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Ask HN: How can we fix Wikipedia?

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Re: Ask HN: How can we fix Wikipedia?

#131

Post by jollybean »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #66
adhesive_wombat wrote: post #30

Get the Wikimedia Foundation to spend money on the technical foundation of the sites, rather than spraying millions up the wall of "racial justice". That's not me making a strawman by going straight to "omg, the SJWs", it's a exact phrase from the 3rd paragraph of the 4.5 million Knowledge Equity Fund page [1]. That, and executive pay, is where donations go, not to keeping the lights on. The running cost to keeping t…

This could almost be taken word for word from an article about Mozilla. People who think 'social justice' is a bad thing seem to set really high standards for the open, independant organisations they say they support, and they're not afraid to give them some extreme tough love and undermine them at every step if they don't follow their priorities.

Np, this is gaslighting.

"If you don't agree with our objectives, you are the enemy!"

Disagreeing with specific elements of social justice, particularly statements like:

"The Wikimedia Foundation defines racial equity as shifting away from Eurocentricity, White-male-imperialist-patriarchal supremacy, superiority, power and privilege to create an environment that is inclusive and reflects the experiences of communities of color worldwide."

Etc. is not 'being against social justice'.

The distinction is quite important, in fact, it's kind of 'the point'.

Most people agree with basic elements of social justice.

How many people are opposed to women voting? To women having 'equal opportunity'? Etc.

We're now into a war of opportunity and outcomes, which is a different kind of playing field.

I think Wikepedia generally does a good job overall, and it's probably fairly hard to do, that said, there is bias.

Re: Ask HN: How can we fix Wikipedia?

#132

Post by devwastaken »

regularjack wrote: post #113
laurent92 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was ashamed when I learnt Wikipedia artificially funds the writing of pages of women, so they try to reach equal numbers to men. I wouldn’t be ashamed if the criteria for admissibility were equal, but barely being a researcher with published papers is enough, while men with entire books on the subject get rejected. Talk about rewriting history…

> while men with entire books on the subject get rejected. Ok, I'll bite. Giving incentives to increase the number of pages about women, does not impact in any way the number of existing pages about men.

Lets say you have a company that requires a level of technical skill to work at, and instead of hiring for that technical skill, you hire them based on being blue. Everyone else, including those who are blue, know you are doing this because the individual is clearly not ready for that work. This creates resentment, which creates discrimination.

You have to promote natural systems, not artificial ones, or you create further inequality. A natural solution in this case would be to create a policy where anyone whom is an authority on a subject can write about it on Wikipedia, and they can write even conflicting opinions. That can all be put together. If woman are paid, men are paid, etc.

Re: Ask HN: How can we fix Wikipedia?

#133

Post by Mathnerd314 »

qiskit wrote: post #104

You can't. Anything that is editorialized will skew to an extreme over time. In the past, wikipedia was bad because its quality of information was generally terrible. "Alan Turing proved in 1936 that a general algorithm to solve the halting problem for all possible program-input pairs cannot exist." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halting_problem Alan Turing did no such thing, but that's wikipedia for you. On topics yo…

I worked on the Halting problem article a bit. The article has a "more footnotes needed" warning at the top - nobody is claiming the article is good. But at least the history section is well-sourced, so it's clear that the 1936 proof refers to Turing's paper "On Computable Numbers With an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem". There is a summary at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing%27s_proof.

Re: Ask HN: How can we fix Wikipedia?

#135

Post by _23sd »

I'm not really a power user but I have been editing on and off for well over a decade, so perhaps I'm part of the insider group you think is too powerful. That said, I don't share the perception that these problems are as bad or widespread as you say. There are certain topics, such as Middle East politics, where there's such a critical mass of people who are just there to push an agenda that to maintain order there need to be actual admin-imposed restrictions. And there are some topics where individuals or small groups keep the article's tone and content under tight control, but that's usually because the topic is obscure enough that few people are interested enough to force changes through. Popular or politically charged topics have so many people contributing that it's virtually impossible to create a Reddit-style echo chamber, more often the problem is articles that consist of a jumble of contradictory propaganda. I think overall Wikipedia works well: even on today's highly politicized topics like COVID-19 vaccines and Ukraine/Russia, on Wikipedia you can read about the dissenting views, not free from refutation but considerably more free from the blanket statements, false equivalences, and even self-censorship that the news media treats these topics with.

Of course, Wikipedia isn't apolitical: since the beginning it's been full of people who consider themselves critical thinkers and skeptics interested in spreading the truth as science tells it, which is itself an ideology that is necessarily opposed to political or religious ideologies which assert some truth that can't be refuted or proven by evidence, and of course to conspiracy theorists who openly detest science and expertise. So yes, people and organizations who make enemies of Wikipedia's ideology won't get nice or even 100% fair treatment in Wikipedia articles. Anyone who sees this as some new development due to recent political currents wasn't paying attention during the 2000s. If you see it as a problem, you're free to follow in the footsteps of widely mocked sites like RationalWiki or Conservapedia and create a wiki that favors your ideology instead. I think it's telling that even people who lean more left or right wing still rely on Wikipedia rather than those places.

