Live data from Hacker News

25 Years of Wikipedia

wikipedia25.org

341–350 of 498 posts

Re: 25 Years of Wikipedia

#341
post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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(!)…

> You missed the part where Wales called a fact an "opinion".

Has Wales actually disputed the objective facts of the matter?

I did not take his comment to mean “it’s an opinion whether Sanger worked on Wikipedia from the beginning” but “it’s an opinion whether that qualifies him as a cofounder”.

> 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."

That is essentially what he said. He called himself the founder, then when the interviewer probed, said it’s a dumb question, then said he doesn’t care, then said the interviewer can frame it however he wants, then said again that he doesn’t care.

He said what you think he should’ve said. He just didn’t use your exact words.

> 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(!)

What “basic facts” did he press on? I heard no facts or questions about facts. He used the word “facts” while pressing Wales specifically about calling himself the founder.

Re: 25 Years of Wikipedia

#342
post #247
post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's always doable to find or fabricate facts, and the truth wins based on the amount of energy, power and money that the person has. You appear to be using unusual definitions of "fact" and "truth", more akin to "assertions" and "vibe". I'll stick with the traditional definitions.

An example of (either fabricated, or just very convenient) facts: [1] https://patriotpolling.com/our-polls/f/greenland-supports-jo... According to an American poll that surveyed 416 people residing across Greenland on their support for joining the United States. 57.3% wants to join the US. [2] https://www.politico.eu/article/greenland-poll-mute-egede-do... According to a Danish poll (conducted through web interviews)…

You're confusing data with facts.

A "fabricated fact" (or "alternative fact" if you prefer) is an oxymoron. Actual truth, as opposed to a vibe or what people are basing their decisions on these days, is orthogonal to "the amount of energy, power and money that the person has." Deriving or identifying actual facts and truth is hard (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method) and always subject to change based on new data, so lots of people don't do it -- it's much easier to just make shit up and confirms biases.

Re: 25 Years of Wikipedia

#343

[flagged]

> the persistent editorial and corporate bias and intellectual dishonesty Musk is explicitly partisan and has repeatedly manipulated Grok's output to suit his agenda. How could you possibly consider Grok a worthwhile alternative if you take issue with intellectual dishonesty and corporate bias?

Apparently some people on this site think there’s such a thing as unbiased information.

Re: 25 Years of Wikipedia

#344

https://grokipedia.com

Wouldn't touch that piece of shit if you paid me.

It's not that it doesn't have potential. But I hope the other players take up the mantle and auto-generate alternatives.

The stench of Mr Elon Musk is just too strong with Grokipedia (scrape that, bitch)

Re: 25 Years of Wikipedia

#345
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has it? I think to challenge you have to show some comparable usage numbers. Its certainly an impressive technical feat to have this AI-based wiki project, but does anyone actually use it? I mean that genuinely. I don't know any usage numbers for Grok. Is it even 1% of Wiki? Is it 50%? Is it more?

It's consistently better in content quality, for everything that I've used it for. I've seen conversations complaining about it that effectively reek of either anti-Musk or anti-AI bias, and when I dig in, I haven't found any legitimate bad information or arbitrary bias in the articles themselves. It's not yet as comprehensive, with ~6 million articles compared to Wikipedia's ~7 million, and the UI isn't as good, wit…

AI-slop tainted by a billionaire wanker.

Translation: I'll never use grokipedia while I have access to better alternatives.

Re: 25 Years of Wikipedia

#346
post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An example of (either fabricated, or just very convenient) facts: [1] https://patriotpolling.com/our-polls/f/greenland-supports-jo... According to an American poll that surveyed 416 people residing across Greenland on their support for joining the United States. 57.3% wants to join the US. [2] https://www.politico.eu/article/greenland-poll-mute-egede-do... According to a Danish poll (conducted through web interviews)…

You know that both can be true right ? If I ask 10 people what they think of something and 60% says "no" and if I ask another 10 people and 90% says "yes" there's no relation between the 60% and the 90%, like at all. Or as Homer said it "Anybody can come up with statistics to prove anything, Kent. 40% of people know that."

I like what you said about the quote :)

My favorite is: "Numbers are fragile creatures, and if you can torture them enough, you can make them say whatever you want"

Re: 25 Years of Wikipedia

#347

In 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.

Are you talking about English Wikipedia, or all of the Wikipedia sites?

Re: 25 Years of Wikipedia

#348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Wikipedia has been the proto-Reddit for a long time, that is, it was relatively easy for ideological bubbles to manufacture the Chomskyian Consent, just by being early adopters. As such it rapidly developed into heavily biased page, as Wikipedia‘s co-founder Larry Sanger keeps pointing out. It helps if you are proficient in multiple languages so you can at least „hop“ between the (some) bubbles. But the gatekeeping i…

Larry Sanger is not the most convincing on this topic due to how he keeps using conspiracy theories as examples of things Wikipedia is biased against.

Like if the complaint is that Wikipedia is biased against pseudoscience like naturopathy, i consider that a good thing.

Re: 25 Years of Wikipedia

#349

https://wikipedia25.org/en/the-first-day > Founder Jimbo Wales on a challenge overcome Aren't you forgetting someone, Jimmy? Your co-founder Larry Sanger, perhaps? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Sanger Let's check one of the citations from the History of Wikipedia page: https://www.mid-day.com/lifestyle/health-and-fitness/article... > It was Larry Sanger who chanced upon the critical concept of combining the thr…

I think Wikipedia is the only place where an early employee who left relatively quickly would be considered a "co-founder". If this was a tech company i dont think Larry would be considered a co-founder.

I think the thing is a soar subject because Wikipedia essentially rejected all of Sangar's ideas, but he's still kind of riding on its coattails.

Re: 25 Years of Wikipedia

#350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His nine theses are basically a how-to guide for replacing democratic consensus with culture war bullshit. He clearly wants to bend the process to match his perception of the world rather than update his understanding of the world to match the facts. The process Wikipedia uses to produce articles that present facts with without editorializing has clearly worked fairly well. Obviously we have a more difficult time rea…

I don't understand how you could read the nine theses essays and think they are anything but reasonable. Even if you disagree with his politics, the results of his suggestions would almost certainly make Wikipedia more pluralistic, welcoming and neutral.

Because they have all been tried before and had the opposite affect.

Anyone who likes them should make their own site to try and see. Oh wait, sangar already did that multiple times and it crashed and burned every time.

Post reply on HN