I dread making changes to wikipedia for this reason. You invest time and energy to research something and write it up and then some semi anonymous bastard comes along and deletes it. Frustrating and a waste of effort.
At least that was what I used to think until recently. I spotted such a glaring omission on the Dutch wikipedia that I felt morally compelled to remedy it myself. I did the edit and sure enough within five minutes I was alerted that someone else had edited my edit.
Turns out he had just fixed a typo, sent me a thank you and added a new section of his own on something unrelated. For what it is worth, it was an uplifting little experience.
I know its a little off topic, but every time I hear it mentioned I want to say something about it:
Rather than complain about the typos or inaccuracies on Wikipedia, fix them. I've had an account registered for a couple of years, and might put in a handful of small edits every few months. It adds up, and just complain about it like people tend to do doesn't help anything.
No surprise here. I tried editing 3 or 4 articles, and every single time my additions were reverted, even if they were valid. There are too many power-tripping people on wikipedia.
this is pretty fascinating to me, i thought the whole point of wikipedia was if you see something wrong you hit edit, fix it, and then click save. If you want to add something new the process is the same. Do you now have to pass like a virtual interview to qualify to make a change?
Idk man, some good soul corrected a common language error on a site where many authors are not even native English speakers.
I am happy there are people willing to do the work for free and that Wikipedia is now better. Hopefully he corrects more errors in the future so I am less likely to pick up incorrect language in the future when I read the articles. Sounds like the right solution you are looking for to me.
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