201–210 of 301 posts
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> I think Wikipedia is mostly good contentwise. Wikipedia politics is insane[1], and this power hunger can lead to objectively incorrect information being defended and sustained. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_cabals
What exactly is this? What are cabals? I'm so confused!!!
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Since you're familiar enough with the activities of the knowledge equity fund to be confident that it's a waste, can you fill in more detail about which grants that it has issued that ended up being wasteful? I understand that you're not "going straight to OMG, the SJWs", so surely you have some knowledge of how these millions of dollars were allocated and at least some vague understanding of their particular failure…
Just from the grants on that page, none of them are designed to actually result in concrete wiki-relevant activity. This is, apparently, deliberate[1]. The metrics of success are not defined in a measurable way with respect to the wiki projects; whatever they do result in won't be published until the end of the year. Maybe we will see 4.5 million worth of value. Maybe we will not. I'm not saying that it's a waste in…
That being said, "what is best for Wikipedia" is in itself a nebulous proposition in the first place because different people have different requirements and visions for the project. Personally to me, the investments in investigative journalism (1) seem like they could have a direct value contribution since it could expand original reporting of facts for the site. That is of course debatable, but we'll see.
Thanks for clarifying!
1 https://medium.com/freely-sharing-the-sum-of-all-knowledge/p...
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I'm not really sure how I am supposed to retroactively go back in time and register earlier. Since you are handing out free advice, is it normally considered polite or helpful here to accuse people of using fake accounts? Is assuming that a person speaking with confidence about a topic may have some direct knowledge of that topic somehow rude or against the rules? If you're speaking confidently on behalf of the perso…
Since you arent a sockpuppet and just new, do you really feel confident to have hit the right tone here, even after somebody gave you a heads up how a conversation is more likely to be fruitful? You dont need to speak on behalf of OP to give you a heads up about a common problem with your approach, its pretty universal. Picture it this way, there is list of common problems which make a sensible discussion less likely…
Considering that the person whom I was addressing responded to my post in a productive manner and we were able to have a civil and thoughtful exchange... Yes?
Do you think it's productive to police the conversations of others in a way that is entirely off topic to the threads? I understand that neither you nor hitekker enjoyed my wording. In the future, when I am speaking to you about a topic in a thread, I'll try to imagine what one's reaction might be if they interpret it as meaning offense before I post. I can't guarantee that I'll always be able to align with your preferred style of decorum, especially since I'm not sure what the rules are here; my post was bad and hitekker's post (an unprovoked off-topic personal attack on me under the auspices of speaking for another person who didn't appear to share their sentiment in the first place) was good.
I won't be engaging any further on the minutae of posting best practices in the discussion thread for the future of the wikimedia project. Have a nice day!
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> At the same time, we recognize this is work that we as a movement cannot do alone. Our projects can only do so much when, for example, academic and mass media representation of marginalized communities remains insufficient, which in turn limits citations and primary sources for us to build from. The document linked above has some very pragmatic and boring goals like: * Supporting media and journalism efforts focuse…
These "goals" are far from narrowly targeted towards fixing the critical issue of biased minority editorship. We don't even know what exactly might deter marginalized people from contributing. Perhaps they're turned away by all the pointless wikilawyering, in which case the most effective solution would look very different from what the WMF is proposing here. Supporting minority media is a job for minorities , who wi…
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…
From the first link: >The Wikimedia Foundation defines racial equity as shifting away from Eurocentricity, White-male-imperialist-patriarchal supremacy, superiority, power and privilege to create an environment that is inclusive and reflects the experiences of communities of color worldwide. What an interesting signaling statement. If you did not know what "racial equity" was, imagine trying to parse out what it is f…
> Note: The Wikimedia movement does not endorse "race" and "ethnicity" as meaningful distinctions among people.
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Universal_Code_of_Conduct
I think Wikipedia is mostly good contentwise. Of course there are two extremes where there are problems: disputed topics (especially contemporary political topics) and niche topics receiving little to no attention. I think for both an improvment can be made by improving the view on the editing history. Showing what kind of editors (new accounts or ong term members? Editing only few articles or across the board? etc.)…
(Reparented from another content thread) Agreed. Wikipedia's strength is its long tail of niche articles. However, once one gets off "popular" articles, the quality bounds rapidly spread. But that seems inherent to having an article for which there are only 1-2 editors, as opposed to 10+ frequently reviewing. So better UX is probably the best "solution." I.e. pulling editor count, frequency, and reputation into the r…
I started this article recently and was very impressed by how everyone came together to reach a consensus on a very niche topic:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qeqertaq_Avannarleq
But then the other day I noticed that a page about a certain very popular K-Pop band was missing one of their major releases, so I added it, but then got into a pissing war with an editor of that niche who argued that the band's own Instagram page was not a valid source for information on their releases?!
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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…
That makes me wonder what is the use in including anything political except blunt facts for a place like Wikipedia. If they want to do “political history” then I’d just have an open dump site of any kindling people want to add to the “discussion” and leave it at that. Basically just an archive of propaganda at worst.
I think overall the wikipedia model has shown itself to be decently working. But (anecdata) I have my gripes with the way it handles evidence. My SO has a person (died already) in her family with a (relatively) short wikipedia entry. There are factual errors in the article. We know that, because we have original documents showing that the "facts" reportet in the entry are wrong. Due to the fact that the documents can…
At this point you need to fight fire with fire. Everything you know that is factually wrong needs to be investigated; are there credible sources for those lies? Can those sources be discredited?
It takes a mountain of work to fight casual lies, unfortunately.
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Here is a specific example: Circumcision It has the features OP complains about. Content controlled by a small number of "guardians" who knows every Wikipedia rule and policy in existence and uses them to keep outsiders out. A shockingly biased tone that omits every dissenting source. The article's guardians call them "anti-circumcisionists" and in their view, the critics objects are as valid as 9/11 conspiracy theor…
> 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…
> Between 10,000 and 15,000 boys are circumcised in the Netherlands each year, mostly for religious reasons and not always with an anesthetic, according to the Royal Dutch Medical Association (KNMG) which represents surgeons, pediatricians, general practitioners and urologists.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-dutch-circumcision-health...
You can find similar views expressed by many medical associations around the world (https://www.thelocal.dk/20161205/danish-doctors-come-out-aga... https://www.thelocal.se/20090725/20900/ https://yle.fi/uutiset/3-5142149) I believe the American Pediatrics Association is the only major one that has come out in favor of circumcision. Their statement is along the lines of "the benefits slightly outweigh the risks". Americans may be cool with genital cutting but in the rest of the world the procedure is very controversial.