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

Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 496 posts

Re: Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

#211

Post by chris_wot »

sshine wrote: post #189
xeromal wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know when you're proud of something and you tell it to someone and they always find something to nitpick while also saying good job. That's what this feels like. It's very unnecessary. Time and a place

That’s one example, but I mean less personal. Wikipedia isn’t a person. For example: I’m a big fan of Wikipedia. I spent countless hours writing articles in my early twenties. I stopped because the environment got more hostile as the site grew in popularity. I think that might have been necessary to address the influx of drive-by editing, but it still meant I stopped enjoying being a contributor. I don’t appreciate t…

You think that's bad? I got permanently banned and I started many important things on Wikipedia - like the admins noticeboard, a number of Australia communities, and the [citation needed]. I wrote dozens of articles about Australian women - none of them gave a shit and so I'm not able to write about them any more.

They are, by and large, a bunch of horrible bullies and losers - many Wikipedians don't actually care about articles creation or actual content, they fiddle about with URL fixes and categorisation. There was one horrible human being called BrownHairedGirl who did all these things and almost destroyed the place before they got indefinitely banned also.

Re: Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

#212

Post by rkomorn »

chris_wot wrote: post #211
sshine wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s one example, but I mean less personal. Wikipedia isn’t a person. For example: I’m a big fan of Wikipedia. I spent countless hours writing articles in my early twenties. I stopped because the environment got more hostile as the site grew in popularity. I think that might have been necessary to address the influx of drive-by editing, but it still meant I stopped enjoying being a contributor. I don’t appreciate t…

You think that's bad? I got permanently banned and I started many important things on Wikipedia - like the admins noticeboard, a number of Australia communities, and the [citation needed]. I wrote dozens of articles about Australian women - none of them gave a shit and so I'm not able to write about them any more. They are, by and large, a bunch of horrible bullies and losers - many Wikipedians don't actually care ab…

> and the [citation needed]

Citation needed.

Re: Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

#213

Post by creatonez »

ljsprague wrote: post #203
savef wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What examples of this are there? I've usually found Wikipedia to be quite equal opportunity, well rounded, and factual. They have their NPOV[1] policy, and seem impressively unbiased to me, given the various divisive situations they have to try to cover. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_v...

Race and IQ stuff.

You're mad Wikipedia doesn't parrot thoroughly debunked eugenics arguments?

Re: Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

#214

Post by nl »

krmboya wrote: post #177
savef wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What examples of this are there? I've usually found Wikipedia to be quite equal opportunity, well rounded, and factual. They have their NPOV[1] policy, and seem impressively unbiased to me, given the various divisive situations they have to try to cover. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_v...

The editors mostly reference left-leaning media outlets when it comes to political topics, without providing a counterbalance from right-leaning sources, assuming it were a truth-seeking endeavor. As a non American this is very obvious to me. Even Reuters that was supposedly meant to be a non-biased media outlet is clearly left-leaning at this point

Reuters is left-leaning? How so? It's a new agency and as far as I've seen just sticks to publishing summaries of events.

I had a look at the most potentially controversial topics I could find right now, and I say they seem fair. For example: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/dozens-detained-us-immigrat... (on ICE arrests in NY) and https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/what-would-wider-r... (on recognition of a Palestinian state).

Indeed, Wikipedia lists it as a good source[1]. It's worth comparing that to outlets like CNN (reliable, but "... talk show content should be treated as opinion pieces. Some editors consider CNN biased, though not to the extent that it affects reliability.") or The Wall Street Journal ("Most editors consider The Wall Street Journal generally reliable for news. Use WP:NEWSBLOG to evaluate the newspaper's blogs, including Washington Wire. Use WP:RSOPINION for opinion pieces.")

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Per... ("Reuters is a news agency. There is consensus that Reuters is generally reliable.")

Re: Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

#215

Post by manquer »

3036e4 wrote: post #73

An unexpected side-effect for me after I started subscribing to Kagi a few months ago, at a low tier with limited searches, is that I made sure to configure all my browsers with keywords for Wikipedia searches and I use those a lot, knowing that what I will end up with after searching is probably going to be the Wikipedia page anyway. No point wasting precious limited monthly searches.

Kagi does not count bangs as part of monthly usage - for wiki that would be !w search term

https://help.kagi.com/kagi/plans/plan-types.html#how-searche...

Re: Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

#216

Post by KingOfCoders »

bawolff wrote: post #12

There has been this trend recently of calling Wikipedia the last good thing on the internet. And i agree its great, i spend an inordinate amount of my time on Wikimedia related things. But i think there is a danger here with all these articles putting Wikipedia too much on a pedestal. It isn't perfect. It isn't perfectly neutral or perfectly reliable. It has flaws. The true best part of Wikipedia is that its a work i…

"It isn't perfect."

