Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2019-08-30/Opinion



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@GreenC: I'm not _entirely_ sure what a "fascist website" is, but it does indeed appear to be the case that the Croatia Wikipedia is being (ab)used by people who harbor sympathies, if not inclinations, towards the country's history of fascism. And that is a situation that should alarm each and every Wikipedian worldwide.
The English Wikipedia is not without very substantial de facto censorship. Since the terms of my topic ban forbid me from explaining myself in full, I will link to this preprint of a best-selling book and risk asking why, for example, we don't have an article on short-term interest rates, a topic in the news virtually every day, and the primary means of controlling the cost of labor for well over two thirds of the world's population. EllenCT (talk) 02:44, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
For articles on short-term interest rates see:
Or Federal funds rate, in which the words "inflation," "employment," and "unemployment" do not occur in the three paragraph "Explanation of federal funds rate decisions" section or anywhere else in the prose. EllenCT (talk) 07:03, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
At the same time, the WMF's funding also helps facilitate the production and dissemination of the Signpost, and to maintain the transparency that permits the rest of us to discover, monitor, and attempt to respond to the hr.wikipedia editors' activities. Think how much worse things would be if those editors were in full control of the content of a closed-site encyclopedia, and could operate with impunity without being subjected to our established transparency policies. Not only would they be free to revise history however they pleased, but nobody would even know they were doing it. -- FeRDNYC (talk) 00:59, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
No argument with your basic point - that the Croatian Wikipedia benefits by having its articles published via the WMF servers. I'd guess that its funding (or the funding to the hr user group or chapter) from the WMF pretty much ends there. I'll check. BTW The Signpost gets the same level of benefits from the WMF. Our budget is $0.00. Smallbones(smalltalk) 03:20, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
meta:Wikimedija Hrvatska was only "active" from 2009-2011 having had only 1 meeting and was closed down according to its by-laws. So I'd guess that it got very little money via that route. I suppose we'd have to check the individual or small scale grants to get more info, but given the controversy surrounding hr.wiki for a fairly long time, any small grants would likely be really small. Smallbones(smalltalk) 03:40, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm confused as to if or how this is different from the controversy earlier this year on azWiki. If anything, based on the reporting in this article it seems like a more extreme case, as the POVs being pushed appear to be fringe even in the context of Croatian media and society. I hope that the publication of this piece leads to some sort of intervention, and hopefully a more decisive one than in the Azeri case. signed, Rosguill talk 01:26, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thank you for this interesting and well-written article. Glad you brought this to light! Ganesha811 (talk) 01:28, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Good piece on a really problematic issue. I edit in this area on English WP. This problem lies squarely with WMF in the absence of an ArbCom equivalent on Croatian Wikipedia. Unlike English WP, where we have a solid core of a dozen or so largely neutral editors and a few admins who hold back the POV-warriors (on all sides) on articles relating to the Independent State of Croatia, few such editors remain on Croatian WP, and they cannot operate to protect the integrity of the encyclopaedia because there are admins who support the inclusion of this right-wing fringe material and are behind it in some cases, as this piece explains. You only have to look at the history of our Jasenovac concentration camp article to see that we do have issues with POV-warriors here, but they are swiftly reverted. With my basic Serbo-Croat I could contribute at Croatian WP a bit, but I stick to English WP because of the long-standing hostility to neutral editing on Croatian WP. I wouldn't be the only one, I am sure. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 01:56, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • I would assume that the reasons for the existence of three Wikis (Croatian, Serbian, and Serbo-Croatian) instead of two are largely political, so one cannot be entirely surprised at the political behavior. I see that the Croatian is smaller than the others, but it is still quite a bit larger than some of the fringe Wikis out there. Bruce leverett (talk) 02:22, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Merge all Shtokavian wikis into one wiki. Minor font (alphabet - and Serbians use Latin too) and other minor variations are less than the difference between British and American English. The resulting sub-wikis are by definition WP:POVFORKs and a waste of editorial resources.Icewhiz (talk) 04:06, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    Serbo-Croat is a pluricentric language with four mutually intelligible standard varieties, Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Montenegrin. There is no Montenegrin Wikipedia, but we currently have separate Wikipedias for the other three, although the Bosnia one is rather small. