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Odin, Wikipedia and engagement farming

katamari64.se

281–290 of 441 posts

Re: Odin, Wikipedia and engagement farming

#281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"They are maniacal about deleting things that I consider noteworthy but others don't" is exactly the point of the notability policy in the first place. Otherwise Wikipedia would almost instantly fill up with crap.

Because, in 2026, hard drives are really small and can't hold much information, that we need to limit the world's freely and globally available editable encyclopedia, too what a select group of individuals consider noteworthy. No possible editorial bias there! Hard drives can hold lots of data these days, and text compresses rather well.

You can write about whatever you like and put it on the web, just not in Wikipedia for which, as has been said exhaustively above, there are clearly laid out admissions criteria, not just the whims of a "select group". You are entirely free to contribute to articles-for-deletion process yourself.

Wikipedia does not exist to be a soapbox, self-publishing host or advertising medium, and having a Wikipedia article is not a human right.

Re: Odin, Wikipedia and engagement farming

#282

[flagged]

Why would deleting a page on an obscure topic earn anyone clout? Did they see into the future to know the public tantrum would follow? People, when you're working backwards from the party you want to criticize rather than starting from a real point, you have to land on a point that would make any kind of sense.

Ever heard of rage-baiting? Look it up. On Wikipedia.

Re: Odin, Wikipedia and engagement farming

#283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And here's the persecution LARPing the article talks about.

So why is that article not deleted yet?

I see it's been nominated for deletion today. Looking at it, it's been marked for attention for two years, so it's not as if people haven't had time to do anything about it.

Re: Odin, Wikipedia and engagement farming

#284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because plenty of secondary sources have covered it. Wikipedia's philosophy is that it summarizes reliable secondary sources. You're asking for Wikipedia to change its fundamental philosophy so that editors go out and gather primary evidence themselves, debate it, and then deduce what's true by themselves. That would work if Wikipedia were edited by a select group of highly qualified people you can trust, but it's no…

Wikipedia’s strategy is to offload the risk of wrong information to sources which can absorb the hit rather than have it reflected back. It’s “safer” for Wikipedia even to knowingly publish inaccuracies or misinformation from a reputable source than the truth from an unknown source. A lie from a reputable source is unavoidable, a lie from an unknown source is unforgivable.

[flagged]

Re: Odin, Wikipedia and engagement farming

#285

I have never been a wikipedia contributor (let alone a mod), but their points seem fair. Maybe not fair for the particular case, but fair for the general case. People who ridicule wikipedia policies should at least acknowledge that the modern internet is a very low trust society with millions of bad actors trying to push their agenda at the expense of others. And now with AI bots running amok the headache increases t…

Wikipedia's core policy is verifiability, not truth. If you put a factual statement into an article, you're required to have a written source that Wikipedia can cite. "Someone who says they're the CEO said so on the talk page" doesn't cut it. If the CEO really wants to get this info into Wikipedia, they can go give an interview to a reputable newspaper, news website, magazine, etc., and then Wikipedia can cite that.…

[flagged]

Re: Odin, Wikipedia and engagement farming

#286

>There are two ways one can "figure out a person" who rarely states their beliefs explicitly, specifically a public figure: >You can infer from their descriptions and prescriptions about things—that's slow, takes times, but it will give you the most accurate image to the extent of the public information. See who they follow on Twitter. This feels like an appeal to tribalism against Bill. My politics are left-leaning…

The author of this article seems quite politically driven like the mods on Wikipedia, and created it disingenuously. I feel it's an attempt to overwhelm the readers through massive amounts of text so that they are too tired to see what's being said at the beginning and end are completely unrelated.

Re: Odin, Wikipedia and engagement farming

#287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But is trusting the CEO worse than trusting newspapers? Argument of Casey was that it is not.

Trusting a rando who claims to be the CEO of a company nobody heard of is worse, yes.

[flagged]

Re: Odin, Wikipedia and engagement farming

#288

The article was alright (with a weird tangent about gingers at the beginning), but then quickly devolved into personal attacks towards Odin's developer and Casey Muratori. Why? Just because they both wrote something on Twitter? And then I read this: > Steering a language and its context will naturally reflect the author's world view > There are two ways one can "figure out a person" who rarely states their beliefs ex…

Well we now know the author's true intentions. It was never about any real criticism, and simply an attack on a person they politically dislike.

Re: Odin, Wikipedia and engagement farming

#289

I have never been a wikipedia contributor (let alone a mod), but their points seem fair. Maybe not fair for the particular case, but fair for the general case. People who ridicule wikipedia policies should at least acknowledge that the modern internet is a very low trust society with millions of bad actors trying to push their agenda at the expense of others. And now with AI bots running amok the headache increases t…

Also, how are we supposed to know that JangaFX is a real company, and its CEO a real person? Creating fake companies and persona is not particularly high effort today, if that's all it takes for a pet project to be featured on Wikipedia, it's going to end up full of crap real quick.

They do have products you can buy, download and use... And plenty of people on YouTube have made videos reviewing or showing how to use their products.

Re: Odin, Wikipedia and engagement farming

#290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It's amazing that anybody creates Wikpedia articles at all" Yeh. This is why I stopped editing wikipedia very often. They are maniacal about deleting things that I consider noteworthy but others don't. I still love wikipedia and think its the best website on the internet, but this is probably its biggest flaw.

> "It's amazing that anybody creates Wikpedia articles at all" Very few people do, which actually makes it worse: of course the spammers and the hustlers are still motivated, so the needle moves more firmly into the territory of "most newcomer contributions are made in bad faith". Editors and admins feel increasingly under siege, so they respond more aggressively to everything . It's basically the same problem as wit…

Cops actually spend the vast majority of their time policing traffic violations and responding to non-emergency calls. Not in GTA-style shootouts.
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