Wikipedia Zero creates a financial penalty for users who want to preserve their privacy by using Wikipedia over Tor. I wonder what folks here think about the ethics of that.
Wikipedia’s ‘complicated’ relationship with net neutrality
61–70 of 87 posts
Re: Wikipedia’s ‘complicated’ relationship with net neutrality
#62This is super interesting! Thanks for sharing. I believe this is a good illustration of how most net neutrality advocacy is misguided. The (very real) problem net neutrality advocates are trying to solve isn't paid prioritization; rather, it's a lack of meaningful competition in the "last-mile" broadband market, and this market failure produces aberrant scenarios like NBC Comcast shaking down its competitors (eg Netf…
I think since it has gained exposure through a public statement by the president, the business news has started to take interest in it. Now a lot of sense is starting to get expressed on the matter. The FT also had a good opinion piece recently: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/de089e8c-6999-11e4-9f65-00144feabd...
Re: Wikipedia’s ‘complicated’ relationship with net neutrality
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
>No, Because it closes out competition to newer, better information. But that would only make sense if Wikipedia created some sort of insurmountable barrier for newer, better information. It doesn't. Newer, better information can reach people through Wikipedia with just as much ease (provided it fits Wiki's publishing standards) as it would through any other platform. For all intents and purposes, Wikipedia and other…
Wikipedia creates an enormous barrier to better information due to its size and scope, and its co-dependent relationship with Google. In many cases Wikipedia's information is substandard when compared to other sources, both in presentation and content. The wiki layout is useless for certain content types, such as video. For example, many people prefer to use imdb for movie information (which is also free to the end u…
IMDB does have better quality information about their niche topic, but their layout sucks. Outside their niche topic, their information sucks. Trying to get even basic information about animals, major religions, or non-entertainer public figures, and IMDB is just plain awful.
As for video, both IMDB and wikipedia 'pop up' a box in which to play video, independent of the parent page layout; they don't seem to differ in that respect, and IMDB is a specialist site that's all about video.
There have also been several recent studies that say Wikipedia's medical information is unreliable and dangerous.
As opposed to...? Online medical literature in general is noted to suck, even the specialist websites. Even paid professionals - my housemate returned from the doctor two days ago after a norovirus scare... and the doctor claimed the incubation period before symptoms was 2 weeks... when it's actually 1-2 days.
Anyway, Wikipedia is a generalist site - basically you're arguing that it's not as good as specialist sites, so to free up access to information, all that better info should be free, hence all (useful) sites (effectively) should be free. I'm not sure that's going to go down well with ISPs.
Re: Wikipedia’s ‘complicated’ relationship with net neutrality
#64A better solution: no data caps, even if it has to be enforced by regulations.
Re: Wikipedia’s ‘complicated’ relationship with net neutrality
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sorry to pick on you, but the responses of net neutrality advocates vis-à-vis competition sound like the standard strategy of the Foreign Office when dealing with crisis from Yes, Prime Minister . "maybe we should do something about it, but there's nothing we can do", it's a natural monopoly. "maybe there was something we could have done, but it's too late now", they already have a stronghold. http://www.imdb.com/tit…
How is this critique useful? I've never seen a net neutrality advocate be opposed to competition. I also don't know a single net neutrality advocate who was in favor of letting the wide variety of early ISPs decay into the sad monopolistic situation we have now. All they're saying is that given that we no longer have an effective marketplace to reign in in the oligopoly in place, we need regulation to limit the harm.…
I just don't see much discussion around the topic; that may be because it's obvious for everyone inside the topic that it's unfixable, but as an outsider who lives in a very corrupt country (among the developed) but which nevertheless has plenty of broadband competition, I just find it very hard to believe that it almost requires a political revolution to increase competition in that market - or that at least that's obvious to everyone.
Re: Wikipedia’s ‘complicated’ relationship with net neutrality
#66A better solution: no data caps, even if it has to be enforced by regulations.
But bandwidth is a limited medium. It is fair IMO that those who use it a lot should pay more,
Re: Wikipedia’s ‘complicated’ relationship with net neutrality
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, Because it closes out competition to newer, better information.
>No, Because it closes out competition to newer, better information. But that would only make sense if Wikipedia created some sort of insurmountable barrier for newer, better information. It doesn't. Newer, better information can reach people through Wikipedia with just as much ease (provided it fits Wiki's publishing standards) as it would through any other platform. For all intents and purposes, Wikipedia and other…
Trying to fight against the deletionists on Wikipedia with their spurious claims is a barrier to entry.
Re: Wikipedia’s ‘complicated’ relationship with net neutrality
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wikipedia creates an enormous barrier to better information due to its size and scope, and its co-dependent relationship with Google. In many cases Wikipedia's information is substandard when compared to other sources, both in presentation and content. The wiki layout is useless for certain content types, such as video. For example, many people prefer to use imdb for movie information (which is also free to the end u…
IMDB does have better quality information about their niche topic, but their layout sucks. Outside their niche topic, their information sucks. Trying to get even basic information about animals, major religions, or non-entertainer public figures, and IMDB is just plain awful. As for video, both IMDB and wikipedia 'pop up' a box in which to play video, independent of the parent page layout; they don't seem to differ i…
> As opposed to...? Online medical literature in general is noted to suck, even the specialist websites. Even paid professionals - my housemate returned from the doctor two days ago after a norovirus scare... and the doctor claimed the incubation period before symptoms was 2 weeks... when it's actually 1-2 days.
Now get some good quality evidence - something like a Cochrane review or NICE guidance - and try to edit those medical pages.
Re: Wikipedia’s ‘complicated’ relationship with net neutrality
#69There's a better solution than zero rating on mobile plans: a very low bandwidth (4-8 KiB/s) unlimited connection once the full speed limit is reached. TIM does this in Italy and it doesn't care what sites you access in this low bandwidth regime.
Re: Wikipedia’s ‘complicated’ relationship with net neutrality
#70There's a better solution than zero rating on mobile plans: a very low bandwidth (4-8 KiB/s) unlimited connection once the full speed limit is reached. TIM does this in Italy and it doesn't care what sites you access in this low bandwidth regime.
The thing is that zero rating can be promoted by platforms such as Wikipedia and Facebook, who want to promote net neutrality; unlimited low speed connection is an ISP-only thing, and I haven't seen many big ISPs (really) promote net neutrality.