I love how this list goes: Arab-Israel conflict, abortion, ...

All making sense so far. But then:

Article title capitalization.

Somehow this is peak wikipedia.

It's peak human. There's a reason why bikeshedding is called that.

What percentage of Wikipedia does that cover?

The entire world's knowledge has some controversial topics? Oh my! Burn it! Burn it all!!

The librarians of Alexandria would have killed for Wikipedia. It's easily our greatest digital achievement.

This is a hill on which I would happily fight to my metaphorical death, here and now. If you disagree, let's discuss please.

I don't get your point. You are allowed to edit articles on contentious topics. Its just more likely to be reverted. Because the topic is... contentious.

My attempt at a point is that the controversial topics are a tiny percentage of the human knowledge stored on Wikipedia. If there were no controversies, then I would actually start to get worried. That would indicate that there was pure control of information on Wikipedia, like a theoretical CCPedia. [0]

Wikipedia is so open, that they even have their own "controversial" section! Is that not the coolest thing ever?

The chip on my shoulder is that there is a concerted effort to destroy and discredit Wikipedia.

The accomplishment of Wikipedia is not just beating the Library of Alexandria by many orders of magnitude, but doing so while keeping moderation logs in the open as well.

Ask @dang, or anyone that has ever had anything to do with forum moderation, if they would be cool with their moderation logs being completely open. Almost everyone with experience would say 100% no. They likely tried that and saw how much nutso drama it creates. Wikipedia actually does that, at the largest possible scale!

[0] Of course that exists, apparently it's called Baidu Baike

> if they would be cool with their moderation logs being completely open

It takes a certain mentality. That's rare but I think it makes for much better communities on the whole.

However I think most participants, not just moderators, don't like the environment that sort of mentality results in. When anything and everything, including the moderation itself, is up for civilized debate that tends to foster an environment in which it's acceptable to question core parts of people's worldviews. There's little shared doctrine beyond "argue any position you'd like" which most people seem to find intensely uncomfortable.

> The accomplishment of Wikipedia is not just beating the Library of Alexandria by many orders of magnitude, but doing so while keeping moderation logs in the open as well.

There is at least one exception to that rule. Users who attract the ArbCom's attention may get a general block. If they ask what they're blocked for, the ArbCom rep will tell them to read their email. These moderation decisions are not public, not even in a form with PII redacted.

There is also what's called "Oversight", which performs actions that are invisible to the public and administrators alike (though not invisible to some very privileged people)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Oversight

There are also "office actions", where essentially the Wikimedia Foundation and/or its legal counsel have been required to do something. In most cases, the office actions are visible and logged, unless they've been required to use Oversight as well. But the main thing is that the office actions will generally not be explained to anyone, as it usually stems from some legal threat to Wikipedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Office_actions

I can't edit now, but when I wrote "CCPedia" I was first thinking about "muskpedia," but I didn't want to get political in a way that might offend other readers.

Currently ROFL, given grokpedia or whatever objectively dumb shit to which we are now exposed. I should not have bitten my tongue. Self-censorship is the worst kind.

Why the hell is Yasuke so controversial oO

* He's a quite interesting historical character popularized by the video game Assassin's Creed Shadows. However, this insertion has also been controversial. East Asian male protagonists are underrepresented in Western media already, and with Assassin's Creed there's the perception that now they snubbed East Asians again, following a long trend of forcefully inserting foreign perspectives in Asian settings, like The Last Samurai, Shōgun, etc.

* There aren't that many real historical accounts about him so people can argue all day about stuff like "Was Yasuke a real samurai?" without clear evidence about who's right.

Since the first games, many fans have clamoured for "Assassin's Creed in Japan"... I suspect they fantasised about being a male Japanese ninja running across rooftops in the moonlight, sneaking over nightinggale floors, and silently assassinating people in their beds, combining what they saw in Altaïr and Ezio, with every Japanese media trope they knew of.

But in the intervening years, Ubisoft and/or the entire AAA games industry is now seemingly driven by a need to conspicuously showcase diversity and inclusion (from some gamers' viewpoints). You could also view it as the gaming industry trying to broaden its audience and get out of the pigeonhole of catering to the base desires of sweaty manchildren, but either way, it's upsetting a certain type of game consumer.

So, when Ubisoft finally got around to setting Assassin's Creed in Japan, and they picked pretty much the only person around that time period who wasn't Japanese as the main protagonist, seemingly to meet diversity goals, capital-G Gamers went bananas over it, like it was a personal affront to them.

To quote from the page:

"In May 2024, it was announced that Yasuke would be a major character in an upcoming video game (Assassin's Creed Shadows). While onwiki disagreement about Yasuke's status as a samurai predates this announcement, the historical figure's Samurai status became part of a culture war around video games (J2UDY7r00CRjH evidence) that media sources have described as a continuation of or successor to Gamergate, leading to an increase in attention to the article. (Symphony Regalia evidence)"