3. I figure that any bias written into an informational source will either be accepted or rejected by most readers.
  4. I don’t have hyperlexia, which limits my ability to read. I cannot follow the strict word for word writings policies that more prolific editors usually seem better able at following. Editing according to wordings in sources requires great attention span on my part, which may be my most scarce resource.
  5. I have my own personal website where I write all my heterodox, non-mainstream thoughts and opinions. Most editors don’t have anything like that, especially not to the depth and extent that I write about on my personal website.
  6. I believe that it would be better to allow sound reasoning to have greater influence over what information an encyclopedia should state, rather than direct quotes or paraphrases of what people have said.

It’s important to not take words without context or make an accurate phrasing. It can affect fence sitters. It also requires greater attention to detail, lots of meticulous, reading, etc.

The rule that Wikipedia article leads should be limited to four paragraphs is a suboptimal rule. Obviously, the size of a lead paragraph depends on the size of the entire article. Sometimes more paragraphs is better than fewer paragraphs, especially if the total text content would otherwise be the same. The four paragraph limit rule is a bad rule because it prevents paragraphs and sentences from being divided and broken from each other, even when it would increase reader comprehension and improve the overall aesthetics and readability of the article. Instead would probably be more practical to have a rule that limits the word count of lead sections based on the amount of content that is inside the articles themselves.

Since humans find it cognitively easier to read and understand lists, it would be great if bulleted lists were permitted in cases where they would transmit the same information in a cognitively easier and superior format, rather than paragraph text walls.

7.5. Why Registration Should Be Required To Edit Articles

I’ve read various arguments for why IP editing is allowed, or even a ’good idea’. I’ve read none that was compelling. Here are my reasons why I think it’s not a good idea, and why it should be banned:

  • Per WP:ISU, user names that imply shared use are not allowed, so why is editing using an IP address allowed, given that IP addresses usually are shared? If the logic behind this policy is that an edit must be traceable to an individual editor, not a collective entity, then allowing anonymous editing from an IP address flies squarely in the face of that.
  • IP editing accounts for a large chunk of vandalism, disruptive editing, BLP violations, etc., and stopping it would reduce the cleanup workload for other editors.
  • Using multiple IP addresses, either intentionally or unintentionally, fragments a user’s edit history, and makes it difficult, in some cases virtually impossible, to detect editing patterns and decipher intentions.
  • The ’hassle’ of registering really is not great, and therefore I don’t buy the argument that mandatory registration would make it difficult to recruit new editors.
  • It’s too easy for a registered editor to get around certain rules (such as creators not being allowed to remove speedy tags from their own articles) by logging out and editing under IP.
  • The whole malarkey about hiding IP addresses, allegedly for privacy reasons (!), would go away if IP editing weren’t an option.

To be clear, I think everyone should be able to access the site without registering, and anyone should be allowed to edit, just not edit without registering. In that sense it’s not that different from using a public library: you’re welcome to browse the collection, access the reference section, etc. without anyone asking you any questions, but if you want to take a book home, you need to get a library card from the nice librarian first.

And a further clarification: I’ve nothing against users who edit under IP; my issue is with the system which allows this. As long as it is allowed, users are of course welcome to make use of this. I just think it shouldn’t be allowed.

Source: On the nonsense that is IP editing – User:DoubleGrazing.

7.6. Avoiding Plagiarism

One of the challenges in editing Wikipedia is that you have to avoid plagiarism. You can’t simply copy text from the source into the article, even if that would be the most cognitively easy thing for you to do. Since an editor’s brain must manipulate text before putting the text into the article, this requires extra cognitive processing and time. Sometimes the best way to avoid plagiarism is to synthesize material from other sources or do things that might break other Wikipedia policies like the no original research policy, the no synthesis policy, etc. To some extent, I feel that these policies conflict with the no plagiarism policy and vice versa since they both make each other harder to fulfill. The challenge of having to fulfill all these policies is one thing that makes editing Wikipedia more difficult than might initially seem.

