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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

#601

Post by t-3 »

seti0Cha wrote: post #596
t-3 wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Experiencing homogeneity is a natural thing. Humans always self-segregate into groups when gathered in large numbers. I don't see anything wrong with people choosing an echo chamber if that makes them happy. It's being coerced into the echo chamber or the open forum that I disagree with.

I more or less agree with that, but can't help but feel that a certain amount of exposure to contrary views (even though unpleasant/unwanted) is more healthy for society. It at least has the potential for defusing straw-man understandings and also keeps people realistic about where they stand with respect to the larger society in terms of beliefs and practices. I'm not sure that the Twitter model does much for that,…

Pretty much everyone gets exposure to contrary views, and they probably wouldn't seek out echo chambers for recreation if they didn't! Most people don't actually want to argue about politics when they vent on their social media, they want to engage with their friends, who probably feel similarly to them. There's no need to worry about these conversations being unbalanced any more than you worry about balance when line workers talk shit about managers and managers talk shit about employees. If people wanted balanced conversation, they would join a political debate forum rather than a social network that connects them to their real-life friends.

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

#602

Post by shadowfox »

graphe wrote: post #599
exo-pla-net wrote: post #545

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Larry Sanger is now a conspiracy theorist [1], believing gems including: - Antifa did the coup. - Face masks are harmful. - There have been "almost zero" deaths from COVID-19. - Soros may have paid people to riot for George Floyd. - The Ten Commandments were God's words: not "inspired", but precisely dictated. [2] Since Wikipedia is hostile to conspiracy theories and religious woo, Larry has in the ensuing years trie…

Every time I read 'rationalwiki' its just a bunch of personal drama about people the writers don't like. Never seen a single good article on there, it's just a bunch of circle jerking politics pretending to be a "rational wiki" like calling it the ministry of truth.

I think I am confused by your comment in the context of Larry Sanger: are you suggesting that rationalwiki is incorrect and that Larry did not say any of the things quoted?

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

#603

Post by xorcist »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #543
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.

I guess that's one reason I can't fully trust Wikipedia. Because of its beauracracy, primary sources can't make much headway. If I had an entry and they got my birthday wrong, I can show them my birth certificate and they wouldn't accept it. But if I talked to Fox News and said I was born in X, suddenly it's "a good source for wikipedia". I think it's a good rule of thumb to not have people edit articles too close to…

It gets really weird when

1. Someone adds obvious nonsense to wikipedia

2. A mainstream publication republishes this because wikipedia is generally trustworthy

3. Someone else at wikipedia notices nonsense and removes article

4. Article gets reinstated using a referense to publication at (2)

It may sound weird but it has happened a few times. Wikipedia could probably do more to avoid circular references, but there's really no simple answer.

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

#604

Post by Kim_Bruning »

kayxspre wrote: post #128

I have since distanced myself from Wikipedia as I feel I was increasingly pushed out of the "Cabal" (a term used to describe editors with aligned interest who usually worked together to set standards others must follow) who vigorously enforced the policy without considering the experience of, and willingness to engage with, new editors. I would rather have them create their own world while I move on to contribute to…

I should probably be the last person to say "There Is No Cabal" but ...

Many times, what you actually experience is a variant on the smart mob concept [1], which are enabled by watchlists and diverse central coordination pages[2] . The number of ways you could organize people on wikipedia without them even realizing (let alone being offended by it) by smart use of smart-mobs was (and probably still is) endless.

Of course, for a casual observer, these smart mobs look very much like coordinated cabals, even if in reality the individual members don't even know each other.

I'm not sure how well this base principle has been documented though. Possibly

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_mob

[2] eg DRN, ANI, AFD, diverse wikiprojects:

   * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Dispute_resolution_noticeboard

   * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents

   * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion

   * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject

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

#605

Post by chris_wot »

simbolit wrote: post #409
chris_wot wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got banned for life from Wikipedia, because I commented on a request for adminship from a user the literally banned forever 9 weeks ago. I wrote countless articles for them, but they didn’t give a crap. I now contribute photos to commons. Don’t bother contributing to Wikipedia. Only people who fiddle around with changing URLs, categories and templates are appreciated. It’s not worthwhile putting in the effort.

