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

washingtonpost.com

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

#941

Post by sneak »

empthought wrote: post #106
sneak wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US has not been a force for good in the world in some time, if ever. Unfortunately for Americans, it has to get worse before it can get better. Much worse. The institutions are deeply corrupt, and have been for decades. They must be destroyed and possibly replaced. It sucks, and it will hurt. It may even possibly require an entire revolution, as many of the deeply evil US institutions such as the CIA and FBI are…

> but the world as a whole is not a better place because Facebook and Lockheed and the US CIA exist. You've cherry-picked a few bogeymen. What about Norman Borlaug, Bell Laboratories, the Gates Foundation, Margaret Sanger and the Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology?

I’d have picked the Manhattan Project, ARPANET/Wikipedia, and aerospace development in the wake of the Wright brothers.

Many of the ones you’ve listed would likely have happened whether or not the USA-qua-USA existed. The Manhattan project and the current internet and the rush to build airplanes (first as weapons of war, of course) would probably not have happened the way they did without the USA.

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

#942

Post by sneak »

matwood wrote: post #839
sneak wrote: post #822

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There have been no large scale wars since the development of nuclear weapons. The data available thus far suggests that mutually assured destruction prevents total war. I live in a county in which most people are armed. There are very few attempts at carjacking.

I’m not sure talking about guns in the US is proving what you want. The US has a much higher gun murder rate per capita than most other high income countries. It’s in fact near the top with active war zones. When everyone has weapons, more people get shot. That’s a fact. When countries arm up there is a much higher chance of a conflict happening that can’t be rolled back.

> The US has a much higher gun murder rate per capita than most other high income countries. It’s in fact near the top with active war zones.

This is markedly untrue in most parts of the USA, including the most heavily armed ones. Almost all of the gun murders in the USA are in 3 or 4 extremely high crime (and high poverty) counties.

Dozens of other counties that have gun ownership rates 2-10x higher per capita have much much much less violence. It isn’t the guns unless you generalize entire USA to a single socioeconomic bucket.

The “more guns = more violence” narrative is simple and easy to understand. It’s also false. “more poverty = more violence” is actually correlated. Guns and violence are, if anything, loosely inversely correlated.

More people shoot themselves willingly and deliberately each year in the USA than are murdered by guns, to put it in perspective.

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

#943

Post by Kim_Bruning »

tonymet wrote: post #933
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.

There are a couple of legitimate reasons. Raising the issue internally only brings ire and attention by admins and shadow groups. I tried doing this via the WMF village pump , technical pumps, admin pages and only drew more attacks. Raising the issues externally comes off as petty, because the “evidence” consists of 50+ pages of inane bickering on talk pages, community post , etc with no clear narrative or verdict. I…

I was mostly looking for specific interactions to dig in to, but if you have a link or two for me to take a peek, we'll both know if it's worth it soon enough. You don't have to dig deep straight away.

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

#944

Post by hnlmorg »

firesteelrain wrote: post #768
hnlmorg wrote: post #756

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wasn’t the one who asked. But even if I were, you’re not accounting for the cumulative benefit saving others from having to research the same acronym.

Let’s get real, they can search. HN doesn’t have a repo of acronyms and this isn’t a technical document where you need to spell out the acronym on first use

It doesn’t matter if it’s a technical acronym or not.

You’re making a lot of effort here to claim that people should already know this when the evidence here (of people asking what it means) demonstrates that it’s not universal.

For the record, I don’t actually mind people not spelling it out on first use if the acronym is guessable from the context of the comment (which, ironically, a lot of technical acronyms are). But in the case of the OP, you wouldn’t know what SJW was u less you already knew what a SJW was. So it’s not an unreasonable request from the GP. And frankly, the comments criticising them for asking is really unfair. They have just as much right to ask as you do to say “it’s common” and the OP had to use that acronym in the first place. Let’s all just be nice rather than moaning that someone didn’t memorise some specific piece of tribalism before coming to HN.

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

#945

Post by boxed »

Spivak wrote: post #625
boxed wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who specifically was the question.