One of the most common edits that I make (which are among my favorite type of edits) is to make the Wikipedia are edits that make the sentences more readable. Wikipedia’s guidelines do of course state that sentences should be written simply and readable, but it’s possible that some sentences may be deliberately written more complex than they could be in order to avoid infringing on copyrights. The people who added the text into Wikipedia would know that the text does not violate copyright, whereas the people who are reading Wikipedia may not be aware that the word order or phrasing is used specifically to avoid copyright. In fact, most people who are reading the text would never even bother to read the original source to check if the text is following copyright laws and not doing a copyright infringement. People who edit the text without checking the original source could hypothetically make the text more close related to the original source, without even realizing it, but there is no way to know how often that actually happens in this before, and after analysis of every secondhand editor was conducted and analyzed across the entire Wikipedia corpus.

7.7. Raising The Social Status Of Editing Wikipedia; Reforming The Academy

Very low social status is awarded for contributing to public or open source projects, rather than creating stuff that can be distinguishably credited under your name. This discourages people from contributing to great projects of Wikipedia. Having more people edit Wikipedia requires that people be wanting to cooperate and forgo their own self-interest, like getting a lot of credit for what they want to create. It is still possible to show how someone contributed to Wikipedia individually. But many people don’t still don’t like this because their work is mixed in with other people’s work, and their revisions can be undone if the collaborative editors disagree with what any individual wants to say. This is all unfortunate when it limits the quality of things, depth, and breadth of things like Wikipedia.

From the way how that Head Bomb guy presents himself on his Wikipedia page, it’s clear that one of the main reasons why he makes so many edits to Wikipedia is because it’s one of his primary ways of seeking higher social status. In fact, it’s definitely one of the most open and explicit Wikipedia user pages where a user admits to editing Wikipedia for the sake of social status.

I wish that Wikipedia would display the contributions tab next to the user page and talk tabs for every page within the username space. This would make navigation much easier and more comfortable, rather than clicking on the history, hoping that you find their contributions link and clicking on it. Of course, this is a problem for the MediaWiki software as a whole.

8. Forking From Wikipedia

8.1. When It’s Better To Edit A Personal Website Instead Of Wikipedia

I dislike how I have to provide sources for things that are obvious from following from chains of logic. Sometimes, Wikipedia will allow some leniency for that, but it generally can’t be done as an official policy in most cases. Usually, a banner will be added to the top of such articles that include uncited chains of reasoning stating that the article needs more sources or whatever. These banners make the articles look less professional, even when they might be perfectly reasoning and factually true. Fortunately, I don’t have to deal with that hassle when creating and editing webpages on my personal site.

I also find editing Wikipedia to be much more stressful than editing my website. On Wikipedia, I and other reasonable right-minded people have to deal with lots of bad-faith idiots who could revert our edits or say things to discredit us on the discussion pages. I also receive notifications for multiple on Wikipedia, which degrades my attention and stresses me out. I don’t receive any notifications for editing my website. Wikipedia also has hundreds (maybe even thousands?) of manual pages and establishment-leaning guidelines that I have to comply with, which adds to my stress and time consumption.

On my website, I can (sometimes) do things that would normally go against Wikipedia manual of style, like giving for things rather than writing things in paragraph form that would be harder to understand when read as paragraphs.

8.2. How To Fork From Wikipedia

The simplest way to fork from Wikipedia is to generate a PDF and add proper attribution to the PDF.

There are a few approaches for exporting Wikipedia articles to PDF format:

Wikipedia’s Built-in PDF Export
Wikipedia has a “Download as PDF” option in the left sidebar that:

  • Preserves internal hyperlinks within the table of contents.
  • Includes basic formatting and images.
  • However, it doesn’t automatically include attribution links back to the original page.

Browser Print-to-PDF

  1. Open the Wikipedia page.
  2. Use your browser’s print function (Ctrl+P).
  3. Select “Save as PDF” as the destination.
  4. This often preserves hyperlinks better than Wikipedia’s export.
  5. You can add a header/footer with attribution text.

Using Browser Extensions
Extensions like “Print Friendly & PDF” or “Save as PDF” often provide more control over:

  • Link preservation.
  • Custom headers/footers for attribution.
  • Layout optimization.

Adding Proper Attribution
Since the built-in exports don’t include attribution, you’ll need to either:

  • Add a cover page or footer with the original URL and CC BY-SA 4.0 license notice.
  • Use PDF editing software after export to add this information.
  • Create a wrapper document that includes the exported content plus attribution.

