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Google gives Wikimedia millions

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Re: Google gives Wikimedia millions

#81

Post by DoctorOetker »

zozbot123 wrote: post #33
Mirioron wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like Wikipedia has also become more and more political as it gained popularity. Some of the decisions the admins have made over the years make me question the trustworthiness of what I read on Wikipedia, because some articles paint a one-sided view of events. Luckily it seems to mostly be limited to certain topics.

Spoiler: it's always been like that. Sometimes it's useful to look at the talk page for the article and/or the history of revisions, looking for obvious controversy.

I wish there was more research on different forms of voting and reputation, not even insisting that we make the voting binding, but just so contributors can agree or disagree with some edit, and then we can look how different metrics would have resulted in what outcome, so that perhaps one day we can run an encycopedia without needing explicit moderators...

DistriPedia?

Re: Google gives Wikimedia millions

#83

Post by DoctorOetker »

tunesmith wrote: post #71
xref wrote: post #7

I used to contribute heavily to Wikipedia in 2007-08 and intermittently since, however recently it has become an absolute nightmare to contribute. Creating a missing article almost immediately is met with an admin nominating it for deletion for something like “notability”, the catch-all term for “I personally don’t care about this topic, and if it was important someone would have made it already.” If you survive dele…

I find it depressing every time I try to contribute. Most recently, there was an article on a popular TV show that was in its first season, where the very top level cast list gave away a spoiler for very late in the season, that completely changed the lives of some main characters. So if you ever check the WP article for the show during the first 8-10 episodes of the season (like I did), you're completely spoiled. It…

you could propose a "spoiler" tag, and people who want spoilers to be censored, should log in and set default spoiler setting to censored for themselves. But the default should be spoiling IMHO. Of course once you've seen the media, and go to the WP pages (with your default censor still active) you'd want some kind of red spoiler button close to "talk" and "history" so you 1) know there is a spoiler tag present and 2) can spoil the secret by clicking it...

Re: Google gives Wikimedia millions

#84

Post by DoctorOetker »

strken wrote: post #65
save_ferris wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And also to scrub existing articles of certain details. A former coworker once told me about a stint he did working for a company that sold wikipedia edits. The founder was Brazilian and apparently their company was super popular with Central and South American politicians trying to scrub their pages of various financial scandals and other things unbecoming of a politician. I was shocked when he first told me about i…

I recently went to link a friend to the Landmark Forum Wikipedia page, and found that instead of a "Criticism" section it had a "Criticism and public option" section, which contained no allegations of cult-like behaviour until the last two paragraphs, but did contain a surprising number of denials. The talk and history page showed that any piece of actual criticism levelled at the totally-not-a-cult was removed more…

It's bizarre when there is an edit war, but WP effectively pretends there is no controversy. There should be some rule that the controversy can not be denied at least not on the talk page.

Perhaps some metric on the article page that indicates the level of controversy in the talk page...

Re: Google gives Wikimedia millions

#85

Post by Retric »

circlefavshape wrote: post #73
Retric wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wikipedia is still small enough to see every article reviewed. They don’t largely becase they funnel funding into other unrelated projects.

You're wrong on both counts here - nobody gets funded to review articles (it's done by volunteers), and there are nearly 6 million articles in English alone

Saying they don’t do something does not mean they can’t do something.

6 million / 30 minutes per article every 5 years at 15$ per hour ~= 9 million per year.

Wikipedia pulled in 55 million in 2017 from North America making this a major but affordable expenditure.

Re: Google gives Wikimedia millions

#86

Post by commoner »

agurk wrote: post #80
xref wrote: post #7

I used to contribute heavily to Wikipedia in 2007-08 and intermittently since, however recently it has become an absolute nightmare to contribute. Creating a missing article almost immediately is met with an admin nominating it for deletion for something like “notability”, the catch-all term for “I personally don’t care about this topic, and if it was important someone would have made it already.” If you survive dele…

After reading a lot about helicopters recently, I was reading the wikipedia page about them today, and found the description of how they are controlled if not wrong, then confusing. My first thought was to rewrite the section, but then I have also heard this opinion quite a lot now and it really put me off. Looking at the talk page of one of the related articles [0] there was someone noting that "An expert that didn'…

In this situation, consider adding a "citation needed" tag to the incorrect uncited content.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Citation_needed

Then, find reliable sources that support the changes you want to make, and propose those changes on the article's talk page. If other editors agree, or if there is silence after a few days, then make your changes to the article.

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

If other editors disagree, and you are unconvinced by their arguments, then escalate this discussion to a request for comment, and debate it out.

