25 Years of Wikipedia • Hacker News Board

Re: 25 Years of Wikipedia

#361

Post by thunderfork » Thu, Jan 15, 2026, 10:45 PM UTC

zahlman wrote: post #355

thunderfork wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your grievance is "people don't take me seriously in arguments", then you could try deploying sources. There's probably still plenty of /v/ archives from back in the day, right? But I think "people trust contemporary and retrospective reporting more than me, a guy who self-identifies as having a skin-in-the-game perspective" shouldn't be very surprising. And, if it means anything, I was reading /v/ at the time, to…

> If your grievance is "people don't take me seriously in arguments", then you could try deploying sources. There's probably still plenty of /v/ archives from back in the day, right? I spent years trying to do this. It took inordinate amounts of time and mental energy, made exactly zero difference to the beliefs of my interlocutors no matter how well reasoned and evidenced, and additionally got me dismissed as some w…

>You keep talking about /v/. I don't understand why.

Given that you find not knowing the blog post guy's name disqualifying, this is extremely funny. The ground level of the whole shitshow wasn't /r/KiA.

(I'd love to see a scrap of evidence that /r/KiA did anything beyond "we did it reddit"-style conspiracy posting and going "hmm this dev is queer, is this an ethics issue?", but given that this was apparently traumatic for you, I won't force the issue)

Re: 25 Years of Wikipedia

#362

Post by sequoia » Thu, Jan 15, 2026, 10:51 PM UTC

FiveOhThree wrote: post #24

I 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…

Some of this has to do with concerted and long-running campaigns of coordinated editing (against wikipedia rules) to push a one-sided political narrative. Most notably this happened and continues to be done by Israel-eliminationists[0]. Wikipedia eventually acknowledged the problem and banned a couple of the worst offenders[1] but that's a drop in the bucket as far as I'm concerned. I read it less and less these days and don't consult it at all for anything controversial ("controversial" meaning "topics that leftists have strong opinions about").

Sadly, a system like Wikipedia is hard to defend against persistent coordinated attacks by people who have lots of time.

0: https://aish.com/weaponizing-wikipedia-against-israel/ 1: https://www.jpost.com/business-and-innovation/article-833180

Re: 25 Years of Wikipedia

#363

Post by DavidPiper » Thu, Jan 15, 2026, 10:53 PM UTC

hallole wrote: post #283

an_ko wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's context. Hank Green talked about it in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zi0ogvPfCA , but in short, paraphrasing, and adding my own thoughts: Jimmy Wales has been poked at with the question of whether he should call himself a founder or specifically co-founder for a long time, by right-wingers who think Wikipedia is too woke, and want to irritate and discredit him as much as possible, and instead raise up his…

> Jimmy Wales has been poked at with the question of whether he should call himself a founder or specifically co-founder Not surprising! Are we setting aside how deceitful his answer his? Claiming all credit for a collaborative accomplishment -- which he does by adopting the "founder" title -- would rightfully provoke "poking" by interviewers. I can't imagine an interview not addressing a question that is so pertinen…

Wales actually covers this at length in his book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seven_Rules_of_Trust

He himself admits it's a complicated situation, and argues both his own and Sanger's position.

Combined with the context provided by all the parent comments here, it's quite difficult to argue good faith given the interview was also specifically on the book tour. There are many different and actually productive ways the interview could have talked about the conflict between Wales and Sanger.

Re: 25 Years of Wikipedia

#364

Post by sequoia » Thu, Jan 15, 2026, 10:54 PM UTC

amiga386 wrote: post #150

zozbot234 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wikipedia was always insufficiently neutral about political or social topics. At a bare minimum, you need to check whether there are any highlighted controversies in the article talk page.

Wikipedia itself knows how much shit it's in. Every ongoing conflict and culture-war issue is a "contentious topic", which is Wikipedia code for "editors are at each others' throats" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Contentious_topics#L... They have a giant pile of editors banned from topics until they can play nice. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Editing_restrictions... But you do give a great tip: a…

this is so crazy. How does this accord with wikipedia's NOR & NPV stances?

This is a case of "if you abandon your convictions when it's inconvenient, you never really had convictions in the first place."

