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25 Years of Wikipedia

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Re: 25 Years of Wikipedia

#371

Post by phatfish »

shevy-java wrote: post #202
mr_mitm wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a very touchy subject for Wales. It caused him to walk out of an interview after 48 seconds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uswRbWyt_pg

IMO Wales has been sitting on that chair for too long. He should retire. It would also be better for Wikipedia to not have any "public face". I don't want fake-heroes; I want accurate, objective content.

I think he plays a good role as a lightning rod for all the MAGA morons to attack, rather than going after contributors. It's better that Musk has a tantrum at Jimmy rather than doxing some poor editor on X.

Sad that he has to play that role, but this is where we are at the moment.

Re: 25 Years of Wikipedia

#372

Post by FiveOhThree »

acdha wrote: post #368
FiveOhThree wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That Kotaku piece was a full year after GamerGate, if anything people might question whether it'd have happened if GamerGate hasn't drawn attention to these problems.

Re: 25 Years of Wikipedia

#373

Post by chmod775 »

konne88 wrote: post #142

I do believe that Wikipedia is one of the least biased sources out there, but there is definitely bias. Here is a concrete example. Compare the introduction paragraph of the English circumcision article ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumcision ) with the German one ( https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zirkumzision ). The English intro talks a lot about medical advantages of the procedure: "reduced rates of sexually tr…

> The German one has not a single sentence in the intro about advantages, but a whole paragraph on how it's controversial.

No, they do have a sentence on that right before, talking about how sometimes it can make sense as a medical procedure:

> Die Zirkumzision ist eine von mehreren Behandlungsmöglichkeiten (s. z. B. Triple Inzision), die beispielsweise bei schweren Formen der pathologischen Phimose als indiziert gilt, wenn Behandlungsalternativen nicht erfolgversprechend sind oder zuvor keinen Heilungserfolg brachten.

I'd say overall the German one is a bit more balanced, if maybe not in the opening paragraphs. It goes over pretty much all of the benefits in similar detail to the English one, while spending much more words on "adverse effects" (which the English one spends very few words on in comparison, and no pictures at all).

Generally it seems that the English one does its very best to gloss over anything graphic, while the German one spares no detail - a product of underlying cultural attitudes no doubt. English Wikipedia would probably consider many of the contents of the German article "gratuitous detail", while German Wikipedia prefers a "factual and explicit" clinical style.

Re: 25 Years of Wikipedia

#374

Post by richardfeynman »

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."

This whole affair should get much more attention. If one topic on Wikipedia can be so manipulated, any topic on Wikipedia can, and it's no longer a reliable source of knowledge.

I hope The Wikimedia Foundation can get its act together, and I admire the courage of Jimmy Wales for speaking up about this, but I've also stopped donating. I want no part of this.

Re: 25 Years of Wikipedia

#375

Post by saghm »

weslleyskah wrote: post #360
OvidNaso wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hold on, their moderation methods are as transparent as could possibly be. Every article has a dedicated page where every decision has a reason and more often than not an overwhelming amount of discussion. Their overall policy is similarly debated publicly. Is it overwhelming? Oh yes. Tough to change? Probably also yes without dedication and sound reasoning. But opaque? Certainly doesn't fail that criteria.

It certainly becomes opaque when it is a labyrinth of links and documents that you need to read and follow through. It does not help when these same rules can be abused to death by veteran users. At a certain point, no one really knows the devil's dance happening at the top of the moderation ladder and you end up wasting a lot of lifetime on these dead talk pages. It is a bureaucratic nightmare.

I don't really see how it's possible to be transparent about decisions for something this large without it being somewhat complex to follow the paper trail. If enough stuff from a discussion is written down, it's going to be complex. If the discussions aren't recorded in a publicly accessible way, that's clearly even less transparent. And if the scope of the discussions for something as large as Wikipedia haven't scaled with proportion to the amount of content being discussed, most of the decisions would probably not have been discussed at all, either due to individuals making them on their own (which is not particularly transparent, since there's no visibility into how they reached those decisions), or it was automated in some way (which is at most only as transparent as it would be to have the human who implemented the automation directly in charge of making the decisions, but in practice often is the least transparent option of all because most of the time automated moderation is almost always relying on ML or something similar).

