Is anyone here able to edit Wikipedia?

[AngeloMysterioso]

Don’t ask me how but I went down a Wikipedia rabbit hole and ended up on Frances Barber’s page, where I was irritated to see the below text:

“In 2018, she was among the signatories to a letter published in The Observer arguing that debate surrounding reforms of the Gender Recognition Act were being silenced.[15] In September 2020, she signed a further letter in support of J.K. Rowling, against the backlash Rowling had received following her transphobic comments.[16]”

The words “transphobic comments” are also a hyperlink to the page “Political views of J. K. Rowling”

I went to edit the page to change the word “transphobic” to “gender critical” but it turns out I’m blocked from editing, the reason given being vandalism. No idea what that’s about as I don’t think I’ve ever actually edited a Wikipedia page in my life… anyway, if there is anyone out there who does have that happy power, could they just pop in and fix it?

It was back to "transphobic comments" before my edit.

Good wording, and like the comment that shows in the history 'removed potential bias'.

🤞

It’s now been changed to “publicising her transphobic views”.

This is getting silly.

The narrative attached to the edit says “Edited to reflect offensive nature of Rowling's comments”

I'm a history nut (mostly 16th century England) and I have edited Wiki a lot. Let's see if my edit holds. If not, I might contact them.

aaaaaaaand back.

The comment in the history on the latest edit back to slander is 'corrected inaccuracy'.

The last change lasted 20 minutes… it’s the same person changing it back each time now so they’re obviously keeping an eye on it, and us… <waves to ShanaChan95>

I used to send Wiki the odd tenner as I thought it was important to keep it free and independent of corporate sponsors.

No more. Graham Lenihan's entry is totally libellous. It describes him as an 'anti transgender activist'. You have to wonder if anything else on Wikipedia can be relied on. I don't want to subsidise liars.

Ps The Guardian can jog on as well

God there are some nut jobs out there aren’t there?

yet again I’m inclined to recommend that the person obsessively slandering JKR get a more constructive hobby

Same here, I won't be sending them any more money if it's just a TRA mouthpiece. And it shows what a stupid little game it is for them, no room for discourse at all.

Thank you for highlighting the exciting process to me. This backwards and forwards clearly shows that some people are incapable of using objective language. Insenstive is not neutral just like transphobic isn't.

Editing not exciting!

Damnit ShanaChan95 has just made me snigger 😡

Shana4chan has clearly gotten more and more worked up.comments scale up from ‘Consensus view’ to ‘Neutrality not required regarding prejudice’ to ‘neutrality not required regarding hate speech’
maybe if you keep going they will just have an aneurism…
what happens to Wikipedia pages where it just goes back and forth- does any higher level of mod get switched on? I made a note I had to donate again yesterday, can’t say I feel like it right now!

And back to OTT slander...

FYI Wikipedia has a rule that you're not allowed to revert an edit more than three times, as it's called "edit warring" and can lead to being banned.

So be careful that none of you as individuals revert a change more than twice in a row.

If anyone else on Wikipedia has done this, then they should be reported and potentially banned.

By my count shanachan has corrected 20 times today! How is this allowed?

It's been reported now.

Just to explain, if it's useful: Wikipedia is entirely peer-edited.

They do have rules, but if someone is breaking the rules then you have to manually report them. There's no automated process

ShanaChan95 has been banned from Wikipedia (a 24 hour ban, because they nearly always start with a 24 hour ban, but will be banned permanently if they don't stop).

Just to explain further, Wikipedia is not a "TRA mouthpiece" anymore than the council is a ACAB mouthpiece just because someone graffities on a council-owned wall.

If you don't like something, then change it. There's literally nothing on Wikipedia you can't change.

Think of Wikipedia as a giant chalkboard set up in a town square. Anyone can come along and scrawl anything they like on it.

I could edit Frances Barber's page to say that she was born on the moon and lives on an all-cheese diet, and the only way it would be removed would be if someone happened to notice and decide to manually remove it.

Please get out of this mindset that just because something is on Wikipedia, it means Wikipedia as an entity approves of it. There is no "higher authority" on Wikipedia. Just normal people. Wikipedia does not have moderators. (They do have Admins but admins are just regular users who other users have voted should receive greater access - for example being able to ban people - because they have a history of making frequent beneficial edits to Wiki.)

If there's something up that shouldn't be there, then the only reason it's there is because either no one has noticed, or no one has bothered to remove it. There's no conspiracy or "mod decision" to let it be there. The onus is on other wikipedia editors ie regular people like us to remove anything that's not cited or not objective.

What happens with pages that are 'locked due to vandalism'? Is there a way of submitting corrections and updates to the admins?

Well, since ShanaChan95‘s last edit changing it back to transphobic views again, the page has been “protected” and now can’t be edited anymore. So it’s stuck like that.

Wikipedia is not a "TRA mouthpiece"
Then it's weird that ShanaChan95 is blocked for 24 hours and the Mumsnet lot are blocked indefinitely