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Wikipedia co-founder slams the ‘appalling’ internet

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Re: Wikipedia co-founder slams the ‘appalling’ internet

#111

Post by SkyBelow »

rabidrat wrote: post #26
rolha-capoeira wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear you. But this teeters dangerously close to gatekeeping, elitism, or something along those lines. I'm sure you didn't mean it that way, but I think how others feel after reading our comments does matter. Better put, because everyone is on the internet now, the real world's problems are now the internet's problems. It used to serve as an escape, true. It has made the world a smaller place, where problems from a…

Gatekeeping is the only way communities can keep themselves healthy. There is no such thing as a universal 'community'. From day one, life has been about letting in certain elements, and keeping out others. Without this selection, development and differentiation are impossible. Similarly we don't (and shouldn't) let every person into our homes, or our countries, or our servers. Why is it seen as an obvious truth that…

>Why is it seen as an obvious truth that we should allow every single person onto the Internet, without ever being able to remove them?

What does it mean to deny someone?

If an OS provider, browser provider, internet provider, and website all agree to give someone the tools necessary to access a given website, why should you get involved?

At the same time, if you want to run your own site who limits who can join, you should be free to do so. Many communities I'm a part of do this already (normally by limiting behavior, for example a forum for a given game only allows discussions related to that game, someone who keeps bringing up unrelated topics will find themselves under a series of increasing lengthy bans).

If you want to build your own protocol and only let those you deem the cool kids use it, then you are free to do so.

>Why is it seen as an obvious truth that we should allow every single person onto the Internet, without ever being able to remove them?

Put simply, we never had the choice because we didn't build the internet. The ones who did have the choice choose to open it up as wide a technically feasible. We don't get a say in this case, but we are free to make our own case where we can have a say.

Re: Wikipedia co-founder slams the ‘appalling’ internet

#112

Post by bilbo0s »

y4mi wrote: post #101
bilbo0s wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why is it seen as an obvious truth that we should allow every single person onto the Internet, without ever being able to remove them?... Because it is obvious. Everyone should be able to access the internet. Now, do the various internet communities have a right to ban people they don't want around? Yes. Absolutely. However, that's not "gate keeping", it's more accurately called Freedom of Association and the gover…

Uuh, that kind of content is legal in the USA? Are you sure? I mean it's a pretty common theme in your movies and shows for people to be incarcerated for owning that kind of content. But I'm not American... So I guess I'm just surprised. It's thankfully illegal where I'm at.

Let me be clear, the child porn is illegal here in the US. Thankfully.

But yes, there are people in the US who post the video of their pet terrorists blowing away some old lady in a church or temple or mosque or what have you. It is not strictly speaking, illegal here. Neither are the death videos no matter how objectionable. To make matters worse, most of these low-lifes tend to congregate in the same well known places, which also host, you guessed it, child porn. So a community of real winners all around.

All I was saying was that people like that should be kicked out of communities that aspire to cater to regular people. But they should not be kicked off the internet. As disgusting as their proclivities may be, they do still have Freedom of Speech. I just don't want them speaking in the places I frequent, and thankfully, the proprietors of those places agree with me in that regard.

That's why Freedom of Association in a place like the US is extremely important. People and organizations have to be free not to be associated with that sort of content. It's as important as Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Expression actually.

Re: Wikipedia co-founder slams the ‘appalling’ internet

#113

Post by nsajko »

KKPMW wrote: post #97
tenpies wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> state of wikipedia moderations I'm glad others are keeping an eye on this issue. It is incredibly ironic to me that anyone in a leadership role at Wikipedia would criticize Zuckerberg or Dorsey. It's not even just political content, it's getting to the point where history is being actively re-written and re-interpreted to match a radical narrative. In some sort of temporal example of humour, I've gone back to recom…

It's not even just political content or history. Take for example economics: There is an article about economics, obviously. And in its "criticism" section there is a long paragraph about criticism of economics from a feminist point of view. However wikipedia also has an article about feminist economics. Which is almost equal in length to the article about economics in general. And if you go to the feminist economics…

You say that the "feminist economics" article does not seem impartial to you, but have you tried improving it? You could add that Criticism section.

Re: Wikipedia co-founder slams the ‘appalling’ internet

#114

Post by imiric »

canidiarus wrote: post #74
throwaway8879 wrote: post #7

I'm going to take a cynical stand and claim that the internet as the greybeards envisioned decades ago is just not going to happen. Or perhaps happened for a short window in the early 2000s. I don't see how we can just turn things around. Something new will pop up in a few years, limited within hacker circles, perhaps in a medium beyond computers/phones. It'll have all the nice qualities that we seek such as privacy,…

The 'Internet' is working as intended. The issue is how HTTP is used and its availability in most consumer devices. Regulation is required, but won't occur with a US congress that is pro-business and anti-consumer. California could regulate companies within its borders, but it would stand to lose that sweet tax revenue on shares and RSU's when they move to a different state.

> The 'Internet' is working as intended. The issue is how HTTP is used and its availability in most consumer devices.

I partly put the blame on late 90s web developers for this. Instead of developing web /browsers/, the industry should've built web /communicators/ (one would think Netscape could've figured this out).

That is, we should've been using tools that make publishing content on the web as easy as consuming content[1].

If that mindset had been cultivated then and we had user friendly tools to support it, public mentality about sharing content would be different, and after years of improvement we might have a more balanced internet today where each user has full control over their data.

