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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

#611

Post by intended »

YZF wrote: post #380
bawolff wrote: post #356

Earlier 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?…

It will unnerve you to know, that this is the state of the art, and the information environment we run in, is incredibly fragile at the speeds at which it is moving.

It may also hearten you to know, that small, consistent actions like yours, make these collective systems run.

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

#612

Post by firesteelrain »

leephillips wrote: post #311
sedev wrote: post #213

I 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…

Please do not edit, write for, read, or cite Wikipedia. If you care about or know about a topic, consider writing a book or article about it.

Understand the sentiment. Less reasonable people that edit Wikipedia will continue to make it a hellscape for the rest. Please try to edit and create.

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

#613

Post by Tycho »

Riverheart wrote: post #552
Tycho wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

A systematic effort to dismantle the federal government bypassing the legislature entirely, replacing federal employees with people who pledge loyalty to the president over the constitution, firing anybody who would hold him accountable, undermining the separation of powers in favor of an all powerful executive who treats executive orders as law, attacking media outlets and judges they disagree with and threatening t…

Consider the illegal immigration question. Tens of millions of people are in the country, knowingly in violation of the law. Many foreign criminal gangs are operating in the country. Yet the federal government was prevented from even constructing a simple wall to stop the situation getting worse. Not only that, but other authorities in the country are even declaring “sanctuary cities”, openly contravening the efforts of federal law enforcement. Latest thing we hear is district judges harbouring illegal immigrant gang members in their home. We are at a point of complete absurdity. So, yes, invoking the “Alien Enemies” act is quite reasonable, given the circumstances. We are not starting from a point of normality.

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

#614

Post by frob »

tomhow wrote: post #346
pachorizons wrote: post #145

Remember as you read more and more news like this that many of the owners of Y Combinator supported this.

The only YC figure who espouses any position on U.S. federal politics is Paul Graham, who loudly campaigns against the current administration almost every day on Twitter.

Hi Tom.

You're burning your credibility here fast as the new moderator. dang derived his respect as an admin from not getting into fights in the threads. It additonaly tarnishes your credibility as you're doing this in defense of your employer. You look like a rage-poster who has the same response copied and ready to go from thread to thread.

Please take a moment to step back and examine if this is the image you want to be projecting as the official representative of YC and HN.

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

#615

Post by rini17 »

Tycho wrote: post #613
Riverheart wrote: post #552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A systematic effort to dismantle the federal government bypassing the legislature entirely, replacing federal employees with people who pledge loyalty to the president over the constitution, firing anybody who would hold him accountable, undermining the separation of powers in favor of an all powerful executive who treats executive orders as law, attacking media outlets and judges they disagree with and threatening t…

Consider the illegal immigration question. Tens of millions of people are in the country, knowingly in violation of the law. Many foreign criminal gangs are operating in the country. Yet the federal government was prevented from even constructing a simple wall to stop the situation getting worse. Not only that, but other authorities in the country are even declaring “sanctuary cities”, openly contravening the efforts…

Consider that the cure "first deport then ask, if at all" will be worse than disease. Not even Nazi Germany had such indiscriminate approach. They marked people first (yellow stars, pink triangles) and then deported them. Trump administration is incapable even of that.

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

#616

Post by simonw »

krisoft wrote: post #519
lukan wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> But in a real court, I can see the verdict and the laws that were broken. All in complicated, but readable english. Thats not really true either. There is a lot to unpack to understand court cases. Just the hearsay rule and its exception would fill a book. Jurisdiction, double jeopardy, means rea, “reasonable man”, Brady disclosure, fruit of poisonous tree, presumption of regularity, habeas corpus, SLAP, reasonable…

Right: and at least in the court system a whole lot of people are being paid a whole lot of money to help move that progress along.

Almost all of Wikipedia's community administration is done by volunteers working for free!

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

#617

Post by simonw »

bjourne wrote: post #593
simonw wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 h…

Love the use of the "we" word here. :) What is counted as a reliable source is voted on on one of Wikipedia's meta pages. So "reliability" is not based on any factual circumstances, but on whether the vote is won or lost. And you can trivially game that using sock/meat puppetry. Notwithstanding, White's claimed policy heavily favors Western media giants such as The New York Times and The Washington Post which many ed…

> So "reliability" is not based on any factual circumstances, but on whether the vote is won or lost.

Those voters (with the exception if bad actors) are working on the basis of "factual circumstances", which they debate extensively before voting.

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

#618

Post by roenxi »

shakna wrote: post #571
roenxi wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The BBC isn’t propaganda. It has its biases for sure, but it doesn’t exist for the purpose of spreading a particular viewpoint. If it isn't pushing a British viewpoint, wouldn't it be incumbent on the British government to shut it down? Why would they be funding something that was pushing viewpoints that undermined Britain? This is simple incentive analysis stuff, this organisation isn't being funded for billions o…

The British government has repeatedly tried and failed to shutdown the BBC. They have repeatedly withdrawn funding. MI5 have had agents deployed inside the BBC to try and subvert it. As of 2017, it runs by royal assent, and there is just about bukpus that the Parliament can do about it. Because at the same time, funding was moved to a trust, to prevent political interference - a trust that both main parties attempted…

My eye is drawn to the section:

> The various foreign services of the BBC have always been tied, in some manner, to the national interest. In the 2017 Agreement, that means the Foreign Secretary. Article 33.6 (right) is subject to the Mission and the Public Purposes of the BBC as defined in the Charter, but it supersedes Article 3 (independence).

> Taking account of the strategy and the budget it has set, the BBC will agree with the Foreign Secretary-

> (a) objectives, priorities and targets for the World Service;

> (b) the languages in which the World Service is to be provided

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

#619

Post by [deleted] »

mikeyouse wrote: post #82
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not true that only one of the two is facing investigation. Multiple state AGs are investigating WinRed, and rightly so - there's substantial evidence that they're using dark patterns to trick people into recurring donations when they intended to donate only once. The controversy is that a political official is ordering an investigation of ActBlue, not that political fundraising platforms ought to be above scruti…

Federally it certainly is true. And I agree, they shouldn’t be above scrutiny which is why it’s so important for the DOJ to maintain their independence and to avoid partisanship.. but Elon was loudly claiming they were funding the Tesla protests a few weeks ago and the rest of the administration got in line to encourage this pretextual nonsense.

[deleted]

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

#620

Post by barotalomey »

lxgr wrote: post #590
TomK32 wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

In my experience (of also roughly 20 years ago), the German Wikipedia is as dysfunctional as it gets. The primary goal of the admins seemed to be to gatekeep, in particular to keep “unencyclopedic” content out at all cost, e.g. by contesting the very existence of articles on individual episodes of TV shows, software, or video games, which are all completely uncontroversial on the English one. “Just because it’s relev…

> by contesting the very existence of articles on individual episodes of TV shows, software, or video games, which are all completely uncontroversial on the English one.

In the first year or so of the english Wikipedia, I was very engaged in adding content but never really tried to engage with the community. I started adding articles about my topic of interest at the time, which was New York 80s punk and hardcore bands. Soon, I had the lot of my articles deleted for "lacking relevance".

I haven't been contributing much since.

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