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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

#571

Post by extraduder_ire »

gosub100 wrote: post #133

One band-aid that would help (but not fix) the internet is a revolt or at least a separation between web2.0 and web1.0. There should be organized, easy ways to consume and switch between 2.0 and 1.0, and while I know this already exists to some extent, I am referring to a social movement on top of the technical differences. Publishers should be pressured to offer web 1.0 (or at least know that a sizeable subset of vi…

I thought the main distinction between web 1.0 and 2.0 was that 1.0 sites are operated and created (content written by) by the same people, whereas 2.0 sites are mostly content from the users of a site.

(I know the name is a bit of a retrofit from after O'Reilly decided to host a web 2.0 conference. Back when it was meaningless.)

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

#572

Post by denton-scratch »

depressedpanda wrote: post #558
denton-scratch wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> (which I guess is why you didn't use them)

You're right! (I don't think I considered the word "strong"). On further reflection, I think I chose "robust" as an evasive euphemism.

I think "robust" was applicable to the kind of communication I was referring to, in the sense in which some meetings of diplomats are described as "a robust exchange of views" (that's euphemistic too).

"Blunt" would have been less euphemistic; but it carries violent connotations that I didn't want to convey, as in "blunt instrument trauma". It's not one of the words I considered, and anyway "direct" covers it.

Thanks for your thoughtful reply.

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

#573

Post by extraduder_ire »

OfSanguineFire wrote: post #163
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…

By 1995 I was regularly interacting on the internet with Japanese, people in the former USSR (who wouldn't necessarily be considered "white"), Romanians, etc. What was special is that when those people had political and social views that may have differed from one's own, but were representative of their countries, they could air those views. And the result was that a user of the nascent internet could learn about the…

Somewhat unrelated: a few months ago, before most mastodon instances started censoring their list of servers they blocked from federating, you could just look at the rules page of almost any popular server and see a server URL and why they were blocked.

To me, this seemed counterproductive. But it was at least interesting to see the creative URLs some people come up with.

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

#574

Post by TaylorAlexander »

snyedd wrote: post #555
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

#575

Post by [deleted] »

silent_cal wrote: post #561
nvy wrote: post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes I am - you don't seem to know that all a double-blind controlled trial produces is (at best) a very strong correlation. I'm not claiming that a correlational study implies causation. I'm claiming that ALL statistical analyses can only prove correlation, and never causation. You're wrong about double-blind controlled trials proving causation.

[deleted]

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

#576

Post by 2devnull »

shadowgovt wrote: post #283
2devnull wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was much more diverse back then only if you were looking for or desiring that diversity. I was drawn to it for that reason, the foreign languages, the strangeness. I feel like the same people now who prefer homogenization of their internet are people who never experienced that diversity. Because they are people who don’t really like diversity, not in the literal sense. They like a certain type of diversity, which…

I'd be interested to learn more. What is the bad kind of diversity, and what is the good kind of diversity?

Like San Francisco used to be more diverse, that’s what I’m getting at. People will argue that point, because the word diversity has taken on different meanings. I’d say there is diverse-diversity and less-diverse-diversity. I prefer one thing, other people are more tribal and prefer that other structure. Both types are needed, but I think we could use a bit more diverse-diversity at the moment, to increase dynamism. Mix things up a bit. At least with respect to the internet.

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

#577

Post by silent_cal »

nvy wrote: post #569
silent_cal wrote: post #561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes I am - you don't seem to know that all a double-blind controlled trial produces is (at best) a very strong correlation. I'm not claiming that a correlational study implies causation. I'm claiming that ALL statistical analyses can only prove correlation, and never causation. You're wrong about double-blind controlled trials proving causation.

You are factually incorrect. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7081045/ >In clinical medical research, causality is demonstrated by randomized controlled trials (RCTs). https://www.sagepub.com/sites/default/files/upm-binaries/236... https://www.statisticssolutions.com/dissertation-resources/r... https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/understanding-statistics/s... https://www2.stat.duke.edu/~jerry/Papers/causal.…

You're confusing strong evidence for causality with establishment and absolute proof of causality. This is even discussed in the sources you've cited (second link). For example here is a quote from one of your sources about the necessity understanding the underlying mechanism before causality can be established:

> A causal mechanism is the process that creates the connection between the variation in an independent variable and the variation in the dependent variable that it is hypothesized to cause (Cook & Campbell, 1979:35; Marini & Singer, 1988). Many social scientists (and scientists in other fields) argue that no causal explanation is adequate until a mechanism is identified.

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

#578

Post by fragmede »

IlllIIl wrote: post #501
dingnuts wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Go look on female-oriented forums like Mumsnet, you'll find similar levels of conflict as are found in male-dominated places, especially around contentious topics.

or Instagram, or Tumblr, or book writing forums, or true crime forums, or certain political forums. it takes a special kind of man to sit in his own bathwater and ruminate on the fact that there are no women there; it's because of the testosterone in the water, which means that women don't bathe, which is why they sink.

sometimes, this place. smh

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

#579

Post by KittenInABox »

cbozeman wrote: post #542
KittenInABox wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. IRC had channel-wide, server-wide blocks available since the olden days, as well as user-to-user blocking. The term "flamewar" is old school from these days where people got hella banned. Forums had trolls that were banned and re-banned, see: the age of the term "sockpuppet". If an…

> IRC had channel-wide, server-wide blocks available since the olden days, as well as user-to-user blocking. The term "flamewar" is old school from these days where people got hella banned. Forums had trolls that were banned and re-banned, see: the age of the term "sockpuppet". And you had to really work to get a ban in most forums and IRC channels. You had to really step out of line - and continue stepping out of li…

> And you had to really work to get a ban in most forums and IRC channels. You had to really step out of line - and continue stepping out of line.

I disagree with this. It was easy to get kicked out of a channel for just being kinda annoying, and then if the mods just didn't like you they can just ban you. Also, like I said, it was normal to channel-ban (i.e. pre-emptively prevent any members from a channel to join yours) notorious channels.

Also yeah I would also kick people talking about "men are not women" just for being off-topic in my channel, which was about computer builds lol. If someone got kicked for being off-topic and came back and continued to be that way they got a ban for being annoying. It was super common to just ban vaguely annoying people.

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

#580

Post by ToValueFunfetti »

afavour wrote: post #116
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…

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…

It took a bit of digging, but the page 'Hip hop' was created in June 2001. 'Hip Hop (Music)' was mostly a retitle of that page in April 2003, and what was left eventually became 'Hip Hop (culture)' by way of 'Hip hop culture'. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hip_hop_culture&o...
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