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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

#621

Post by ytytkk »

silvestrov wrote: post #327
skydhash wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just a "you" problem. I have to routinely reset my youtube history (I don't have time to prune it) to avoid stale recommendation. I have few interests, but every once in a while, I'm on a research spree or just want some new vibes, then my home view is ruined. If they are not getting rid of the algorithm, it would make sense to let me manage the keywords that are driving it.

I really want the ability to easily create multiple persons/personalities like Netflix lets you do. On Netflix I have a seperate "user" for asian movies so the main user is not flooded with recommendations for asian movies. Those 2 users have extremly different list of recommended movies. When I watch a few "The girl is doing her homework" music movies on YouTube they quickly drown out everything else on the homepage…

You can create new channels and use each them just for viewing, from the YouTube account page:

https://www.youtube.com/account

Works well to keep different viewing histories and commenting identities separated.

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

#622

Post by tyg13 »

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.

It's just a secular leftist response to Conservapedia that mostly focuses on debunking (mostly far-right) pseudoscience and conspiracy theories. I think you're taking the name a bit too literally and the concept a bit too seriously.

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

#623

Post by toyg »

mr_mitm wrote: post #143
toyg wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if it had asked for $0.25 The economics of credit-card transactions, unfortunately, make this fundamentally impossible.

I pay these tiny amounts by card all the time for public toilets, parking meters and the like.

And it's why, when paying like that, you're typically paying more than would have done in cash, or the amount is high enough to cover the extra transaction fees. That's definitely the case for most UK carpark operators - the minimum amounts you can specify online are always higher than the ones for cash, because of transaction fees.

You're probably also misjudging how tiny those amounts are. Vending machines, for example, nowadays don't really stock anything costing less than £0.50, if they take credit cards. Public toilets can often be £1 or £2.

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

#624

Post by kaonwarb »

exo-pla-net wrote: post #545
bawolff wrote: post #514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The flip side of that is larry sanger's post-wikipedia success record is very bad and quite frankly a bit nutty.

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…

Your source on [2] does not quite support your interpretation: if you follow the Twitter thread from the beginning, or read Sanger's linked blog post [0], he makes no claims about his own beliefs. He's explicitly considering what one would conclude about Biblical inspiration _if_ one believed what the Bible says about itself. No faith is necessary to consider that question. [0] https://larrysanger.org/2023/10/on-biblical-inspiration/

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

#625

Post by graphe »

tyg13 wrote: post #622
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.

It's just a secular leftist response to Conservapedia that mostly focuses on debunking (mostly far-right) pseudoscience and conspiracy theories. I think you're taking the name a bit too literally and the concept a bit too seriously.

Conservapedia and Wikipedia don't call themselves "rational" and the other guy took it seriously, not me. I know its just a bunch of whiny losers. What if conservapedia called itself the unbiased wiki and everyone quoted it?

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

#626

Post by z3ncyberpunk »

Iv wrote: post #615
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.

Those banners begging for donations are profit...

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

#628

Post by didibus »

whatwhaaaaat wrote: post #600
didibus wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was never under the impression that there were any trials specifically about transmission. I can believe some people said or published articles saying that it would reduce transmission, I'm not sure they'd all claim it was from evidence that it did, as opposed to just inference that it would. I'm interested where you feel you were led to believe it would? I also find the word "truth" in your sentence a bit confusin…

Every single public health official got up and told us that the mRNA shot prevented transmission. They had no science backing those claims. I have a hard time believing you somehow missed fauci or Walenski or ALL of the mainstream media going on for months about the vaccine preventing transmission. There was even the famous Rachel Maddie “it stops, with every vaccinated person”. So if public health officials didn’t b…

> I have a hard time believing you somehow missed fauci or Walenski or ALL of the mainstream media going on for months about the vaccine preventing transmission

I guess I did. Axios has been my primary news source, along with New York Times and The Guardian/Wapo once in a while. Most of the time I just Google my way to the information I'm looking for. I don't consume any TV based news, or Twitter based news or any other such social media news, appart for HackerNews. I also generally went directly to the CDC website, and didn't use retellings from other publications or press conference.

