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25 Years of Wikipedia

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Re: 25 Years of Wikipedia

#411

Post by dpark »

cptskippy wrote: post #321
hallole wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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 went down the rabbit hole on this a while back and came away with the impression that it's complicated. And whether or not Wales is being deceitful hinges on pedantic arguments and mincing of…

> And whether or not Wales is being deceitful hinges on pedantic arguments and mincing of words.

A big piece of this is that “founder” is actually a very unusual title to use here. Normally someone would “create a product” and “found a company”. Wikipedia is not a company. It’s not even the name of the foundation. It’s a product.

It’s kind of like Steve Jobs saying he founded the iPhone.

> He didn't spend 25 years fostering and growing the foundation.

Which isn’t however relevant to the title “founder”.

Re: 25 Years of Wikipedia

#412

Post by andruby »

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…

I fondly remember visiting Wikipedia HQ in Jan 2012. It was amazing to see how small their "operation" was :)

Back then they had 474M monthly unique visitors, 83,444 active contributors and a staff of less than 100. I'm still blown away by the collaboration. To me, that was the promise of "Web 2.0".

On the kitchen door they hung xkcd 903, 906 and another webcomic mentioning that only 13% of updates to Wikipedia are from women (can't find the source). The wifi password back then was "knowledgeshouldbefree" (maybe it still is?)

https://xkcd.com/903/

https://xkcd.com/906/

Re: 25 Years of Wikipedia

#413

Post by frenchtoast8 »

throw10920 wrote: post #402
whynotmaybe wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is tedious because you must edit with facts, not ideology. But we now live in a world where people agree that ideology should be able to change facts. > or the impact of certain wars Exactly, like China wanting to completely censor anything regarding the Tiananmen Square protests. > for example questioning homosexuality I don't know what you have to question about this. >If you are seeking for a global view you be…

> It is tedious because you must edit with facts, not ideology. Wikipedia is ideological. Even when the articles stick to the facts (which they often don't), editors will selectively omit inconvenient (but factually true) information to push their ideology. As a recent, first-hand example of this, witness the highly ideologically motivated Wikipedia editors actively suppressing discussion of Hasan Piker's dog abuse/s…

There are many examples of edit wars between people fighting political battles, but I don’t think your link is one of them. I think how he treated his dog was cruel and I believe how he responded by lying and gaslighting his audience was disgusting, but that doesn’t mean it belongs on Wikipedia. In your link I don’t see Hasan white knights protecting their master from bad publicity, I see Hasan haters trying to bludgeon the change into the article by ignoring any objection and just reverting edits. It was frustrating to read people bringing up the same Forbes article and not reading the reason why it wasn’t suitable. Again, I dislike Hasan in general and especially for this, but if this was so important then why hasn’t any major news outlet written about it? You may disagree about what does and doesn’t belong on Wikipedia, and I have my own objections, but I truly don’t believe the rules were designed by a left leaning cabal to make their favorite Twitch streamer avoid egg on their face.

Re: 25 Years of Wikipedia

#415

Post by pastage »

fsckboy wrote: post #401
jacobolus wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's extremely difficult to write math articles for a general audience which are both accessible and accurate, and the number of excellent writers working on Wikipedia math articles is tiny. Please get involved if you want to see improvement. There are some math articles which are excellent: readable, well illustrated, appropriately leveled, comprehensive; but there are many, many others which are dramatically underd…

no. there are many math teachers teaching math to people who don't know the subject, basically all mathemeticians. and wikipedia has guidelines for how to serve the audience, the math articles ignore it. I (got into and) went to MIT (and graduated several times) in engineering and also in finance. I am way beyond the average wikipedia reader in math knowledge. the mathematics wiki articles are imho worthless. the cha…

The thing about Wikipedia is that no one cares what you have done outside Wikipedia. It is like showing up at a new work place and saying something that is factually correct, it can go any way.

I have a fair amount of edits on Wikipedia and the wikis that preceded it. Whenever I read this sentiment here I never really understand what the problem is. I never have it myself. The only fight I have been involved in was if Wikipedia should have an article on Bitcoin. Which was not obvious in the beginning.

You could always link to the article and we can have a look. I have no clout on Wikipedia but I do understand why facts can be problematic in any text book. It once took me a week to correct an article about a Russian author.

Re: 25 Years of Wikipedia

#416

Post by oytis »

20k wrote: post #179
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…

If I want to look something up, I always check out wikipedia first. Its not always accurate, but its invariably a lot more accurate on most topics than random information across the web. Its also pretty easy to spot bad quality wiki articles once you get the gist of the site Its amazing that wikipedia exists - there've been multiple hardcore attempts to kill it over the years for profit, but its still managing to go

If the choice is between Wikipedia vs random information accross the web, then Wikipedia is undoubtedly better. But it doesn't have to be that, on many topics there are reputable sources to consult first.

Re: 25 Years of Wikipedia

#417

Post by FiveOhThree »

acdha wrote: post #396
FiveOhThree wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

GamerGate was still going strong in 2015, and did absolutely nothing to help stories like that. The people attacking journalists don’t get to take credit for their targets’ work.

I'm sure that the journalists involved would never admit that people putting a spotlight on their bad behaviour made them clean up their act.

Re: 25 Years of Wikipedia

#418

Post by zppln »

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…

Fully agreed. The Talk pages are a very interesting read these days. I things continue down this path I think Wikipedia will be a lot less relevant in the coming years, at least for current events and things related to the on-going culture war.

Re: 25 Years of Wikipedia

#419

Post by rvnx »

mpalmer wrote: post #392
rvnx wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wikipedia is literally a spin-off of a porn company. From that point on, where it came from or who founded it is not so important. The question is how it acts today. It is a highly-political organization supporting lot of “progressive” ideas, California-style. So if you like reading politically biased media it may be for you. If you are seeking for a global view you better ask different LLMs for arguments and counter…

You make your slant against Wikipedia immediately obvious by attempting to smear it. You lazily link it with porn, but you're not making an actual point.

It's more to show that it doesn't matter much in the end where the project comes from, but rather where the project is going

Re: 25 Years of Wikipedia

#420

Post by vee-kay »

GaryBluto wrote: post #41
amiga386 wrote: post #19

https://wikipedia25.org/en/the-first-day > Founder Jimbo Wales on a challenge overcome Aren't you forgetting someone, Jimmy? Your co-founder Larry Sanger, perhaps? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Sanger Let's check one of the citations from the History of Wikipedia page: https://www.mid-day.com/lifestyle/health-and-fitness/article... > It was Larry Sanger who chanced upon the critical concept of combining the thr…

I'd say his lack of acknowledgment of Larry Sanger is actually quite useful, as it is a perfect and irrefutable example that Wikipedia has no qualms with omitting information and twisting the truth to serve a narrative.

Wikipedia is extremely biased and has a lot of deliberate misinformation, so I wouldn't trust it for anything except as a basic starting point for information gathering alongside a web search. Wikipedia's founder itself has denounced it for its bias.
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