 | This is an
essay. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of
Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been
thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. |
In any long-term contest between the precedents set by reality and a contradictory position found in Wikipedia, the typical verdict is "Reality Wins Again". Hence, to avoid a lengthy, protracted struggle fighting uphill against an avalanche of opposing forces, the easiest option would be to change Wikipedia, sooner, to match reality.
Some examples:
- Many people have tried to hack articles about medical subjects to remove "Symptoms and Treatment" or "Related illnesses" only to find that medical information is continually restored to list those details, regardless if some people dislike the big words used to name illnesses or symptoms in pathology. Instead, Reality Wins Again to stop the censoring of big words in technical articles.
- Some people have tried to remove road maps from articles, in favor of simplistic unlabeled maps which do not show the large towns in an area. Instead, Reality Wins Again where entire categories of roadmaps have been added to Wikipedia.
- Early Wikipedia policies had fought against protecting pages, instead allowing anyone to edit, or hack, any page. Almost every page had to show an intense warring of vandalism and hacking before being protected. In mid 2010, many string-handling templates had been unprotected as showing no vandalism, but most were quickly hacked to break, then reverted and re-protected. Eventually, a policy was adopted to auto-protect the cascading pages of a high-use page, without having to prove the potential damage caused by allowing an unprotected page to be transcluded into a high-use page.
There are numerous other cases where Wikipedia attempted to enforce an unreal position, even penalizing dissenting users, only to find, long-term, how Reality won the debate, and Wikipedia was changed to align with real-world concepts.
| This is an
essay. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of
Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been
thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. |
In any long-term contest between the precedents set by reality and a contradictory position found in Wikipedia, the typical verdict is "Reality Wins Again". Hence, to avoid a lengthy, protracted struggle fighting uphill against an avalanche of opposing forces, the easiest option would be to change Wikipedia, sooner, to match reality.
Some examples:
- Many people have tried to hack articles about medical subjects to remove "Symptoms and Treatment" or "Related illnesses" only to find that medical information is continually restored to list those details, regardless if some people dislike the big words used to name illnesses or symptoms in pathology. Instead, Reality Wins Again to stop the censoring of big words in technical articles.
- Some people have tried to remove road maps from articles, in favor of simplistic unlabeled maps which do not show the large towns in an area. Instead, Reality Wins Again where entire categories of roadmaps have been added to Wikipedia.
- Early Wikipedia policies had fought against protecting pages, instead allowing anyone to edit, or hack, any page. Almost every page had to show an intense warring of vandalism and hacking before being protected. In mid 2010, many string-handling templates had been unprotected as showing no vandalism, but most were quickly hacked to break, then reverted and re-protected. Eventually, a policy was adopted to auto-protect the cascading pages of a high-use page, without having to prove the potential damage caused by allowing an unprotected page to be transcluded into a high-use page.
There are numerous other cases where Wikipedia attempted to enforce an unreal position, even penalizing dissenting users, only to find, long-term, how Reality won the debate, and Wikipedia was changed to align with real-world concepts.