[EM] Wikipedia article needs editing

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 05:12 PM 8/28/2013, Richard Fobes wrote:
>The Wikipedia article titled "Electoral reform in the United States" 
>contains a heading "Electoral Reform Proposals" and then under that 
>heading is a section titled "Instant-runoff voting".  Obviously this 
>needs to be broadened to "Election-method reform" with IRV being 
>just one kind of election-method reform.
>
>Does anyone have time to do this edit?  (I don't.)

If one doesn't know Wikipedia policy, it can be an exercise in 
massive waste of time, or it might be useful for a time, and it's 
quite unreliable.

Basically, that there is what we might consider important 
information, even information that, among the informed, is obvious 
and generally accepted, is not enough for Wikipedia, by policy. 
Indeed, making up an article out of your own knowledge or conclusions 
is called "Original Research," quicklink WP:OR, and is prohibited. 
Everything should come from Reliable Sources, but don't copy, except 
for short excerpts, explicitly quoted, and attributed.

"Reliable Source" does not have the ordinary meaning, it is a 
Wikipedia term of art. It means something independently published, 
and not self-pubished by an author or advocacy organization or even 
certain kinds of special-interest groups. Gaming the Vote, 
Poundstone, is RS. A page on the rangevoting.org web site is not. 
Never cite anything to a mailing list!!!

And, then, if someone reverts you, don't revert war, it can get you 
blocked quickly. Don't use the Talk page to discuss the subject, but 
only for evaluating suggested edits. Yeah, counter-intuitive, all right!

The cited article is atrocious.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_reform_in_the_United_States#Cost_of_problems_with_the_current_system

is one section.

It's "recentism." Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and is to be written, 
by policy, from an "encyclopedic point of view." Everything in the 
article is about recent situations or proposals or organizations.

There is less reliable source on this than on past reform movements.

The article appears to be written from a reformer point of view, very 
possibly someone affiliated with FairVote.

The history of the article shows extensive editing by 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:DavidMCEddy. This user is not 
exactly a single-purpose account (WP:SPA), but close, he's a 
reformer, writing about election reform. He uses what appear to be 
self-published sources, including FairVote. First step would be to 
take the article down to what is reliably sourced. Much of the 
article looks like Original Research.

A chart showing the advocacy positions of organizations is close to 
OR. Is that a reliable compilation? What were the standards for inclusion?

By the way, the first editor who edited the Talk page, and who worked 
on the article, was Captain Zyrain. CZ was, at that time or 
thereabouts, a FairVote activist, and was, he later told me, sent by 
FairVote to "take me out." Unfortunately, he engaged in a 
conversation and said, essentially, "OMG, I've been on the wrong 
side." He was subsequently, under a different name, banned.

The article had a POV tag on it for years. That was removed by 
DavidMCEddy unilaterally. That's not a violation of policy, but he 
removed it first and asked questions later.... In his discussion of 
the article, he appears to have had the intention of removing the 
appearance that the article was a "sales pitch for Instant Runoff 
Voting." Indeed. But he's not a sophisticated editor.

McEddy makes piles of small edits, also a sign of an inexperienced 
editor. Yes, one should not make one huge edit, that is also rude. 
But section rewrites should be done with a single edit, proofread 
before saving....

The POV tag was added by Devourer09. 
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Electoral_reform_in_the_United_States&diff=455307060&oldid=455302714
This editor had five edits this year, so far, probably is not 
checking his/her watchlist.

Recent edits: 
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Electoral_reform_in_the_United_States&diff=570492529&oldid=570491180 
though it appears to be a sound edit, elimination possibly POV 
language, was reverted by a power user, an administrator, "to revert 
block evasion." That's standard practice if an editor is identified 
as evading a block, to revert their contributions without considering 
them. Anyone could revert that back. If they dare. I don't know that 
any serious POV pusher is watching this article.

That reversion is odd. The IP was not blocked, there is no block log for it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents&oldid=570593657#Harassing_an_administrator.3F

Arthur Rubin reverted this IP on a page not related to any of the 
reverts of his edits.

Fascinating. Rubin maintains a page listing all the incarnations of 
this IP editor, in his judgment. He's violating common advice to 
ignore trolls. But this is what I've seen. Blocking an editor becomes 
a matter of personal power, it's a contest of wills. And, generally, 
the IP editor can continue as long as he or she wants. There is no 
reliable way to block every edit, with all the options an editor has. 
If an administrator gets an editor sufficiently pissed, this can go 
on for years, at enormous cost in administrator time, and with 
collateral damage. Range blocks can block an enormous number of users 
who have nothing to do with the problem.

But this current editor hasn't been blocked yet, as far as I could 
see (but the pattern does indicate this is the same editor with IP 
previously blocked, I'd agree). I argued that an administrator should 
never block an editor, except short-term in an emergency, and then 
asking for independent attention, for attacking the administrator. I 
haven't researched this case, I used to go into these in detail. You 
can bet it wasn't popular.... The active core in Wikipedia did not 
want *any* restriction on the power of administrators to do whatever 
they please, so conflict of interest administration was, and probably 
is, common. It's pretty normal, but the neutrality of the project 
required more than that, and failure to understand this is a piece of 
why Wikipedia is unreliable.

Even if Rubin was totally justified initially, he's created a user at 
war with him. Did he ever attempt to resolve this? I don't know. I 
worked with Rubin at one point, not a bad sort at all, by comparison 
with certain others. But this kind of thing happens routinely, 
Wikipedia burns out administrators, and they don't undertand why.

I need to stay away from Wikipedia. I see too much.