This isn't really a hard list to compile. * Paul Graham * Mark Zuckerberg * The Ghost of Elon Musk before he fell down the alt right pipeline and now is no longer liberal-tarian. * Sundar Pichai * Jeff Bezos * Sam Altman * Jensen Huang * Tim Cook A who's who of people who felt their businesses were being threatened by the Biden administration with a starry-eyed view of how this next round might benefit them and being…

> have they done or said to make you believe that they support this?

Most of those people are just cowardly bending to corruption, which is not the same thing as what was originally asked for.

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

#946

Post by krupan »

acdha wrote: post #113
krupan wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does, but both side's followers are blind to it when their side does it. Or they think it's ok for their side to do it. I'm not sure which is scarier

You’re painting with an awfully broad brush, omitting both the magnitude of the difference and far overstating the homogeneity of one of those sides.

"Yeah, but they did it worse" is a very. weak. argument.

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

#947

Post by tptacek »

myvoiceismypass wrote: post #665
rayiner wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, “voter suppression” is the act of preventing legitimate voters from voting. Society determining that categories of people shouldn’t vote (children, felons, non-citizens, etc.) isn’t voter suppression, it’s simply establishing qualifications for voting. The goal isn’t to get to 0 or try to get as close to 0 as possible. People who should vote should be able to vote, while people who shouldn’t vote shouldn’t be abl…

> No, “voter suppression” is the act of preventing legitimate voters from voting. Next you will tell us all how easy it is for all Americans to get drivers ids / similar licensing right? > Statistically, both of these would have hurt my party in 2024, so this isn’t self-interest speaking. Ah. There it is.

Not for nothing, but a requirement for American voters to present official ID at polling places would work to the benefit of the Democrats; increasingly so since 2018. That could change and, of course, there's a right answer here (voter ID is silly). But it's kind of a dumb conspiracy theory to hold.

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

#948

Post by keybored »

ty6853 wrote: post #660
keybored wrote: post #636

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, owning land then. My bad. All humans existing in the nation have skin in the game by the fact that they exist there. How do landowners have more of a stake?

They have land that can be taken or voted away. I don't think only land owners should be able to vote, but it's worth noting worldwide having significant property is one of the most common ways for immigrants to qualify for a resident visa (other two common ways is job or business investment). Right or not it signifies enough skin in the game to many if not most societies to reflect reciprocated integration the commu…

> They have land that can be taken or voted away.

The assumption that these privileges would be voted away implies an eventual equal distribution of such thing. Then all would have equal skin in the game which would justify democracy under this bizarre definition of skin in the game.

> I don't think only land owners should be able to vote, but it's worth noting worldwide having significant property is one of the most common ways for immigrants to qualify for a resident visa (other two common ways is job or business investment).

That has got nothing to do with the political franchise.

> Right or not it signifies enough skin in the game to many if not most societies to reflect reciprocated integration the community.

No. It means that they want people with means. Same basic reason why some nations may want people with advanced degrees. Or for that matter poor people who are willing to work for low wages. They want to import people who will benefit the nation state.

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

#949

Post by keybored »

gitremote wrote: post #926
keybored wrote: post #774

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know about Whataboutism. Thanks. It’s a perfectly reasonable rthetorical strategy.[1][2] You are engaging in the logical fallacy of making a true statement about fascist dictatorships which is skewed to, by implicit comparison, imply that the thing in question is the case elsewhere (elsewhere here being liberal democracies because that’s the most common comparison and also where most people in these discussions liv…

Russia's invasion of Ukraine is just as colonialist as the US invasion of Iraq.

They’re both colonialist wars. Do you have a point or are you just fishing for a particular response?

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

#950

Post by firesteelrain »

hnlmorg wrote: post #944
firesteelrain wrote: post #768

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let’s get real, they can search. HN doesn’t have a repo of acronyms and this isn’t a technical document where you need to spell out the acronym on first use

It doesn’t matter if it’s a technical acronym or not. You’re making a lot of effort here to claim that people should already know this when the evidence here (of people asking what it means) demonstrates that it’s not universal. For the record, I don’t actually mind people not spelling it out on first use if the acronym is guessable from the context of the comment (which, ironically, a lot of technical acronyms are).…

I’ve barely spent 1 min typing. Effort is very low. Much lower than it could have taken to look up the acronym originally.
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