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Ask HN: How can we fix Wikipedia?

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Re: Ask HN: How can we fix Wikipedia?

#291

Post by fortran77 »

jl6 wrote: post #227
noxer wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't read it all but wasn't hard to find "mistakes" in that wiki article For example: "Several countries which are historically neutral, such as Switzerland and Singapore have agreed to sanctions." Clearly a misrepresentation of Swiss neutrality. The news outlets all over the world posted this and various similar claims over the last week and wiki picks it up. Some news articles even straight out tell you that Sw…

Are you disputing that Switzerland is historically neutral?

I will. They clearly aided and abetted the Germans government over citizens Germany was oppressing/killing during World War II.

Re: Ask HN: How can we fix Wikipedia?

#292

Post by ipaddr »

noxer wrote: post #270
topranks wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get it - you feel the word “neutrality” should only be used to mean military neutrality - and you’re annoyed that Wikipedia has used a broader definition used by various media outlets. I think what your arguing here is semantics, as opposed to something that’s “factually incorrect”. The problem you describe is one Wikipedia suffers from. If the conventional wisdom is wrong then Wikipedia will be wrong. And it will…

"Swiss neutrality" is its own "thing" its not the same as "military neutrality" its a very broad concept that does include military neutrality but many more things that aren't part of the dictionary definition of the word "neutrality". I would point you to the wiki article that explains it but its very bad. Anyway the overall conclusion people get when reading the statement that neutral countries DESPITE being neural…

Russia has many countries from Israel to India to China to circumvent sanctions. Using that as the reasoning for the sanction is great political cover but it clearly showed Switzerland picked a side in this conflict.

Re: Ask HN: How can we fix Wikipedia?

#293

Post by ryan_lane »

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…

I'm not a huge fan of Wikimedia's fundraising copy, but their budget is well documented, and their spend is relatively good, in comparison to other non-profits (and especially in comparison to for-profits of similarly-sized web properties).

You've conveniently left out links to the financial reports [1], which have annual plans, audited financial statements, form 990s, Q&As, etc. It also proves that your claim that keeping the servers running costs around the same as the knowledge equity fund is bullshit, unless you don't count paying engineering staff. Even the cost of the equipment, and the hosting itself is quite a bit more than the cost of this program. As a whole, this program is 2% of their budget for the year.

In terms of the engineering, you can't look at a list of growing bug counts to determine project health. A growing list of bugs could simply a byproduct of growth of the overall project. Listing that without any analysis of open vs close ratios is lazy at best, and disingenuous at worst. Also, a number of the projects on that maintainers list are community maintained, or don't have a need for change (I wrote OAuthAuth, for instance, and can tell you it doesn't need active development).

[1] https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/financial-reports/

Re: Ask HN: How can we fix Wikipedia?

#294

Post by devwastaken »

mplanchard wrote: post #166
devwastaken wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lets say you have a company that requires a level of technical skill to work at, and instead of hiring for that technical skill, you hire them based on being blue. Everyone else, including those who are blue, know you are doing this because the individual is clearly not ready for that work. This creates resentment, which creates discrimination. You have to promote natural systems, not artificial ones, or you create f…

Or you maintain the same hiring standards, but do more work to ensure your candidate pool, which historically is 99% not blue, actually contains some blue people, which naturally leads to more blue people on the team. These blue people are just as qualified as anyone else, and their presence keeps people from building idiotic ideas like “the only reason blue people can be hired is if we lower our standards,” since ev…

>The idea that the only way to promote equity is through lowering standards is a pernicious and unrealistic strawman.

Any metric is a goal. Boss says we have a program that focuses upon hiring minorities and wants a % that check off some boxes to ward off title IX suits and make them look good. Hr really wants to see new hires for this reason too. You open up interviews, candidates can't meet the standards. Your boss says they really want to get those numbers up. Do you A. Do your job and hire, or do you B. Not do your job?

By definition minorities are a scarce resource. Industry wants a disproportionate amount in comparison to the available pool that meets requirements. Some are perfectly capable, sometimes the best, but the company isn't looking for 1, they want dozens to hundreds.

Therefore, to meet the requirements you will have to modify the process, and that is overwhelmingly done by making it easier. That's not how it should be, but that's how it's done because it is the easiest method. People respond to incentives.

Re: Ask HN: How can we fix Wikipedia?

#295

Post by noxer »

ipaddr wrote: post #292
noxer wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Swiss neutrality" is its own "thing" its not the same as "military neutrality" its a very broad concept that does include military neutrality but many more things that aren't part of the dictionary definition of the word "neutrality". I would point you to the wiki article that explains it but its very bad. Anyway the overall conclusion people get when reading the statement that neutral countries DESPITE being neural…

Russia has many countries from Israel to India to China to circumvent sanctions. Using that as the reasoning for the sanction is great political cover but it clearly showed Switzerland picked a side in this conflict.

Thats your opinion and you have zero evidence for it. While I have the official statement from the Swiss gov + the timeline of their actions. BTW they declined sanctions and only after the EU sanction where in place and they reviews them they decided to join (most) sanctions. There reason for the change were the actions of others (and not a 180° switch in foreign politics) its obvious and well documented.

Also sanctions are not "for" picking sides but for punishing wrongdoings (in this case breaking international law) they could easily put sanction on "both" sides if appropriate, in fact there are already sanction in place because of the Swiss neutrality, Swiss companies can not sell/export military equipment to Ukraine (or Russia).

