Wikipedia could do a lot by reminding people of their own rule: that Wikipedia is not a source to be cited - more often.
25 Years of Wikipedia
301–310 of 498 posts
Re: 25 Years of Wikipedia
#302Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s more likely that you became more radicalized so what used to read as neutral seems partisan now.
Is it radicalised to want even a basic premise of neutrality in an encyclopedia? Despite not being particularly political, even I raise an eyebrow when an article opens with "____ is a , , known for "
Indeed, neutral point of view is one of the most important principles of Wikipedia [1]. I only recall phrasing like that being used used in very clear-cut cases, like the word "pseudoscience" in the article on homeopathy. If you don't think something is neutral, the guideline "be bold" [2] encourages you to edit it. You don't have to wait for somebody else to.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_vie... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Be_bold
Re: 25 Years of Wikipedia
#303https://grokipedia.com
Still in beta. It's apparently going to be called 'Encyclopedia Galactica' when released.
Re: 25 Years of Wikipedia
#304I can't be the only one who feels that Wikipedia's quality has really started to go downhill over the past 5 or so years. I've noticed more and more articles which read as ridiculously partisan, usually around subjects with any link to politics or current events. That's probably linked to the increasing polarisation in the US, but I get the impression that the sites neutrality policies have gradually been chipped awa…
I haven’t noticed this.
Re: 25 Years of Wikipedia
#305In the 2000s, in the tech world, the open source successes that were being talked about was always Apache and Linux. When Wikipedia started gaining a bit of traction, everyone made fun of it. It was the butt of jokes in all the prime time comedy shows. And I always felt like telling the critics - "Don't you see what is happening? People all over the world are adding their own bits of knowledge and creating this huge…
> Something that goes beyond our daily vices of politics and religion Religion maybe, and Wikipedia is indeed pretty awesome for many topics, but politics is THE bad example here. Much of the political - especially geopolitical - content on Wikipedia has a tremendous atlanticist bias.
“atlanticist” - the culture of the enlightenment and the good that’s come from it.
Wikipedia does hold ideals, that access to knowledge is a net good, that people can cooperate both in contribution and review without a dominating magisterial authority. That rational dialogue and qualification and refinement is possible, and that it’s possible to correct for bias, and see the difference between bias and agenda.
Like those whose anti-enlightenment agenda is revealed when they use “atlanticist” as a slur.
Re: 25 Years of Wikipedia
#306Earlier quoted context omitted.
This kind of bias is a statistical measure; typically you can't prove or disprove it using a single sample. It's about larger patterns, which things are talked about and (crucially) which are not. How much attention is given to things and not.
Ok, can’t wait for specific examples illustrating the larger patterns
Eh... this is a joke comment, right?
Re: 25 Years of Wikipedia
#307Earlier quoted context omitted.
It absolutely matched the Wikipedia summary. There is a ton of evidence linked supporting each point: it was a hate mob from the moment Eron Gjoni decided his ex should be punished for breaking up with him.
> from the moment Eron Gjoni decided his ex should be punished for breaking up with him. There was no such moment in the first place.
It all started with his post, attacking her relationship with Grayson, who never reviewed her games. Even he later admitted that the original claims were fictitious but that did nothing to stop the attacks – if you look at the threats she received or the online statements the attackers made, they cared a LOT more about her alleged infidelity or what they perceived as unfair privileges for women in the gaming industry than anything about journalism.
This was later added to his post:
> To be clear, if there was any conflict of interest between Zoe and Nathan regarding coverage of Depression Quest prior to April, I have no evidence to imply that it was sexual in nature.
He even told Boston Magazine that this was the hook he used to get attention, with what he knew was a high likelihood of attacks:
> As Gjoni began to craft “The Zoe Post,” his early drafts read like a “really boring, really depressing legal document,” he says. He didn’t want to merely prove his case; it had to read like a potboiler. So he deliberately punched up the narrative in the voice of a bitter ex-boyfriend, organizing it into seven acts with dramatic titles like “Damage Control” and “The Cum Collage May Not Be Accurate.” He ended sections on cliffhangers, and wove in video-game analogies to grab the attention of Quinn’s industry colleagues. He was keenly aware of attracting an impressionable readership. “If I can target people who are in the mood to read stories about exes and horrible breakups,” he says now, “I will have an audience.”
> One of the keys to how Gjoni justified the cruelty of “The Zoe Post” to its intended audience was his claim that Quinn slept with five men during and after their brief romance. In retrospect, he thinks one of his most amusing ideas was to paste the Five Guys restaurant logo into his screed: “Now I can’t stop mentally referring to her as Burgers and Fries,” he wrote. By the time he released the post into the wild, he figured the odds of Quinn’s being harassed were 80 percent.
Re: 25 Years of Wikipedia
#308In the 2000s, in the tech world, the open source successes that were being talked about was always Apache and Linux. When Wikipedia started gaining a bit of traction, everyone made fun of it. It was the butt of jokes in all the prime time comedy shows. And I always felt like telling the critics - "Don't you see what is happening? People all over the world are adding their own bits of knowledge and creating this huge…
>Something that tries to bring a lot of balance and objectivity in today's polarized world.
And fails spectacularly.
Re: 25 Years of Wikipedia
#309Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is a fair question, IMO. His reaction was childish.
After watching this I kind of disagree. Wales said he didn’t care multiple times. Calling it the “dumbest question” is childish, yes. Walking out of an interview that was going nowhere is not childish. I personally think writing Sanger out of Wikipedia history (as in this 25 year celebration montage thing) is quite lame. But I also think pressing Wales on this when he says “you can say whatever you want” is also quit…
You missed the part where Wales called a fact an "opinion". Wales could have said "I don't dispute the facts of that case. I see myself as the founder, but I won't argue against other interpretations. Lets move past it." Instead he immediately became defensive, even angry.
The interviewer is right to press on the basic facts and Wales was wrong to ragequit, especially since the exchange lasted less than 45 seconds(!)
I don't see this as a political victim issue: I can see Sanger as an asshole while also seeing Wales as weak.
Re: 25 Years of Wikipedia
#310Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's impossible to write completely neutrally. Editorial decisions like what information to include or exclude, what sources to cite, what order to present information in, what illustrations to use cannot be avoided and inherently present some kind of narrative.
It absolutely is possible to write completely neutrally. All it takes is for the writer to be aware/honest of their biases and to have a goal of achieving a neutral perspective. Of course the goal of most writing is explicitly to not be neutral.
Literally the first thing you will learn in journalism school is that there is no such thing as "objective neutrality". Even deciding what story to cover includes bias.