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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

#321

Post by isk517 »

bad_alloc wrote: post #2

People complain a lot about the internet getting worse and worse. We can fix it, if we put in the effort to rebuild it. * Join fediverse services, e.g. [Lemmy](feddit.de) or Mastodon and post a bit. * Create your own website if you have sth like a cool hobby to share. Webhosting is available for free or cheap, depending on what you want. Link other pages you like to form a net. * If you can, host your own instances a…

I'd also add try and give monetary support content creators that you enjoy. Consuming things for free then relying on ads to pay the people that make things is part of how we got to this point.

Also in response to your edit, isn't the entire point of Hacker News about discovery? One thing we could do right here on is have a weekly thread for people to post general places on the internet they find interesting (webpages, services, communities) but perhaps don't feel like they constitute a unique thread of their own.

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

#322

Post by hindsightbias »

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #177

Can't really trust an academic on this matter, Wikipedia is like academia it's a closed system where a small group get to decide what opinions are correct, what facts get a mention and what are worth looking at with a feedback loop to itself that is used to control facts by deciding what sources are valid. Really the open decentralized internet is the antithesis of academia. Not to say its all bad but reading wikiped…

Add generational lens.

I barely recognize much of the 70's and 80's history on wiki. A lot of it clearly wasn't written by someone who lived through it, and if it isn't linkable it basically doesn't exist. History is written by the victors, and they only do the internet. All those books, newspaper and magazine articles of that era just don't exist outside of libraries and microfiche and it's clear none of those wiki editors are going there.

I've seen younger people start to complain about this as link rot reaches into their generation.

At least academics have standards, even if they don't always follow them.

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

#323

Post by shadowgovt »

cbozeman wrote: post #269
giraffe_lady wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

No, although I understand why such a simplistic and easily-digestible idea would be appealing to a group of people who increasingly want simple answers. We want to go back to the Internet of thick-skinned people who rarely even blocked others, much less actively tried to get them banned. We want to go back to the Internet where you can say wild shit and people are smart / savvy enough to know you're just being edgy a…

I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, but if I may try to interpret: it sounds like you want to go back to an Internet with not nearly so many people on it, where the culture of "being online" was more homogeneous.

One can imagine why that's a problem in a world of 8 billion people, all of whom (some say) have a right to be online.

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

#324

Post by chrsw »

yason wrote: post #24

All places ever deemed 'good' have had sufficient technological or financial, and above all intellectual barriers of entry that filter out regular joes. BBS's in the 80's. Usenet till the early 90's. WWW till the late 90's. IRC till early 00's. Forums replaced usenet groups but have been in decline for years. Once those barriers are broken and the masses flood in then the supply side will emerge and takes over with s…

Thank you. This is a better version of something I said in another comment.

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

#325

Post by ajsnigrutin »

vladms wrote: post #203
VancouverMan wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While it was already obvious to some people before then, after everything that happened from early 2020 through most of 2022, it should be completely clear to everyone now that "expert consensus" has absolutely nothing to do with being factually correct. Time and time again, from the lockdowns/restrictions to the forced masking to the forced shots to the censorship to pretty much everything in between, the "expert co…

These are some strong statements without any reference. Haven't you personally dealt with any situation in which you have to take a decision based on incomplete information? That was covid for most part of it. You could compare it with a bet, and some bets look retrospectively "bad" (although we have no way to check, don't we?) There were also plenty of "fringe voices" with ideas that were proven wrong over time, so…

But we decided on one singular truth and literally censored/banned and/or publically shamed all other variants.

You get vaccinated, you won't get ill, won't spread the virus, herd immunity, end of covid. At a time, this was the one and only acceptable truth, and everything else, from low efficiency of vaccine, sideffects, "you'll nfect grandma, even if you're vaccinated", "there will never be herd immunity" was considered a fringe conspiracy theory.

Choosing and promoting ideas is different from straight up censorship, shaming and worse.

