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Wikipedia co-founder slams the ‘appalling’ internet

cnbc.com

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

#131

Post by AnimalMuppet »

aswanson wrote: post #88
braythwayt wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a fundamental difference between "Everyone should be allowed on the Internet," and, "Everyone should be allowed onto every social media site." Or, "Everyone on a social media site should be encouraged to interact with everyone else." For example, maybe everybody should be able to read the President's tweets. But should Twitter necessarily be such that everybody can reply to the President's tweets? At this po…

Imagine if DJT had an HN account. That would be...

I suspect that a large number of people here would pay for the privilege of being able to downvote Trump[1]. I mean, I think that in several cases he's been given a bum rap by the mainstream media that wants to shred him if given the least opening, and even I have to admit that it would feel good to downvote him.

[1] He'd probably get banned very quickly. And the limited number of downvotes before a comment gets killed would be a hindrance. Still, the idea has a lot of charm...

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

#132

Post by KKPMW »

nsajko wrote: post #129
KKPMW wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point was more about a big part of Wikipedia being ideologically biased. This Feminist Economics page was just an example. A lot of articles in Wikipedia are inside the battle ground for politics. I like to talk about it and point it out. But would rather stay a safe distance away.

Yeah, but people wanting to "stay a safe distance away" is exactly what makes articles vulnerable. Wiki-style projects rely on many different interested parties contributing for accuracy and "neutral" point of view.

I would be quite a bit sceptical of "neutral point of view" emerging from two ideologies fighting against each other and the stronger one winning... To me it looks like the deeper problem is that there is little gain for a truly well-intentioned and impartial editor to keep editing articles for free, seeing that all around them neutrality is being suppressed for political party lines and ideologies.

I agree with you that wiki-style projects depend on neutral volunteers to succeed. But you and me are not wiki-style projects. Our knowledge can be gathered from several differently biased sources and then combined, in hopes to get closer to "neutral".

Also it might just be the case that it was too early to praise Wikipedia as success. When it started people had precisely these doubts in mind - how could a "democratic" platform aim at truth. Maybe critics were right, just the down-spiral effect was delayed. And at first it was delayed because there was a technical barrier at being an editor. Then various groups began to train people in editing Wikipedia, and here we are.

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

#133

Post by WorldMaker »

nradov wrote: post #128
WorldMaker wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that "online" still has real consequences: those spitballs that become personal hills to die on bleed back out into the real world as partisanship or, worse, violence. Things that are written may not just haunt us forever, but things that we read may as well. Mental health is something culturally we don't have strong controls on, and yet evidence backs that our physical health is strongly correlated to…

Caution is unnecessary. People are responsible for their own mental health. It's not my problem.

We are a social species. We call them "memes" and discuss the "virality" of content for multiple reasons. It's starting to feel that mental health is a lot like herd immunity and the mental health of an individual is directly related to the overall mental "vaccination state" of their community. Unfortunately compared to real world germ theory, we don't have a lot of good ideas yet for what mental "vaccinations" even are.

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

#134

Post by qwsxyh »

WorldMaker wrote: post #92
qwsxyh wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hardly. I only follow ~50ish people, of which I only interact regularly with ~9ish. I only block a few people a day max.

I liked Twitter before Twitter decided that advertisers and "trending topics" and virality were more important than personal curation. The out-of-order timeline with forced ads and both Likes and Replies becoming less deterministic retweets were some of the last straws for me.

My timeline is completely in-order and I don't see ads.

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

#135

Post by krapp »

everdrive wrote: post #126
krapp wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But should Twitter necessarily be such that everybody can reply to the President's tweets? The ability to directly and freely communicate with leaders (and for them to communicate with one another) is incredibly revolutionary. It is unfortunate that Twitter, of all places, a site whose entire purpose is top-of-mind contextless microblogging, is where this revolution is taking place, and that the President in questio…

>The ability to directly and freely communicate with leaders (and for them to communicate with one another) is incredibly revolutionary. I agree with you, but why do you believe the discourse is so bad?

>I agree with you, but why do you believe the discourse is so bad?

Twitter really isn't designed for discourse, and definitely not for complex discourse, but for immediate engagement and virality. The way the platform works almost encourages piling on and hostility. More than anything, I think the appearance of retweeted and replied-to content in your feed from people you don't even follow contributes to this.

And I'm trying to put this in as non-partisan a way as I can... Trump's personality, his addiction to the platform, the polarizing nature of his Presidency and his loose relationship with the truth just adds fuel to the fire. I suspect this is just what mainstream political discourse looks like when a lot of people are genuinely angry about the state they find the country in. It provides a catharsis, if nothing else.

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

#136

Post by jessriedel »

duskwuff wrote: post #121
jessriedel wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think even if you had complete control to re-write the Wikipedia system from scratch, creating effective moderation systems is a super challenging. Trying to change the current system given the existing entrenched interest is damn near impossible. If you have a specific system change you thought could and should be made by Sanger, let's hear it (though I won't be able to assess).

> If you have a specific system change you thought could and should be made by Sanger As I've tried to point out elsewhere: Mr. Sanger departed from the Wikipedia project in 2002, and, in the time since, has been openly critical of the project. He really isn't in much of a position to make changes to the project he departed from 17 years ago.

Thanks

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

#137

Post by krapp »

ravenstine wrote: post #54
everdrive wrote: post #12

The internet was much nicer before most people were using it. We usually focus on the technology problems here at HN: filter bubbles, skinner box addictive UIs and content feeds, algorithmic and centralized control. Has anyone simply wondered if the problem with the internet is fundamentally that everyone's on it? It used to be an escape from the problems of the real world. Now it's just a new way for the problems of…

The internet is the way it is right now for the same reason that you don't just let anyone and everyone into a club. When you destroy the barrier to entry, you get a bunch of totally uncool people who kill the mood, talk about really lame shit, start fights, get blackout/piss-pants drunk, and vandalize property. Indeed, the internet once was a lot more like a club; even in the late 90's and early 2000s when I began u…

Except the internet isn't the club... an individual site is the club. The internet is the city, and anyone can set up whatever club they like with whatever rules they want, but they all still live together.

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

#138

Post by pixl97 »

reallydude wrote: post #120
nsajko wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

You mean "Google can help you on a reality tunnel choose your own adventure"?

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

#139

Post by giaour »

jasonjayr wrote: post #77
polskibus wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any particular niche sites that you have in mind and could recommend to others?

Isn't this antithesis to the issue at hand? These niche places are great exactly because they're hard to find, and the community there grows organically. I'm on HN now because slashdot was flailing years ago, and a friend I knew IRL mentioned it ....

Most of the niche sites I've seen aren't great because they're exclusive but because they're built around a specific interest. Anybody can join, but if they don't share that interest, they'll get bored and leave.

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

#140

Post by giaour »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #130
giaour wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ravelry is a lovely social network for knitters, crotchers, and spinners. It's a relatively small site, but it's a model for how social networks should work. Because it's built around a shared interest that people spend money on, the site can sell ad slots instead of relying on real-time bidding based ad networks.

Ravelry just had a controversy over banning patterns that had Trump's face on them as white-supremacist content.

Nevertheless, the site is well-built and their monetization strategy is non-invasive.
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