Lizstar

@Lizstar

Gay Murr Girl

She/Her/Goblin
twitch.tv/Lizstar

Liz, Goblin, Part-Time Shark, VTuber, retired speedrunner, author, GDQ staff, Sega fan, "Yuri Sommelier", Walking Encyclopedia of All Things Useless, Twitch partner, general menace. Says "Murr" a lot. This is not a place of honor, views my own, etc. Avatar art by me.

Lizstar @Lizstar4/29/2023, 3:22 PM

I was reading the Wikipedia article for the Pinkertons last night and it seriously gave the vibe that they wrote it themselves.

Yeah we need to mention the (unfounded) claim that they stopped a presidential assassination and hired minorities before anyone else did (probably not paying them well but whatever), before mentioning what they're ACTUALLY known for.

I also love the talk page, where a dude with the name of Prakov-Pinkerton argues that we need to not use the words goon squad or intimidate. Sure think, Mr. Pinkerton, we'll get right on that.

I assume he meant "inaccurate" instead of accurate, but hey, I get it, big words are hard.

#pinkertons #wikipedia

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in reply to @Lizstar's post:

Vincent Kinian @Video-Game-King4/29/2023, 4:06 PM

I checked out the Talk page myself and was about to mention this little gem:

https://i.imgur.com/fZUfT2i.png

But then I decided to check out the guy's user page, and uh, turn around of the fucking century.

https://i.imgur.com/X4iDLF7.png
https://i.imgur.com/ThBo8LB.png

Lizstar @Lizstar4/29/2023, 5:00 PM

Oh fuck yeah

You love to see it!

Emptyeye @Emptyeye4/29/2023, 5:10 PM

Oh THIS GUY.

So one of my hobbies is in lurking the "behind-the-scenes" areas of Wikipedia, to the point where I've picked up enough that I'd probably (wrongly) get banned for being a sockpuppet of another user, because Wikipedians focus their paranoia in all the wrong places. I find "The Wikipedia culture" way more interesting than the actual encyclopedia part, though I have made a few edits to it.

But ANYWAY.

"Kurt Weber" was infamous circa the late 2000s on Wikipedia. I don't know that I can concisely explain it without the context, but as succinctly as possible, he would oppose any self-nominated Request for Adminship (Admins get a set of elevated Wikipedia privileges, chiefly being able to block rule-breakers. Getting these privileges involves a Request for Adminship, which is a week-long gauntlet where people get to ask you questions/dig up your entire Wikipedia history/etc. these requests can either be self-nominated, or another user can nominate you on your behalf [You can either accept or decline the nomination in theory; in practice, the nominator will ask you if you want to try to be an admin before making the nomination, so they're just about never declined.].) as "I view all self-requests for administration as prima facie evidence of power hunger.". Wikipedia being Wikipedia, it would generate pages upon pages of text and discussion every time he did it even though it doesn't make that big a difference in the grand scheme of things.)

I actually don't think they've edited Wikipedia in a long time, but regardless, thanks for bringing back that memory!

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