Unfortunately, we built web browsers for consumption only, the advertising industry took hold of our business models, which naturally created silos that grew richer and more powerful.

We can build and have built better tools, but the inertia of how things work today makes it difficult for alternative platforms to take off.

It still makes no sense to me that we use powerful computers to run web clients that send data somewhere on the internet where it is served for me, when the computer I'm using can serve this data just fine (assuming some infrastructure is in place to handle this).

[1]: This is something Opera attempted much later in 2009 with Unite (https://dev.opera.com/blog/taking-the-web-into-our-own-hands...), but abandoned it shortly later. I imagine they were missing a lot of network infrastructure and it being too confusing for end-users to make this a success. Are there previous attempts of this in a consumer browser?

Re: Wikipedia co-founder slams the ‘appalling’ internet

#115

Post by duskwuff »

iamsb wrote: post #4

I agree with Larry about abuse by Facebook and Twitter. I also strongly encourage him to look at state of wikipedia moderations. Specially in a country like India. Lot of pages related to political content is moderated by people who are deeply partisan and have no respect for facts.

Mr. Sanger hasn't been involved with Wikipedia since 2002. There's nothing preventing him from looking into the situation as an individual, but he has no special knowledge or authority here -- the site today is very different from the one he was involved with 17+ years ago.

Re: Wikipedia co-founder slams the ‘appalling’ internet

#116

Post by nsajko »

tenpies wrote: post #9
iamsb wrote: post #4

I agree with Larry about abuse by Facebook and Twitter. I also strongly encourage him to look at state of wikipedia moderations. Specially in a country like India. Lot of pages related to political content is moderated by people who are deeply partisan and have no respect for facts.

> state of wikipedia moderations I'm glad others are keeping an eye on this issue. It is incredibly ironic to me that anyone in a leadership role at Wikipedia would criticize Zuckerberg or Dorsey. It's not even just political content, it's getting to the point where history is being actively re-written and re-interpreted to match a radical narrative. In some sort of temporal example of humour, I've gone back to recom…

> in a leadership role at Wikipedia

Nitpick: Sanger is not part of Wikipedia or the WMF as far as I know.

> t's not even just political content, it's getting to the point where history is being actively re-written and re-interpreted to match a radical narrative.

Mind giving some examples?

> In some sort of temporal example of humour, I've gone back to recommending people use Britannica as a starting point and for surface level reading.

In what way could Britannica possibly be better than Wikipedia. It is usually based on a single viewpoint, instead of Wikipedia's thousands.

Re: Wikipedia co-founder slams the ‘appalling’ internet

#118

Post by ysavir »

tenpies wrote: post #9
iamsb wrote: post #4

I agree with Larry about abuse by Facebook and Twitter. I also strongly encourage him to look at state of wikipedia moderations. Specially in a country like India. Lot of pages related to political content is moderated by people who are deeply partisan and have no respect for facts.

> state of wikipedia moderations I'm glad others are keeping an eye on this issue. It is incredibly ironic to me that anyone in a leadership role at Wikipedia would criticize Zuckerberg or Dorsey. It's not even just political content, it's getting to the point where history is being actively re-written and re-interpreted to match a radical narrative. In some sort of temporal example of humour, I've gone back to recom…

> it's getting to the point where history is being actively re-written and re-interpreted to match a radical narrative

A human tradition dating back to the origin of storytelling. But at least now it comes packaged with a version history.

Re: Wikipedia co-founder slams the ‘appalling’ internet

#119

Post by duskwuff »

hirundo wrote: post #20
iamsb wrote: post #4

I agree with Larry about abuse by Facebook and Twitter. I also strongly encourage him to look at state of wikipedia moderations. Specially in a country like India. Lot of pages related to political content is moderated by people who are deeply partisan and have no respect for facts.

> I also strongly encourage him to look at state of wikipedia moderations. I think that the solution is similar to what he's proposing for the social networks: decentralization. One example would be to take hint from github, and allow articles to be forked when they reach some threshold of editing warfare. Embrace and aggregate partisan takes rather pursuing the noble but chimeric goal of neutrality.

> Embrace and aggregate partisan takes rather pursuing the noble but chimeric goal of neutrality.

The "noble but chimeric goal of neutrality" is core to Wikipedia's content policies [1]. Abandoning it would be an abdication of their mission.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Purpose

Re: Wikipedia co-founder slams the ‘appalling’ internet

#120

Post by reallydude »

nsajko wrote: post #116
tenpies wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> state of wikipedia moderations I'm glad others are keeping an eye on this issue. It is incredibly ironic to me that anyone in a leadership role at Wikipedia would criticize Zuckerberg or Dorsey. It's not even just political content, it's getting to the point where history is being actively re-written and re-interpreted to match a radical narrative. In some sort of temporal example of humour, I've gone back to recom…

> in a leadership role at Wikipedia Nitpick: Sanger is not part of Wikipedia or the WMF as far as I know. > t's not even just political content, it's getting to the point where history is being actively re-written and re-interpreted to match a radical narrative. Mind giving some examples? > In some sort of temporal example of humour, I've gone back to recommending people use Britannica as a starting point and for sur…

> n what way could Britannica possibly be better than Wikipedia.

> Mind giving some examples?

Google can help you with these questions, to your own satisfaction.

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