Optionally, you could include a link to the original page, and advise everybody to read the original page, if they want the convenience of the table of contents, the browser back and forward page (fragment) navigation, and easier hyperlinking and tooltips from Wikipedia’s layout software.

8.3. Procedure For Creating PDF Forks of Wikipedia Pages To Host On Websites

  1. Generate a PDF of the page that you want to fork, using your chosen PDF generator.
  2. If you are using printfriendly.com, then edit the page to delete all the excess HTML elements that you don’t want to be displayed in the PDF.
  3. Download the PDF.
  4. Copy the wikipedia short link by clicking “Tools > Get Shortened URL”. Paste this link into footer.tex.

  5. Edit footer.tex to display the footer that you want to show. Example:

    > \qquad CC BY-SA 4.0 derived work of WIKIPEDIA-SHORT-LINK-HERE (and https://www.printfriendly.com) generated on DATE; See Wikipedia editing history for attribution.\\\\

    Compile .tex file into a PDF file.

  6. In a shell where PDF Toolkit is installed, type:
    pdftk WIKIPEDIA_PDF_PAGE.pdf stamp footer.pdf output PDF_NAME_FOR_WEBSITE_URL.pdf
  7. Verify that everything outputted correctly, and copy into your website file hosting directory.

Unfortunately, this approach does not include hyperlinks to the licensing terms, article URL, printfriendly.com, nor the link to the editing history, but most of these aren’t needed to obey the copyright rules. Printfriendly.com still includes a hyperlinked URL to the original article just under the header at the top of the first page, which makes it easy to get to and see the editing history. Hyperlinking to the licensing terms is convenient, but technically not required. Some users can also right click the two bare URLs displayed in the bottom footer and select to go to those pages.

All the formatting and hyperlinks of the article are preserved, and users can still view the original Wikipedia article, if they want to. If they don’t view the original Wikipedia article, then they won’t able to see the TOC, but the article may still be readable enough without one. Most importantly, the mere existence of this page will get indexed by search engines, can be displayed on your site, can present the content, and can get people to view your Wikipedia userpage. You could view the XTools stats for the userpage(s) to estimate how many views they are getting from search engines and people navigating your home page.

This approach fulfills all the requirements of the CC BY-SA 4.0, except that it doesn’t show what was changed since forking the original work:

Footer: CC BY-SA 4.0 derived work of SHORTENED-ARTICLE-LINK-GOES-HERE and printfriendly.com; See editing history for attribution.

Plain Text Footer: CC BY-SA 4.0 derived work of SHORTENED-ARTICLE-LINK-GOES-HERE and printfriendly.com; See editing history for attribution.

9. Using Wikipedia As A General Information Source

9.1. Bias Correction

If you know that the material that you are reading has a bias(es), then you can account for it in your mind as you read it. But if you don’t know of a bias and you’re on the fence, then you can be persuaded towards the direction of the bias without realizing it.

9.2. Verifiability Versus Truth

Wikipedia focuses on “verifiability, not ”truth“. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliability_of_Wikipedia#False_biographical_information

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Researching_with_Wikipedia.

Wikipedia can be used to introduce to a topic, but information from Wikipedia cannot be cited as information for the topic.

This should be a contradiction because the only two consistent beliefs are:

  1. Wikipedia is a credible source for learning information and can thus be cited.
  2. Wikipedia is not credible and can’t be used at all.

If you wouldn’t trust Wikipedia to teach the topic in depth or cite information from it, then why would you trust it to give you a reliable introduction to the topic? Wikipedia articles often have errors, especially for statistical information and partisan topics, but aside from these are the articles any more likely to have errors than other sources? Furthermore, Wikipedia articles aren’t very good teaching resources for beginners trying to learn topics in STEM fields.

They do often feature valuable images and gifs that help with explaining topics, have great first sentences that summarize the topic information, many comprehensive sections and links, and of course valuable information. But it would be more efficient to learn the topics with a beginner friendly resource, use Wikipedia to supplement that knowledge, and use wikipedia to find other topics worth learning about.

