Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 1001 posts

Re: Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney

#101

Post by acdha »

LightHugger wrote: post #99
jjmarr wrote: post #87

The English Wikipedia is a massive target for influence campaigns. I don't think there are any other communities as resilient as it. Just an example: There's certain individual or group that edited under the name "Icewhiz", was banned, and now operates endless sockpuppet accounts in the topic area to influence Wikipedia's coverage on the Middle East. One of them was an account named "Eostrix", that spent years making…

There are counterexamples where this has failed/continues to fail, the gamergate article is famously non-neutral, only accepting primary sources from journalists directly involved in the controversy. This is rather than true secondary sources with less extreme and biased views, like is supposed to be the rules there. You can switch from the english one to other languages and get completely different content with very…

Do you have any specific examples? You mentioned the Gamergate article but your assertion that it doesn’t reference non-primary sources needs some citations that all of the academic and media sources were directly involved. Since it was a harassment campaign involving journalists, there’s a big question about what a policy would need to look like to prevent someone from attacking a journalist and then saying Wikipedia can’t use their work because they’re involuntarily involved.

Re: Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney

#102

Post by alganet »

aingling wrote: post #66

[flagged]

They (those worried about commie political bias) could do their own public digital university and social media websites. Instead of being free, they could charge a fee that would both serve to repel the freetards and fund the project.

Oh shit! That happened already, didn't it? How is it going at attracting talented individuals?

We should remember that anti-wikipedia propaganda exists for decades now. Despite of that, it is a place cherished by many (including non commies). Its demise would be a public disaster.

Hoarders will maintain copies of it. And if there is bias, there will be tons of biased bootlegs around.

Further investigation would be more wise than rapid decisions by instinct.

Re: Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney

#104

Post by simonw »

mjrpes wrote: post #56

Here's the letter: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ocNyx34Et19sKtlta0bTPPzSPcp... No claims, no evidence. No sources, except "it has come to my attention" and "information received by my office".

Yikes that letter is alarming.

> In view of public criticisms, including those expressed by Wikipedia Co-Founder Dr. Lawrence M. Sanger, regarding the opacity of editorial processes and the anonymity of contributors, what justification does the Foundation offer for shielding editors from public scrutiny?

Larry Sanger has been criticizing Wikipedia for more than 20 years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Sanger#Criticism_of_Wiki...

The author of that letter is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Martin_(Missouri_politician... - "the first U.S. attorney for D.C. in at least 50 years to be appointed without experience as a judge or a federal prosecutor".

Re: Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney

#106

Post by empthought »

sneak wrote: post #44
jtrip wrote: post #10

The scale of deep body trauma that has been done to the US will not seem clear today, but it will have dire consequences for the future trajectory of US. I am sad for this, for the current status quo I was born under, but I suppose History must happen.

The US has not been a force for good in the world in some time, if ever. Unfortunately for Americans, it has to get worse before it can get better. Much worse. The institutions are deeply corrupt, and have been for decades. They must be destroyed and possibly replaced. It sucks, and it will hurt. It may even possibly require an entire revolution, as many of the deeply evil US institutions such as the CIA and FBI are…

> but the world as a whole is not a better place because Facebook and Lockheed and the US CIA exist.

You've cherry-picked a few bogeymen.

What about Norman Borlaug, Bell Laboratories, the Gates Foundation, Margaret Sanger and the Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology?

Re: Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney

#107

Post by hightrix »

walrus01 wrote: post #95
Fauntleroy wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Well, considering they have a very high ranking guy in the Putin regime who considers that to be his full time job, google "Vladislav Surkov", they seem to be doing a fairly effective job of it so far.

Russia has a pretty high ranking guy in the US Government as well, google Krasnov.

Re: Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney

#108

Post by [deleted] »

nailer wrote: post #31
techpineapple wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh look! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Benghazi_attack They creatively censored it under the title “2012 Banghazi Attack”

The article above that we are discussing discusses the omission of the Benghazi attack as an aspect of Barack Obama‘s presidency.

[deleted]

Re: Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney

#109

Post by r053bud »

tzs wrote: post #69

> Before being named U.S. attorney, Martin appeared on Russia-backed media networks more than 150 times, The Washington Post reported last week. In one appearance on RT in 2022, he said there was no evidence of military buildup on Ukraine’s boarders only nine days before Russia invaded the country. He further criticized U.S. officials as warmongering and ignoring Russia security concerns. This is getting ridiculous.…

We voted for this! This is “democracy” at work

Re: Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney

#110

Post by vFunct »

I have a question on non-profits in general. What exactly is the advantage of being incorporated as a non-profit, when all you have to do to not be taxed as a for-profit corporation is spend all your money each year and not show any profit? It seems you'd have more privacy as a for-profit corporation, since you don't have to disclose donors.
Post reply on HN