The fact that other counties can be used to circumvent sanction is false argument. Switzerland is the financial hub of Europa and could diminish the effect the sanction have. Beside that the sanctions are designed to have an effect despite possible circumvention.

Re: Ask HN: How can we fix Wikipedia?

#296

Post by noxer »

fortran77 wrote: post #291
jl6 wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you disputing that Switzerland is historically neutral?

I will. They clearly aided and abetted the Germans government over citizens Germany was oppressing/killing during World War II.

Switzerland was neutral during WWII. You may just have a simplistic idea of what Swiss neutrality means. It certainly does not mean that the well-being of their own people is sacrificed for some kind of morally righteous "neutral" foreign politics. The people in power back then hat to carefully balance their actions and they had a lot to loose, in hindsight they did incredibly well.

Re: Ask HN: How can we fix Wikipedia?

#297

Post by mardifoufs »

KerrAvon wrote: post #241
mardifoufs wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> But now that those laptop leaks were either confirmed by different reputable sources Citation needed

The citations are in the talk page of the article I linked. And a few of them are even at the end of the lead paragraph of the main page. The entire comment was about the citations that are in the article but still ignored in the main body ;)

Re: Ask HN: How can we fix Wikipedia?

#298

Post by notafraudster »

calumetregion wrote: post #261
notafraudster wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just read through both articles but I don't understand the point you're making. Is it that the NYT article is more fleshed out and talks about their various print products? You can add such a section to the Epoch Times.

Because of a different thread I thought of another subtle, yet similar example. Look at the Wikipedia entry for The Verge. It's a media product, a tech news site, all good. But it's a "left wing" site on the merits. Not a single mention of that in the Wikipedia article. There's a little bit of discussion about tabloid-style content on the Talk page, but it doesn't go anywhere. Even the Vox Media Wikipedia article mak…

I'm not sure I really understand. I don't read the Verge (because consumer product journalism is deeply uninteresting and I don't want to rot my brain), but I'll take your word that it is a "left wing" site (I don't know what this means) on "the merits" (I also don't know what this means). I would expect this to show up on the Wikipedia page if it was a notable fact about the site -- if they had broken some "left wing" news story (again, I don't know what this means) or if they staked out some powerful "left wing" editorial (again, I don't know what this means). Overall, whether or not the writers happen to be "left wing", "right wing", or otherwise doesn't strike me as a hugely relevant thing on its face. The other thing is that given that I presume the site is not avowedly "left wing", the characterization of the site as "left wing" would have to involve either original argumentation or secondary sourcing.

I honestly wouldn't imagine the major editorial cleavage in tech websites is partisan at all, but rather the privacy-convenience cleavage. I would expect a consumer goods focused website to likely cater to people who are less privacy oriented. I am not sure this would be remarkable or something I'd put in an article. The "break up big tech" agenda is mostly a liberal consensus versus left+right angle, but even then I find it pretty unlikely that the site's coverage goes beyond relatively mild critical reporting; I know I've never in my life seen someone link a The Verge editorial as a contribution to a political debate. I think they published some of the mistakenly public financial documents from the Epic v. Apple case. I'm not sure which of Epic or Apple is meant to be the "left wing" perspective. I remain flummoxed.

I checked the article on Vox Media. It characterizes Vox Media as a company that was created to combine SB Nation and The Verge, and then added other not obviously related content verticals, all of which are named and linked. The only part of the article that really comments on inner workings is the "Corporate Affairs" section, which seems to be written in a fair and neutral way and notes that the staff of Vox Media unionized. Is this what a "lefty" business is? I'm not sure?

The main takeaway is that they run a bunch of websites I've never heard of and will never read. I did click on the Vox article. Vox is a politics website, and its politics are described as "left-of-center" (I don't know what this means) and progressive, the former citing a Poli Sci 101 textbook I've never heard of and the latter citing a WSJ attack piece. This seems reasonable to me, it seems to be what you're asking for.

I'm not really sure I find this to be wild or surprising. You might be right, again, I have no idea, I don't care about Vox Media and I don't read the Verge. But your point doesn't really strike me as obvious having wasted 20-30 minutes reading Wikipedia articles that are supposed to be evidently biased.

Re: Ask HN: How can we fix Wikipedia?

#299

Post by _Nat_ »

lozenge wrote: post #275
_Nat_ wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The fact that many believe that male circumcision is a grave violation of boys' rights to body autonomy is not. For reference, how many people believe that? Like, is it a view held by 50% of the population, 10% of the population, or is it more of a niche view, or..? Because when we get down to stuff that --- Tried looking it up; appears to be a niche perspective. A significant minority of the population doesn't fav…

How did you jump from the view being "niche" or "minority" to it being irrelevant?

The comment that I was responding to complained that the first two paragraphs of a Wikipedia article didn't mention a perspective that they considered important.

I asked if it was a niche-perspective because that'd seem relevant to if it'd be notable enough to go into one of the first two paragraphs.

Re: Ask HN: How can we fix Wikipedia?

#300

Post by stretchpants »

Afton wrote: post #6
stretchpants wrote: post #3

Let 1,000,000 little Wikipedias sprout. Eventually the garbage model of the original will be forgotten.

Can you provide some substantial ideas about what you would like to see different and what makes the current model "garbage"? Otherwise it's not clear what you're advocating for.

nah i'm good
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