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How Wikipedia became the last good place on the internet

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Re: How Wikipedia became the last good place on the internet

#141

Post by sph »

afavour wrote: post #116
OfSanguineFire wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fediverse (in the sense of the major servers that federate) is an extreme echo chamber representative of mainly a certain sociopolitical wing and mainly from North America and Western Europe. Just look at mastodon.social/explore and consider that many founding activists of Mastodon have spoken about how they yearn to keep the community just like that even as it grows. Part of the early internet was about being able t…

I disagree about your assessment of the early internet. It was extremely white and nerdy when looked at on average. Certainly diversity was out there but it wasn’t easily found, much like the fediverse today. Even Wikipedia (not that it counts as early internet): > I knew that early Wikipedia editors were (and kinda still are) academically-inclined hacker dudes, but it's crazy when you realize the article about mole…

The Early Internet was white and middle class because they could afford it. But there were no recommendation algorithms or content siloes, so even if it was less diverse, it was potentially much more diverse and free than whatever we have today.

Today we have most of the world online, but they live on 5 websites, so even though it feels like there's more diversity and breadth, it has become a much more homogeneous culture.

There must be a name for this scientific phenomenon (variable increases between two spans of time, but the relative effect of it on the entire system has decreased)

Re: How Wikipedia became the last good place on the internet

#143

Post by mr_mitm »

toyg wrote: post #125
hliyan wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, a pay-per-use Internet (where appropriate), where people will vote for content with their wallets, instead of having to purchase subscriptions whether they read an article or not. Just a few minutes ago, I wanted to read an NYT article but it asked me to buy a $1/mo subscription. Very cheap, but a) I don't read NYT that regularly and b) doing that with every news outlet I occasionally read, adds up. On the othe…

> if it had asked for $0.25 The economics of credit-card transactions, unfortunately, make this fundamentally impossible.

I pay these tiny amounts by card all the time for public toilets, parking meters and the like.

Re: How Wikipedia became the last good place on the internet

#145

Post by suoduandao3 »

wildrhythms wrote: post #71
js8 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think socialism is the mechanism - one person one vote with the stake of ownership. I am pretty liberal but it I believe it needs socialism (democracy in economic sphere) to avoid capture by corporations. (And vice versa, socialism needs liberalism to prevent capture by government. They can't survive without each other, being constantly threatened by authoritarianism.)

Socialism has nothing to do with 'government capture'; it only concerns itself with worker ownership over the means of production.

The means of production these days is a laptop or a smartphone. A solar panel or a garden if one is in the physical portion of the economy.

We are kind of already at a point where working class individuals can own the means of production without ever needing to 'smesh capitalism'. I expect as a result we'll see a divergence between people who want to own the means of production and people who want to impoverish the current owners.

Re: How Wikipedia became the last good place on the internet

#146

Post by js8 »

wildrhythms wrote: post #71
js8 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think socialism is the mechanism - one person one vote with the stake of ownership. I am pretty liberal but it I believe it needs socialism (democracy in economic sphere) to avoid capture by corporations. (And vice versa, socialism needs liberalism to prevent capture by government. They can't survive without each other, being constantly threatened by authoritarianism.)

Socialism has nothing to do with 'government capture'; it only concerns itself with worker ownership over the means of production.

I think you misunderstood my comment. In order for socialism to remain true to its intent of being democratic, it needs liberalism. By 'government capture' I mean the authorities in government taking control over an ostensibly democratic system (as frequently happened in the real-world attempts at socialism). You need to have an ability to rebuild these democratic systems elsewhere, which is provided by liberal freedoms.

Re: How Wikipedia became the last good place on the internet

#147

Post by Sharlin »

WhyOhWhyQ wrote: post #99

What's wrong with Stack Exchange? I'm a Math Stack Exchange user and I think it's absolutely amazing for the knowledge seeker. It's a repository of high quality questions and answers that you're not going to answer yourself. You can instantly access hundreds of the smartest people in the world. You can spend a week thinking about something difficult and frequently get it answered in under an hour, sometimes 10 minute…

Yes, many SE sites are pretty great, but they probably wouldn't if they were as large as Stack Overflow itself. The failure modes of SO are well known. Still, given how invaluable a resource it has become to the large majority of programmers, it's certainly doing many things right.

Re: How Wikipedia became the last good place on the internet

#149

Post by velcrovan »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #129
velcrovan wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Individual action takes place in a context of social cues and incentives. Those who understand this try to work together to change those things, which in turn changes the “easy defaults” for everyone. This is a million times more effective than limiting your approach to nagging people to do better for ideological reasons.

> Individual action takes place in a context of social cues and incentives. Those who understand this try to work together to change those things, which in turn changes the “easy defaults” for everyone. I think this discounts the fact that people are not mindless automatons following the path of least resistance. Individuals are capable of difficult things that fly in the face of collective theory, and time and time…

> I think this discounts the fact that people are not mindless automatons following the path of least resistance.

That is nowhere implied or required by what I am arguing. I am just saying changing incentives is more effective at a broad societal level than nagging people. This is plainly observable and undisputable.

For example, add a mortgage interest deduction to the tax code. Doing so in no way reduces or discounts the ability of every person in that jurisdiction to make financial decisions based on a million factors that are weighted uniquely by each individual. But behavior of the market overall will inevitably change, because the incentives have changed.

Re: How Wikipedia became the last good place on the internet

#150

Post by LudwigNagasena »

kingofthehill98 wrote: post #121
Namari wrote: post #8

It would be good if Wikipedia could stay neutral and not biased. It's not as good as it was.

There is no such thing as neutrality or unbiased views, we are humans, everything we do or say is filled with bias. Claiming for Wikipedia to "stay neutral" is a bias itself. They do as good of a job as any of us in trying to stay neutral.

> There is no such thing as neutrality or unbiased views, we are humans, everything we do or say is filled with bias.

Meh, there is a scale.

> Claiming for Wikipedia to "stay neutral" is a bias itself.

Yeah, everything is relative, truth doesn’t exist, yadda-yadda.

> They do as good of a job as any of us in trying to stay neutral.

They don’t.

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