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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

#431

Post by seti0Cha »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #391
seti0Cha wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, and the result of which is an echo chamber, which was OPs point. I didn't see anyone complaining that their own speech was being suppressed. Does anyone question that it's ideologically homogeneous? It seems to me the question is, is that a good thing or a bad thing.

"I don't see anyone questioning, so we must conclude it's true," is epistemological laziness. Any hypothesis must be testable and actually tested before believed otherwise it's religion. JTB applies here too.

What the heck are you even talking about? I'm not running experiments, I'm trying to have a conversation. Do you or do you not believe the fediverse is ideologically homogeneous? I see people here arguing that it is, but that it is justifiably so. I don't see anyone clearly claiming it's not, but someone might. I think it is homogeneous for the very reasons you gave (i.e. people are not obliged to propagate speech they think is bad), but I'm not sure whether I think that's a good or a bad thing. If you think I'm wrong about it being ideologically homogeneous, feel free to tell me. If you want to weigh in on whether that's a good or bad thing, please do, that's why I asked the question. If you really want to challenge my epistemological standing to offer an opinion at all, well, I guess we're done here.

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

#432

Post by denton-scratch »

hindsightbias wrote: post #322
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…

> I barely recognize much of the 70's and 80's history on wiki.

Yup. History is a battleground; so is politics, and in some cases geography. Even food can be a battleground; "Biryani" is on my watchlist. It is constantly being vandalized, to state that the canonical version belongs to this or that community.

Interestingly, articles on religion don't seem to be battlegrounds to anything like the same extent.

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

#433

Post by ZeroGravitas »

zare_st wrote: post #241

It's also worth to mention that Wikipedia is absolutely not a good source for contemporary events. These use artificially constructed validity when it comes to primary news sources. While certain media outlets are known to be state propaganda, many accepted outlets are propaganda too and do not deserve to be sourced. However this issue is not unique to Wikipedia.

I find it a good source just for the non-political reason that the "news" is obsessed with "what just happened" and "what's about to happen (maybe)" and Wikipedia is more of a summary of the whole topic.

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

#434

Post by bebop404 »

One thing (perhaps the thing) that makes Wikipedia great is that it doesn't seek the truth. Instead, it seeks verifiability. This means that editors don't have to be experts to write articles, which is the main reason the site is useful at all.

The truth can be very elusive. So it makes sense to move that burden to the sources.

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

#435

Post by silent_cal »

snuxoll wrote: post #424
silent_cal wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's certain "radioactive" topics on Wikipedia where it's almost impossible for contrarian views to get a fair hearing: evolution, vaccination, nationalism, etc.

Contrarian views on many topics are not backed by facts but by emotion. A collection of knowledge is not obligated to let contrarian viewpoints with no scientific basis share the same space as factual coverage of a topic. This is the problem I see far too often with people who criticize Wikipedia for their NPOV policy.

In some cases sure, but on these issues it doesn't matter if you have facts or not. The contrarian view simply isn't allowed on Wikipedia.

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

#436

Post by braiamp »

ivanhoe wrote: post #221

My (admittedly personal & anecdotal) impression of Wikipedia is that the objectivity of the content highly depends on the subject - particularly anything that touches on more recent historical events and public/political figures continues to be of the debatable objectivity (at least on the subjects that I'm familiar with enough to notice the problem).

I would argue the opposite. There's no way to have a nuanced and constructive topic if it ever touches, either by implicit or explicit association, other sensitive topics. Example, create a list of the qualities that a country must fulfill to be socialist, compare that list with the characteristics of countries that are considered socialist, and find examples of countries that fit those characteristics and ask yourself why they are not considered socialist. At the end of the argument you notice that there are no country totally socialist, capitalist, communist or any other economic theory. Every country is a piecemeal of different concepts and policies that may or may not make sense in conjunction to everything else. But socialism/communism bad.

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

#437

Post by nvy »

gwd wrote: post #4

I seem to remember a talk I heard a very long time ago, maybe by Joel Splosky? He was saying that he'd observed the "population change" effect in USENET; where argumentative jerks tended to stay and helpful people tended to be driven away; and in his mind the "reply in-line" mechanic specifically contributed to this. So the first-order goal he had when he built Stack Overflow was to build a system with mechanics whic…

>So the first-order goal he had when he built Stack Overflow was to build a system with mechanics which encouraged helpful people tended to stay and argumentative jerks to be frustrated and go elsewhere.

Well, that failed spectacularly. The Stack Exchange sites are some of the most hostile, caustic places on the Internet, surpassed on that axis by only a small handful I'm aware of.

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

#438

Post by some_random »

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #157
nvm0n2 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They routinely run absolutely massive banner ads for themselves at the top of every page begging for donations they don't need. And these ads are the worst: extremely deceptive, unnecessary, and huge.

Honestly once you learn the truth about their finances their banner campaign are actually the absolute pits of advertising and the most deceptive and emotionally manipulative type of advertising going. Laughable to claim wikipedia is "ad free" just because the one ad is for wikipedia.

I completely agree that their campaigns are distasteful for a number of reasons, but I think the original point was more that the lack of ad slots for sale has prevented the site from turning into the addiction optimized hellsite that most websites have become now

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

#439

Post by anon25783 »

denton-scratch wrote: post #402
gwd wrote: post #4

I seem to remember a talk I heard a very long time ago, maybe by Joel Splosky? He was saying that he'd observed the "population change" effect in USENET; where argumentative jerks tended to stay and helpful people tended to be driven away; and in his mind the "reply in-line" mechanic specifically contributed to this. So the first-order goal he had when he built Stack Overflow was to build a system with mechanics whic…

[flagged]

> especially women (I suspect).

Not to be a woke feminist culture warrior on main but, that seems misogynistic.

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

#440

Post by CobrastanJorji »

Ygg2 wrote: post #9
gwd wrote: post #4

I seem to remember a talk I heard a very long time ago, maybe by Joel Splosky? He was saying that he'd observed the "population change" effect in USENET; where argumentative jerks tended to stay and helpful people tended to be driven away; and in his mind the "reply in-line" mechanic specifically contributed to this. So the first-order goal he had when he built Stack Overflow was to build a system with mechanics whic…

Didn't that backfire anyway? Jerks found other ways to be jerks?

Well, sort of. The "jerks" thing is true in part, but I think the majority of that feel comes from a disconnect between what people want Stack Overflow to be. Many of the contributors (and the founder) want it to be Wikipedia, a place to enter search terms and find your specific problem and its solution, documented exactly once. But many novices get used to finding answers on Stack Overflow, and they quite reasonably see a bunch of questions and answers and decide it's a place to ask for help, which it a thing that looks similar on the surface but is quite different. And so you get a lot of well-meaning answers/moderators closing the majority of what comes in as repetitive noise, because from their perspective it is, and so the majority of people who ask (quite reasonable) questions, especially novice questions, have a terrible experience initially engaging. But yes, ALSO jerks are there.
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