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 04:29, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • "with its nationalist sentiments, factual mistakes, lack of academic references and omitted facts [...] [Croatian Wikipedia] is not a reliable source" I'm afraid I can also name quite a number of other projects where all of this is also true. —MarcoAurelio (talk) 11:47, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • If it want, the WMF has full control of any versions of Wikipedia. When it does not take action against misuse, as shown in the article, it expose itself for not doing it what it should. If WMF do not take action, the problem will not go away, sooner or later this will be in the media. Ulflarsen (talk) 18:11, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Depiction of Wikimedia Foundation destroying Wikipedia with the Fram ban, Flow, and Media Viewer instead of the more important task of stopping admin abuse. —pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 19:32, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thank you for your comments! I'm fairly sure that issues similar to the ones described in this article may be seen in many smaller Wikipedias (largely because smaller communities are easier to subvert by cliques). I'm somewhat familiar with the recent controversy around the az wiki - indeed, that problem seems to be quite severe. Croatian Wikipedia, however, - as far as I can tell - stands unique for its deliberate and systemic abuse, the way it affected both content and editors, as well as its dismal media image. When I wrote that "it is necessary to face the reality", I meant that it is necessary to abandon the romantic notions of Wikipedia communities as bastions of free thought ruled by the wisdom of the crowd. As argued by Harari, digital domain in general is vulnerable to subversion, and when it does turn into a tyranny, that tyranny is very powerful and fighting against it is virtually impossible without outside help. I wish the WMF at least acknowledged it. Finally: if you find it unacceptable that Wikipedia - with the funding it receives - is used in the way described in this article, you can help by asking questions and demanding answers. Also, if any of you have the means of contacting Jimbo Wales (not his talk page - I've tried that already :-) ), I'd be really interested in his take on all this. GregorB (talk) 19:40, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Interesting read, thanks for taking the time to write it. --Hmxhmx 07:15, 1 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Last year, as the Croatian football team went really far on the World Cup, indications of their supporters having some far right tendencies showed up. And the people of the country also edit Wikipedia to paint fascists positively? Man, that's just depressing. igordebraga ≠ 16:35, 1 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Given that Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia is larger and more active than Croatian Wikipedia, I wouldn't be shocked if non-fascist Croatian editors have just decided to edit there instead. signed, Rosguill talk 17:44, 1 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, the stuff that happens IRL is indeed depressing, because one cannot do anything about it - but when it happens here, it's more than just depressing, to me it is insulting.
The three admins in question know about this article, but they are not coming here to defend themselves. Apparently, they don't think it's necessary, because they are not in any danger. What's worse, I'm beginning to think they might be right. GregorB (talk) 19:54, 1 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Here[1] is a link to the discussion at hrwiki. To me, the hrwiki community's response to this Signpost article is further indicative of the problems with hrwiki. Response from the admins in question is first ad hominem, then argument from fallacy, then whataboutism. They really aren't helping their case, but at the same time, the reason they can be so arrogant is that they feel they have nothing to fear. If nothing happens as a result of this Signpost article, we may need to consider proposing closure of Croatian Wikipedia because of how poisoned it is. DraconicDark (talk) 20:55, 1 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
...and, whoever takes a look at that discussion, will find I've already been accused of "serving lies and disinformation", compared with Paris terrorists, been called a "mercenary who has to account to his master for the financing" and a "political commissar", associated with a "maniac who threatens with murder and rape" and, finally, being called "Grigorije", and declared an agent who is a part of a Serbian plot against Croatia. I'm not making any of this up. This really defies belief: one would assume that people who are accused of right-wing extremism would know better than to defend themselves in a way that makes the accusations seem even more plausible. GregorB (talk) 22:20, 1 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Not to go in too much depth in ex-Yugoslav politics, yes the political situation in the region has definitely deteriorated over this decade. E.g. read Aleksandar Vučić#Controversies for an example of what's happening in Serbia. Not to cast a wrong aspersion, the majority of people in ex-Yugoslavia are preoccupied with geting by in the Great Recession which hasn't ended here, not theorising about WWII-era ideologies and vengeances. Most people in Croatia have no qualms watching Serbian and Bosnian TV and listening to Bosnian and Serbian music and vice versa, and very well see the idiocy and insult in expressing national pride by supporting a Nazi puppet state. The sad part is that though these ultra-nationalists are a small minority everywhere in the Balkans, they're unfortunately a very vocal minority. The recession and the worsening global political climate are allowing the voices promising fairy tale future through such ideologies to gain relevance -- or at least letting each such fringe group garner tacit sympathy through the ethnic FUD created by the other fringe groups (I speculate that a substantial amount of frequent editors on hrwiki are going along with and supporting the current admins for fear of those being replaced by an equally far-side group of another political ideology), not unlike the support for white supremacist and Antifa violence in the US.
