Odin, Wikipedia and engagement farming • Hacker News Board

Re: Odin, Wikipedia and engagement farming

#291

Post by ninjascotsman » Sat, Jul 04, 2026, 2:37 PM UTC

lambdaone wrote: post #263

Morromist wrote: post #103

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.

"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.

It is filled with crap for example London Bus routes

Re: Odin, Wikipedia and engagement farming

#292

Post by mopsi » Sat, Jul 04, 2026, 2:46 PM UTC

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #247

lvoudour wrote: post #127

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

#293

Post by dismalaf » Sat, Jul 04, 2026, 2:51 PM UTC

vor_ wrote: post #180

skotobaza wrote: post #159

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…

If you read the whole article, you'll understand the context and how its relates to Wikipedia. The fact GingerBill accuses Wikipedia of having a political bias against Odin when (spoilers) it was actually a "constitutional conservative" who triggered the deletion is amusing.

I've engaged with GingerBill enough on X and the Discord server and I have no idea what his political stances are; he literally never talks politics in public (he's also English and not American). So if he says there's a political bias he's definitely not talking about politics in the general sense, but the specific context of programming languages.

Re: Odin, Wikipedia and engagement farming

#294

Post by DiogenesKynikos » Sat, Jul 04, 2026, 2:55 PM UTC

close04 wrote: post #264

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #249

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.

It's also that letting editors argue based on their own original research would be a recipe for chaos.

"Use reliable secondary sources" is a simple rule that limits the scope for possible conflict and chaos. For an online encyclopedia that anyone can edit, that's very important.

Re: Odin, Wikipedia and engagement farming

#295

Post by mike_hock » Sat, Jul 04, 2026, 2:57 PM UTC

lvoudour wrote: post #127

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…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainfuck

Apparently that one is "notable" but Odin is not.

"The rules" are on the hook to justify their existence by providing reasonable and desirable outcomes, they're not a purpose unto themselves.

If your rules are shown to be buggy, fix your rules.

Re: Odin, Wikipedia and engagement farming

#296

Post by svat » Sat, Jul 04, 2026, 2:57 PM UTC

SanjayMehta wrote: post #287

pwdisswordfishq wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

[flagged]

No they are not, which is why Wikipedia doesn't rely on them. All information on Wikipedia is supposed to be verifiable via a reliable secondary source (books, newspapers, etc from publishers with a reputation), so anything written by any editor can, if unverifiable, be removed by any other editor, anonymous or not.

Re: Odin, Wikipedia and engagement farming

#297

Post by DiogenesKynikos » Sat, Jul 04, 2026, 3:02 PM UTC

SanjayMehta wrote: post #284

close04 wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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]

I tried looking for reliable secondary sources that discuss the Odin programming language. I couldn't find any.

That's not Wikipedia's fault. It is a bit weird that people are insisting that Odin is such a big deal that it must have a Wikipedia page, but apparently no tech website of note has ever mentioned it.

Re: Odin, Wikipedia and engagement farming

#298

Post by embedding-shape » Sat, Jul 04, 2026, 3:04 PM UTC

wavemode wrote: post #280

stymaar wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm 95% sure the account you're replying to is a karma-farming bot (15k karma in just 8 month is a lot ), which makes its comment spectacularly ironic.

After reading through several pages of their comments, I'm roughly 100% certain that the user you're referring to is not a bot and is not karma farming. They just post a lot.

Thanks for independently confirming I actually seem human, I had my own doubts about it at times too so helps a lot :)

Re: Odin, Wikipedia and engagement farming

#299

Post by embedding-shape » Sat, Jul 04, 2026, 3:06 PM UTC

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #277

stymaar wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm 95% sure the account you're replying to is a karma-farming bot (15k karma in just 8 month is a lot ), which makes its comment spectacularly ironic.

I'm just wondering - what is the benefit of a karma-farming bot? I mean I get the benefits of bots on bluesky and twitter and Instagram etc. because you can turn high engagement into money!! I figured bots here were because people maybe were trying out AI tools, scripts, or because keeping their business visible to people who might be interested. But what benefit can you derive from the Karma.I have pretty good Karma…

You can influence the general sentiment in the thread, have the last word everywhere when terms/companies and so on are mentioned. Manipulation goes way beyond just "score goes up", sometimes introducing a lot of fear, uncertainty and doubt is enough to derail entire submissions.

Re: Odin, Wikipedia and engagement farming

#300

Post by sethaurus » Sat, Jul 04, 2026, 3:07 PM UTC

LoveMortuus wrote: post #155

I don’t get why they would ever delete knowledge… that’s like burning books…

Are you sincerely advocating that Wikipedia should never delete anything, regardless of notability or verifiability? Do you think that would make it better or worse?