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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

#551

Post by mckn1ght »

epgui wrote: post #539
mckn1ght wrote: post #532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

GP: “I do not see any annoying bias or editorializing on Wikipedia. Not even on sensitive or political subjects” (emphasis theirs)

There is no unanimity being arrived at, it’s simply whomever has made the latest edit by the time a given person arrives at the page. Many people can read the “same” article and if they take it at face value, arrive at different conclusions.

I didn’t state my expectations about how WP should function. I pointed out why I think GP is wrong.

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

#552

Post by braiamp »

derefr wrote: post #462
aroundtown wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What's wrong with Stack Exchange? Every time I have posted a question on SE it is either flagged as already answered (when it's not) or people screaming "XY Problem!" My approach to SE now is "Look, Don't Touch".

I would love a place that works almost exactly like Stack Exchange, but which is geared toward polling experts' opinions on something (which is a thing that SE explicitly says it doesn't allow.) Like, I can solve most concrete single answer problems (the kind SE is "for") on my own by digging into the offending component's source code. Reverse engineering if necessary. The type of question that I really want to ask o…

Which is fine. SE wasn't meant to be the end-all be-all of Q&A. You can have any kind of Q&A, just not on SE. SE is simply not interested in those as it would dilute the other topics that don't lend too well to those policies.

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

#553

Post by johnnyanmac »

esafak wrote: post #495
baja_blast wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So when the sources contain inaccurate information then Wikipedia does so as well. I don't see how that is a good thing people view Wikipedia as the online version of the Encyclopedia Britannica which was curated by experts. Wikipedia should strive for the truth since finding truthful and factual information is becoming increasingly more difficult online.

Wikipedia seeks reliable sources. If you dispute a source, take it up in the article's talk page.

Nah, I'll let sleeping dogs lie. Beyond done trying to give all my time to help out forums and social media stuck in their ways.

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

#554

Post by snorremd »

akudha wrote: post #429
snorremd wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is my approach. I've almost completely de-Googled my private life. For email I use Fastmail. I've migrated most my mail over there, but some remains on my old Google address. So many accounts to port. For search I now mainly use Kagi. Sometimes I drop into Google if I can't find what I'm looking for on Kagi. The nice thing about Kagi is I can manually block or de-prioritize SEO spam domains so I get more relevan…

Would you recommend fastmail? I am shopping for email service

Yes. I've used them for a few years now and never had any serious issues. Their delivery rate seems good, I don't get much spam, and so far as I know I have not missed legitimate emails.

They have a fast web client where you can perform actions on your entire inbox. So far as I remember gmail only allowed you to do actions on the current page of mails. If you don't want to use their official clients you can always connect via standard IMAP and SMTP.

Also they support plus-addressing like gmail, but also subdomain addressing. I.e. instead of name+alias@yourdomain.com you can use alias@name.yourdomain.com. You can also set up nice email filters quite easily, and their server supports the JMAP protocol [1], which they made. So if you want to interface with your mailbox programmatically they have a more modern protocol to use.

The years I've used them I only remember them having actual noticeable downtime once. Other than that rock solid. Their first line support isn't super technical, but I've only tried to contact them once.

Edit: Essentially if you want good olf-fashioned mail, Fastmail is about as good as it gets. It does not have the smart inbox concepts that Google Mail and Hey do. And not so much in terms of other fancy stuff either. But it makes up for it by using open protocols for mail, calendar, and contact lists. So no danger of lock-in.

[1] https://jmap.io/index.html

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

#555

Post by snyedd »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #475
adr1an wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The gender remark was totally uncalled for, off topic, and not backed by any evidence (other than your personal experience in the form of "I suspect"). Maybe you can rethink what you had in mind. But please don't take my comment as a platform to expand on it.. I'm already regretting pointing this out... But it seemed almost sexist..

Hmm I guess I would like to add some nuance. I’m a trans woman, and I have thought a whole lot about gendered roles in our society. Indeed, women and afab people are taught in our society to behave a certain way - to be deferential to men, to please others, and to avoid confrontation. Men and amab people are taught to speak their minds, not shy away from confrontation, and to be direct. This cultural pattern is indee…

[flagged]

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

#556

Post by momirlan »

bebop404 wrote: post #434

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.