9.3. The Freedom, Costs, And Benefits For Anyone To Edit

One of the best features of open source software and wikis like Wikipedia is that if people and users don’t like how the way how things are, they can always change it or even fork it to create something better. I like this idea, but it’s much easier to improve wikis like Wikipedia than trying to fix open source software, when there’s something that one does not like. Open source software, there is usually a lot of specialized knowledge that one has to know in order to modify it, including, but not limited to the programming language(s) used to develop the software, and software libraries that may be used, and a lot of advanced mathematics and computer science.

By contrast, to edit wikis, you only need to know:

  • Wiki Markup Language.
  • The policies of the wiki.
  • Relevant information related to what you want to change and why.
  • Reliable sources for anything that you want to say.

Overall, there’s a much lower barrier to entry for editing wikis.

Even though editing Wikipedia article articles may have comparatively lower status compared to say writing ones on work like a website or a book, Wikipedia still has greater prestige as a source of information if the person who creates their own work does not have a high reputation. Wikipedia is the world’s greatest repository of accessible and mostly meritocratic collaborative editing. Wikipedia is also used to improve large language models.

There are easily tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, and probably even millions or even billions of people who would rather argue with people in text or invoice about this or that Who is right and who’s wrong. But there’s very few people comparatively who had any interest and actually writing informative things that everybody would benefit from knowing about, like writing Wikipedia articles. In hindsight, I wish that I had spent much less time arguing with people on Reddit, and more time figuring out how to write Wikipedia articles.

If you don’t like something that you see on a Wikipedia page, then say something about it. Better yet, do something about it. Even if you just bring attention to it, you can get enough people involved or discuss discussing how the article should be written on the talk page, which will usually result in the article being improved overall.

9.4. Merits Of Wikipedia

  • Continuously updated.
  • Great compilation of secondary and primary sources.
  • Balanced representation of most topics and different viewpoints.
  • Extensive links to many different / related topics.
  • Great for coining neologisms and new phrases that often end up in STEM articles (according to MIT 2017 study): https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3039505 & https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/scicurious/wikipedia-science-reference-citations.
  • Wikipedia’s references and citations can be cite in research papers (even though the articles themselves cannot be cited).
  • Easily accessible, free of charge, no advertisements.
  • Multilingual (though depth and quality of articles varies between languages).
  • Aims for neutrality (not guaranteed for controversial topics; sometimes, there is often a banner informing this at the top of an article or section).

9.5. Influence Of Wikipedia As The World’s Largest Reference

  • Information from Wikipedia is often retrieved by virtual assistants like: Apple Siri, Microsoft Cortana, Amazon Alexa, etc.
  • Wikipedia often comes up in desktop search utilities like: Apple spotlight, …
  • Wikipedia articles are often used to form corpuses for research and development in computational linguistics, corpus linguistics, etc.
  • Words/phrases mentioned in Wikipedia often appear in scientific publications later on.
  • Wikipedia is the world’s largest encyclopedia / tertiary source.
  • Wikipedia is a common starting point for finding primary and secondary resources for doing research.

9.6. Advantages of Wikipedia As A News Source

  • It isn’t managed by a corporation aiming to make profit, so it doesn’t have an economic incentive to exaggerate details, purposely catch attention, or flat-out lie to make a profit. Albeit, Wikipedia instead inherits the collective ideological incentives of its editors.
  • It has somewhat less incentive to unevenly cover different concurrent topics (based on which ones will draw the most profit and interest).
  • Wikipedia is free. By contrast, news articles from outlets like the New York Times, Washington Post, etc are often paywalled.
  • Wikipedia has a clean and professional looking layout and formatting. News sites often feature bloated javascript and overcomplicated HTML/CSS, which makes their articles relatively more cumbersome to view. Thus, the information I read is more balanced on all kinds of different concurrent topics, and one does not receive more attention than another. In fact, the length of an article often (but not always) indicates the importance of its topic.
  • It is relatively unbiased compared to most news outlets, and it tends to report multiple perspectives too, often with different headings for each.
    • However, Wikipedia does have a strong left-wing bias.
  • All articles are written in third-person, which reduces personal biases and can even cause the writers and readers to think more objectively.
  • News outlets often control the information by choosing which people to invite and voice their opinions, and sometimes they won’t let them speak or clearly articulate their message. For that matter, cable news takes all the downsides of spoken debates (compared to textual debates) and incorporates those negative flaws into itself. Cable news is also very well-known to photo/video-shop.
  • It is a tertiary source instead of a secondary source, with links to various secondary and sometimes even primary sources.
    • Can tertiary sources refer to primary sources?
    • The Encyclosphere may be the closest thing there will ever be to a “quaternary” source, since it makes it possible to search multiple Tertiary sources.
  • It links to other articles with information relevant to the first article.
  • It is multilingual, so I can read the same article in different languages as long as there is an article written in that language. Sometimes the different language articles have different information written in each of them, but at least they are available. By contrast, most news outlets usually don’t provide news in more than one language.
  • No ads.
  • No clickbait. Titles are often the most clickbaity parts of news articles, and those fortunately aren’t shown anywhere in Wikipedia articles, except the references section, or when part of the title actually appears in the article body.
  • Few conspiracy theories.
  • It is slower to report the news, but the advantage is that it’s less likely to report fake/exaggerated/etc news. And besides, when would I have to know something in the news immediately?