Depends what your goal is. If you want to feel appreciated, I agree, wikipedia is a horrible place. If you want to contribute to making human knowledge available to everyone, it's the best place we have. My personal rule: don't interact with the community, unless absolutely necessary. has served me well in the last 18 years.

Is it really the best place we have, though?

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

#606

Post by Kim_Bruning »

graphe wrote: post #599
exo-pla-net wrote: post #545

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Larry Sanger is now a conspiracy theorist [1], believing gems including: - Antifa did the coup. - Face masks are harmful. - There have been "almost zero" deaths from COVID-19. - Soros may have paid people to riot for George Floyd. - The Ten Commandments were God's words: not "inspired", but precisely dictated. [2] Since Wikipedia is hostile to conspiracy theories and religious woo, Larry has in the ensuing years trie…

Every time I read 'rationalwiki' its just a bunch of personal drama about people the writers don't like. Never seen a single good article on there, it's just a bunch of circle jerking politics pretending to be a "rational wiki" like calling it the ministry of truth.

No love lost for sure:

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Larry_Sanger#Views_on_Rational...

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

#607

Post by imadierich »

Kim_Bruning wrote: post #604
kayxspre wrote: post #128

I have since distanced myself from Wikipedia as I feel I was increasingly pushed out of the "Cabal" (a term used to describe editors with aligned interest who usually worked together to set standards others must follow) who vigorously enforced the policy without considering the experience of, and willingness to engage with, new editors. I would rather have them create their own world while I move on to contribute to…

I should probably be the last person to say "There Is No Cabal" but ... Many times, what you actually experience is a variant on the smart mob concept [1], which are enabled by watchlists and diverse central coordination pages[2] . The number of ways you could organize people on wikipedia without them even realizing (let alone being offended by it) by smart use of smart-mobs was (and probably still is) endless. Of co…

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

#608

Post by Kim_Bruning »

yason wrote: post #24

All places ever deemed 'good' have had sufficient technological or financial, and above all intellectual barriers of entry that filter out regular joes. BBS's in the 80's. Usenet till the early 90's. WWW till the late 90's. IRC till early 00's. Forums replaced usenet groups but have been in decline for years. Once those barriers are broken and the masses flood in then the supply side will emerge and takes over with s…

Not necessarily more scarce. There might be more good places than ever in absolute numbers, just harder to find?

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

#609

Post by johnnyanmac »

xorcist wrote: post #603
johnnyanmac wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess that's one reason I can't fully trust Wikipedia. Because of its beauracracy, primary sources can't make much headway. If I had an entry and they got my birthday wrong, I can show them my birth certificate and they wouldn't accept it. But if I talked to Fox News and said I was born in X, suddenly it's "a good source for wikipedia". I think it's a good rule of thumb to not have people edit articles too close to…

It gets really weird when 1. Someone adds obvious nonsense to wikipedia 2. A mainstream publication republishes this because wikipedia is generally trustworthy 3. Someone else at wikipedia notices nonsense and removes article 4. Article gets reinstated using a referense to publication at (2) It may sound weird but it has happened a few times. Wikipedia could probably do more to avoid circular references, but there's…

Indeed, one of my favorite XKCD comics: https://xkcd.com/978/

but the answer in my head is simple.

1. make sure the primary source is publicly viewable and archiveable (be it a blog, acedemic profile, about us on a news site, or even a social media post).

2. ensure that there's some way to verify this as a primary source. This one pains me the most, but if we trust news sites to vet anonymous sources, may as well trust social media communities to vouch for a source really being that person. IME social media loves to call out lies, so them trusting a personality isn't as scary as it sounds.

3. be able to mark a source as "primary" to give a bit of distinction so we know there is some lack of vetting compared to a mainstream resource (which hopefully has such vetting built in). similar to [citation needed], it can be footnoted like [2, primary].

There is and always will be nonsense that penetrates through, but I don't think we should discount primary resources as much we do currently. That's not how real life reflects on such resources. Wikipedia has loosened up and started to use more social media as ciations, so this isn't a radical direction.

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

#610

Post by imadierich »

depressedpanda wrote: post #477
anon25783 wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> especially women (I suspect). Not to be a woke feminist culture warrior on main but, that seems misogynistic.

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.

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