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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

#531

Post by cbozeman »

shadowgovt wrote: post #323
cbozeman wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Anytime someone says, "Blah blah sentiment blah blah... BUUUUUUT", what they're really saying is, "I'm doing exactly what you think I'm doing, but I don't want anyone to call me out on it!"

And just have the goddamned courage to say what you want to say to begin with. You're exactly the problem. You can't even be honest enough to say, "You just want the Internet to be white again!"

We didn't have voice communication when I was young. Sending a single high-resolution GIF took 10-15 minutes. In 1996, it took 28 minutes for me to receive a single 4 MB MP3 via DCC in IRC using mIRC. We didn't know what color anyone was. Oftentimes we didn't even know what nationality someone was. You were judged solely by the quality of your content. How good were your arguments? How cogent was your point? How well do you present yourself in communication.

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

#532

Post by mckn1ght »

alkonaut wrote: post #524

I just want to be the lone comment that says I do not see any annoying bias or editorializing on Wikipedia. Not even on sensitive or political subjects. But that’s of course my subjective view of it. Judging the number of times I see that complaint here, I’m starting to think that commenters here have a different political midpoint than the one of the people editing the English Wikipedia? Are HN readers more American…

Have you ever read the edit history of a page on a topic you know to be controversial in society? The constant back and forth is something to behold. And for people who think Wikipedia is just a static unchanging webpage, they’ll never realize that depending on the minute that you read an article, it could be very biased in one direction or the other versus what your grandma saw when she read it an hour ago and posted a link on facebook.

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

#533

Post by nvy »

silent_cal wrote: post #509
sodality2 wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What points of views are scrubbed from WP, with credible scientific evidence supporting them?

Take this passage from the vaccination page for example: > Some studies have claimed to show that current vaccine schedules increase infant mortality and hospitalization rates;[103][104] those studies, however, are correlational in nature and therefore cannot demonstrate causal effects, and the studies have also been criticized for cherry picking the comparisons they report, for ignoring historical trends that suppor…

Goodness, are you not familiar with the phrase "correlation does not imply causation"?

There are ways to establish causal relationships, the gold standard of which is to conduct a double-blind controlled trial.

To claim as you have that a correlational study establishes a causal relationship is deeply misguided, irrespective of whether or not it is peer-reviewed.

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

#534

Post by johnnyanmac »

alkonaut wrote: post #524

I just want to be the lone comment that says I do not see any annoying bias or editorializing on Wikipedia. Not even on sensitive or political subjects. But that’s of course my subjective view of it. Judging the number of times I see that complaint here, I’m starting to think that commenters here have a different political midpoint than the one of the people editing the English Wikipedia? Are HN readers more American…

Depends on the entry. For most technical entries I see it as a quick summary you google for and it's fine (if not sometimes a bit outdated on modern practices. But that's fine, it's an encyclopedia, not documentation). It tends to be pretty good as a spingboard to other stuff.

For politicized stuff I see it no differently than any other aggregator like Reddit or Hacker News. get a quick feel from the post and comments (yeah I even read the editor comments), look at several sources and get a feel for their bias. Then try to form my own view based on that. I see bias/editorialization there because I see it in every single person's POV. That's just life and why the number of sources I'd ever take wholesale are ones I can count on onehand.

Wikipedia is definitely very weak at developing stories, where you'll really see the back and forth happen underneath.

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

#535

Post by [deleted] »

alkonaut wrote: post #524

I just want to be the lone comment that says I do not see any annoying bias or editorializing on Wikipedia. Not even on sensitive or political subjects. But that’s of course my subjective view of it. Judging the number of times I see that complaint here, I’m starting to think that commenters here have a different political midpoint than the one of the people editing the English Wikipedia? Are HN readers more American…

[deleted]

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

#536

Post by epgui »

alkonaut wrote: post #524

I just want to be the lone comment that says I do not see any annoying bias or editorializing on Wikipedia. Not even on sensitive or political subjects. But that’s of course my subjective view of it. Judging the number of times I see that complaint here, I’m starting to think that commenters here have a different political midpoint than the one of the people editing the English Wikipedia? Are HN readers more American…

I think a lot of people are just... either epistemologically confused, or unreasonable, or a bit of both.

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

#537

Post by depressedpanda »

malcolmgreaves wrote: post #487
depressedpanda wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? The claim was that women to a higher degree find "direct, robust speech" alienating. Disregarding whether it's true or not, and my own reservations against using "robust" as a descriptor, it looks like a fairly neutral statement to me.

> The claim was that women to a higher degree find "direct, robust speech" alienating. I'll assume that (1) you're not sexist and (2) you're asking why is this claim rooted in sexism. The nature of this claim is rooted in an idea that any observable behaviors between genders is due to the nature of genders themselves. It is not worded to indicate that its root is, for instance, a commentary about how _external factor…

I don't know how to interpret this answer. The nature vs nurture aspect of the alleged gender preference against direct/blunt speech was never even discussed.

It seems to me like people are just letting their own biases shine through. Perhaps the people claiming sexism falsely believe that a higher preference for direct/blunt speech is always superior somehow?

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

#539

Post by epgui »

mckn1ght wrote: post #532
alkonaut wrote: post #524

I just want to be the lone comment that says I do not see any annoying bias or editorializing on Wikipedia. Not even on sensitive or political subjects. But that’s of course my subjective view of it. Judging the number of times I see that complaint here, I’m starting to think that commenters here have a different political midpoint than the one of the people editing the English Wikipedia? Are HN readers more American…

Have you ever read the edit history of a page on a topic you know to be controversial in society? The constant back and forth is something to behold. And for people who think Wikipedia is just a static unchanging webpage, they’ll never realize that depending on the minute that you read an article, it could be very biased in one direction or the other versus what your grandma saw when she read it an hour ago and poste…

> on a topic you know to be controversial in society

What else could you reasonably expect? Unanimity without discussion?

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

#540

Post by justinbaker84 »

Rebelgecko wrote: post #484
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).

Someone recently pointed out the incongruity between the English wikipedia article about the "Al-Ahli Arab Hospital explosion" and the Arabic Wikipedia article about the "مجزرة مستشفى المعمداني" (Baptist hospital massacre). Without sidelining the thread discussion with unproductive arguments about the conflict, I found it really fascinating how the two articles can paint such different pictures, just by picking diffe…

That is exactly what I see most of the time in high quality discourse around current events. People pick the items they want to emphasize or de-emphasize and that is what creates different narratives.
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