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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

#631

Post by lwhi »

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.

True, but I'd say Lack of advertising is also key.

Advertising provides a perverse incentive that has the effect of injecting rot into the core of products that depend on it.

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

#632

Post by rldjbpin »

it may not be along the lines of the article's point, but using wikipedia can often not be the most ideal.

i understand how they have managed to stay autonomous, but the banners to raise funds get worse every time they have a new campaign. it is almost one step away from finding a ublock filter for those banners. (also see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33174533)

combined with some editorial decisions it takes (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32303279) and potential state-level involvement (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21200121) in some cases, it is not always the ideal source, but the best available for us for non-critical scenarios.

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

#633

Post by imadierich »

shadowgovt wrote: post #611
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-re…

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

#634

Post by imadierich »

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…

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

#635

Post by tim333 »

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…

I don't think the avoidance of primary sources is due to bureaucracy. It's long been a policy in the guidelines. I can sort of see the reason if you look at something like say vaccine safety, primary sources would be papers and the like, secondary articles in the nyt and the like. The trouble with papers is there are loads and hard to understand for non specialist and you can find one saying they caused problems in this instance or not in that according to your biases. Whereas nyt articles etc are written for the public and try to be kinda balanced.

Not quite sure what the birthday problem was about.

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

#636

Post by Swenrekcah »

carimura wrote: post #310
whywhywhywhy wrote: post #177

Can't really trust an academic on this matter, Wikipedia is like academia it's a closed system where a small group get to decide what opinions are correct, what facts get a mention and what are worth looking at with a feedback loop to itself that is used to control facts by deciding what sources are valid. Really the open decentralized internet is the antithesis of academia. Not to say its all bad but reading wikiped…

> Wikipedia is like academia it's a closed system where a small group get to decide what opinions are correct, what facts get a mention and what are worth looking at with a feedback loop to itself that is used to control facts by deciding what sources are valid Came here to say this. 98% of the content is perfectly fine. Searching for "lemurs" in any search engine returns a perfectly trustworthy (calling all lemur ex…

I'm actually very curios about this. Can you link to an example of a clear position? I ask because I'm thinking it may be that, as political discourse becomes more polarized, it is conceivable that a mostly neutral article is perceived as biased in the wrong direction by both camps.

So if you can find a good example of what you have in mind, it would be really helpful to examine it and see what might be going on.

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

#637

Post by js8 »

ants_everywhere wrote: post #452
js8 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think socialism is the mechanism - one person one vote with the stake of ownership. I am pretty liberal but it I believe it needs socialism (democracy in economic sphere) to avoid capture by corporations. (And vice versa, socialism needs liberalism to prevent capture by government. They can't survive without each other, being constantly threatened by authoritarianism.)

> one person one vote with the stake of ownership. I'm not great with the terminology of this stuff. Just to be clear on what you're suggesting, do you mean that each person has a stake of ownership as well as a single vote? So functionally something like a corporation with one kind of stock where no owner owns more than one share? And do you mean to have restrictions on stock ownership? Like everyone in the country…

What I am suggesting in practice would be similar to either consumer or worker cooperative. These are similar to publicly-traded companies, except the stakeholders are not some Wall Street randos, but people who actually use company products or employees of the company.

Of course, for this to be truly socialist, the system has to be democratic, i.e. each person involved has equal and non-transferrable vote.

What type a company should be is up to discussion. I believe infrastructure (natural monopolies) are better served by consumer (public) ownership, while companies that can compete on the free market are better served by worker ownership.

As I said elsewhere in the discussion, I think lot of Internet infrastructure should be publicly owned. (And on this infrastructure, businesses could be built.)

Personally, I would prefer an economic system where every company above certain size (say 20 employees) must be either publicly-owned or worker-owned, i.e. democratic in the above sense. Which makes me into a pretty traditional socialist. But that's tangential to the discussion about the Internet.

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

#638

Post by js8 »

pjc50 wrote: post #131
js8 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think socialism is the mechanism - one person one vote with the stake of ownership. I am pretty liberal but it I believe it needs socialism (democracy in economic sphere) to avoid capture by corporations. (And vice versa, socialism needs liberalism to prevent capture by government. They can't survive without each other, being constantly threatened by authoritarianism.)

I feel the non-profit/co-operative model has been really under-explored, other than the huge successes of Open Source and Wikipedia itself. On the other hand, even that's vulnerable. The UK used to have customer-owned banks until shareholder banks offered to buy them out. https://www.thenews.coop/85589/sector/big-bang-demutualisati...

Yes, the reason it is vulnerable IMHO, because within our mostly liberal system, there is too little support for coops in the law. We do not protect enough against people taking power from others. That's why I believe liberalism (which at least ideologically values this diversity) cannot survive without socialism.

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

#639

Post by suoduandao3 »

js8 wrote: post #197
suoduandao3 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The means of production these days is a laptop or a smartphone. A solar panel or a garden if one is in the physical portion of the economy. We are kind of already at a point where working class individuals can own the means of production without ever needing to 'smesh capitalism'. I expect as a result we'll see a divergence between people who want to own the means of production and people who want to impoverish the c…

I think this misunderstands what "ownership of means of production" really means in Marxism. The point is NOT that the capitalist owns the factory, which they then rent to workers, who can choose to do whatever they want with it. The ownership of means of production instead refers to full control over the production process, including the social structure of work that makes production possible. Marx's point is that i…

So if someone improves the logistic infrastructure involved in getting the products from the workers to the consumers none of the value they generated belongs to them? That actually explains a lot. Even today, places with food insecurity don't have supply but distribution problems, so it's a pretty hard problem to solve.

I wonder how many Marxists study logistics.

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

#640

Post by marginalia_nu »

carlosjobim wrote: post #520
marginalia_nu wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't individual action the only action? The only ones with hands and thoughts are individuals, whether they imagine themselves part of a collective or imagine themselves to be alone. Yeah sure you may not be able to fix the world yourself, but you can undeniably make it better. Waiting for some grand wave of collective action to arrive and fix the problem seems like it would above all stand in the way of even making…

If hackers pray five times per day to the European Union, they will one day step down from the sky regulate and ban all our dreams into being. Jokes aside, you're completely right, but I think individuals should remember to limit their effort when it's without reimbursement. In order to not burn out and become bitter, etc.

> I think individuals should remember to limit their effort when it's without reimbursement. In order to not burn out and become bitter, etc.

You're projecting your will onto the world and making it more like how you think it should be. It's nice when other people share your vision and chip in to support the effort, but I don't think that can be a prerequisite. If it is, then you will never be true to your vision, and that is, if anything, recipe for crashing and burning.

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