Re: Ask HN: How can we fix Wikipedia?

#136

Post by calumetregion »

cy_hauser wrote: post #81
calumetregion wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many people asking for examples. For an easy one (among millions) just compare The New York Times Wikipedia article to the article for The Epoch Times. "Oh, but The Epoch Times is right wing, so..." How can I compare the Ochs-Sulzberger family to the Falun Gong? Well I just did. They're both made up of humans with opinions.

I'm interpreting your comment as, "Wikipedia isn't far right enough for my tastes." Is that accurate? Do you know of any examples where Wikipedia leans farther right than left?

Or you could see it as "poisoning the well" - an approach so common and accepted that neither of you see it, apparently.

Although clearly a lefty news organization, I don't see the NY Times as a "wing" on that easy left-right spectrum we all seem to love. NYT has had many writers and done some excellent work along the way. In the aggregate their ideology is more in support of population density (cities), industrialism and technology - with some hostility towards more pastoral living, herding animals for food, etc.

Re: Ask HN: How can we fix Wikipedia?

#137

Post by qiskit »

munch117 wrote: post #129
qiskit wrote: post #104

You can't. Anything that is editorialized will skew to an extreme over time. In the past, wikipedia was bad because its quality of information was generally terrible. "Alan Turing proved in 1936 that a general algorithm to solve the halting problem for all possible program-input pairs cannot exist." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halting_problem Alan Turing did no such thing, but that's wikipedia for you. On topics yo…

Care to tell us who did prove it then? While the 1936 paper, "On Computable Numbers", doesn't explicitly mention the halting problem, it does cover the Entscheidungsproblem, and that the halting problem is undecidable follows trivially from that.

"Jack Copeland (2004) attributes the introduction of the term halting problem to the work of Martin Davis in the 1950s.[1]"

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

Martin Davis did in the early 1950s after Turing's death.

> and that the halting problem is undecidable follows trivially from that.

Trivially? Took nearly 2 decades after Turing published his paper for Martin Davis to come up with the halting problem. And it required a reformulation of the Turing machine itself. Today, we view 'good' Turing machines as those that stop/halt. Turing viewed 'good' Turing machines as those that continued forever ( aka never stops ).

Re: Ask HN: How can we fix Wikipedia?

#138

Post by endominus »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #128
thatguy0900 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this is a social justice thing. I personally would be just as annoyed about any other cause. Wikipedia donations shouldn't be championing any cause that isn't open access to information, no matter what side of the political spectrum it's on. Especially if it's to the point that Wikipedia itself is being left to rot in favor of unrelated causes.

The thing being complained about is literally them executing their stated mission: > This pilot initiative is rooted in our strategic direction, where Knowledge Equity emerged in 2017 as one of two key pillars of focus in order for us to achieve our vision for 2030. Knowledge equity acknowledges that we can’t achieve free knowledge if there are societal or economic barriers that prevent some people’s ability to share…

This is a motte and bailey argument. The motte here is that people living in unjust situations will likely be unable or less able to contribute to the Wikipedia project, which is true. The bailey is that donation funds are being funneled into these initiatives rather than improving Wikipedia itself (see other comments about bug counts and features lacking in Wikipedia, which are not being addressed). The Knowledge Equity fund may or may not improve "racial justice," however they define that - but the strategic goal of improving free access to the world's knowledge is almost certainly better reached by direct improvements to the Wikipedia software and development, and support of open access and free speech causes rather than racially-focused ones (such as, for example, support for Alexandra Elbakyan's endeavors to keep Sci-Hub operational, or speech protection in more repressive governments).

Re: Ask HN: How can we fix Wikipedia?

#139

Post by zozbot234 »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #128
thatguy0900 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this is a social justice thing. I personally would be just as annoyed about any other cause. Wikipedia donations shouldn't be championing any cause that isn't open access to information, no matter what side of the political spectrum it's on. Especially if it's to the point that Wikipedia itself is being left to rot in favor of unrelated causes.

The thing being complained about is literally them executing their stated mission: > This pilot initiative is rooted in our strategic direction, where Knowledge Equity emerged in 2017 as one of two key pillars of focus in order for us to achieve our vision for 2030. Knowledge equity acknowledges that we can’t achieve free knowledge if there are societal or economic barriers that prevent some people’s ability to share…

It's worth noting that the bias in Wikipedia editorship is very real, and persists even after controlling for obvious causal factors such as Internet access. This is why "knowledge equity" was identified as a key part of Wikimedia projects' future strategy. Of course, trying to single-handedly solve "systems of racial bias and inequality around the world" is a pointless, Sisyphean task: what they ought to do in the first place is identify what factors make it harder for minorities and the socially marginalized to contribute to Wiki projects, specifically, and address these things. But Wikimedia is not a very evidence-driven organization, so they'd rather content themselves with these pointless and self-defeating platitudes.
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