Re: 25 Years of Wikipedia

#376

Post by richardfeynman »

GuB-42 wrote: post #339
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…

I didn't notice this, in fact, I still find Wikipedia to be remarkably neutral on controversial topics. It is very explicit about not being a news website, and yet, that's where I find the best coverage for hot topics like the war in Ukraine and Gaza, Black Lives Matter, protests in Hong-Kong, etc... For instance, most western media completely disregard the Russian side of the Ukraine war, not Wikipedia, where you ha…

You are getting bad information. The Wikipedia pages on those specific topics (Ukraine, Gaza, BLM) is known to be have been manipulated by groups of editors acting in coordination to advance political narratives.

Re: 25 Years of Wikipedia

#377

Post by bawolff »

mightyham wrote: post #365
bawolff wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> Claiming that Wikipedia has implemented all of these suggestions in the past is just plainly false

I'm claiming people, not necessarily wikipedia, have tried them. However many have been tried by Wikipedia too.

> just belittling efforts at changing the status quo?

The status quo is pretty good. Change for change sake is an anti-pattern.

Regardless, i think people who like these ideas should try them, on their own site. I suspect they will quickly find out why Wikipedia does not want to do them.

After all, martin luther didnt just whine that the pope wouldnt listen to him, he made his own thing.

Re: 25 Years of Wikipedia

#378

Post by saghm »

weslleyskah wrote: post #187
thunderbong wrote: post #147

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…

Wikipedia is surely a formidable source of knowledge, but > Something that goes beyond our daily vices of politics and religion. You are romanticizing. Wikipedia is a corporation, just like Work or University, and I personally assume anything corporate is being manipulated by the owners or the ruling oligarchy because they are structurally unreliable. This is especially veritable for Wikipedia. Create an account ther…

At least in the US, most universities are also not for profit. I'd argue that Wikipedia and universities have more in common than either do with for profit companies, so I'm not convinced your examples clarify why it makes more sense to lump all of them together.

Re: 25 Years of Wikipedia

#379

Post by Cyphase »

hbn wrote: post #329
defjm wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you provide an example article from Wikipedia for such bias? PS: I had to look up „atlanticist“, did this on Wikipedia. (giggle!)

I know sometime around Trump's first presidency, in Bill Clinton's Wikipedia entry, under the Impeachment section they added in a picture of Trump and Clinton shaking hands, apropos of nothing in the surrounding text. I just checked and it's still there.

Here's the change, which happened on December 5, 2016, a few weeks after Trump was elected the first time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bill_Clinton&diff...

Link to the section in question:

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bill_Clinton&diff...

Still there as of now:

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bill_Clinton&oldi...

Re: 25 Years of Wikipedia

#380

Post by weslleyskah »

saghm wrote: post #378
weslleyskah wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wikipedia is surely a formidable source of knowledge, but > Something that goes beyond our daily vices of politics and religion. You are romanticizing. Wikipedia is a corporation, just like Work or University, and I personally assume anything corporate is being manipulated by the owners or the ruling oligarchy because they are structurally unreliable. This is especially veritable for Wikipedia. Create an account ther…

At least in the US, most universities are also not for profit. I'd argue that Wikipedia and universities have more in common than either do with for profit companies, so I'm not convinced your examples clarify why it makes more sense to lump all of them together.

It was badly worded. I don't even know how to express this properly. It has been many years since I edited on Wikipedia, and it was on both english and portuguese. But the point that I was trying to make is that they are institutions with ideological norms and if you start deviating from them and start hammering on controversial and dangerous ideas and topics, or even just discovering and mentioning them, you can be silenced very easily.

And I don't agree with you that US universities are not for profit entities, might be on paper, I don't know. Some of them can bind the students to a long life of debt no?

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