> "The truth can be very elusive" no shit, this must be the understatement of the day. not sure if people care much about truth these days, maybe rather just for validation of their biases. having said that, wikipedia is the site i turn to most often for information so i agree - it is the last good place...

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

#557

Post by momirlan »

nvm0n2 wrote: post #127
hliyan wrote: post #21

To me, the main difference between almost every other place on the Internet (save for personal websites) and Wikipedia is the lack of advertising, or attempting to generate revenue through engagement. That is the reason why Wikipedia still remains tolerable.

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.

i agree, that is annoying. i think it can be zapped with things like ublock

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

#558

Post by depressedpanda »

denton-scratch wrote: post #506
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.

> my own reservations against using "robust" as a descriptor I thought for a few minutes about what word to use there. Perhaps "direct" on its own would have been better; but I wanted connotations of "assertive" and "strong". I used to participate in certain political mailing lists that had a much higher proportion of women participants than, say, Usenet (and I knew many of the participants in these lists IRL). My ex…

If you want to get into the reeds of it, I think "assertive" and "strong" are too positively loaded (which I guess is why you didn't use them). However I would say the same applies to robust, coupled with the fact that "robust" on its own is not really applicable to the kind of communication you're referring to. The positive undertones are probably also why you saw a bunch of unnecessary knee jerk virtue signaling in response.

I would personally have stuck with just "direct" (which is neutral), and perhaps added "blunt" (which is neutral-negative).

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

#559

Post by shadowgovt »

soundnote wrote: post #335
shadowgovt wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a reason there's other letters besides 'G', and "a minority can be hostile to another minority" isn't a new idea. Of course a person gets booted for attacking other members of the community regardless of who they are.

The point is: "anti-LGBT" is much more about politics and ideology than it is about the actual minorities - the minorities are used as a shield against criticism by activist types, who claim critiquing their ideology is hating those minorities. The typical rhetoric is also highly exaggerating, where if I disagree with the sensibility of trans identification, for example, people will readily accuse me of "denying thei…

> The activists aren't pro gay people, or pro black, or pro transpeople. They don't want me listening to Douglas Murray, or Gays Against Groomers, or Thomas Sowell.

I think you're committing the error of treating social categories as set-theoretic absolutes when humans are far more multidimensional.

It's like "Well they're not really patriots; they tell me Americans are great but they don't want me talking to Benedict Arnold or Aaron Burr." No, they don't, because those Americans were traitors who hurt their fellow countrymen. "Listen to more LGBTQ voices" and "Don't listen to Gays Against Groomers" aren't actually contradictory concepts; 'listen to' doesn't mean 'give equal, uncritical weight to every'.

The missing sociological tool you may want to dive in on is 'Intersectionality,' which is the concept of how one's privilege is contextual and multidimensional factor; a person can be both oppressed and oppressor.

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

#560

Post by dragonwriter »

dingnuts wrote: post #470
adr1an wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The gender remark was totally uncalled for, off topic, and not backed by any evidence (other than your personal experience in the form of "I suspect"). Maybe you can rethink what you had in mind. But please don't take my comment as a platform to expand on it.. I'm already regretting pointing this out... But it seemed almost sexist..

I thought it was an interesting hypothesis for why I see women actively avoid the sort of debate spaces online that I seek out. They are all absolutely dominated by men and it doesn't matter what part of the political spectrum the particular echo chamber embodies, this happens in both leftist and right-wing spaces. Is it sexist to say that women seek out conflict less than men? Mens' brains are literally doused in a…

> Is it sexist to say that women seek out conflict less than men?

Inherently? No. In practice, generally.

> Isn't it sexist, or just weird, to suggest that testosterone has no effect on mens' behavior?

It is erroneous to conflate the positive claim that "testosterone has no effect on mens' behavior" with not making the claim "women seek out conflict less than men", and that is particularly true in the context where "conflict" is specifically online debate.

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