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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

#991

Post by psychoslave »

matwood wrote: post #588
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…

> What comes after will be more transparent, more fair, and more integrated with society. No one is claiming that US been or will ever be perfect, but what are you smoking? Everything that's happened in the current administration has gone the opposite direction of transparent, fair, and integrated.

There is this mental creed that to reach something really better, a phase of total purge is an absolute requirement, and the resulting gap between the situation once everything was "completely cleaned" and the wonderful world of "everything is fabulous for everyone now" will spontaneously happen out of the sheer expression of the virtuous dynamics then put as new foundations.

Possibly in such a mindset it’s impossible to envision that destroying everything indiscriminately will generate a more challenging situation. One from which it will be far harder to build anything. And which will be far from leaving the world with more pure innocent souls willing to construct a better place for everyone. It won’t percolate into their conscientiousness that the process is just most likely going to create more traumatized people full of fear on the one hand, and people accustomed to impose unilaterally their cruel point of view with violent means on the other hands. And that none of this will be a fertile soil to foster cooperation and trust, things without which humans are unable to create anything worth lauding.

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

#992

Post by psychoslave »

ordu wrote: post #667
user3939382 wrote: post #584

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neutrality? I’ve never seen an English language wikipedia article on a politically controversial topic that wasn’t the DC establishment/State Dept official take. They listed Greyzone as an unreputable new source because it’s pro-Palestinian. When you Google the usernames of those who voted to ban them pro Israeli think tanks from DC come up. Wikipedia is a joke when it comes to politics. If you’re lucky you can find…

> Wikipedia is a joke when it comes to politics. What isn't a joke when it comes to politics? The only way to be informed about politics I have found is to regularly read news from several different media sites paying careful attention when they talk about the same issue. This way you learn their biases and how to interpret their news articles, you get the ability to guess what really happens, not just their takes on…

Or some attention is distracted about a topic the editorial feel fine to make readership lose time on.

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

#993

Post by tonymet »

Kim_Bruning wrote: post #943
tonymet wrote: post #933

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

i just got pinged with this being archived. It was regarding abuse of USERTALKSTOP to block any criticism on user talk pages. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk%3A...

There's no such policy , but it's abused as a way to censor criticism over behavior, which itself is a policy (RUCD)

There were a couple instances where user conduct concerns were raised on their talk page (in accordance with RUCD), and that user used USERTALKSTOP to censor the concerns. The outcome is that me and the other users who were raising concerns received a temporary ban (one permanent), instead of the concerns themselves being attended to and addressed.

Worse than the ban was the hours and hours of inane dialog on admin pages, defending your edit history, account history, intentions, etc. And the UI is clumsier and noisier than the worst 1990s web BBs

You can see how a seemingly benign non-policy can be abused to censor even well-intended volunteers.

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

#994

Post by 0x457 »

toast0 wrote: post #234
0x457 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hmm, please correct me if I'm wrong, but donations just decrease your tax liability by the amount you've donated. It's the same as if you donated your pre-tax dollars to 501(c)(3) org.

The second sentence is mostly accurate, but the first implies something else. If your taxable income was $50,000 and you donate $10,000, and (some other conditions) your taxable income would now be $40,000; same as if you managed to move the money pre-tax. However. If you donate aprechiated capital assets, you get two benefits. Your taxable income is offset by the value of the asset, and the capital gains disappear.…

Sure, but my point is - I'm parting ways with my money (be it cash or an asset with monetary value) either way without anything in return. It's just from tax perspective it essentially looks like I never had those money.

I see your point about cost basis tho, I didn't think of this and definetly will use this from now on. Thank you.

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

#995

Post by tonymet »

Kim_Bruning wrote: post #943
tonymet wrote: post #933

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

see what i mean.

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

#996

Post by Hamuko »

Kim_Bruning wrote: post #923
Hamuko wrote: post #920

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 administra…

Oh dear. If you want to point me at the talk page in question, I'll take a look!

It's quite an old discussion at this point and is now archived.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:List_of_best-selling_vide......

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

#997

Post by tonymet »

deknos wrote: post #690

To be honest, many of the people who critize wikipedia.. just do not want to fork the content. it would be possible. they all like the work people put into it. but as soon as it does not fit the worldview anymore... are there manipulations? sure. then more people should watch it. and wikipedia should have a better process on controversal topics in own areas. but the whining is abysmal.

where do you draw the line between whining and legitimate concerns? forking wikipedia wouldn't address the core quality issues and how low quality content is syndicated to billions via search engines, LLMs, academic references etc.

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

#998

Post by tonymet »

BrtByte wrote: post #492

Wikipedia definitely isn't perfect - bias in editing is real, and it's fair to critique how reliable it is - but threatening their nonprofit status over it is wild.

90+% of the contributions do not go to wikipedia . They are scamming contributors who think they are paying for the encyclopedia

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

#999

Post by anigbrowl »

hagbard_c wrote: post #639
anigbrowl wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to take you seriously when you employ 'democrat' background and Republican as contrasting terms. Referring to the Democratic party and its supporters is more easily effected by saying [the] Democrats . This sort of baity rhetoric undermines any aspirations to objectivity.

You can look through (and may already have done so) my comment history for my explanation for putting "democratic" between quotes. In short it is because the party is not democratic and thus should not be called such. Had they been democratic they'd have run Bernie Sanders instead of Clinton, they'd have had primaries where there were none, they'd have allowed people like RFK and Tulsi Gabbard to have a shot at the c…

But you didn't call them the 'democratic' party; I wouldn't have bothered to respond if you had, since I agree with many of your observations. Perhaps inadvertently, you referred to them as the 'democrat' party. This was what I was responding to, because it's a popular rhetorical trope of the right.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democrat_Party_(epithet)

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

#1000

Post by barotalomey »

hnlmorg wrote: post #758
barotalomey wrote: post #651

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Usually, acronyms are followed by the full wording the first time they are mentioned. I'm sure they did at the time this (SJW) acronym got popular. That was maybe 10-15 years ago.

SWJ wasn’t a popular acronym 10 years (let alone 15) ago in the online communities I hung around in. ;)

Sure, I get that. But the term gained popularity in 2012 it seems, according to google trends.

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=SJW&hl=e...

And there's a entry from 2011 in urbandictionary.com, so maybe that's around when it was coined.

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