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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

#401

Post by rc_mob »

Gareth321 wrote: post #370
tim333 wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If you ask it about anything political it's going to be from a certain slant I'm not sure if there's anything else out there that's better at giving a fairly neutral summary of political controversies? It reminds me of the Churchill quote "democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…"

Ground.news is quite good. It provides a bias meter next to publications, and offers a blind spot tool so one doesn't only see one side of a report or discussion. Wikipedia doesn't have such a counter-measure. Most of the political pages have been entirely captured and there are no mechanisms promote neutrality. On the contrary. WikiProjects, Arbitration Committees, and Administrators are all very entrenched position…

stupid reality and its left wing bias

Re: Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

#403

Post by rstarast »

stevage wrote: post #326
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…

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.

Add musicbrainz to the list. It was weirdly comforting to rediscover it 15 years later with nothing really having changed (for better and worse)

Re: Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

#404

Post by pohl »

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…

I've heard it expressed as "the last good thing on the internet" many times, but it never occurred to me to interpret that to mean it has attained perfection in some regard. I always took it to mean that it has thus far evaded the enshitification trends.

Re: Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

#405

Post by [deleted] »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #230
KingOfCoders wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It isn't perfect." Articles about some chemical process are fine, indeed often excellent. Everything where facts get filtered and presented, is bad. Read about real world events - especially where different groups or countries were involved - in three different languages on Wikipedia, and you'd think three different universes exist.

> Read about real world events - especially where different groups or countries were involved - in three different languages on Wikipedia, and you'd think three different universes exist. Can you give a clear example? I would like to read it for myself.

[deleted]

Re: Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

#406

Post by Quarrelsome »

sharpshadow wrote: post #332

To be very specific I was told that the hand does not go over the head when doing a nazi salute.

I just imagine a hypothetical future where a party funded by the richest man in the world goes full fascist and we trot out the "who could have known?". We get out the protractors or simply admit that it was a Nazi salute.

Its the lack of clarity or apology, he never said that it wasn't, he never apologised or said "oh yeah, i didnt mean that" or he even could have brushed it off as a joke or trolling to evoke a reaction. But he never did, he just said people were overreacting.

Combined with his public support for groups like AfD and Patriotic Alternative UK, it seems pretty obvious that he's a Nazi. If anything this subject shows a clear divide between US and European reaction, given how he's now overwhelmingly persona non grata in Europe since that. The US has this bizarre tribalism in its politics, where half its electorate deny the reality that an government official (as he started his doge role at the time) is glorifying the symbols of America's greatest adversary in the world's most destructive war.

Re: Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

#407

Post by tojumpship »

fkyoureadthedoc wrote: post #392
torium wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've already connected the dots of the HN zeitgeist. Besides this was done by a few individuals at Meta, or are you thinking they had a board meeting and shareholder vote on it?

even if we completely ignore organizational structure, do you truly believe not holding companies accountable for a few rogue employees is a good call? Is it too difficult for higher-ups to blame the rank-and-file and arrange scapegoats in the opaque black box that is a corporation? and even still, we can ignore this potential precedent and focus on motivation only: if an employee uses illegal means as a tool to reach their work goals, isn't an investigation into said work goals and culture warranted?

Re: Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

#408

Post by gcanyon »

> conservatives… claim[ing] Wikipedia has strayed from its neutrality principle by making judgments about the reliability of sources. Instead, … it should present all views equally, including things “many Republicans believe,”

That is some 1984-level “War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength" argument. If those “news” sources want people to stop calling them liars, they should stop lying.

Re: Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

#409

Post by gcanyon »

Whoppertime wrote: post #109

Wikipedia is a good source for certain kinds of information. If you ask it about anything political it's going to be from a certain slant and the most informative part of the page will be the Talk page which explains what people would like on the page that isn't there, or shouldn't be on the page but is

Cites please. Seriously, if there is a chronically-biased Wikipedia page I would very much like to know about it.

Re: Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

#410

Post by jacobgkau »

hungmung wrote: post #146
jacobgkau wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> national security implications (not just USA, but any democracy) That's not really "national," is it?

National security doesn't just refer to USA...? France has national security considerations, just like the UK, Uruguay and Uganda. They'd all benefit from having open access to verifiable information.

That's fine, it just seems more like a "societal security consideration," "democratic consideration," or just a general "consideration" than specifically "national security," which has the scope of a nation.
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