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Wikipedia fundraising banners paused over weekend in response to complaints

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Re: Wikipedia fundraising banners paused over weekend in response to complaints

#11

Post by frabbit »

I used to give to Wikipedia but stopped when I discovered that they were claiming that The Grayzone / Moderate Rebels were a special fourth category of untrusted in their three tier system of source ranking.

I still like and use it, but that smacks of an especially sneaky variant of censorship.

The Grayzone / Moderate Rebels definitely take an independent, outsider slant on important stories with an upfront, stated intent of being anti-imperialist, but they do not fabricate stories. That makes them a superior source to the NYT (let's invade Iraq) or any of the CNN, MSNBC outlets pushing anti-Russia and anti-China hysteria.

Wikipedia is too useful and important to be left in the hands of people with marked political biases.

Re: Wikipedia fundraising banners paused over weekend in response to complaints

#12

Post by frabbit »

frabbit wrote: post #11

I used to give to Wikipedia but stopped when I discovered that they were claiming that The Grayzone / Moderate Rebels were a special fourth category of untrusted in their three tier system of source ranking. I still like and use it, but that smacks of an especially sneaky variant of censorship. The Grayzone / Moderate Rebels definitely take an independent, outsider slant on important stories with an upfront, stated i…

These are the specific accusations from the Grayzone: https://thegrayzone.com/2020/06/10/wikipedia-formally-censor...

Re: Wikipedia fundraising banners paused over weekend in response to complaints

#13

Post by akolbe »

frabbit wrote: post #12
frabbit wrote: post #11

I used to give to Wikipedia but stopped when I discovered that they were claiming that The Grayzone / Moderate Rebels were a special fourth category of untrusted in their three tier system of source ranking. I still like and use it, but that smacks of an especially sneaky variant of censorship. The Grayzone / Moderate Rebels definitely take an independent, outsider slant on important stories with an upfront, stated i…

These are the specific accusations from the Grayzone: https://thegrayzone.com/2020/06/10/wikipedia-formally-censor...

I thought the Grayzone ban was interesting too. There is always the option of leaving it up to editors, and/or explicitly attributing any opinions or fact claims so the reader can see where they come from.

However, I wonder how much the Wikimedia Foundation as the solicitor and recipient of reader donations has to do with it. For all its faults, the Wikimedia Foundation does not edit Wikipedia directly (its own article, i.e. the Wikipedia article on the Wikimedia Foundation, is crap for example, because they won't edit it and nobody else really cares to).

So a decision like banning Grayzone is down to the volunteer editors that congregate around a topic area rather than the Foundation. (Grayzone is a curious case because the Blumenthal family has close links to the Clintons, and so does the Wikimedia Foundation, because some of the consultancy firms listed as major suppliers in their Forms 990 (Williamsworks, Minassian Media and Trilogy Interactive) are run by people with close personal ties to the Clintons.)

Re: Wikipedia fundraising banners paused over weekend in response to complaints

#14

Post by zozbot234 »

frabbit wrote: post #11

I used to give to Wikipedia but stopped when I discovered that they were claiming that The Grayzone / Moderate Rebels were a special fourth category of untrusted in their three tier system of source ranking. I still like and use it, but that smacks of an especially sneaky variant of censorship. The Grayzone / Moderate Rebels definitely take an independent, outsider slant on important stories with an upfront, stated i…

Relevant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Per... "The Grayzone was deprecated in the 2020 RfC. There is consensus that The Grayzone publishes false or fabricated information. Some editors describe The Grayzone as Max Blumenthal's blog, and question the website's editorial oversight. " I.e. it's "banned" for the same reason the Daily Mail is "banned".

