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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

#911

Post by Riverheart »

Tycho wrote: post #866
Riverheart wrote: post #635

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The wall was a waste of tax payer money and purely theatric since it hasn’t helped. Saying illegal immigration is a problem today basically acknowledges as much if it weren’t also backed up by statistics. https://www.cato.org/blog/border-wall-didnt-work No, illegal immigration is not the same as an invasion by another nation. I don’t condone harboring criminals but if they are indeed criminals they should be tried in…

If you take a step back, your position is basically that it is ok to let people break the law, ok to help them break the law even, and if you want to enforce the law, you should only do it to a degree that amounts to futility, not with any serious chance of preventing tens of millions of people getting away with illegally inhabiting the country.

I’m no anarchist, I simply acknowledge that civil disobedience exists. People are responsible for the risks they take in violating the laws they feel are unjust. Frankly, I have little reason to believe a city, state, or person would take that risk to protect people who would harm them so I don’t worry much about it. In my mind, the ones committing crimes will be caught committing those crimes and those aren’t the ones people are trying to protect.

I don’t support the wall for reasons I’ve already given but I do support border control as I think most of these people do, it’s just different with folks already here.

Even if I was worried about illegal immigrants more-so than other current issues, I’d still take issue with the cruelty in which it seems to be carried out such as in the story I posted. Surely you realize that stories like that promote civil disobedience because even if they committed a crime they aren’t all hardened criminals, some are just people looking for a better life. Not everyone believes they’re all murderers and gang members simply because Trump thinks so and especially not women and children.

In terms of the Alien Enemies act it is not the role of the executive branch to interpret the law and one could argue they are breaking the law by taking a non-literal reading of the words ”invasion” and “predatory incursion” to avoid due process for these individuals. They may argue and win in court that the interpretation should change but that doesn’t excuse them from taking liberties in the first place.

All that said. I’m going to leave it here, you’re free to respond if you wish but I don’t think we’ll change each other’s minds. I do appreciate your civil discussion despite the controversy of the topic.

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

#912

Post by tomhow »

lobotomizer wrote: post #670
tomhow wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's such a weirdly blatant lie. Jared Friedman endorsing DOGE https://x.com/snowmaker/status/1886672263216504853 Garry Tan hanging with a DOGE flunky https://x.com/jgebbia/status/1907181994695332295

Normally I'd rather not reply this kind of comment, but so as not to let it just sit here and be presumed to be the slam dunk it purports to be...

1) Yes, Jared posted (nearly three months ago) that DOGE reminded him of (and indeed is the same entity as) USDS, a program launched by Obama in 2014 – evidently a program that Jared liked and supported.

2) Yes, Garry was photographed with Joe Gebbia, a notable YC alum who is volunteering with DOGE.

The next day, Garry posted a photo of himself with prominent Democratic Senator Cory Booker:

https://twitter.com/garrytan/status/1907526506840003025

He also posted the full video of Sen. Booker giving a long, impassioned speech at a YC-hosted conference:

https://twitter.com/garrytan/status/1907537541550469410

People will make up their own minds as to whether the tweets cited by the parent pass the test of campaigning or advocating for the administration or any particular agenda.

They don't for me, given the full context.

Still, the relevant matter for HN moderation is the political signals that will influence us or cause us to be biased. The strongest signal is from pg and it’s in the opposite direction to what is being claimed in the comments that accuse us of bias. Of course we don’t want to be influenced in that direction either.

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

#913

Post by ashoeafoot »

jimmaswell wrote: post #678
ashoeafoot wrote: post #661

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Usually hijacked and paid by quatar, russia or china. Its always fascinating how fast that im against injustice at home chute leads to "i support a monstrous regime abroad".

The cognitive dissonance can be disturbing. A frightening number of people never grew past a child's logic of "X has problems -> X is the worst thing ever -> if I hate X then that must mean I love the opposite of X" and suddenly they're a trans activist (which is a good thing, to be clear) frothing at the mouth in absolutist terms to defend people who want them dead.. Someone feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but…

only 'genocide' i know where the population kept increasing and that for all minorities in Israel .