By curiosity, I pulled up this archive from October 2020: https://web.archive.org/web/20201027130822/https://coronavir...

John Hopkins FAQ on the vaccine at the time. It states:

> Although the phase 3 clinical trials are designed to determine whether vaccinated individuals are protected against disease, it will also be important to understand whether vaccinated individuals are less likely to transmit the virus. This is likely but not ensured.

So that's at least one expert source corroborating my impression. I can't remember where I landed when I would have looked this up in 2020, but John Hopkins is a likely place I might have found.

> They had no science backing those claims

While I don't know why I didn't get the impression any official expert source told me it would prevent transmission and you feel many of them did tell you it would. I do still feel I need to make a correction on what you're saying. There's definitely science backing up the idea that vaccines can reduce transmission. It's based on historically observed outcomes from prior vaccines for other diseases, as well as on transmission models around herd immunity.

The idea that the mRna vaccines would for sure prevent transmission had no evidence, but there was scientific based prior for thinking it might at least reduce transmission, specifically of the exact strain it targets.

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

#629

Post by didibus »

whatwhaaaaat wrote: post #600
didibus wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was never under the impression that there were any trials specifically about transmission. I can believe some people said or published articles saying that it would reduce transmission, I'm not sure they'd all claim it was from evidence that it did, as opposed to just inference that it would. I'm interested where you feel you were led to believe it would? I also find the word "truth" in your sentence a bit confusin…

Every single public health official got up and told us that the mRNA shot prevented transmission. They had no science backing those claims. I have a hard time believing you somehow missed fauci or Walenski or ALL of the mainstream media going on for months about the vaccine preventing transmission. There was even the famous Rachel Maddie “it stops, with every vaccinated person”. So if public health officials didn’t b…

I was even more curious, and it's pretty hard to search for what information was available on the web in early 2021. So don't judge me, but using ChatGPT is the fastest way I could think to get an idea.

This is what chatGpt thinks was the CDC statement in early 2021:

> In early 2021, the CDC indicated that while COVID-19 vaccines were highly effective at preventing severe illness, the ability of vaccinated individuals to transmit the virus, particularly the delta variant, was still under study. Vaccinated people could carry viral loads similar to unvaccinated individuals, but these would diminish quickly. The CDC differentiated between "breakthrough infections" (vaccinated people testing positive) and "breakthrough disease" (symptomatic cases), noting that both were uncommon. However, exact rates were unclear, leading to updated guidance for vaccinated individuals to be tested and mask up after exposure, especially in high-transmission areas. CDC's program focused on real-world vaccine effectiveness, including against variants and over time

Edit:

I also checked if ChatGPT knows if Fauci ever stated that vaccine would prevent transmission, this is what it had to say:

> Dr. Anthony Fauci initially stated on February 4, 2021, that there was insufficient data to confidently claim that vaccines prevent the transmission of COVID-19. However, by February 17, 2021, he referenced new studies indicating that vaccines might reduce transmission. Fauci cited research showing that vaccinated individuals had significantly reduced viral loads, suggesting a lower likelihood of transmission. Studies supported the idea that the lower the viral load, the lower the chance of virus spread. Fauci highlighted the public health implications, suggesting that vaccination could diminish the outbreak's dynamics

Do with that as you will, it's ChatGPT, not a thorough research into the historical archives, but its better than nothing.

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

#630

Post by Phileosopher »

graphe wrote: post #617
shadowfox wrote: post #602

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is a natural product of how power works on the internet. Barring an algo that downgrades time spent, the people with the most power are proportionally the people who do the least things elsewhere.

I was clued into this when the BLM protests happened. When I poked into all the names of the protesters I could find who were present on-site, very few of them had day jobs.

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