9.7. Disadvantages of Wikipedia As A News Source

[I haven’t finished writing this section yet. It takes time to write stuff.]

  • Wikipedia has a strong left-wing, humanist bias, as so do most mainstream media outlets. Alternative media and news sources sometimes or often prove to be more reliable.
  • News articles sometimes feature information that isn’t included into Wikipedia articles. This may be done for brevity (an article can’t always fit every single thing that’s been said into it), etc.
  • News articles feature more images and videos, and often more recent images/videos for events, whereas Wikipedia is comparatively more text-based. This is a disadvantage when you wish you could see more images and videos about events.
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9.8. Thoughts On Each Of The Different Language Wikipedias And Race Realism

The population of editors of each of the Wikipedia language versions is largely determined by the racial characteristics of each of those populations. I suspect that the main reason why the Spanish Wikipedia has one lowest admin to user ratios is because they’re simply aren’t enough reasonably intelligent who are qualified enough and have enough desire to become admin of the encyclopedia. The Japanese Wikipedia also has a very low admin to user, but this is probably because The Japanese is so intelligent and unlikely to vandalize things that it can get away with having a lower admin to user ratio. This implies that there are two extremes there are not enough admin quality overall, or conversely, encyclopedia is so high-quality that not a lot of admins are needed because the users are usually very rule-abiding. The Japanese Wikipedia has higher attention of users and one of the lowest edit revert rates probably for similar reasons.

It’s not surprising that the English Wikipedia is so large when English is the most spoken language in the world with a high population of intelligent people. Years ago before I ever discovered race realism, I would’ve expected the Spanish and French Wikipedias to be among the largest. There are other factors, like how some populations lack Internet access and education to begin with. But as it turns out, the main determining factor for the size of each Wikipedia is mostly how many intelligent people there are who speak that language. Hence why the German Wikipedia is larger than both the French and Spanish Wikipedias.

Censorship in China is the primary reason why the Chinese/Mandarin Wikipedia isn’t larger than it is, despite China having the world’s second largest population and an enormous number of relatively intelligent people compared to the rest of the world. The Chinese/Mandarin Wikipedia is banned in mainland China, hence why it’s so small compared to the other Wikipedias, even though there is a very high population of native Mandarin speakers in the world. The logographic writing systems, simplified vs traditional versions, etc of those languages also pose problems, but they are very minor.

Thoughts On Spanish Vs French Wikipedia
Regarding the Spanish speaking world, it seems that the number of Spanish speakers of European descent is smaller compared to the number of French speakers of European descent. French is spoken in France, Belgium, Switzerland, Canada, and any Europeans, who learn French as a second language. Even though French may currently have fewer speakers than Spanish speakers, both regarding native speakers and the total number of speakers, many of these statistics don’t count for how many people also learn French as a second language in Europe, like say, German learning French or Romanian learning French, etc.