Croatian Wikipedia is a small project which has been from early on controlled by a handful of admins representing a fringe group, whose gatekeeping policies have for a long time successfully turned away people who don't participate in their worldview. See for example their article on abortion with a number of graphic images and, to drive the example home, the text: "According to statistics, there were 38,500 intentional abortions in Croatia in 1990, and a little over 5,000 in 2004. The large difference can be attributed to higher education and a more informed public" (original Croatian in comment), while the newspaper article cited goes actually focuses on how due to obstructions by a few doctors women seeking abortions in some parts of Croatia have to travel hundreds of kilometres to find a hospital willing and certified to perform one. Croatia was one of the first European countries to legalise abortion (as part of Yugoslavia), and anti-abortion activism in public discourse is a fringe topic in Croatia that is only touched by far-right activists. For more examples of gatekeeping and fringe activism read my old posting on Jimbo's talk page.
I would say the crux of the problem is that hrwiki is a small community with a small number of admins, who effectively only answer to each other. In such an environment one has to be much more mindful of not stepping on their friends' toes, sacrificing newcomers and dissenters, while there's little to no force guiding the community consensus away from fringe and far-side mentality. Exacerbated here by the political ideological side, this problem is likely a common one in wikis with less than 100-150 admins and influential non-admin editors. I think that would be a good starting point to consider when searching for a solution. Daß Wölf 07:05, 2 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

So is this an issue simple within the articles about politics? Or is this a systemic issue across much of the content? Do people have proposals for improving the situation? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 14:23, 2 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Doc James: I would say the issue is very much a systemic problem. It's mostly found in articles about history and politics, (which are written from a far-right, Croatian nationalist, anti-Serbian point of view backed by questionable sources), but because any attempts to remove the bias in articles are countered by the admins, and all dissenting editors were forced out a long time ago, it has become ingrained in all levels of Croatian Wikipedia, including in page patrolling and the requests for adminship process. In regards to proposals for improving the situation, I will point you to this discussion on Meta-Wiki, where a proposal to resolve this issue is being discussed. DraconicDark (talk) 15:13, 2 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The problem is a small insular group. Which is not unique to Wikipedia. Any sort of democratic process typically in the judicial side of things would help. Once the judicial is corrupted so goes everything else, the first thing dictators do is stack the courts with cronies. Perhaps some sort of world-court for Wikipedia with judges elected from other language-wikis, that is able to take cases like this. -- GreenC 15:41, 2 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Doc James: I agree with DraconicDark's assessment. Hot spots of grossly unencyclopedic content are largely related to Croatia in World War II, notably including the Holocaust revisionism. There are also strong currents of anti-Serbian and anti-LGBT sentiment. As for the solutions, they will be discussed on Meta (very likely in a new RfC). Judging by the reactions of the article's subjects,[2] these solutions will have to be of highly involuntary nature. GregorB (talk) 16:59, 2 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
How about simply shutting that particular language WP? Its rulers would presumably copy its contents to a new, defiantly independent and ethnically cleansed wiki and roll along, no longer posing a problem anymore for WMF and WP. Jim.henderson (talk) 20:25, 2 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
That's also one of the options discussed on Meta right now. I'd say that would be fair game if all else fails. There are surely less drastic solutions to be tried first. GregorB (talk) 20:33, 2 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • As an editor of sr.wiki and someone who closely follows the developments of each community on all of the 4 projects of the 1 (serbo-croatian) language (which, btw, only became possible coz in the mid 00's the Wikimedia Linguistic committee decided to engage in identity politics but science as they should have), I agree with the opinions above calling for an intervention. I myself from personal experience can say that the admins on that project don't abide by the basic wp rules, it's all arbitrary according to their will. And the rest of the community there hasn't got the internal strength to kick them out, because, by now, they've purged everyone who isn't in line with the right-wing POV.

