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How paid Wikipedia editors squeeze you dry

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Re: How paid Wikipedia editors squeeze you dry

#41

Post by bryanrasmussen »

JimDabell wrote: post #23
riffraff wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I share the same feeling (and we likely are not thinking of the same politicians) it's worth noting every age has had people complaining about * The current government/politicians, which are worse then the ones we had * The youth, who have it easy and are not as good as the old generation We have actual texts from ancient civilizations saying this, so _maybe_ it's just a seesaw, or _maybe_ it's just getting old…

I’m not sure that’s true? There are certainly people complaining about politicians from every era, but specifically shameless grifters ? In similar volume to today? For instance, you can find no end of people who utterly despise Margaret Thatcher and think that she’s the worst thing to ever happen to the UK. But as far as I am aware, even the people who hate her tend to think that she genuinely believed in what she w…

grift seems to wax and wane with the seasons. It was certainly complained about at equivalent levels to today during the Grant administration.

Re: How paid Wikipedia editors squeeze you dry

#42

Post by JPLeRouzic »

quartesixte wrote: post #14
idiotsecant wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you and I just had the singular luck to exist at a time where computers were for weirdos, deviants, and dreamers. The internet was full of people who had naive ideas of what it would be used for and built beautiful and horrible things but they were built largely on ideology, not the banal mediocre lukewarm lawful neutral selfish tribal beige tyranny of the rest of the world. The technology is mature enough now th…

Is there anywhere new for us to go? Or must we wait for some new leap forward still?

Deep space but not with rockets, rogue/advanced biology/medicine?

Re: How paid Wikipedia editors squeeze you dry

#43

Post by alentred »

idiotsecant wrote: post #7
Smoosh wrote: post #4

Perhaps I’m just getting old and weary and the scales are falling from my eyes, but the number of assholes in the world who are willing to destroy some valuable resource or community for a small benefit to themselves seems to be increasing, and also increasing their efforts and their effectiveness.

No, you and I just had the singular luck to exist at a time where computers were for weirdos, deviants, and dreamers. The internet was full of people who had naive ideas of what it would be used for and built beautiful and horrible things but they were built largely on ideology, not the banal mediocre lukewarm lawful neutral selfish tribal beige tyranny of the rest of the world. The technology is mature enough now th…

My goodness, you are right. Your comment is like a cold shower, I never thought of it in this way. *We are hippies.* I'll keep being a naive optimist as I am, but this way of thinking offers an important perspective to add some realism to my judgment. Thank you, I mean it.

Re: How paid Wikipedia editors squeeze you dry

#44

Post by lukan »

riffraff wrote: post #13
JimDabell wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s definitely gotten worse in politics over the last decade. It used to be the case I could look at politicians and hate their policies and values, but know that they were genuinely trying to shape their country into what they thought was best. Now it seems to be overtaken by shameless grifters who will happily tear everything down if it profits them in some way.

While I share the same feeling (and we likely are not thinking of the same politicians) it's worth noting every age has had people complaining about * The current government/politicians, which are worse then the ones we had * The youth, who have it easy and are not as good as the old generation We have actual texts from ancient civilizations saying this, so _maybe_ it's just a seesaw, or _maybe_ it's just getting old…

"The youth, who have it easy "

Is this still currently a thing? I would think, with Covid lockdowns, social networks designed to manipulate them from early age and a future prognosed of climate change and war, not many people could think the new generation has it easy.

Re: How paid Wikipedia editors squeeze you dry

#45

Post by the_gipsy »

palmfacehn wrote: post #20

Wikipedia as an institution, their insider-only ways, byzantine guidelines and more all incentivize this kind of abuse. There's a pessimistic comment on this page observing, "The world is just chock full of assholes..". Wikipedia editors are not exempt here. Wikipedia shouldn't be so difficult to edit or highly politicized. There was a time when IP editors made the majority of contributions. Today correcting a typo m…

> Even asking questions about an uncited assertion on a talk page can be labeled as disruptive.

