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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

#381

Post by PH95VuimJjqBqy »

Jcowell wrote: post #274
ekianjo wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think it's revisionism to suggest that the old internet was far more politically and culturally diverse Of course it was more diverse because no-one was kicking anyone off any platform when there was no social media and content policy in application in the first place. I don't even know how you can seriously think that this was not the case.

Wasn’t there but I find it hard to believe that webmasters were kicking off people with views they found toxic. That Forms don’t have ban wars. There’s nothing about the internet or social media in regards to “cancel culture” or anything like it. Humanity has been doing it since we formed communities.

I've read people cannot actually fathom large numbers, and by extension I have to conclude they also cannot fathom scale or how that changes things.

There's a difference between your neighbor rejecting your belief in green jesus (thrall from World of Warcraft) and the entire world doing it.

That's the difference between your bog standard PHPBB forum from the 90's and FB today. We have _precedence_ for this, people have literally been booted off all major platforms at the same time.

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

#382

Post by gunapologist99 »

jwestbury wrote: post #36
bko wrote: post #15

> Over time, Wikipedians who supported fringe content departed or were ousted. Thus, population loss led to highly consequential institutional change. Is this a good thing? It seems like homogenous hive mind effects. Works in some instances but we should aim a little higher A big problem is homogeniety in media. For instance, everyone from every major newspaper more or less went to the same schools, has a similar wor…

Well, yes, when it comes to knowledge I'd say that it is a good thing to remove those supporting fringe content. Consensus amongst those who generally care about a topic is probably better for ensuring largely correct data than the alternative of a large number of voices, each with a questionable level of actual subject matter expertise.

Do you also support removing the question you replied to?

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

#383

Post by PH95VuimJjqBqy »

bloqs wrote: post #250
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…

The fediverse is an echo chamber for many groups, including notably hard left gen Z. It's integrity is similar to that of early days 4chans /b/, in that it wholly rejects reality around it, and it serves not as a discussion forum, but a self-fed enshittification engine racing to the most extreme take. It couldn't look any more different from the intellectually curious people that largely constituted the beautiful art…

I've never interacted or understood /b/ much but my impression of 4chan in general is that you kind of get a slice of humanity because of their rules + anonymity. Both the good and the bad.

But I've never seen anyone describe it as rejecting reality, nor have I ever got that impression from much that I've seen from there. It's mostly people fucking around, whereas the hard left you're referring to seem to be taking it a lot more seriously than most on /b/ (that I've seen, not much personal experience with it).

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

#384

Post by soundnote »

didibus wrote: post #311
whatwhaaaaat wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Claiming things to be true that had no evidence is not the same thing as making decisions with partial information. The mRNA shots were not tested at all for transmissibility yet we were told they prevented transmission. Thank goodness some people have a memory longer than 2 weeks.

> The mRNA shots were not tested at all for transmissibility yet we were told they prevented transmission Data that has come out since does seem to indicate it lowers transmission. But I'm unclear if you're trying to say that this turned out to be false (the reduction in transmission), or that you're pointing out how some policies were driven by claims that didn't yet have strong enough evidence backing them up?

He's claiming that the vaccines weren't tested on whether they reduced transmission or not, but that we were told they would be super effective at reducing transmission (since the bureaucrats' only concern was to get as many people jabbed as possible, so they snake oil sold the vaccines as far more effective than they were).

He's not claiming that the vaccines don't reduce transmission at all, as best as I can tell.

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

#385

Post by [deleted] »

[deleted] wrote: post #372
bko wrote: post #15

> Over time, Wikipedians who supported fringe content departed or were ousted. Thus, population loss led to highly consequential institutional change. Is this a good thing? It seems like homogenous hive mind effects. Works in some instances but we should aim a little higher A big problem is homogeniety in media. For instance, everyone from every major newspaper more or less went to the same schools, has a similar wor…

[deleted]

[deleted]

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

#386

Post by PH95VuimJjqBqy »

SleepilyLimping wrote: post #380
gosub100 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would love that. just a tip jar button on my browser that I load up with a few bucks every month, and send to websites or commenters who made me laugh or got me thinking. Streamers have proven (albeit crudely) that viewers are more than willing to part with their money (if they have it). And I'm not just hinting at salacious young women (who probably receive the bulk of the dollar value). There's a streamer team wh…

This was kind of the theory of using Brave Browser to earn BAT through ads, and then set up an "auto-contribute" list that took your earned BAT and distributed a % that you set to each person. The adoption didn't exactly happen, especially with Brave's weirdness lately.

I like the idea of BAT but I just don't fully trust it.

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

#387

Post by gunapologist99 »

VMG wrote: post #173
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…

Of course the contrarian will only defend the "fringe voices" up to the point that he agrees with. Once it goes into 5G-activated magnetic microchip implants, the contrarian will defer to experts without the quotes.

That doesn't mean that the contrarian tries to silence those he disagrees with.

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

#388

Post by jl6 »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #349
thinkingtoilet wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To your last point, I think this is something people get confused about. I think no reasonable person says science is always right and there is never any corruption in the process. Science is done by humans and humans are fallible. The argument is that science is the best we have , not that it's perfect. One thing I see with 100% of conspiracy theorists is that they have no self-awareness of when they're wrong. They…

But who gets to decide what stays on and what gets deleted? Does the tectonic plate theory stay on wikipedia, or do we delete it, since it's just a conspiracy theory (let's say we flew back in time a bit)? What about epsteins "suicide"? Would an articl about "heart problems as covid vaccine side-effect" stay on wikipedia a year and a half ago, or would it get deleted? In hindsight, it's easy... but who gets to decide…

Wikipedia editors are supposed to evaluate what the consensus of reliable sources is, and report that. So there's a second-order game being played around what counts as a reliable source.

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

#389

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#390

Post by spacemadness »

sanex wrote: post #56
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…

I've been saying this for a while. It doesn't even need to be that expensive either. Pay a penny to watch a YouTube video type of deal. It can be done through lightning network to avoid per transaction credit card fees which would probably otherwise make it too expensive. My biggest hangup is paying for something that quickly turns out to be crap. I guess people would learn pretty quickly and hopefully the recommenda…

This is giving me PTSD from using old online services like Quantum Link on the C64 and having my parents freak out on me for racking up a huge bill.
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