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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

#501

Post by eqvinox »

jjmarr wrote: post #87

The 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…

You're saying it yourself: it's a target of influence campaigns. The Wikimedia Foundation ìs not a source of them itself.

The non-profit public benefit service they provide is the openly editable encyclopaedia wiki, not its contents or its editors. The same safe harbour provisions as with other content hosters should (and need to) apply as with YouTube hosting questionable videos.

Re: Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney

#502

Post by BrtByte »

tintor wrote: post #144

Wikipedia needs decentralized hosting infra, away from any single country. It is way too important.

Moving to decentralized hosting would be extremely hard without compromising performance, reliability, or the ability to moderate effectively

Re: Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney

#503

Post by rvnx »

atombender wrote: post #486
ArinaS wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On Wikipedia people like Icewhiz are called "long-term abusers", and there's a public list with more than a hundred of them - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:LTA .

That list is fascinating. Like the obscure Canadian illustrator [1] who for a decade has been repeatedly trying to put herself into Wikipedia despite being told she's a "non-notable" artist. I'm frankly amazed that enough people have the time to track this nonsense and stamp it out that it ends up being self-correcting. It's not just about time, either; chasing bad edits and prosecuting bad users must be a huge chore…

She tried to add herself to a list called “professional Canadian painter”, and from what I see, she is a professional Canadian painter for 10+ years.

Re: Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney

#504

Post by ksajadi »

jjmarr wrote: post #87

The 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…

I am not sure if I agree with the statement "the only reason we know about them is because Wikipedia fights them". I am sure there are admins and accounts on wikipedia who work hard to protect the sites integrity. However, I know a lot of the misinformation on wikipedia pages, specific to the Middle East were uncovered by organizations outside of the site and with quotes of the content that have found their way to the site, so in those cases, the internal checks and balances of wikipedia didn't work.

Re: Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney

#505

Post by BrtByte »

hodgesrm wrote: post #54

In my humble opinion Wikipedia is the single best thing thing to emerge from the Internet boom. Its name is a wordplay on one of the most important intellectual projects of the Enlightment.[0] The DC prosecutor letter reads like something straight out of the totalitarian playbook.[1] Please donate now to show your support. It's time to fight back against this crap. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclop%C3%A9die…

Wikipedia isn't perfect, but it embodies the idea that knowledge should be built collaboratively and made freely available to everyone

Re: Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney

#506

Post by TomK32 »

jjmarr wrote: post #87

The 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…

What a contrast to the early days: 22 years ago I was simply appointed admin on the German language Wikipedia when there was simply a lack of hands doing deletions and stuff. No voting, just a show of hand a lots of trust put into people only know by what they write and discuss on this new website.

A few years of work (10k edits) and a few years of dwindling participation on my side someone noticed that quite a few of those early admins never faced a vote at all. The process had re-elections when 25 wikipedians asked for a vote, took them almost three weeks, I got that treatment as well in 2009. Indeed someone had enough time to dig through and find a discussion where I wasn't the nicest person (at the same time writing and discussing on Wikipedia help me a lot to develop a healthy social skill). Well, I didn't use the admin rights anymore so I rather resigned before someone dug even deeper ;)

For security reasons those admin rights should be time limited anyways.

Re: Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney

#507

Post by int_19h »

YZF wrote: post #377
TheMiddleMan wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dems and republicans both do their political corruption, Trump is something else. https://commonslibrary.org/authoritarianism-how-you-know-it-... What are the Top 10 Elements of the Authoritarian Playbook? 1. Divide and rule: Foment mistrust and fear in the population. 2. Spread lies and conspiracies: Undermine the public’s belief in truth. 3. Destroy checks and balances: Quietly use legal or pseudo-legal rationales…

This feels like a decent list. I'm not an American but some of these processes seem to be happening in other places. 1. Is all of us, on the "right" or the "left". Let's not do this. 2. Here you could say maybe the government is doing a little. But I would still say most of the lies and conspiracies that are reverberating in our society are not originating from there. This is like 95% on all of us (or social media).…

You seriously don't believe that pardoning people like Enrique Tarrio for violent crimes perpetrated openly in pursuit of political goals doesn't encourage violence?

Re: Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney

#508

Post by tgv »

Fraterkes wrote: post #480
IceHegel wrote: post #391

Curtis Yarvin has a riff that goes something like this: Liberal Wikipedia, Communist Wikipedia, and Fascist Wikipedia will all actually agree on the vast majority of topics: Physics, botany, the solar system, chemistry, math, statistics etc. However they'll be worlds apart on history, economics, anthropology, sexuality, politics, previous leaders and so on. Our Wikipedia is the world seen through the eyes of the New…

Yarvin putting his intellectual mediocrity on display: the nazis, for example, dismissed relativity as "jewish science".

Quoting a parvenu like Yarvin is a sign of fanaticism. He sounds like a teenager on weed. The only reason he's gotten into the limelight is because some powerful people aligned with Project 2025 agree with him, and needed some philosophical sounding blather to cover their power lust.

Re: Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney

#509

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 »

sapphicsnail wrote: post #256
edgyquant wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That poster is specifically arguing against democracy

Your right. I stand corrected. They don't give a damn about democracy or individual liberties.

Hmm. What if I told you that the parent was clearly in favor of the republic? Would that change your disposition? If not, why not.

Re: Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney

#510

Post by 20after4 »

atombender wrote: post #486
ArinaS wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On Wikipedia people like Icewhiz are called "long-term abusers", and there's a public list with more than a hundred of them - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:LTA .

That list is fascinating. Like the obscure Canadian illustrator [1] who for a decade has been repeatedly trying to put herself into Wikipedia despite being told she's a "non-notable" artist. I'm frankly amazed that enough people have the time to track this nonsense and stamp it out that it ends up being self-correcting. It's not just about time, either; chasing bad edits and prosecuting bad users must be a huge chore…

There are a whole bunch of little utilities like browser extensions and bookmarklets and even an entire in-house cloud infrastructure that is used for hosting various kinds of bots and web-based tools for automating workflows. It's all very ad-hoc, crude and not very well organized or publicized. There have been a few efforts over the years to create a repository for all of the little tools to help with exposure and some level of vetting for security risks. I'm not sure any of those projects were ever successful (or even made it past the planning stage) but there has been some appetite for improving that ecosystem.
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