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

#914

Post by teddyh »

zahlman wrote: post #842
teddyh wrote: post #814

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How about I look at some of those cases? Please note that, although there are scores of anecdotes in this thread, precisely none of them link to any examples or give enough details to find them. It’s always like this with Wikipedia detractors; I don’t know why, but it is. Complaints and horror stories galore, but nobody will link to any of it, preventing anybody from investigating what actually happened.

>although there are scores of anecdotes in this thread, precisely none of them link to any examples or give enough details to find them In the past, when I've tried to keep receipts on this sort of thing (which requires an extraordinary amount of effort, and is often only possible if you've anticipated that there would be a need to do so - since content is often deleted or archived without warning, and nobody ever en…

If the evidence has merely been “archived”, it would still be possible to find and link to, no?

And even if, as you say, all the evidence has been completely deleted, an honest critique would at least point out the exact article in question, and summarize the details of the attempted changes.

But all the criticism in this thread (and elsewhere) always lack this. It is a mystery.

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

#915

Post by GoblinSlayer »

webstrand wrote: post #300
flask_manager wrote: post #233

Earlier 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.

I think it's an antispam bot, just rerevert.

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

#916

Post by GoblinSlayer »

standardUser wrote: post #880
zahlman wrote: post #848

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that you tried to attribute this behaviour to conservative sources specifically, in order to rebuke someone else here, but in reality this is not a specific trait of conservative sources.

I just fucking said that. Any sphere, if sufficiently disconnected from or contradictory to the mass of human knowledge, is highly suspect at best. Most likely it's complete garbage. Pollution that hinders the healthy advancement of human knowledge.

That's a strange choice of words. Divergence from human beliefs is perfectly legal, because beliefs are fallible. How can you possibly be ignorant about this when you just now described an echo chamber yourself?

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

#918

Post by kyzx »

flask_manager wrote: post #233
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…

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've tried to contribute to Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects but they block Tor, e-mailing admins to get an account manually created always results in them telling you to follow some other process, but that process is only for "established editors", so it seems there's no realistic way for me to contribute.

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

#919

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 »

fugalfervor wrote: post #841
A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 wrote: post #713

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I willing to give you moving polling locations, but with that minor concession. Can you explain to me like I am 5 why those are bad things? For a simple person like myself, one would think, data accuracy, voting system integrity, and verifiability would be of use and value to everyone.

Voter ID laws disproportionately affect a very specific subset of the population, one that reliably skews in one direction on the political spectrum. However, there is no evidence that voter ID laws reduce fraud, nor is there evidence that the absence of such laws introduces fraud. Something like 90% of voter fraud is people making mistakes on their ballot, or not realizing they were not allowed to vote. Also, voter…

Hmm. Just the perception of fraud among the population is enough to undermine the system. We can argue whether Republicans in this case are simply playing to their base by drumming up doubt in the voting system or rigging the system for their benefit or both, but if you are going to admit that a) people who are not supposed to vote do vote b) argue that laws to penalize such votes don't work, you sound about as partisan as they do ( and merely arguing for 'your' side ). Just sayin'.

Why is that important to you?

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

#920

Post by Hamuko »

Kim_Bruning wrote: post #874
Hamuko wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's even worse when you add a source and you get reverted for reasons quite clearly disproven in your source. I had to make a single edit three times because it got undone twice by two separate administrators. A less stubborn person would've just given up on the first baseless revert and never edited Wikipedia again.

When it finally got through, were they nice to you at least? (They'd better have been!) And, it probably wasn't administrators, unless you specifically looked. You do sometimes have to be a bit insistent, you're quite right. If someone reverts you, it's often not personal. Ask on the talk page why they reverted, and if no one says anything for 24 hours (definitely wait this long), just try your edit (or a better one!…

>When it finally got through, were they nice to you at least?

Not really. They continued to grumble about being "stuck" with the data on the talk page because they couldn't find any source to refute it, and the last edit one of them made about it was "Since I can't find any source to refute this (everyone seems to use it without question), let's at least sort the data correctly".

>And, it probably wasn't administrators, unless you specifically looked.

I did look! One of them is still an administrator and the other one is currently a "former administrator". I think I remember the other one being an admin back then too, but I could be misremembering.

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