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

Re: Google gives Wikimedia millions

#87

Post by strainer »

commoner wrote: post #62
strainer wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have marvelled at the quality of WPs music theory articles where I think different outlooks are well tolerated and accepted. 8 years ago I tried to fix WP philosophies entry on the concept of "Appeal to Nature" and was even joined by an experienced academic but our efforts[1] where removed by admin/users wishing to describe the topic as a kind of simple fallacious trope[2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?…

I'm not sure if that's the full story, considering that you tried to have the article deleted: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletio... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_no...

The original article was a simple attack piece on the concept of nature and should be deleted if WP cant protect a reasonable treatment of the subject. The "full story" could take as long as you've got to dig through, but the articles speak for themselves.

Re: Google gives Wikimedia millions

#88

Post by helmword »

save_ferris wrote: post #25
commoner wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As Wikipedia became more popular, it also started attracting people and companies who try to use it for writing promotional articles on themselves with little to no basis in reality. The notability requirement helps ensure that articles are accurate and can be verified with trustworthy sources. A topic only needs 2 trustworthy sources for an article, and if it doesn't meet that bar, then the topic is probably better…

And also to scrub existing articles of certain details. A former coworker once told me about a stint he did working for a company that sold wikipedia edits. The founder was Brazilian and apparently their company was super popular with Central and South American politicians trying to scrub their pages of various financial scandals and other things unbecoming of a politician. I was shocked when he first told me about i…

I did a consulting gig about 15 years ago, when the company (my client) went bankrupt. It had been recently acquired, and the new owners gutted the company, embezzling at least several million dollars. The structure was quite intricate, including at least six different companies with revenues in at least the tens of millions. I think the bankruptcy left about $30 million in debts (they owed me about $15,000).

There are a few articles about it in Swedish, linked below. Company I worked for was Azzets, or Depicta, under Delling Group.

A few years after, when I google their names (Geir Lolleng and Aksel Bratvedt), nothing about this turned up on Google. Instead, there were links to all kinds of tumblr, blogspot, weebly, twitter, youtube etc links. (And the notice Some results may have been removed under data protection law in Europe.) I found Geir Lolleng's LinkedIn, and his next job after that was starting a new company:

Helmword is a specialist firm that protects and supports companies’ and executives’ reputation online. Together with the client we can achieve long term results. We work with clients in Asia, Europe, Africa and South-America.

https://www.resume.se/nyheter/artiklar/2011/03/23/sa-styckad...

https://www.affarsvarlden.se/bors-ekonominyheter/konkurser-n...

https://www.norrteljetidning.se/artikel/norrtalje-kommun/nye...

https://www.affarsvarlden.se/bors-ekonominyheter/konkursrytt...

https://www.affarsvarlden.se/bors-ekonominyheter/omstridd-re...

Re: Google gives Wikimedia millions

#89

Post by commoner »

DoctorOetker wrote: post #84
strken wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently went to link a friend to the Landmark Forum Wikipedia page, and found that instead of a "Criticism" section it had a "Criticism and public option" section, which contained no allegations of cult-like behaviour until the last two paragraphs, but did contain a surprising number of denials. The talk and history page showed that any piece of actual criticism levelled at the totally-not-a-cult was removed more…

It's bizarre when there is an edit war, but WP effectively pretends there is no controversy. There should be some rule that the controversy can not be denied at least not on the talk page. Perhaps some metric on the article page that indicates the level of controversy in the talk page...

Controversial articles are usually tagged as such on their talk pages. For example, see the talk page for the Donald Trump article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Donald_Trump

Note the banner that says "The subject of this article is controversial and content may be in dispute."

Articles in highly controversial areas (such as American politics and the Arab-Israeli conflict) are subject to additional restrictions meant to encourage discussion and reduce editing disputes. On these pages (including Talk:Donald Trump), you'll see a "Warning: Active arbitration remedies" banner with the details.

Re: Google gives Wikimedia millions

#90

Post by ardy42 »

scrollaway wrote: post #41
ardy42 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is wrong. Low view articles cost essentially nothing to host. The whole of wikipedia can be stored for about $1 per month if all you care about is storage. Also rejected articles don't get deleted from the system they just get moved to the draft section which is hidden from search results. That's wrong. Low view articles still cost volunteer time to maintain, otherwise many would become home to malicious edits…

Malicious edits don't scale with the number of articles, they scale with the number of edits and users. If all of a sudden Wikipedia gained 10 million more articles, there would not be more malicious edits per day than there are now without the amount of malicious users increasing.

> Malicious edits don't scale with the number of articles, they scale with the number of edits and users. If all of a sudden Wikipedia gained 10 million more articles, there would not be more malicious edits per day than there are now without the amount of malicious users increasing.

But some fraction of malicious edits aren't caught as they are made, and those will remain until they're accidentally noticed by someone and fixed. That's also true about honest errors and mistakes. If you add 10 million more articles, they'll either distract "accidental" QA from more popular articles, or (more likely) not receive an adequate amount of accidental QA at all.

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