From their perspective it's spam. And it seems to work, as in: they have a wikipedia and you can complain but elsewhere.

Re: How paid Wikipedia editors squeeze you dry

#46

Post by Y_Y »

Smoosh wrote: post #4

Perhaps I’m just getting old and weary and the scales are falling from my eyes, but the number of assholes in the world who are willing to destroy some valuable resource or community for a small benefit to themselves seems to be increasing, and also increasing their efforts and their effectiveness.

The commons needs more tragedy!

Re: How paid Wikipedia editors squeeze you dry

#47

Post by charcircuit »

cuu508 wrote: post #21
charcircuit wrote: post #18

>The volunteer community is extremely diligent about finding and deleting any promotional material that marketing companies try to post on Wikipedia. I think it's much more common for me to see articles that do the opposite. They take some article, find some negative news article and write about them in the Wikipedia article. Especially for small communities where there are no notable publications except for major dr…

Can you point to a few specific examples? Are there signs this is targetted, and done maliciously? I have not previously noticed/recogmized articles like this, and am asking out of curiosity.

I would rather not as they are seen as controversial to outsiders since outsiders have probably only heard of them due to the drama. The common theme of these articles is that if you go to their wikipedia page and go to the very first revision you will see that the article was made to document a controversy.

I don't think it's necessarily the person writing the wikipedia page malicious, but it creates a reinforcing cycle where journalists don't know what XYZ is so the Google it, get the wikipedia page Since wikipedia ranks highly, then see a bunch of controversial stuff, and then propagate that more. Similar with average people wondering what it is.

Personally, I don't like controversy sections in wikipedia article as the way wikipedia works does not make them work well. Good luck trying to correct misinformation while simultaneously following wikipedia's rules as you can't correct misinformation yourself.

Re: How paid Wikipedia editors squeeze you dry

#48

Post by piaste »

knowaveragejoe wrote: post #34
quartesixte wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there anywhere new for us to go? Or must we wait for some new leap forward still?

For some reason it's unpopular here, but that "place to go" is the altweb of crypto and other networks like I2P, often dubbed "web3". Yes, all of the scams and beige this-or-that are there. But it's so vast and so granular right now that you can definitely find your dreamers and weirdos doing interesting things.

When I lived in a small European town a few years ago, upon hearing that I was a software developer, regular-ass business dudes would regularly want to talk about NFTs, inbetween a conversation about football and one about cars.

I'm sure there are weirdos in the web3 spaces, but I feel like they're very outnumbered. Projects like ENS or IPFS are probably much more interesting to weirdos than most "crypto stuff". I2P too, though I don't think this twenty-year-old project should be lumped in with "web3".

I think the Fediverse is a better place to go. Lots of little communities, almost all of run by regular nerds, each one with their own quirks and petty personal drama and constant UI tweaking? It's like forums all over again, except it's now safe to use one password for everything.

Re: How paid Wikipedia editors squeeze you dry

#50

Post by RidiculousBeans »

treffer wrote: post #28
Smoosh wrote: post #4

Perhaps I’m just getting old and weary and the scales are falling from my eyes, but the number of assholes in the world who are willing to destroy some valuable resource or community for a small benefit to themselves seems to be increasing, and also increasing their efforts and their effectiveness.

Well, the good news is that there aren't enough of these a*** to destroy it. When Wikipedia started and even like 10-15 years ago that wasn't a common belief. Especially in Germany. "There are some assholes on earth, how could you dare to believe something voluntary and open to everyone will succeed?!?" (others already posted that it's not unfounded given real world experience) Wikipedia though is my preferred counte…

Except that everything regarding contemporary politics in English Wikipedia is biased beyond any belief.

And they seem to be adamant about titling the article about Kalashnikov rifle "AK-47", which is simply wrong (there were only handful of actual units of model AK-47 produced, and the mass armament of Soviet army with AKs has started with AKM), and their justification for that is "but that's how AK called in the media" - I thought Wikipedia is there to debunk media myths, not amplify them.

Other than that, yes, Wikipedia is a miracle.

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