11–20 of 39 posts
I'm not directly touching this debate with a 20-foot pole. Wikipedia has issues with its insular editor pool for sure, but this minefield isn't the best vehicle for a public discussion of the issue.
If you comment in this thread, please make sure you're up on https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and especially this one:
"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
Flames and ideological battle are not welcome—nay, not even on this topic.
Long ago there has been an analysis of how much better organized the "pro life" crowd was online than the "pro choice" and this is just another facet of the same: alas, it seems those on the right are playing this better.
Oh well. Everyone knows or should know Wikipedia can not be trusted or if they didn't then the Scottish Wikipedia scandal should have taught them this.
I'm not directly touching this debate with a 20-foot pole. Wikipedia has issues with its insular editor pool for sure, but this minefield isn't the best vehicle for a public discussion of the issue.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/N...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Not...
(The first contains links to others.)
Similar points were raised by Haaretz a few years ago:
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2019-10-04/ty-article-ma...
The Hungarian wikipedia being overrun by ... how to say this politely? neonazis, yes, that's a polite word, I guess, is a well known fact. I am not at all surprised this happened to the English one as well. Long ago there has been an analysis of how much better organized the "pro life" crowd was online than the "pro choice" and this is just another facet of the same: alas, it seems those on the right are playing this…
“The fact of the matter is that all sources of information are not of equal value, and I don't know how or when it became impolitic to suggest it. In opposition to the spirit of Wikipedia, I believe there is such a thing as expertise.”
https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2005/12/16/i-have-the-pow...
The Hungarian wikipedia being overrun by ... how to say this politely? neonazis, yes, that's a polite word, I guess, is a well known fact. I am not at all surprised this happened to the English one as well. Long ago there has been an analysis of how much better organized the "pro life" crowd was online than the "pro choice" and this is just another facet of the same: alas, it seems those on the right are playing this…
I'm sure many would disagree with this, personally I find the idea of the right dominating (English) wikipedia laughable.
But that's a pointless discussion. I think the takeaway should be there is no such thing as neutral media - one man's "neutral" perspective is another's far $political_direction. It's similar to "fact checking". Reality outside of the hard sciences (and even then) is subjective. It's much better to communicate the perspective from which reporting is done, or at least to not pretend to be neutral. And interested people necessarily need to seek a broad range of perspectives and not take any one platform as truth, no matter how neutral
The Hungarian wikipedia being overrun by ... how to say this politely? neonazis, yes, that's a polite word, I guess, is a well known fact. I am not at all surprised this happened to the English one as well. Long ago there has been an analysis of how much better organized the "pro life" crowd was online than the "pro choice" and this is just another facet of the same: alas, it seems those on the right are playing this…
I have no good ideas about how to solve this problem, I’m guessing that the smaller audience a wiki has, the more likely it is that an ideological faction will have influence on the content.
The first thing that came to mind for me was making all of the other non-English wikis read-only machine translations of the English version since it has the most eyeballs on it. The problem with that is, then you miss out on things that are notable (by Wikipedia standards) in other languages that don’t have sources in English, which isn’t fair to non-English speaking countries that have their own notable culture and history.
Enforcing an NPOV across all of the wikis across many different languages (or even just the English wiki) seems like an intractable problem. And that’s without opening the ‘what is a neutral point of view’ can of worms.
The Hungarian wikipedia being overrun by ... how to say this politely? neonazis, yes, that's a polite word, I guess, is a well known fact. I am not at all surprised this happened to the English one as well. Long ago there has been an analysis of how much better organized the "pro life" crowd was online than the "pro choice" and this is just another facet of the same: alas, it seems those on the right are playing this…
Everyone should know, and yet I often see people, in HN comments for example, citing Wikipedia as if it means something. As the great Tycho has said, “The fact of the matter is that all sources of information are not of equal value, and I don't know how or when it became impolitic to suggest it. In opposition to the spirit of Wikipedia, I believe there is such a thing as expertise.” https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic…
It does make you wonder sometimes whether technological progress really does make things work better than before ...
The Hungarian wikipedia being overrun by ... how to say this politely? neonazis, yes, that's a polite word, I guess, is a well known fact. I am not at all surprised this happened to the English one as well. Long ago there has been an analysis of how much better organized the "pro life" crowd was online than the "pro choice" and this is just another facet of the same: alas, it seems those on the right are playing this…
[I deleted a part of this comment where I incorrectly attempted to correct the OP] I have no good ideas about how to solve this problem, I’m guessing that the smaller audience a wiki has, the more likely it is that an ideological faction will have influence on the content. The first thing that came to mind for me was making all of the other non-English wikis read-only machine translations of the English version since…