The truth is that the internal battle over hr.wiki has been lost in 2013 or so. That was the last time a big chunk of the community mobilized to revoke the admin status of these three incriminated admins. And all three votes were lost by a fairly slim majority. The consequences were the medial decimation of hr.wiki, a bunch of ppl left and the project fell in terms of number articles created that and the next year b4 2004 and 2005 (years immediately after hr.wiki was started). And this discussion is also one of the consequences. So, we are in fact debating a battle which is internally already lost. So the only way forward is an intervention or to shut down the project. Guess the only positive thing for the croatian public if it want's to inform itself on their native language is the „luxury“ of having 3 more wikipedias on your native language, so google search levels out things (coz it puts the other 3 wikis on top, behind hr.wiki) and, i guess, the impact from the perspective of the public is somewhat limited.

As for the history, as a long term Serbian wiki editor, looking back i can say that the main difference why sr.wiki hasn't gone the hr.wiki road, although it also struggled vehemently with the same issues in the mid and late 00's, is that from the start sr.wiki had a local Wikimedia branch who recruited a core of non-biased admins onto the project, so politics never prevailed. U, ofc, have still POV articles but no1 will stop u editing them acc. to the guidelines. So since the temptation of politics got overcome the project is thriving in terms of popularity in public and new editors. In conclusion, yes, because the Wikimedia Language committee decided early on that u can have 4 wikis on the same language (granting each identity it's own wikipedia (but also delegitimizing serbo-croat.wiki in the public's eyes)), hr.wikipedia very much has public legitimacy for it's existence. It's just the ruling cadre that needs to get booted out and the project will very fast be back on track. --Ivan VA (talk) 02:52, 5 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Serbian Wikipedia unfortunately has some problems of its own in the political department: e.g. the page on abortion, or the conspiracy theory opening the article on Srebernica massacre. I do agree that srwiki stands a better chance of correcting these on their own than hrwiki due to the extent of gatekeeping on hrwiki. Daß Wölf 15:06, 9 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Daß Wölf:Tnx fot the input, but, tho, i've never heared so far that the abortion article is somewhat controversial on sr.wiki, unlike Srebrenica. Most of the medical articles are quite good on sr.wiki, @Doc James: is perhaps familiar with it coz he cooperated with two of the quite active editors contributing on that field (Dcirovic and Intermedicibo) in translating stuff. I'll ask some of the two to look that article up. The Srebrenica massacre article is an other can of worms. It is badly written and has got POV, but mainly because there is no serious editor who is eager to get thoroughly, in depth, with the subject. It's somewhat a sysphean venture because the number of references is exorbitant (from the fake ones to the real ones). Unfortunately most editors who go to that article are just interested in the medial sensation and the political hype surrounding it, and not into serious editing. So if u wanna give it a try, u're most welcome. I'm atm tied to writing the article about the Ferhadija mosque, so i won't be on that article any time soon. But the main difference to hr.wiki is that there is no admin abuse. I've some time ago written an article on some ARBiH medal, it almost made it into the good article status/front page. So, u certainly can edit „controversial” articles on sr.wiki, but (as, i guess, on any wikipedia version) u have to know what u are doing. --Ivan VA (talk) 12:48, 12 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, it seems that the abortion article stands up better on another review. I was mostly concerned because of the concealed pro-life advocation link on top of the External links section and the graphic abortion pictures that are also present in the hrwiki article (I suppose both were translated from an older version of the enwiki article).
