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Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

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Re: Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

#371

Post by zahlman »

pessimizer wrote: post #64
IAmBroom wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its (relatively short) history suggests otherwise, so far.

It certainly does not. It is not dependable for any subject that anybody or any government that commands any significant resources has any interest in. I'm sure there's somebody right this second guarding distortions on some obscure page about some scientific phenomenon that 99.999% of people have never heard of because their investment depends on it. The political model doesn't work at all. If you just count the vot…

> If you just count the votes of the people who show up to vote, the Party will hire buses and empty the retirement homes and homeless shelters.

They don't even have to go that far; consider the "consensus is not a vote" policy.

Re: Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

#372

Post by mafuy »

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

The Right-leaning has a relevant influence on media because some of its supporters are affluent and it is in their financial interest. Ex: Bezos bought a newspaper. The same is far less often the case for the Left-leaning. There are few "land and factory owners" that are part of a pro-worker movement, simply because it would hurt them (or at least that's what they truly believe).

Accordingly, the average media experienced a shift to the right, but not to the left. To be neutral, one thus has to look left of the average of what the media report.

Re: Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

#373

Post by jowea »

LtWorf wrote: post #11
jalapenod wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Honestly it's the first place I look when I must implement some network protocol.

Yeah, lots of the weaker parts of Wikipedia relate either to political controversy or things that the editor base doesn't care as much about.

Re: Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

#374

Post by zahlman »

cormorant wrote: post #352
hungmung wrote: post #16

Honestly Wikipedia+Archive.org remaining online have national security implications (not just USA, but any democracy). Though I'd wager the current administration would take a different view.

There are mirrors and backups of Wikipedia. Archive.org has no substitute.

archive.today at least allows people to preserve snapshots of selected websites, which is often important for being able to demonstrate that mainstream sources have edited or deleted content without proper acknowledgment.

Interestingly enough, Wikipedia once (I haven't checked if it's still in effect) blacklisted links to there, with compelling evidence (if you read any of the discussion behind the scenes) that it was actually about certain admins and power users trying to maintain control over the bias in main-space article content.

Re: Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

#375

Post by torium »

fkyoureadthedoc wrote: post #360
torium wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Torrents are also a good thing on the internet.

Me getting free movies and music, piracy good Meta getting free books to train an LLM, piracy bad

Powerful entities getting a pass, bad.

Individuals getting a pass, good.

See, it just depends on how you slice the Venn diagram. With a bit of imagination you'll be able to start connecting the dots by yourself in no time.

Re: Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

#377

Post by sorbusherra »

torium wrote: post #341
stevage wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say that OpenStreetMap is also a pretty good thing on the internet. Maybe not quite as impactful, and I'd say less well run, and rougher around the edges, but it's largely resisted being taken over by evil corporations or heavily influenced in bad directions.

Torrents are also a good thing on the internet.

Linux is also good thing on the internet.

Re: Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

#378

Post by HankStallone »

pessimizer wrote: post #64
IAmBroom wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its (relatively short) history suggests otherwise, so far.

It certainly does not. It is not dependable for any subject that anybody or any government that commands any significant resources has any interest in. I'm sure there's somebody right this second guarding distortions on some obscure page about some scientific phenomenon that 99.999% of people have never heard of because their investment depends on it. The political model doesn't work at all. If you just count the vot…

Yeah, I've heard people say, "I don't use it for anything controversial, but it's accurate for other stuff." That's usually true, but you can't assume it, because you never know what will be someone's personal hobbyhorse.

If I just want to know some dry facts about Podunk, BFE, it'll probably have them right. But maybe not, if the mayor of Podunk wrote the page and is trying to promote the town, or if it was last edited by someone who used to live there and hates the place. And very few people are going to check the talk or history pages to see whether there's been an edit war or other hints that the page might be sketchy.

Re: Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

#379

Post by zahlman »

howenterprisey wrote: post #84
NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment is farcical. Supposing you are right and that there was "no doxxing involved", it's still impossible for an outsider like most of us here, to verify it. Especially if there is such a thing as non-public discourse of any kind. It is not a transparent organization, and it does not even pay lip service to the effort of transparency. It is large enough of an organization that it is an absurd claim, on its fa…

When I said anyone can verify it, I meant it; go make an account on wikipediocracy, go to the "Wikimedian Folks Too Embarrassing for Public Viewing" forums, and go through the posts by that user. Quite to the contrary, it's a very transparent organization because edit histories are public. It would be trivial to link to any instances of doxxing on the project, unless they don't exist, which they don't. Wikipediocracy…

> It would be trivial to link to any instances of doxxing on the project, unless they don't exist

Please don't pretend as if people having a discussion at this level are unaware of the facilities available for permanent deletion on Wikipedia (the so-called "oversight").

> Wikipediocracy doesn't count when talking about Wikipedia doxxing.

"Wikipedia doxxing" clearly means doxxing performed by and/or against Wikipedians, not necessarily on Wikipedia's actual domains. Especially if you're using the term to refer to GP, which states:

> The article criticizes doxxing but well-known Wikipedia editors doxx each other all the time...

So unless you can demonstrate that these Wikipedia editors don't post on Wikipediocracy, then yes it obviously does count. "Wikipedia editors doxxing each other" doesn't stop being "Wikipedia editors doxxing each other" just because of where it's posted.

> When I said anyone can verify it, I meant it; go make an account on wikipediocracy, go to the "Wikimedian Folks Too Embarrassing for Public Viewing" forums, and go through the posts by that user.

It looks to me like the top-level commenter already did exactly this, and found the exact opposite of what you imply we'd find.

Re: Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

#380

Post by ThinkingGuy »

mmphosis wrote: post #42
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…

Wikipedia is my default search engine.

Mine, too. 1. Wikipedia for general knowledge questions ("What languages are spoken in Nigeria?") 2. Wolfram Alpha for time/date/number questions ("How many days until 2026-07-01?") 3. Mapquest for driving directions 4. DuckDuckGo for everything else
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