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

#326

Post by DeIlliad »

wiseowise wrote: post #235
afavour wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

[flagged]

People of a similar background tend to have similar thoughts. If you grew up white in America or black in Africa you will have at least a few experiences that most people of your background share. Expand the amount of people with diverse background and you will get a wider range of thoughts.

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

#327

Post by silvestrov »

skydhash wrote: post #226
gspencley wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and hopefully the recommendation algorithm would start to favor just good content over clickbait sellout garbage. My problem with recommendation algorithms, at least YouTube's, is that by design they recommend things based on keywords and categories for videos you have watched previously. So what happens is that I get hooked on some new topic, say cave diving for example. And then I watch a whole bunch of cave divi…

Not just a "you" problem. I have to routinely reset my youtube history (I don't have time to prune it) to avoid stale recommendation. I have few interests, but every once in a while, I'm on a research spree or just want some new vibes, then my home view is ruined. If they are not getting rid of the algorithm, it would make sense to let me manage the keywords that are driving it.

I really want the ability to easily create multiple persons/personalities like Netflix lets you do.

On Netflix I have a seperate "user" for asian movies so the main user is not flooded with recommendations for asian movies. Those 2 users have extremly different list of recommended movies.

When I watch a few "The girl is doing her homework" music movies on YouTube they quickly drown out everything else on the homepage. When I later watch a few "watch later" engineering movies, the music videos are drowned out and I then have difficulty finding more music videos. It's like starting over from scratch every time.

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

#328

Post by parasti »

OfSanguineFire wrote: post #107
bad_alloc wrote: post #2

People complain a lot about the internet getting worse and worse. We can fix it, if we put in the effort to rebuild it. * Join fediverse services, e.g. [Lemmy](feddit.de) or Mastodon and post a bit. * Create your own website if you have sth like a cool hobby to share. Webhosting is available for free or cheap, depending on what you want. Link other pages you like to form a net. * If you can, host your own instances a…

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…

What you see on mastodon.social is the result of Elon Musk buying Twitter. One and a half years ago it looked very different from the current mix of US politics and social issues, with more European-oriented, non-English content. As a European, it lost a lot of relevance to me, personally.

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

#329

Post by wwweston »

soundnote wrote: post #264
t-3 wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be viewing the fediverse as a blob, but it's actually a federated network. There's no need to join an instance if you don't like the moderation!

The point is that the federation mechanism explicitly means that any server that is federated will have to follow those policies, because the admins of all the large servers hew to a certain ideology that will not tolerate dissent from key talking points. So the server can technically speaking exist on the protocol but in practice won't be federated with the broader network unless it's palatable to Californicated act…

If you literally can’t find a space where your views are palatable, then it’s possible there’s something wrong with them.

And if what you’re seeking is the privilege to compel other people who take responsibility for setting up and administering such spaces to carry / broadcast your unmoderated views regardless of their own, what we’re talking about isn’t really any principled kind of liberty.

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

#330

Post by bko »

nickelpro wrote: post #232
bko wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is scientific American not reputabl? Here are a number of articles suggesting various arguments that there is no physical advantage of males in sports https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/trans-girls-belon... https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/hormone-levels-ar... https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/to-understand-sex... https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/sex-redefined-the...

None of those articles argue that men and women are biologically equivalent in all things. If I might summarize, they mostly argue that hormonal arguments towards unfair advantages in certain sports understate the already existing disparities in hormonal distribution in a given sex. That a given trans athlete might be less hormonally advantaged than a cis woman who competes uncontroversially. The latter articles are…

> the uncontroversial point that binary biological sex is an incomplete model of humanity as a whole.

Why does sex have to be a complete model of humanity? It's real and useful. For instance as a male I don't bother getting mamograms. Sex tells you more about predisposition of health conditions than any other factor apart from maybe age and weight. Let's not pretend it doesn't exist

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