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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
#432The 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…
To me those links you provided, indicate a lot, of what is wrong for me with wikipedia. Because it is extremely hard to figure out what is going on. Lots of mysterious abbreviations. Unclear timeline. I still don't really know it, it seems the scandal is, that he had a sockpuppet account? And there is only "private" evidence (meaning not public)? "The Arbitration Committee has determined through private evidence, inc…
"Really, really hard to figure out for someone just having a quick look into the topic."
Sometimes things are genuinely complicated. If you want to understand the hardest, most elaborate forms of Wikipedia community management you're going to need to work really hard at figuring out what's going on.
Community dynamics at this scale, and with this level of bad actors, are not something that can be explained in a few paragraphs.
Re: Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney
#433Earlier 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?…
Its definitely an eventual consistency kind of model.
There was some attempts at change review (called "pending changes") that is used on very continous articles, but it never really scaled that well. I think its more popular on german wikipedia.
Wikipedia is so dominant that it has kind of smoothered all alternative models. Personally i feel like its kind of like democracy: the worst system except for all the other systems. All things are transient though, i'm sure eventually someone will come up with something superior that will take over, just like wikipedia took over from encyclopedia briticana.
Re: Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney
#434Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
Thanks for the first two. So she was a guest on panelist/talking head shows about her antiwar positions.
I know about Chris Hedges. I wasn't asking about him.
Re: Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney
#435Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right. The fact that someone so terrible got 99% approval and only one anonymous investigator was able to stop them makes me think that it's likely a lot of other terrible admins who didn't have an anonymous investigator go after them probably go through the process. And the times I've brought up the fact that Wikipedia can be unreliable before, I've had numerous editors come in and claim that wasn't true and that pe…
Wikipedia isn't supposed to be a source, so "reliable" here has to mean "reliably presenting a full range of notable sources". No editor should be saying you can rely on claims found in Wikipedia, except in the sense of relying that the claims are in the sources. (Except the claim as stated isn't always in the source anyway. Best to check.)
I found Molly White's video here really useful for helping me understand the Reliable Sources policy: https://blog.mollywhite.net/become-a-wikipedian-transcript/
> The way we determine reliability is typically based on the reputation for editorial oversight, and for factchecking and corrections. For example, if you have a reference book that is published by a reputable publisher that has an editorial board and that has edited the book for accuracy, if you know of a newspaper that has, again, an editorial team that is reviewing articles and issuing corrections if there are any errors, those are probably reliable sources.
Re: Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney
#436Earlier quoted context omitted.
OK, I can't argue with that. Timothy Snyder might make a similar correction, "markets can't be free, only people participating in the market can be free" is something he says frequently. If only people can have commitments to truth, which organization, institution, or media do you think has a leader that seems to have a commitment to truth, especially truth in their institution? Who is our gold standard of "as good a…
I think for very scientific and technical matters that is entirely divorced from politics Wikipedia is fine, not great, but entirely serviceable. For everything else I won't trust it, which sadly includes matters of war and history, as almost all causal claims about the world rests on counter factuals, and therefore does not merely depend on what is. Politics also concerns what ought to be, not what is, and most edit…
Wikipedia is a great point of entry for history.
Roughly ~20 years behind current academic research on most subjects, makes it 10 to 40 years more advanced than other encyclopaedia and school curriculums.
But its value is on the bibliography. You have research papers linked, which makes it infinitely better than most other sources. The only way to get closer to the truth in history is rigorous demonstrations, and those only exist in academic papers.
The view on Wikipedia on the French revolution are mostly Furet's views, which is 20 years behind, as it is the case in the Anglo world. Furet isn't the only one cited in Wikipedia though, and his point of view is nuanced with research from the 90s and 2000s, all with links to actual research. The last time I checked, research from JCM on the recently (late 2000s) discovered 'archives du comité' isn't discussed yet there, but all that makes it infinitely better than encyclopaedia brittanica. Infinitely.
Re: Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney
#437[deleted]
Re: Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney
#438Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have in the past, but three things put me off doing so now; Pages where I can spot inconsistencies are often controversial, with long dense discussion pages, edits here are almost impossible beyond trivial details. I dont mind fixing trivia, but not if the actual improvement I think I can make is rejected. There is a bit of a deletionist crusade to keep some topics small, for example, Ive had interesting trivia abo…
I made an edit last year, it immediately got reverted and I got a banner on my user page for vandalism. I complained about that, other people agreed with me but the person who reverted my edits never responded. So there it sits.
Would be curious to learn what you edited.
Re: Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney
#439Earlier quoted context omitted.
One can look into Shira Klein and Jan Grabowski's report about how the Polish ultranationalists have distorted the Holocaust topic area on Wikipedia ( https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/25785648.2023.2... ) if they want to find a counterexample. To the best of my understandings so far, I think Icewhiz is a good guy, just that he doesn't have strong grasp about Wikipedia's guidelines, particularly regarding…
A month after that article was published (and shortly after the article was posted on Wikipedia), the Arbitration Committee opened a sua sponte case to review the topic area despite the substance of that article being "Icewhiz was right".[1] It resulted in bans of Icewhiz' enemies for distorting the Holocaust topic area. I think moderators on pretty much any other website would laugh and ignore an article like that a…
> I don't think there's any website that has successfully navigated that minefield as well as Wikipedia.
I don't believe this is the case, the Israeli/Palestine are restricted to long-time contributors, so the articles are either messy and unmaintained due to lack of editors, or worse, edited only by members of influence campaigns who have scared away everyone else
Re: Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney
#440Earlier quoted context omitted.
To me those links you provided, indicate a lot, of what is wrong for me with wikipedia. Because it is extremely hard to figure out what is going on. Lots of mysterious abbreviations. Unclear timeline. I still don't really know it, it seems the scandal is, that he had a sockpuppet account? And there is only "private" evidence (meaning not public)? "The Arbitration Committee has determined through private evidence, inc…
"Really, really hard to figure out for someone just having a quick look into the topic." Sometimes things are genuinely complicated. If you want to understand the hardest, most elaborate forms of Wikipedia community management you're going to need to work really hard at figuring out what's going on. Community dynamics at this scale, and with this level of bad actors, are not something that can be explained in a few p…
Oh in general for sure, but my first (attempted?) edit for Wikipedia was 20 years ago so I am not a completely newb.
And this is kind of like a court decision.
But in a real court, I can see the verdict and the laws that were broken. All in complicated, but readable english. Which makes it clear (usually). But in wikipedia to understand a indefinite ban, I have to understand global wiki community dynamics first? I am a bit reminded of Kafka - The Trial.