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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

#421

Post by kayxspre »

SamBam wrote: post #413
nostromo wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you choose to donate, know that a small fraction of your donation goes to Wikipedia. Most of your donation goes to unrelated projects. Wikipedia could function forever without another donation if they wanted to.

Source? (Particularly for that last part.)

Discussion about Wikipedia not actually being in financial jeopardy has been around for some time, and I remember reading about it at least once a year, during the donation banner season. Here are a few sources that discuss them.

[1] https://slate.com/technology/2022/12/wikipedia-wikimedia-fou...

[2] https://www.dailydot.com/news/wikipedia-endownemnt-fundraisi...

[3] https://archive.ph/CClQ6 (this is a Washington Post article. I'm using the Archived link as it's paywall-free)

Re: Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

#422

Post by glenstein »

visarga wrote: post #48
xorvoid wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say this is all we really should reasonably expect from our knowledge consensus systems. In fact it’s the same values that “science” stands on: do our best everyday and continue to try improving. It’s a bit hard for me to imagine something better (in practice). It’s easy to want more or feel like reality doesn’t live up to one’s idealism. But we live here and now in the messiness of the present. Viva la Wikip…

> In fact it’s the same values that “science” stands on: do our best everyday and continue to try improving. Scientists realized there is no "Truth", only a series of better and better models approximating it. But philosophers still talk about Truth, they didn't get the message. As long as we are using leaky abstractions - which means all the time - we can't capture Truth. There is no view from nowhere.

I understand the spirit of what you're saying, but I think this phrasing can be abused by burn-it-all-down skeptics, and I would prefer to say the notion of forward iteration depends on there being some such real thing as truth. The "relativity of wrong" essay by Isaac Asimov, recently upvoted on HN, captures the idea pretty well imo.

Re: Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

#423

Post by fkyoureadthedoc »

tojumpship wrote: post #407
fkyoureadthedoc wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 reac…

This is all already happening, that's why we know about it. But there's also nuance. Was piracy Meta corporate strategy, as implied ad nauseam on here, or was it some guy taking a shortcut?

Is it actually bad that Meta trained their AI on books? No, court already decided that it's substantially transformative and doesn't harm the publishers. Should Meta employees have stolen the books? No, obviously not. The middle men need their cut.

Re: Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

#424

Post by glenstein »

blackbear_ wrote: post #419
47282847 wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Either atoms exist or they dont Perfect example, since they only exist as a concept to describe an observation. With higher precision of observation, it became “the new truth“ that most of the time even on the observation level do not actually exist in terms of matter; they “flicker“ fast enough to appear existing at all times. When you look often enough or at the wrong times, there is nothing to observe.

> When you look often enough or at the wrong times, there is nothing to observe. Is this because atoms don't exist, or because we are looking in the wrong way due to partial (mis)understanding? The "new truth" that you talk about is just a different understanding of the concept of atom, but the actual thing that we call atom and that exists in the real world (whether as matter or in some other form) has not changed.

Exactly the right question. If atoms are forever retained as a locally true-in-its-domain and at-its-level-of-description phenomena in every future theory, I think they count as real in any important sense. Even classical mechanics is true in the sense of strongly accurate and predictive at its scales of description, as an approximation of something more precisely described by QM.

One thing that gets me excited is that there's a tantalizing possibility that the 21st century might have an Einstein-level breakthrough that treats holography and some principle of informational consistency as more fundamental than QM, which is amazing, and would change everything.

But even in that hypothetical future paradigm, an "atom" would still be something true and meaningful against that backdrop, and our measurements or knowledge claims about it would still be meaningful. And our progress toward knowledge of the atom was still real progress.

It's legitimate to treat our knowledge as limited, subject to revision, or approximating. But treating that grain of truth like it implies no knowledge or progress is in hand is an abuse of the concept.

Re: Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

#425

Post by apparent »

rc_mob wrote: post #401
Gareth321 wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This cute phrase was much more believable before Democrats were so insistently wrong about so many important things during COVID (lab leak theory, efficacy of cloth mask mandates, arresting surfers on the beach, natural versus vaccine immunity).

Re: Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

#426

Post by homefree »

Wikipedia has major issues - there are a lot of topics with coordinated editing from bad actors. The verge article is paywalled so I can't read more than the first page + headline, but I can guess the case it makes.

- https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/reliable-sources-how-wik...

- https://www.piratewires.com/p/wikipedia-editors-cant-decide-...

- https://www.piratewires.com/p/how-wikipedia-s-pro-hamas-edit...

It's similar to the problem on Reddit, I wouldn't trust it on any topic that is even mildly controversial. Wikipedia will have a strong progressive left slant it launders carefully through seemingly neutral language and selective sourcing.

Honestly it's gotten worse over the years too - makes me see more value in printed encyclopedia, they go out of date but at least they represent a slice of time. They're not endlessly revised to meet some false ideology that has edit power at present.

Re: Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

#428

Post by Idesmi »

jasonlotito wrote: post #325
thaumasiotes wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would say this is all we really should reasonably expect from our knowledge consensus systems. Compare this text from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_configuration : >> The most common labeling method uses the descriptors R or S and is based on the Cahn–Ingold–Prelog priority rules. R and S refer to rectus and sinister , Latin for right and left, respectively.[2] This claim is actually repeated further dow…

> The fact that it is false was noted on the talk page seven years ago, but this seems to bother no one. From the talk page: "This is inaccurate, as the linked Wikitionary page defines rectus as straight, not right" From the Wiktionary page referenced: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/rectus - led straight along, drawn in a straight line, straight, upright. - (in general) right, correct, proper, appropriate, befitting.…

The first claim is correct, as the topic was direction, not correctness.

Re: Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

#429

Post by [deleted] »

savef wrote: post #110
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

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...

[deleted]

Re: Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

#430

Post by lp0_on_fire »

LastTrain wrote: post #416
Levitz wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm really at a loss on how to make this any more clear. You are looking at a case of a person LITERALLY admitting they are using it for propaganda and your reaction is "I'm sure it's actually not, it's actually neutral and it's just that it differs from your view". I'm sorry but I can only explain it to you, I can't understand it for you.

Do you think anyone here on HN uses this site for propaganda?

HN doesn't style itself as an encyclopedia for all human knowledge that's worth writing down.
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