Articles about some chemical process are fine, indeed often excellent.

Everything where facts get filtered and presented, is bad. Read about real world events - especially where different groups or countries were involved - in three different languages on Wikipedia, and you'd think three different universes exist.

Re: Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

#217

Post by nl »

will4274 wrote: post #194
savef wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What examples of this are there? I've usually found Wikipedia to be quite equal opportunity, well rounded, and factual. They have their NPOV[1] policy, and seem impressively unbiased to me, given the various divisive situations they have to try to cover. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_v...

I don't know how much you know about the Washington Redskins naming controversy. There's little doubt that "redskin" is a slur today - Native Americans say so, and it's kind of up to them. The status in the 17th and 18th century is a bit less clear IMHO. Wikipedia says (or said, I guess - I haven't checked) that it unambiguously *was* a slur then too. As evidence, it cites a study of 17th century literature that note…

> Wikipedia says (or said, I guess - I haven't checked) that it unambiguously was a slur then too.

It doesn't seem to say this - there's quite a nuanced discussion about whether or not it was a slur during that time period[1]:

> The term redskin underwent pejoration through the 19th to early 20th centuries and in contemporary dictionaries of American English it is labeled as offensive, disparaging, or insulting..

> Documents from the colonial period indicate that the use of "red" as an identifier by Native Americans for themselves emerged in the context of Indian-European diplomacy in the southeastern region of North America, before later being adopted by Europeans and becoming a generic label for all Native Americans....

> In the debate over the meaning of the word "redskin", team supporters frequently cite a paper by Ives Goddard, a Smithsonian Institution senior linguist and curator emeritus, who asserts that the term was a direct translation of words used by Native Americans to refer to themselves and was benign in its original meaning ...

> Sociologist James V. Fenelon makes a more explicit statement that Goddard's article is poor scholarship, given that the conclusion of the origin and usage by Natives as "entirely benign" is divorced from the socio-historical realities of hostility and racism from which it emerged.

I think your summary saying the "status in the 17th and 18th century is a bit less clear" is fair, but I think the Wikipeida article outlines that lack of clarity too.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Redskins_name_contr...

Re: Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

#218

Post by dyauspitr »

voxl wrote: post #90
glitchc wrote: post #79

Wikipedia has plenty of propaganda. It's often at the fringes of knowledge, in niche subjects where there isn't yet an established group of proponents and detractors. It can be quite subtle too, will fool most laypeople, even those who are otherwise intellectually savvy. It's only when a subject becomes popular that the propaganda gets recognized and rectified.

And? Share an example. This reads like conspiratorial thinking without any evidence.

It says on there that the mRNA vaccine doesn’t kill you.

Re: Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

#219

Post by komali2 »

krmboya wrote: post #177
savef wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What examples of this are there? I've usually found Wikipedia to be quite equal opportunity, well rounded, and factual. They have their NPOV[1] policy, and seem impressively unbiased to me, given the various divisive situations they have to try to cover. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_v...

The editors mostly reference left-leaning media outlets when it comes to political topics, without providing a counterbalance from right-leaning sources, assuming it were a truth-seeking endeavor. As a non American this is very obvious to me. Even Reuters that was supposedly meant to be a non-biased media outlet is clearly left-leaning at this point

I'm very surprised to hear Reuters described as left wing. I suppose though that even my Republican twice Trump voting uncle is left of someone, is that what you mean?

I'm increasingly concerned about the fact that any media outlet, conservative or otherwise, that doesn't engage in far right pandering to the propaganda of politicians is magically labeled "left wing." Anecdotal but someone was arguing to me at a pub last night that Piers Morgan is a liberal now because of his criticism of Israel.

Re: Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

#220

Post by globular-toast »

testplzignore wrote: post #86

> Because Wikipedia was under a Creative Commons license, anyone who didn’t like the way the project was run could copy it and start their own, as a group of Spanish users did when the possibility of running ads was raised in 2002. Correction on this: Wikipedia was GFDL until 2009. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Licensing_update .

If I remember correctly, the licence change was achieved by the FSF releasing a special version of the GFDL allowing the change, taking advantage of the "any later version" part of the original licence.

OpenStreetMap's licence change was much more difficult. Agreement had to be sought from all editors and for the few that didn't respond their work was removed. We actually replaced the work of most non-responders before the licence change though.

Post reply on HN