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Stepping Down as CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation

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Re: Stepping Down as CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation

#161

Post by Kiro »

nickpp wrote: post #80

Wikipedia may have been an amazing idea in the beginning. Then it got taken over by a bunch of entrenched editors more interested in their own power than the accuracy of the pages' information. Today I can see mistakes and inaccurate info in every niche I am familiar with. Because of that, I cannot trust it on subjects I know nothing about. I tried contributing and fixing but nothing got through. Even worse, the leve…

> Today I can see mistakes and inaccurate info in every niche I am familiar with.

Do you have any examples?

Re: Stepping Down as CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation

#162

Post by desmap »

I rarely use Wikipedia, only for stuff not from my domains and where I need a brief tldr and then, I just skim the first few sentences. Once I want to get more into that topic, I check other sources. Would love to see competition to Wikipedia and less use of Wikipedia from other parties as their default definition provider.

Wikipedia is anything but not an open platform.

Re: Stepping Down as CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation

#163

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

natex wrote: post #113
nickff wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not really a reason why, it's the (vague) plan going forward.

They want a break from their present situation so they can concentrate on planning for their future plans since it's hard to plan for the future when they are fully involved in the present. That's why. Not vague at all.

Can I ask, why are you using "they"? The article lists the author's name as Katherine Maher and you can see a picture of a woman when you click it.

Edit: her wikipedia page also uses "she" and "her" etc throughout.

Re: Stepping Down as CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation

#164

Post by harperlee »

nickff wrote: post #127
natex wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The CEO did not explicitly state that they were quitting because they wanted time and space to plan their future. Yes they did.

Which word in their statement indicates causation? I generally look for the word 'because'.

Natural language tends to assume the receiver of the message shares sufficient context with the emmiter as to be able to infer their communicative intention even if it lacks some key word, or logical stepping stone.

Re: Stepping Down as CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation

#165

Post by Clewza313 »

fastball wrote: post #160
foolmeonce wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are these parties without alcohol? I hope so, because we wouldn't want to exclude the muslim world, right? What? They aren't a fraternity, so I don't think drinking is mandatory. If you look at any large organization it has these kinds of frivolous events. Among other things, they let the leadership get a sense of the social environment and how it reacts to some of their ideas with less filtering. I personally don'…

Most large orgs don't beg for my money after I've already given them my time for free though.

Wikimedia is free for its users and doesn't do ads, you need to pay the server bills and find development somehow.

Re: Stepping Down as CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation

#166

Post by casi »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #163
natex wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They want a break from their present situation so they can concentrate on planning for their future plans since it's hard to plan for the future when they are fully involved in the present. That's why. Not vague at all.

Can I ask, why are you using "they"? The article lists the author's name as Katherine Maher and you can see a picture of a woman when you click it. Edit: her wikipedia page also uses "she" and "her" etc throughout.

I know when I talk about someone I don't know I use "they". It isn't to do with not knowing preferred pronouns, more like a type of formal speech about an unknown person. Maybe it is a regional/dialect thing? I would read an article about a person, and then still talk about them/they rather than he/her. I think it is tied to them being unfamiliar, as I wouldn't do that with a celebrity.

If i replace she in op's line "She wants a break" it feels like they are writing about someone more familiar to them. "They" implies distance between the observer and observed.

Re: Stepping Down as CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation

#167

Post by dessant »

nickpp wrote: post #80

Wikipedia may have been an amazing idea in the beginning. Then it got taken over by a bunch of entrenched editors more interested in their own power than the accuracy of the pages' information. Today I can see mistakes and inaccurate info in every niche I am familiar with. Because of that, I cannot trust it on subjects I know nothing about. I tried contributing and fixing but nothing got through. Even worse, the leve…

I was quite happy to see one of my projects mentioned on Wikipedia for the first time, in the reCAPTCHA article. I've discovered it from the list of referring sites shown by GitHub Insights, and then the mention disappeared.

Looking at the edit history of the article, someone added it a year ago, and then 204.132.216.84 has decided recently that a genuinely informative section must be removed from the article, because they thought it's "self-promotion for browser extension".

Dear 204.132.216.84, you're wrong.

Re: Stepping Down as CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation

#168

Post by KingOfCoders »

nickpp wrote: post #80

Wikipedia may have been an amazing idea in the beginning. Then it got taken over by a bunch of entrenched editors more interested in their own power than the accuracy of the pages' information. Today I can see mistakes and inaccurate info in every niche I am familiar with. Because of that, I cannot trust it on subjects I know nothing about. I tried contributing and fixing but nothing got through. Even worse, the leve…

Just read articles in several languages on historic events. You'll see how they differ and draw your own conclusions.

Re: Stepping Down as CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation

#169

Post by cabalamat »

nickpp wrote: post #80

Wikipedia may have been an amazing idea in the beginning. Then it got taken over by a bunch of entrenched editors more interested in their own power than the accuracy of the pages' information. Today I can see mistakes and inaccurate info in every niche I am familiar with. Because of that, I cannot trust it on subjects I know nothing about. I tried contributing and fixing but nothing got through. Even worse, the leve…

And the maths articles only make sense if you already understand them, which restricts their usefulness somewhat.

Re: Stepping Down as CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation

#170

Post by exporectomy »

nickff wrote: post #108
ardy42 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wikipedia may have been an amazing idea in the beginning. Then it got taken over by a bunch of entrenched editors more interested in their own power than the accuracy of the pages' information. Then there are also the people with ideological axes to grind, and the community's seeming belief that it's fine to merely reform a problematic user to just the barest level of acceptability. Unless you find some forgotten c…

Wikipedia also has the Stack Overflow problem of 'deletionists' (who mark everything as already described somewhere else, or not notable).

I would expect that to happen and be appropriate since eventually most questions will have been asked and most articles written. If you put aside information on new things in the world, those two sites are approaching a "finished" state so there's surely not much of value that anyone can add anymore. Of course, they may still be overzealous in deleting.
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