Re: 25 Years of Wikipedia

#365

Post by mightyham » Thu, Jan 15, 2026, 11:06 PM UTC

bawolff wrote: post #350

mightyham wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

Did you even read the document? Claiming that Wikipedia has implemented all of these suggestions in the past is just plainly false. If you disagree with the documents contents, why don't you provide a substantive argument instead of just belittling efforts at changing the status quo?

Re: 25 Years of Wikipedia

#366

Post by dlubarov » Thu, Jan 15, 2026, 11:12 PM UTC

sequoia wrote: post #364

amiga386 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wikipedia itself knows how much shit it's in. Every ongoing conflict and culture-war issue is a "contentious topic", which is Wikipedia code for "editors are at each others' throats" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Contentious_topics#L... They have a giant pile of editors banned from topics until they can play nice. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Editing_restrictions... But you do give a great tip: a…

this is so crazy. How does this accord with wikipedia's NOR & NPV stances? This is a case of "if you abandon your convictions when it's inconvenient, you never really had convictions in the first place."

I would say it absolutely violates the NPOV policy, and it's worth noting that both Wikipedia founders share this view [1] [2]. It's the only thing they've agreed on in many years.

Ultimately it's just a numbers game - Wikipedia almost always follows consensus, even when the consensus is to (effectively, without admission) throw neutrality or other rules out the window.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Gaza_genocide/Archive_22#...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Gaza_genocide/Archive_22#...

Re: 25 Years of Wikipedia

#367

Post by thiht » Thu, Jan 15, 2026, 11:14 PM UTC

lysace wrote: post #306

thiht wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, can’t wait for specific examples illustrating the larger patterns

Eh... this is a joke comment, right?

I don’t know, is the "Wikipedia is left biased but I can’t produce a single piece of evidence" rhetoric a joke?

Re: 25 Years of Wikipedia

#368

Post by acdha » Thu, Jan 15, 2026, 11:20 PM UTC

FiveOhThree wrote: post #333

acdha wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that was really their motive, they sure picked an odd way to express it by focusing their efforts on attacking one woman with very little power in the industry while ignoring the actual game media outlets and huge companies. It’s like claiming you’re an environmental activist but instead of even talking about Exxon you’re busy making death threats to the local pet store claiming their organic kibble isn’t really o…

That's it though, at the time there were plenty of complaints about the media outlets and publishers. Your problem is that the only people reporting on this to the wider public were the very journalists that the group were criticising.

GamerGate wasn’t doing that work and they distracted mightily from it. For example, the much-hated Kotaku was actually doing reporting which got them black listed so not only was GamerGate not contributing there, they were actually harming the people who were:

https://kotaku.com/a-price-of-games-journalism-1743526293

Even if they had also been involved, it would not excuse the abusive behavior.

Re: 25 Years of Wikipedia

#369

Post by pndy » Thu, Jan 15, 2026, 11:24 PM UTC

shevy-java wrote: post #197

In the last 2 years, Wikipdia's quality declined. For me this was evident when they suddenly changed the UI. The new UI is more annoying. Perhaps it is nicer for Average Joe people, but for powerusers it is just annoying to use now. But this is not the only problem: many articles have a low quality, or they are so complicated that Average Joe doesn't understand them, which is ironic considering the UI was most likely…

> For me this was evident when they suddenly changed the UI.

That reminds me of this thread, where clearly new interface wasn't fondly received: https://old.reddit.com/r/wikipedia/comments/10fdfal/wikipedi...

Re: 25 Years of Wikipedia

#370

Post by acdha » Thu, Jan 15, 2026, 11:28 PM UTC

zahlman wrote: post #352

acdha wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Even he later admitted that the original claims were fictitious No, he did not. And nobody was claiming that Grayson reviewed Quinn's games beyond like a day or two of confusion, and none of the arguments made relied on that being the case. > what they perceived as unfair privileges for women in the gaming industry than anything about journalism. This is a false dichotomy. The entire point was that the journalism h…

> No, he did not

Those were his words, I’m not sure why you’d expect your assertion to be more credible.

> nobody was claiming that Grayson reviewed Quinn's games beyond like a day or two of confusion

They spent a year lying about her “unethical” actions justifying all of the abuse, and it all traced back to that foundational lie.