Ed Martin seems like a SME when he himself has been influenced by foreign agencies and spoke their case.
Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney
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Re: Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney
#412The English Wikipedia is a massive target for influence campaigns. I don't think there are any other communities as resilient as it. Just an example: There's certain individual or group that edited under the name "Icewhiz", was banned, and now operates endless sockpuppet accounts in the topic area to influence Wikipedia's coverage on the Middle East. One of them was an account named "Eostrix", that spent years making…
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Re: Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney
#413Earlier quoted context omitted.
According to its cofounder, Wikipedia abandoned truth long ago. https://larrysanger.org/2020/05/wikipedia-is-badly-biased/
It’s pretty clear from this blogpost that Larry Sanger has abandoned a pursuit of truth and neutral point of view and instead does not like how reality fails to conform to his personal biases and preferences about the way the world is.
If nothing else, the rambling about global warming and MMR vaccines makes it obvious. It’s not neutral to spread many times disproven lies. Especially how he wants to spread it, without saying that it’s not true, because that’s not neutral. He just forgot that saying that something is true is also not neutral.
I understand the caution, and we need to be more cautious in today’s world. And I do in controversial topics quite frequently. For example, giving points for women during university admissions just for being women in Norway seemed outrageous. And when I feel that way, I immediately start to check its validity, especially that the article “forgot” to mention how many points. At the end they give out 1 or 2 points on a scale of 50, and not to just women but also men, where they are underrepresented. The article just lied about that we should have outrage. It’s a lie.
Larry Sanger wants such lies on Wikipedia. He should be way more cautious when he’s outraged. Also 100% of people who commented under this article on Reddit should do the same.
Re: Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney
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Truth has a left wing bias.
Re: Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney
#415Earlier quoted context omitted.
Martin was also at the coup attempt on Jan 6 and on that day said "Like Mardi Gras in DC today: love, faith and joy. Ignore #FakeNews". https://archive.ph/jekzQ
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> That's more relevant. RT has had some fairly legitimate people on it such as Larry King, Julian Assange, John Pilger, Amy Goodman... Many Pulitzer prize and Peabody winners ... It's a mixed bag, people can't be so reductive about it.
Can you back up your accusations with facts? I can state that I have not seen any reprehensible reporting from Amy Goodman; but rather the opposite, backed up by facts (e.g. about mass graves on Russian-occupied areas [0]).
[0]: https://www.democracynow.org/2022/9/29/ukraine_russia_mass_g...
Re: Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney
#416I am going to say a thing I say a lot: please edit Wikipedia. It is easier to do than you probably think! Wikipedia's biggest constraint is no longer money or server space, it's editor time (especially since LLM-based garbage is a force multiplier on disruptive editing that does not have a corresponding improvement to good-faith editing). Any topic area you know about and/or care about can benefit from your attention…
I used to edit Wikipedia actively. I was was active on the conflict of interest notice board and involved in pushing back against a few self-promotional scams. The worst one involved the "binary options" industry, before it was shut down.
"Better Place", a hype-based electric car startup that went bankrupt, was another.
A few years previous, most heavy promotion on Wikipedia was music-related. Then business hype dominated. Then political hype took over. Trying to push back in the "post truth" era is valuable but painful.
It was worth doing for a while. But not for too long. It's wearing.
Re: Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney
#417Earlier quoted context omitted.
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RT is not legit. It is Russian propaganda. When those people participated they were collaborators.
This applies to all state owned media. The US is unique that even privately held corporations push propaganda.
The most gratuitous example is NYT, as documented by Ashley Rindsberg in his book “The Gray Lady Winked.”
Re: Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney
#418Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It just feels like it's too big and there are too many interests that want to distort things. I was surprised to see some article recently removed effectively rewriting history and directing to some alternative version. I just checked again and it's been restored but it just seems like the wild west. In fairness, this does mean the system is working.
Yeah- Maybe it's "eventually working". It's hard to trust when it seems so fluid. Maybe there needs to be some mechanics to make it harder to change. Something like being able to suggest changes/corrections but having those come out on some schedule after a review? (thinking software release process here). Quarterly Wikipedia releases? Creating some "core" of Wikipedia that is subject to tougher editorial standards?…
Harder to change doesn't make it more or less correct, just means wrong information sticks around longer.
Because revision history is kept and changes are instant, it's easy to fix bad changes.
For topics that see extensive astroturfing, they can be restricted.
Re: Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney
#419I am going to say a thing I say a lot: please edit Wikipedia. It is easier to do than you probably think! Wikipedia's biggest constraint is no longer money or server space, it's editor time (especially since LLM-based garbage is a force multiplier on disruptive editing that does not have a corresponding improvement to good-faith editing). Any topic area you know about and/or care about can benefit from your attention…
I created a page, it got declined because the guy who two films have been made about didn't count as important enough. I kind of get it, but still, did kill the energy slightly.
The notability requirement is a real bane, but it also kind of makes sense when there's really insufficient manpower for the articles they already have.
But then, maybe they'd have more manpower if they loosened the notability requirement.
Re: Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney
#420Earlier quoted context omitted.
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> Amy Goodman Source for that? My impression is that Democracy Now!, while it has a clear perspective and set of biases, has been fairly independent. I don't think Goodman herself would be involved with them, but I think some of her sometimes guests have been. In general I agree with folks replying to you that RT is not trustworthy and someone being involved with it is a red flag.
Here's two: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x61wly8 or https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xvxx8j
Chris Hedges had a show as well.