Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: How can we fix Wikipedia?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 301 posts

Re: Ask HN: How can we fix Wikipedia?

#121

Post by tasha0663 »

coffeefirst wrote: post #106
bwb wrote: post #11

Sorry, I am not quite sure what the problem is? I think Wikipedia is great from my day to usage. Can you point me to specific examples where the output is bad due to this? I would like to see the problem.

Yeah, I don't get it either. It's not perfect, but it might be the only web institution that hasn't broken down over time, and has done an impressive job of holding itself to quality standards given the absurdly large scale. Encyclopedias are, by definition, fairly superficial. You could also sit down and nitpick Britannica. The quality of writing is better because they actually have a professional staff, but they ha…

> the only web institution that hasn't broken down over time, and has done an impressive job of holding itself to quality standards given the absurdly large scale.

Internet Archive and Project Gutenberg come to mind. Wikipedia might be an encyclopedia, but those are the libraries.

Re: Ask HN: How can we fix Wikipedia?

#122

Post by claytongulick »

mardifoufs wrote: post #67
legitster wrote: post #10

I'm not sure if I share the same assessment. I am amazed at how robust your typical Wikipedia page is despite the chaos that goes into writing it. Given that it's not possible to make a version of reality that everyone is happy with, I think Wikipedia comes pretty dang close.

This is a good example of an amazingly bad article with the worst type of wiki lawyering on the talk page. It basically still has the same conclusion in the lead as when it was originally created, and most of the claims/leaks against Hunter were considered "false"/dinsinfo... But now that those laptop leaks were either confirmed by different reputable sources, it more or less indirectly calls most of the claims true…

The only thing this sort of obvious political bias does is discredit Wikipedia and push readers to less reputable sites for information.

Like many others on here, I prefer to go directly to multiple biased sources like npr, CNN, breitbart, nypost because I understand their bias and can sort through it to tease out information.

The thing that I find the most distasteful is any source that purports to be unbiased, but uses subtle language tricks to skew their readers towards a conclusion.

I find such things to be the most toxic, and avoid them.

I don't agree with the other commenters on here that argue "it's mostly good", so that makes it ok.

When there's a hidden bias, it makes it much more difficult to tease through the information to find something that resembles the truth.

Re: Ask HN: How can we fix Wikipedia?

#123

Post by actuator »

zozbot234 wrote: post #110
actuator wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some sources are more credible than others. I am not saying we should trust DailyMail more than BBC. My issue is with sources where the lines are more blurry. Say, they will not publish outright misinformation but they will definitely have a editorial stance which colours their coverage. > If editors didn't exercise judgment in selection of sources, Wikipedia would just be a disinformation playground dominated by t…

If you have genuine issues with any part of the existing rating in WP:RSP, it's entirely appropriate to raise that on the talk page. "I think this source should be ranked higher/lower than it currently is, and here's evidence" is a valid concern. Wikipedians are well aware that verifiability standards may reinforce biases in article coverage, and some have even proposed (though not very seriously) that doing away wit…

I have tried making an effort for this in the past but it didn't work as there was no opposition but there wasn't much support as well.

Also, I am not sure how we can verifiably prove that the editorial stance of one source is either day pro or against something, so it should be rated higher or lower, and if equal whose tone do we go with. As wiki editorialisation of news events is not preferred, you will have to go with existing editorialisation in media

Re: Ask HN: How can we fix Wikipedia?

#125

Post by devwastaken »

adhesive_wombat wrote: post #30

Get the Wikimedia Foundation to spend money on the technical foundation of the sites, rather than spraying millions up the wall of "racial justice". That's not me making a strawman by going straight to "omg, the SJWs", it's a exact phrase from the 3rd paragraph of the 4.5 million Knowledge Equity Fund page [1]. That, and executive pay, is where donations go, not to keeping the lights on. The running cost to keeping t…

Yes, remember that Wikipedia, just like other big "nonprofits" abuse that meaning to make money. This isn't some org comprised of engineers and servers. It's a few engineers, some servers, and mostly warm bodies that are incentivizes to come up to contrived problems to justify their existence. It's very similar to modern U.S. academia.

Re: Ask HN: How can we fix Wikipedia?

#127

Post by zozbot234 »

actuator wrote: post #123
zozbot234 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have genuine issues with any part of the existing rating in WP:RSP, it's entirely appropriate to raise that on the talk page. "I think this source should be ranked higher/lower than it currently is, and here's evidence" is a valid concern. Wikipedians are well aware that verifiability standards may reinforce biases in article coverage, and some have even proposed (though not very seriously) that doing away wit…

I have tried making an effort for this in the past but it didn't work as there was no opposition but there wasn't much support as well. Also, I am not sure how we can verifiably prove that the editorial stance of one source is either day pro or against something, so it should be rated higher or lower, and if equal whose tone do we go with. As wiki editorialisation of news events is not preferred, you will have to go…

"Some support but no opposition" qualifies as consensus, at least provisionally. So you should be WP:BOLD and just edit the policy page directly. People might be upset and revert you, but you won't be in the wrong because you did after all seek consensus on talk, and they didn't object.

Re: Ask HN: How can we fix Wikipedia?

#128

Post by ZeroGravitas »

thatguy0900 wrote: post #92
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This could almost be taken word for word from an article about Mozilla. People who think 'social justice' is a bad thing seem to set really high standards for the open, independant organisations they say they support, and they're not afraid to give them some extreme tough love and undermine them at every step if they don't follow their priorities.

I don't think this is a social justice thing. I personally would be just as annoyed about any other cause. Wikipedia donations shouldn't be championing any cause that isn't open access to information, no matter what side of the political spectrum it's on. Especially if it's to the point that Wikipedia itself is being left to rot in favor of unrelated causes.

The thing being complained about is literally them executing their stated mission:

> This pilot initiative is rooted in our strategic direction, where Knowledge Equity emerged in 2017 as one of two key pillars of focus in order for us to achieve our vision for 2030. Knowledge equity acknowledges that we can’t achieve free knowledge if there are societal or economic barriers that prevent some people’s ability to share and contribute to knowledge. With this focused fund, we will invest in organizations working to address systems of racial bias and inequality around the world, with the goal of creating a more inclusive, representative future for free knowledge.

Re: Ask HN: How can we fix Wikipedia?

#129

Post by munch117 »

qiskit wrote: post #104

You can't. Anything that is editorialized will skew to an extreme over time. In the past, wikipedia was bad because its quality of information was generally terrible. "Alan Turing proved in 1936 that a general algorithm to solve the halting problem for all possible program-input pairs cannot exist." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halting_problem Alan Turing did no such thing, but that's wikipedia for you. On topics yo…

Care to tell us who did prove it then?

While the 1936 paper, "On Computable Numbers", doesn't explicitly mention the halting problem, it does cover the Entscheidungsproblem, and that the halting problem is undecidable follows trivially from that.

Re: Ask HN: How can we fix Wikipedia?

#130

Post by mechanical_bear »

smt88 wrote: post #31
bwb wrote: post #11

Sorry, I am not quite sure what the problem is? I think Wikipedia is great from my day to usage. Can you point me to specific examples where the output is bad due to this? I would like to see the problem.

I personally haven't seen a biased Wikipedia article in a very long time. It is absolutely astounding to me and seems like one of the great successes of internet culture. I assume OP has a particular set of issues that they are not in agreement with the majority of experts on.

“Experts” just depends on who you draw on as an expert:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/02/24/wikipedia...

https://www.technologyreview.com/2015/02/02/169470/computati...

https://thecritic.co.uk/the-left-wing-bias-of-wikipedia/

Post reply on HN