Re: Srebrenica, there's unfortunately a common pattern in political articles everywhere that the editors with the most interest and tenacity tend to also have the most WP:INVOLVEMENT, what from political COI, what from promoting fringe political views. I have little interest in editing this kind of articles even on enwiki, but I believe that article should definitely be tagged in some way. In future it would be a good idea to create ARBCOMs not just on hr but in other sh WPs too, or an inter-sh ARBCOM, to deal with the promotion of fringe/conspiracy politics. Daß Wölf 12:34, 13 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • @GregorB:, @DraconicDark:, @Hmxhmx:, @Daß Wölf:, @Doc James:, @GreenC:, @Jim.henderson:, This is hardly only problematic aspect of (ab)use which emanates from hr.wikipedia project, albeit being the most disturbing and elaborate one, for sure. However, here's another illustrative example of abuse, dritto from my own experience. The merger debate of two articles related to Balkan topics, namely "Turkish Croatia" → "Bosnian Krajina", is completely overwhelmed by Croatian editors from Croatian Wikipedia, thus being completely disrupted and irregular. It started with few antagonistic editors, who self-identify as ethnic Croats, contacting each others, exchanging e-mails via their Talk pages, to organize response against that merger. This exchange predictably resulted with them posting requests and asked for assistance at Croatian Wikipedia, which brought several like-minded Croatian editors into merger discussion, which is a lot considering that this is both obscure subject and really problematic article in regard of verifiability and notability - entire process couldn't draw much of attention from uninvolved and neutral editors, which makes this canvasing and number of these editors really big deal. Some of the administrators mentioned in this opinion piece also appeared, namely "K". They were warned over this behavior, but they dismissed it with some justifications and icy contempt. They all expressed their opinions and started voting, amusingly (or maybe not so much) some of them voted more then once(!) each, while using, apparently, so-called "Single-purpose accounts" when editing in English Wikipedia. But what baffled me is the lack of interest, if not with the lack of concrete reaction, on the part of English Wikipedia adminship, as I reported on this whole shebang. (Of course, it may be that I am doing it all or something wrong. I'm not overly experienced in dealing with disputes through "Noticeboards" and reports, so I may be wrong in creating a report and building a case.)
Anyhow. Amazingly, on Croatian Wikipedia they have something called "List of irregularities at English Wikipedia", which is a subpage of "Kafić", Croatian version of "Village Pump" I suppose - as a subpage it's obscured from passing-by outside editors' view, and obviously serves as a sort of forum for collecting reports and preparing an organized approach and acting in unison toward articles, edit-wars, disputes, on English Wikipedia. Cheers.--౪ Santa ౪99° 21:22, 18 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Update: as a direct consequence of this article, I am now indefinitely blocked on Croatian Wikipedia. On that occasion, I was accused of "attacking and poisoning [the Croatian Wikipedia project]" and having a "dirty agenda", and associated with Serbian officials and their "anti-Croatian mythomania". Finally, I was told that implying that anyone on CW is a fascist or a supporter of fascism is "impudent and shameless". The blocking admin was "K", one of the protagonists of this article. GregorB (talk) 18:06, 24 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • @GregorB: sorry to hear that, though the action by "K" reinforces what you said about the Croatian wiki is probably accurate. It is anti-intellectual, reliant on physical brute force (blocks) to eliminate ideas, opinions and people they don't agree with. It violates core Wiki principals of multiple POVs among other things and raises questions if Croatia is a Wikipedia or something else. -- GreenC 18:29, 24 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@GregorB:It's disgraceful. Banana republic stuff, really. For others who might read this, he got blocked on an accusation that he conspired with the serbian government against the „croatian (political) cause (?!?)” which, apparently, hr.wiki is a part of. McCarthyism stuff and alike. Insane. I really don't know why WMF doesn't do something against this absurdity. --Ivan VA (talk) 13:43, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]