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Big tech's anti-labor playbook has come for Wikipedia

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Re: Big tech's anti-labor playbook has come for Wikipedia

#261

Post by doctorpangloss »

bberenberg wrote: post #182
OsrsNeedsf2P wrote: post #74

I spent ~2 years actively editing Wikipedia for multiple hours every day. I remember taking my laptop out at airports for 20 minutes between transfers, just to tweak an article or improve a source. While I originally started because I found some articles lackluster, I quickly realized how vigorous the editing process could be on controversial topics. For what simple HTML you see on the surface, you would be absolutel…

I have a hard time with the idea that Wikipedia is unbiased when the main source in most cases is news reporting. Wikipedia is a societal form of Gell-Mann Amnesia.

i'm not sure you're why you're being downvoted, relying on journalism is the weakest part of wikipedia, far and away, because it affects accuracy, which is what gell man amnesia is about, not bias. in comparison bias, in general, seems to happen regardless of sourcing.

Re: Big tech's anti-labor playbook has come for Wikipedia

#262

Post by slg »

wilg wrote: post #249
slg wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no such thing as exploitation with that mindset. That sweatshop worker isn't being exploited, they just need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and open their own sweatshop.

You're misunderstanding your own argument.

Great contribution to the conversation, thanks for sharing it.

Re: Big tech's anti-labor playbook has come for Wikipedia

#263

Post by caturopath »

dotancohen wrote: post #140
dmurray wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "abstract Wikipedia" just seems like a solved problem with LLMs. However sceptical of "AI" you are, "give me the information on this page in my preferred language" is the kind of task they excel at. (I won't use the word translate ). It wouldn't even require prioritising the English Wikipedia: any agent today could one shot a task like "check the Wikipedia pages in all languages for X, summarize the results and n…

> give me the information on this page in my preferred language I'm sure that works great for European languages and other languages with huge corpus. Those are not the target languages of the program in question.

LLMs are great with minority languages compared to almost anything else. Including better than the by the natural language generation employed to use Abstract Wikipedia, which whiffs at relatively large languages like Zulu and Xhosa, let alone many of the rarer languages that popular LLMs speak fluently.

Re: Big tech's anti-labor playbook has come for Wikipedia

#264

Post by wagwang »

harimau777 wrote: post #210
roenxi wrote: post #29

Maybe I'm behind the times, but isn't Big Tech known as one of the best employers on the planet? I thought most of the tech workers were in the industry because the work is light, the conditions pretty relaxed compared to most jobs and the pay was high. Especially for an industry where anyone anywhere can just get involved and become a great coder.

Heck no! Working in tech is an absolute nightmare! The pay is excellent which is why people do it, but the actual work environment sucks. Agile and modern performance review culture means that you are constantly pressured to work faster and churn out more code to keep your job (quality of course is never a priority). The "shift left" movement means that more and more work (testing, infrastructure, product management)…

yall are babies, 99% of jobs on earth suck ass but they dont pay half a million

Re: Big tech's anti-labor playbook has come for Wikipedia

#265

Post by slg »

shrubby wrote: post #229
OsrsNeedsf2P wrote: post #74

I spent ~2 years actively editing Wikipedia for multiple hours every day. I remember taking my laptop out at airports for 20 minutes between transfers, just to tweak an article or improve a source. While I originally started because I found some articles lackluster, I quickly realized how vigorous the editing process could be on controversial topics. For what simple HTML you see on the surface, you would be absolutel…

Wikipedia is a threat to the technofeodalist AI mind shaping consortium. As long as it's reasonably decent, the AI can't go full biased without consequences, but once it's gone there's nowhere normal people can easily to go and get a good enough sanity check.

If I saw this comment 5 years ago, I would have thought you were some crazy conspiracy nut. Today I read it and worry that you might be right. I wonder what I will think seeing this sentiment 5 years from now.

I personally don't know if the world is on some sort of precipice. It seems like that's possibly the case. The strongest piece of evidence is that many of the rich and powerful, including those big tech leaders, are behaving like it is and that they think they're close to some sort of victory.

Re: Big tech's anti-labor playbook has come for Wikipedia

#266

Post by pwdisswordfishq »

orsenthil wrote: post #54

Brooke Vibber is the single most person responsible for creating the software that runs wikipedia. There is a Brooke Vibber day in her honor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Brooke_Vibber_Day It is wild to see she getting fired.

For those like me, who have stopped following WMF governance for a long while and wondered "huh, I remember a Brion Vibber, is she related to him?", yes indeed she is as related as a person could possibly ever be: it's the same person.

Re: Big tech's anti-labor playbook has come for Wikipedia

#267

Post by bad_username »

OsrsNeedsf2P wrote: post #74

I spent ~2 years actively editing Wikipedia for multiple hours every day. I remember taking my laptop out at airports for 20 minutes between transfers, just to tweak an article or improve a source. While I originally started because I found some articles lackluster, I quickly realized how vigorous the editing process could be on controversial topics. For what simple HTML you see on the surface, you would be absolutel…

> honest, unbiased, astroturf-free

That is not the case, sorry. Pre-2015 Wikipedia was as honest and unbiased as we can get. Now the political, historical, philosophical segments of English Wikipedia is very biased and I cannot recommend or support it.

Re: Big tech's anti-labor playbook has come for Wikipedia

#268

Post by myaccountonhn »

iririririr wrote: post #255
petterroea wrote: post #189

Why do orgs like Wikipedia and Mozilla keep hiring corporate CEOs thinking it will bring them anything else than toxic work culture

they promise more fundraising. gnome foundation voted for a new president in 2010s who then hired several directors "specialized in fund raising" for obscene salaries, and then 4yrs iirc left, and the foundation declared bankruptcy or something most devs in the board kept blogging what was happening, in kinda of an oblivious way. so it's a good insight on how those things are sold and how they happen.

https://web.archive.org/web/20200307222956/https://www.gnome...

They never declared bankruptcy.

Re: Big tech's anti-labor playbook has come for Wikipedia

#269

Post by ETH_start »

A labor union restricting who can be part of the Arbitration Enforcement admin team flies directly in the face of the principle that Wikipedia is the encyclopedia that "anyone can edit". It is turning Wikipedia into a protected guild, with a privileged class of administrators.

And if this drive to lock down control over Wikiedia succeeds, by framing opposition as "Big Tech", then Wikipedia is truly finished.

Re: Big tech's anti-labor playbook has come for Wikipedia

#270

Post by fsflover »

hulitu wrote: post #257
nvme0n1p1 wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering Wikipedia has remained high quality for so long, you're going to have to expand on this. As is, it exudes the same naivety as "the building hasn't gotten robbed, so why are we spending money on security?"

> remained high quality That was ten years ago. Now, political stuff (countries articles for example) is biased. It really looks like CIA fact book.

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