Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 22:20, 1 September 2019

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• So, the monies we donate to the WMF are being used to support and promote a fascist website. This isn't a New York Times article yet? -- GreenC 00:36, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

@GreenC: I'm not _entirely_ sure what a "fascist website" is, but it does indeed appear to be the case that the Croatia Misplaced Pages 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 Misplaced Pages 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)

For articles on short-term interest rates see:

• United_States_Treasury_security#Treasury_bill
• Eurodollars
• TED spread
• Libor
• Certificate of deposit
• Prime rate
• Primary dealer
• Yield curve, etc. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 03:53, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

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)

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)

No argument with your basic point - that the Croatian Misplaced Pages 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)

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)

• 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 01:26, 31 August 2019 (UTC)
  • Ditto. Was going to link to the same Meta page. Start a RFC on Croatian Misplaced Pages? Renata (talk) 01:34, 31 August 2019 (UTC)
    • There is already one RFC at Meta-Wiki. George Ho (talk) 04:25, 31 August 2019 (UTC)
  • My gut feeling is that if stewards did not act on Azerbaijani Misplaced Pages (where the issues were relatively more clear-cut) then they won't act here, unfortunately. --Rschen7754 04:34, 31 August 2019 (UTC)
• Thank you for this interesting and well-written article. Glad you brought this to light! Ganesha811 (talk) 01:28, 31 August 2019 (UTC)
• 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 Misplaced Pages. 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)
• 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)
• 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)

  Serbo-Croat is a pluricentric language with four mutually intelligible standard varieties, Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Montenegrin. There is no Montenegrin Misplaced Pages, 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)

• "with its nationalist sentiments, factual mistakes, lack of academic references and omitted facts 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)
• If it want, the WMF has full control of any versions of Misplaced Pages. 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)

• 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 Misplaced Pages, 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 Misplaced Pages 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 Misplaced Pages - 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)
• Interesting read, thanks for taking the time to write it. --Hmxhmx 07:15, 1 September 2019 (UTC)
• 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 Misplaced Pages to paint fascists positively? Man, that's just depressing. igordebraga ≠ 16:35, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

Given that Serbo-Croatian Misplaced Pages is larger and more active than Croatian Misplaced Pages, I wouldn't be shocked if non-fascist Croatian editors have just decided to edit there instead. _signed, Rosguill 17:44, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

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)

Here 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 Misplaced Pages because of how poisoned it is. DraconicDark (talk) 20:55, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

...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)