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25 Years of Wikipedia

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Re: 25 Years of Wikipedia

#421

Post by vee-kay »

reddalo wrote: post #59
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…

>He may not be with the project now, but don't airbrush him out of history. I don't want to defend Jimbo Wales (he's very touchy about the subject), but to be honest, even if he's a founder, Larry Sanger didn't contribute much to what Wikipedia today is.

If someone builds a free knowledge-repository platform and makes it available for worldwide use, and if that platform takes off to become commonly used globally, then I think some credit is due to such founder and innovator.

Re: 25 Years of Wikipedia

#422

Post by rvnx »

msla wrote: post #406
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…

> Wikipedia is literally a spin-off of a porn company. Thinking this is relevant is a very revealing position. It shines some very strong light on your ideological biases and, yes, your agenda, which I feel certain you will feel obligated to deny as a defensive measure. You are showing your hand in ways I don't think you realize.

It gave me an idea, a tool to analyze history of Hackernews user comments and determine what they are up to, what ideas they are pushing, etc. Would be cool and horrible at the same time (so if anyone wants to be on the first page of HN and has a couple of LLM credits somewhere)

Re: 25 Years of Wikipedia

#423

Post by mathgratuitious »

chmod775 wrote: post #373
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 gil…

This is a very interesting take, however, it makes it a bit ironic to compare wikipedia across topics and domains.

Like, right here, let's not ask the question "Why is wikipedia deciding that gratuitous detail is consideration" for one page, and instead point out the amount of inconsistency in this regard on other surgical procedures (coronary bypass is tame, kidney transplant is not), and on non-medical topics, such as the absolute inscrutable travesty that is every single Mathematics Wikipedia page and how all of it amount to post-graduate oneupmanship competitions at this point.

Re: 25 Years of Wikipedia

#424

Post by BoingBoomTschak »

thiht wrote: post #367
lysace wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh... this is a joke comment, right?

I don’t know, is the "Wikipedia is left biased but I can’t produce a single piece of evidence" rhetoric a joke?

BuzzFeed, Salon and PinkNews being used as reliable sources should be everything you need to know about WP.

Or read some of the more critical viewpoints against the Wikipedia editor bureaucracy (that shields itself with a laughable "Anybody can edit Wikipedia! We don't exist! Don't look at the man behind the curtain") like https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/reliable-sources-how-wik...

Small aside, it's a fun coincidence I (finally!) saw Brazil for the first time a week ago...

Re: 25 Years of Wikipedia

#425

Post by luc4 »

0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #238
lostlogin wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does this relate to a particular domain or field? I find it so good, and on the rare occasion I’ve found something wrong, I’ve fixed it.

I find math topics to be insufferable. They are written to be as theoretical as possible and borderline useless if you do not already know the topic at hand.

To give a different opinion, the math topics are actually what I like most. When I'm looking for something on Wikipedia, I want to get a precise definition and related concepts. I don't think it's Wikipedia's job to teach me the material, there's other resources for that.

Re: 25 Years of Wikipedia

#426

Post by concats »

pflenker wrote: post #255

I was close to finishing school when Wikipedia came up. A lot of complaints and concerns about LLMs today echo remarks about Wikipedia back then. Kids won’t learn anything, they will just copy and paste! The information is unreliable, our kids will stop thinking critically or learning how to research! While I don’t mean to equate both, I find the resemblance in this case striking.

> A lot of complaints and concerns about LLMs today echo remarks about Wikipedia back then.

I have also noticed this.

How LLMs can never be trusted because they are stochastic sounds very similar to how Wikipedia can never be trusted because it sometimes has a bad-faith edit.

Or how the people that don't believe information should be free are very active in both the anti-Wikipedia and anti-llm crowds. And use much of the same talking points.

Have publishers have sued Wikipedia too?

Re: 25 Years of Wikipedia

#427

Post by amiga386 »

ryan_lane wrote: post #407
amiga386 wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because he co-founded it, duh. Even if your father abandons your family on your second birthday, to start another family, he's still your dad, no matter how much you hate him. This website purports to tell us how Wikipedia came to be, 25 years ago. Why not tell it honestly?

> Even if your father abandons your family on your second birthday, to start another family, he's still your dad, no matter how much you hate him. I think if you asked anyone in that situation, they probably wouldn't call them their dad, so yeah, this is indeed a good example. Larry Sanger is effectively an abusive parent who did their best to try to ensure Wikipedia didn't survive. Him being there for the birth does…

Indeed, but no matter how much you don't want your dad to be your dad, he is your dad, which was also my point.

Without Sanger, Wikipedia:

- wouldn't be called "Wikipedia"

- wouldn't be editable without first opening an account

- wouldn't have NPOV as a fundamental policy

In short, it wouldn't be Wikipedia.

The community he incubated grew and took Wikipedia onwards to what it is today, even if he disagrees with that direction and plugs his own massively less popular encyclopedia.

Re: 25 Years of Wikipedia

#428

Post by amiga386 »

0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #238
lostlogin wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does this relate to a particular domain or field? I find it so good, and on the rare occasion I’ve found something wrong, I’ve fixed it.

I find math topics to be insufferable. They are written to be as theoretical as possible and borderline useless if you do not already know the topic at hand.

Out of interest, would you consider these articles to be approachable to a non-mathematician?

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introduction_to_quantum_mechan...

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introduction_to_general_relati...

They were created because the main articles are, as you say, difficult for a layperson to read.

Re: 25 Years of Wikipedia

#429

Post by GuB-42 »

richardfeynman wrote: post #376
GuB-42 wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Is there a single source that is not manipulated on these topics? For example in Ukraine, it is very obvious that both western mainstream media and Russian mainstream media are little more than propaganda for their respective camps.

The good thing with Wikipedia (the English version in particular) is that both sides try to manipulate it, in addition to those who really want to say the truth, so in the end, it is relatively neutral. And if you want to go further, there are citations, which is maybe the most important aspect of Wikipedia compared to traditional media, including encyclopedias.

Wikipedia is not perfect, but it does its best to resist manipulation: citations, all activity is recorded and publicly available, etc...

Non-English Wikipedias have more bias, because they are smaller and also because unlike the English version that is used worldwide, even by non-English speakers, the non-English ones are often tied to specific countries. For example, I think I remember seeing the Arabic Wikipedia as being explicitly pro-Palestine, I guess the opposite is true for the Hebrew version.

Re: 25 Years of Wikipedia

#430

Post by rand846633 »

deknos wrote: post #236
rolfsen wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, but Tilo Jung is the absolute opposite of right wing

yes, but question can be done in different ways. and tilo jung always at least, not cared, if his questions are offensive... or trying to up the interviewed person a group of people seems to think, that journalists should trip up people, like in interrogations, instead of being hard in the topic but nice in the tone.

Yeah, that sentiment surely exist that PR and journalism is not the same. Some would even argue that journalism should try to find facts and that being particularly pleasant and nice with doing so is secondary to the goal of fact finding, it’s not PR after all. One could even go as far as to speculate that a journalist being “nice” is not genuine but just a method to gain information. I know I am biased here as this is how I want it to be.

The case if Tilo is quite specific, his interview style uses methods that are effective and uncommon and in part extremely unpleasant, but super effective in making people a accidentally confess to him whilst forgetting all their media training.

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