Re: Wikipedia fundraising banners paused over weekend in response to complaints

#15

Post by frabbit »

zozbot234 wrote: post #14
frabbit wrote: post #11

I used to give to Wikipedia but stopped when I discovered that they were claiming that The Grayzone / Moderate Rebels were a special fourth category of untrusted in their three tier system of source ranking. I still like and use it, but that smacks of an especially sneaky variant of censorship. The Grayzone / Moderate Rebels definitely take an independent, outsider slant on important stories with an upfront, stated i…

Relevant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Per... " The Grayzone was deprecated in the 2020 RfC. There is consensus that The Grayzone publishes false or fabricated information. Some editors describe The Grayzone as Max Blumenthal's blog, and question the website's editorial oversight. " I.e. it's "banned" for the same reason the Daily Mail is "banned".

That is exactly what is under dispute and it is un-sourced and worded very loosely. Not impressive for an organization that encourages citations of original source material.

Re: Wikipedia fundraising banners paused over weekend in response to complaints

#16

Post by toomuchtodo »

greatgib wrote: post #7

The worse is that I started to stop contributing and caring for Wikipedia once the nagging fundraising started to be a regular thing. Because it does not make any sense to pretend to do something so that it can stay free and ad free, when half of the year there is constantly the fundraising banner that takes half of the screen of any displayed page. And the bad thing is that a lot of people are doing the same thing.…

I would rather pay the Internet Archive to persist the corpus, Cloudflare to front it (CDN), and directly pay the devs and editors. The Wikimedia bureaucracy has needlessly grown to meet the needs of the ever growing bureaucracy, having captured users with the centralized library.

Re: Wikipedia fundraising banners paused over weekend in response to complaints

#17

Post by akolbe »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #16
greatgib wrote: post #7

The worse is that I started to stop contributing and caring for Wikipedia once the nagging fundraising started to be a regular thing. Because it does not make any sense to pretend to do something so that it can stay free and ad free, when half of the year there is constantly the fundraising banner that takes half of the screen of any displayed page. And the bad thing is that a lot of people are doing the same thing.…

I would rather pay the Internet Archive to persist the corpus, Cloudflare to front it (CDN), and directly pay the devs and editors. The Wikimedia bureaucracy has needlessly grown to meet the needs of the ever growing bureaucracy, having captured users with the centralized library.

I don't know what the Internet Archive's financials are like, but donating to the Internet Archive arguably aids Wikipedia as well. It prevents link rot. This is becoming ever more important over time.

Re: Wikipedia fundraising banners paused over weekend in response to complaints

#18

Post by hbholiday »

Jimbo Wales is a right cheeky monkey. He just trousered $750k for his imaginary "First Edit" NFT.

Fair play, there's one born every minute.

More alarmingly, he never donated the $500k prize given to him by the UAE, as he promised he would, over seven years ago.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jimbo_Wales#2014_UAE....

His constant e-begging for a finacially secure website should be commended for sheer brass-necked temerity.

It's such a shame they wised up and stopped using Jimbo's creepy, bug-eyed, sex-pest death-stare to intimidate donors into giving...

https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/224/806/sta...

Re: Wikipedia fundraising banners paused over weekend in response to complaints

#19

Post by akolbe »

hbholiday wrote: post #18

Jimbo Wales is a right cheeky monkey. He just trousered $750k for his imaginary "First Edit" NFT. Fair play, there's one born every minute. More alarmingly, he never donated the $500k prize given to him by the UAE, as he promised he would, over seven years ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jimbo_Wales#2014_UAE... . His constant e-begging for a finacially secure website should be commended for sheer brass-n…

People complained then, in a light-hearted way. Lots of funny memes. But in those days, the banners were tiny, and other than the pupils of the death stare, they didn't follow you around and keep count of how often you'd seen them, as they have been doing these past few years. Ah, good times.

Re: Wikipedia fundraising banners paused over weekend in response to complaints

#20

Post by patrick451 »

frabbit wrote: post #11

I used to give to Wikipedia but stopped when I discovered that they were claiming that The Grayzone / Moderate Rebels were a special fourth category of untrusted in their three tier system of source ranking. I still like and use it, but that smacks of an especially sneaky variant of censorship. The Grayzone / Moderate Rebels definitely take an independent, outsider slant on important stories with an upfront, stated i…

I also stopped giving to wikipedia when it become clear they had become a political fifth column.
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