I was aware of this for specific things, (e.g. blogging about gender and sexuality issues, or the weirder parts of reddit or 4chan). But I’d always thought of wikipedia as a nice friendly place. Basically I thought it was a risk you took on in certain areas not a general background thing.
The vast majority of activity on Wikipedia is nice and friendly. But some of that minority, well…
(More in high-conflict areas than elsewhere, yes, but crazy people are everywhere. Articles get written on obscure subjects because no matter what the topic is, someone is obsessive about it. But people go crazy about unexpected topics, because no matter what the topic is, someone is obsessive about it...)
I was aware of this for specific things, (e.g. blogging about gender and sexuality issues, or the weirder parts of reddit or 4chan). But I’d always thought of wikipedia as a nice friendly place. Basically I thought it was a risk you took on in certain areas not a general background thing.
The vast majority of activity on Wikipedia is nice and friendly. But some of that minority, well…
(More in high-conflict areas than elsewhere, yes, but crazy people are everywhere. Articles get written on obscure subjects because no matter what the topic is, someone is obsessive about it. But people go crazy about unexpected topics, because no matter what the topic is, someone is obsessive about it...)
Wikipedia doesn’t have a culture that promotes being awful to people, the way that some sites do — but it’s a high-value target.