Although the Spanish Wikipedia could theoretically be improved, especially with the help of (AI) translation from other language Wikipedias, I see the root problem with the Spanish Wikipedia being the people who created and the population of Spanish speakers in general. Although people could try to improve the Spanish Wikipedia to make it better for everybody, there isn’t usually isn’t much benefit to reading the Spanish Wikipedia in general compared to the other Wikipedia since it’s so low quality due to the people who contribute to it. In middle school, Spanish was the only language class that was offered to students. If I had never taken that Spanish course in the first place and if I had never been so unreasonably intimidated by learning, Mandarin and I’ve been aware of the easier way to learn the Chinese writing system, I could’ve done that instead during my middle school in high school years.

Wikipedia 2008 demographics survey

9.9. Typography Of Types Of Wikipedia Editors

  • Some Wikipedia editors are daily readers of certain news outlets, and they’ll just cite whatever factoids they find from reading those news outlets every day. Those types of editors are probably mainly people who read and edit about current events and political related stuff and they thought it’s probably a greater influence in adding about political topics and such.
  • There are other editors who strive to create articles and research papers about things that they want to know more about and they like to create articles from scratch rather than editing existing articles about political topics or current articles from new events and such. The PARAKANYAA editor comes to my mind as an archetypical example of an editor like this who is obsessed with reliable sourcing, and strictly following Wikipedia sourcing policies.
  • For a third demographic of Wikipedia editors, there are subject matter experts who create articles about things that they were interested in and want the world to know about.
  • For a fourth type, there are activist editors, and paid editors who want to edit Wikipedia to promote a narrative, biases or information that influences the world in favor of their world view, bottom line, and biases.
  • There’s also casual editors, who just edit about whatever they’re interested in as they go along and such. These editors tend to have very levels of experience with editing. At the most basic level, they may just correct occasional typos, as I mainly did from 2018 to 2024. Electric gecko is another example of this type of editor with very limited skills, knowledge, and desire on how to make more advanced edits. On a higher skill level, they might be more like myself from 2025 to the present where they occasionally add in information from new sources and such if they decide to search for it or they happen to already know of the source and they want to decide it.
  • As a potential final category, there are editors who edited for a while, but they decided to stop editing for some reason. These reasons may range from death, to disinterest, to reevaluating their assessment and value in editing and their impact, etc. For example, Randall Holmes stopped editing Wikipedia after he was turned off by a discussion war on debating the definition of a function across hundreds of talk, page, comments, and such. Another example is chopping aficionado, who used to believe that we’re editing Wikipedia had huge impact, but he was turned off by all the combative, enemy editors who succeeded in pushing their biases and such and how he was banned from editing and how he decided that Grokipedia is a superior encyclopedia for people to use instead, in spite of its hallucination and other flaws. An editor who lost interest in editing, can be any one of the previous types of editors that I have mentioned.
  • Finally, there are the archetypical trolls and vandalism, and such who had no value whatsoever to the encyclopedia. They are the most obvious stereotype and demographic type of editor but they are worthless because they have no practical value and they are not a real editor who contributes to the site.

Nearly all editors do Wikipedia:Wikilawyering on Wikipedia, i.e. they cite specific policies that favor their desires (or they deliberately misinterpret and/or misapply policies), while ignoring others. Exceptions mainly include the most dedicated, most prolific Wikipedia editors, who strictly follow nothing but the rules. These people take pride in being Wikipedians, but they typically no original thoughts, beliefs, values, or agendas. Their beliefs could be described as mainstream NPCs. Unlike NPCs though, they are unusually far more productive at creating quality content than most people.

PageTheEditor and similar people who don’t understand how Wikipedia works are especially guilty of wiki-lawyering. They wikilawyer to an even greater degree, in part because they don’t know all or most of the actual policies, are anti-cooperative, lack the competence required to be a good editor, and usually don’t understand that they don’t have enough power to change how Wikipedia’s policies function or how its community behaves.

Footnotes:

1

Although userboxes can often indicate conflict of interest and biases in yourself and others, they can sometimes indicate competence when they demonstrate or indicate your expertise in a subject, especially if it is genuinely true. For example, my userboxes indicating that I have a Linguistics BA and Mathematics BS qualify me to talk about mathematics and linguistics. My linguistics degree also add credibility and competence/qualification to my claims when I am making comments that specifically relate to some talk page disputes about correct grammar, implicature, and such.

Last Modified: 2026 June 14, 14:37

Author: Zero Contradictions