>Personally, I think for 90% of the articles, Wales does a decent job as the final gatekeeper,

Which only indicates that you haven't looked at the actual content of Wikipedia very closely. I have. Yes, there are many good, usable articles on it. There are also millions of "junk" articles, thousands of hoaxes, tens of thousands of people being defamed in their biographies, hundreds of thousands of people glorifying themselves by writing their own bios (against Jimbo's own rule), and various other abuses. Some are repaired quickly, some sit there for years. And there's no way to tell if an article is valid or not, except by checking the references very carefully (which few people do anyway--Wikipedia is a lazy man's reference). Wales does no "gatekeeping" at all, he is purely a figurehead at this point.

What I really don't get: why do people worship him? He's one of the most inadequate leaders of a major online movement I've ever seen.

(Hello, David! You've failed again with the anonymous backstabbing, we got what we wanted--on the front page. Give it up.)

....no one, not even the Wikipedians, has any idea how many there are. No one can even hazard a decent guess, although after 3+ years of heavy study of English Wikipedia and the "people" who run it, I can state with reasonable certainty that there are thousands of hoaxes on it at any given time. They tend to be subtle bits of misinformation, difficult to find and often lasting for many years.

....no one, not even the Wikipedians, has any idea how many there are. No one can even hazard a decent guess, although after 3+ years of heavy study of English Wikipedia and the "people" who run it, I can state with reasonable certainty that there are thousands of hoaxes on it at any given time. They tend to be subtle bits of misinformation, difficult to find and often lasting for many years.

I've estimated that English Wikipedia contains thousands of hoaxes at any given time. Some of them are removed quickly as "vandalism", some of them last for many years. It is simply not possible to make accurate studies of this situation, because the hoaxes are ever-changing, old ones removed while new ones are added.

Part of the perverse subculture of Wikipedia is the absolute, near-religious certainty that Wikipedia does not contain false or malicious information, because it "simply isn't possible". This is the dark and slimy legacy of Jimbo Wales and his early supporters. By and large a very dishonest group. They are simply pathologically incapable of admitting that they are wrong, or that they ever make mistakes.

Well, well, well, I don't suppose you're really Lee "Camembert" Pilich, one of Wikipedia's earliest administrators and arbitrators, are you?

If so, why did you more-or-less give up on Wikipedia in 2010? Did you finally realize that Jimbo Wales wasn't an "Internet Hero" or some bullshit like that, and that he had installed some very dishonest people in the admin ranks, and thence at the WMF? When did it dawn upon you that Wikipedia was declining?

1) No, I am not Oppong. I did partly assist him with the publication of his Wikipediocracy article. That is all.

2) I don't read German and so am not privy to much of what happens on de-WP. But Wikipediocracy has a couple of regulars who follow de-WP, and they tell us that even though it is better run overall than en-WP, it has major problems with "cranks" pushing extreme viewpoints. Also, many of the worst users on Wikimedia Commons, who fight any controls over adult content tooth and nail (resulting in thousands of close-up penis photos and other disgusting stuff), came to Commons from de-WP.

3) Your nitpicking about the exact language is superfluous. Oppong himself read it as a direct and violent threat, and he contacted his local police. Who did nothing, as usual, saying that "it's an American website and we have no control over it legally". This is part of how Wikipedia gets away with its abuses and incompetence.

4) Are you "Giftzwerg 88"? Because your furious spluttering reminds me of him.

So, to summarize:

1) it appears from the threads on this post that many Slashdotters find it acceptable for corporate paid editors to mess openly with Wikipedia articles.

2) and, it's similarly perfectly acceptable for anonymous Wikipedia editors to threaten people who uncover these schemes.

3) plus, Oppong is black, and the threat involved "curb stomping", a very ugly act of violence that white "skinheads" are fond of doing to their enemies. As Oppong noted, it was seen being done (by a white racist, to a black man) in the film "American History X". So acts of skinhead violence are A-OKAY on Wikipedia, because "oh well, people make violent threats on Wikipedia all the time".

I'm getting the impression that soon it will be socially acceptable for Wikipedia's cultlike fans to commit acts of real-world violence against their critics, plus any journalists who uncover Wikipedia corruption. Why?