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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

#611

Post by shadowgovt »

z7 wrote: post #47

>Whereas Wikipedia used to normalize and lend credence to pseudoscience, conspiracy theories, and fringe rhetoric, it has over time become firmly anti-pseudoscience and anti-conspiracy theories. Okay, so before the mid-20th century Wikipedia would have categorized the concept of plate tectonics as pseudoscience. Consensus doesn't mean truth. Today's conspiracy theory could be tomorrow's government press release. Bein…

> Consensus doesn't mean truth.

That's true, but it's fine if Wikipedia, not being able to discern truth and falsehood as "a collection of people arguing online about stuff," uses consensus as a low-resolution proxy. It's the best tool they have given their circumstances.

> Today's conspiracy theory could be tomorrow's government press release

But it usually isn't, which is why consensus works as a pretty good low-resolution proxy for truth.

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

#612

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

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.

For me, it's that such a high traffic site can operate on a budget and infrastructure that is so much less than the mega-sized websites full of other peoples' work product called "Big Tech". Those "Big Tech" companies then turn around and use Wikipedia's work to capture their audience, e.g., in search results. It cuts through any myth that it takes a trillion dollar company with tens of thousands of employees to run a high traffic website.

[Accessing Wikipedia from command line I never see the nags for donations.]

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

#613

Post by SilasX »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #612
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.

For me, it's that such a high traffic site can operate on a budget and infrastructure that is so much less than the mega-sized websites full of other peoples' work product called "Big Tech". Those "Big Tech" companies then turn around and use Wikipedia's work to capture their audience, e.g., in search results. It cuts through any myth that it takes a trillion dollar company with tens of thousands of employees to run…

But don’t worry, they still nag users for unnecessary donations!

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

#614

Post by iteratethis »

OfSanguineFire wrote: post #107
bad_alloc wrote: post #2

People complain a lot about the internet getting worse and worse. We can fix it, if we put in the effort to rebuild it. * Join fediverse services, e.g. [Lemmy](feddit.de) or Mastodon and post a bit. * Create your own website if you have sth like a cool hobby to share. Webhosting is available for free or cheap, depending on what you want. Link other pages you like to form a net. * If you can, host your own instances a…

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…

Fully agree. It's a far-left Gen-Z ex-Twitter doom cult depression network.

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

#615

Post by Iv »

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 thing that makes Wikipedia great is that it is not a profit seeking-entity. It made it avoid all the incentives for shitification.

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

#616

Post by Xiol32 »

nvm0n2 wrote: post #567
hnbad wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a huge functional difference between fundraising ads (no matter how manipulative) and the kind of commercial (and behavioral) ads you see everywhere else: the incentive structure it creates. Behavioral ads also require extremely intrusive tracking. Commercial ads incentivise optimising for impressions, i.e. getting users to see as many ads as possible. This leads to clickbait, bloating one-line news bits into…

The Wikipedia ads are nothing but clickbait. Wikipedia itself doesn't need any funds, but the ads urge users to click by claiming that the site may go offline if they don't. Then the money is embezzled and spent on left wing causes. This is pure commercialism of the worst kind, but it's actually worse than that because many countries have various kinds of truth in advertising laws that apply to companies, whereas Wik…

[flagged]

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

#617

Post by graphe »

shadowfox wrote: post #602
graphe wrote: post #599

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Only thing I know is a group of limp wristed keyboard warriors hate some people write a wall of text and try to "rationalize" why. The facts don't matter, only the tone does and it's full of impotent anger.

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

#618

Post by anon_cow1111 »

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…

For an amusing but harmless example, see the Amelia Bedelia article. It's been long since reverted, but I'm sure there are many similar prank edits that survive to this day

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Amelia_Bedelia

https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/amelia-bedelia-wikipedia-ho...

(EDIT: please use noscript if you visit the daily dot link, it's a terrible 3rd party spam site)

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

#619

Post by starkparker »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #612
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.

For me, it's that such a high traffic site can operate on a budget and infrastructure that is so much less than the mega-sized websites full of other peoples' work product called "Big Tech". Those "Big Tech" companies then turn around and use Wikipedia's work to capture their audience, e.g., in search results. It cuts through any myth that it takes a trillion dollar company with tens of thousands of employees to run…

It still shocks me that they've built so much of their infra work for so long on open-source non-enterprise Puppet of all things

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

#620

Post by graphe »

Kim_Bruning wrote: post #606
graphe wrote: post #599

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

He pretty much sums it up in one sentence. I don't care about Sanger or his politics. These writers have no lives, all they do is criticize things that don't matter.

> Besides being the cofounder of one of the biggest websites on the Internet, he is mostly known for two things; criticising Wikipedia, and having created many failed WikiProjects to fix said criticisms.

This writing is fine penmanship for a 2nd grader about why I hate Kevin and his Pokemon cards.

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