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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

#451

Post by Aachen »

hoshi73 wrote: post #167

Many call Wikipedia "the last good place on the internet", but that's really only true of the English edition. Non-English versions are generally filled with political misinformation and propaganda from people trying to politicize a nation's history, which, frankly, makes them not worth bothering with: https://slate.com/technology/2021/03/japanese-wikipedia-misi...

The difference between English, Dutch, and German Wikipedias is also very interesting. I used to never open the Dutch one unless there was a near-zero chance of the English one having any article on the topic at all (like how to make vlaai or idk). It has way fewer articles, has virtually no references for anything, is written more casually by fewer people, and everyone who needs information in the Netherlands speaks English (under 55yo) or German (over 55yo) or both (those in border-nearing retail) so nobody bothers

(Even tinier is the Limburgian dialect that have their own Wikipedia. It seems to mostly be an exercise in how to write this spoken language than to make actually useful articles with unique content. Literally nobody can read that who can't also read Dutch, since it has no spelling or even a dictionary that'd work for more than a few square kilometres. But I digress)

The Germans on the other hand, I've been amazed that there exists, not infrequently, articles in German with more information than in English. It seems like such a shame to me to put all this effort into a niche language, yet it's there. There are well-maintained silos of information out there if you know where to find them!

Re: Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

#452

Post by praestigiare »

Gareth321 wrote: post #364
ragazzina wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>factually true information [...] meets all requirements [...] it will be taken down Can you make such an example?

I can, but perhaps not with the specificity that you'd like. I should also preface this by saying I was involved in a community which is often stereotyped and denigrated by those on the "online left." When I was younger my parents divorced and my dad was treated very badly by the courts, by friends, and by society. He is a good man and I saw the ways in which he was systematically marginalised and outright discrimina…

I am actually not sure that this is an example of bias, at least not in the direction that you seem to be implying. Though I appreciate your strong connection to the subject, the purpose of the Wikipedia page for a topic is not to advocate, but to describe. I don't think it is very controversial to say that the term "feminism" has a more widespread common understanding than the term "men's rights." I empathize with the desire to have a place to put information about issues that affect men, and also with the frustration at being told that the correct place to put that information is under the heading of feminism. But I do not think it is unreasonable for the Wikipedia page on "men's rights" to discuss the various ways people use and understand the term, the history of its use, and criticisms.

Re: Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

#453

Post by stevage »

jowea wrote: post #361
stevage wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The difference is that there are corporate alternatives to OSM, and they're popular. The closest alternative to Wikipedia is asking an LLM to read Wikipedia for you.

>The difference is that there are corporate alternatives to OSM, and they're popular.

I actually think that's probably a good thing for OSM. If OSM was the only game in town, there would be a lot more contention, fighting over how businesses are represented etc etc.

Re: Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

#454

Post by hulium »

Agraillo wrote: post #369
hulium wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a fake Wikipedia screenshot! That line doesn't exist in the actual article and didn't at the time when that tweet was written, and does not even fit in the context. To me, this is at best an example for how much higher the quality is on Wikipedia than in average social media like X.

The edit did exist. So the phrase "Multiple studies have found a left-wing bias at Wikipedia" can be found last in the edit (4 February 2025) [1] and was removed by the editor Aquillion with the explanation [2] Not seeing anything in this source that supports this language; they summarize no other sources that I could see, and their own conclusions are more complex than this (as covered further down the article.) I t…

I am not surprised that the sentence existed once. But "Wikipedia once said this during the time August 2024-Februrary 2025" is not the same as "Source: Wikipedia" because of the way Wikipedia evolves. It's especially bad if you disregard the entire much more nuanced discussion in the remaining article.

Re: Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

#455

Post by Aachen »

submeta wrote: post #265

Does it survive though? I haven’t opened Wikipedia in years. And young folks rather ask Chatgpt for their homework instead of Wikipedia. And that’s the crux. Llms are vacuuming the content of Wikipedia, just like Google is doing the same with Web content.

It's dirt cheap to host text contributed by volunteers compared to audiovisual media or newspapers written by paid people

Which is not to say free and without challenges, definitely not at Wikipedia's scale, but compared to how much donation money they get it's peanuts, not even the same ballpark (the vast majority of the money they get via Wikipedian beg banners goes to projects other than Wikipedia)

Also, personal opinion but

> I haven’t opened Wikipedia in years.

sounded like someone proudly telling a group of supposedly cool friends how they don't read stuffy books anymore now that they've discovered one-page summaries online. This might fall on deaf ears but there's value in reading the actual thing including following references where relevant

Re: Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

#456

Post by techpineapple »

homefree wrote: post #446
techpineapple wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“I seek out individuals I think are smart from a variety of places and read a lot - I'm not sure if there's another way. The more I do this, the more I have a general dislike for wikipedia.” Right but then this isn’t the purpose of an encyclopedia. Like great! But it feels like you’re saying “the more I cook fresh meals, the less I like microwave dinners”. I should Hope so!

Wikipedia fails at its purpose is more my point - it pretends to be something it’s not. The bad part is people (including many in the comments here) don’t realize this. A good encyclopedia doesn’t push an ideological agenda.

“A good encyclopedia doesn’t push an ideological agenda”

But this is the no true Scotsman fallacy, encyclopedia’s are inherently biased. A good _______ doesn’t push an ideological agenda but they all do. I think I would argue Wikipedia less and more transparently than most. They just cover a lot more and are the main one so you see it a lot more.

This article suggests for instance that though Wikipedia’s does indeed have much more bias than británica, that bias may mostly be a factor if it’s length:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/hbsworkingknowledge/2015/01/20/...

“ What’s more, much of Wikipedia’s bias seems to be due to the longer article length of the online publication, where word count is less of an issue than the historically printed Britannica. When compared word to word, most (though not all) of Wikipedia‘s left-leaning proclivities come out in the wash. In other words, for articles of the same length, Wikipedia is as middle-of-the-road as Britannica.

“If you read 100 words of a Wikipedia article, and 100 words of a Britannica [article], you will find no significant difference in bias,” says Zhu. “Longer articles are much more likely to include these code words.”

So again my point would be, your criticism seems nihilistic, why try to have a thing that may, like all things, be inherently flawed, how can something fail in its mission if all of its failures are normal human fallibilities.

Re: Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

#457

Post by thaumasiotes »

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.…

Ok, so you also failed at a very, very easy problem, but you're proud of that fact?

Question: in the phrase "right and left", what does right mean?

Re: Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

#458

Post by grafmax »

voldacar wrote: post #444
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.…"

A quantitative look which might interest you: https://davidrozado.substack.com/p/is-wikipedia-politically-...

> Results show a mild to moderate tendency in Wikipedia articles to associate public figures ideologically aligned right-of-center with more negative sentiment than public figures ideologically aligned left-of-center

It could be that politicians right of center have a tendency to do things which merit negative sentiment slightly more often than politicians left of center. It begs the question to call this bias.

Re: Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

#459

Post by dragonwriter »

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.

> Scientists realized there is no "Truth", only a series of better and better models approximating it.

That’s not accurate. Science is orthogonal to belief in ultimate truth, and scientists have very diverse opinions on that point. Science is about finding more useful models to predict future observations, but whether and how that relates to truth is a question outside of the domain of science.

Re: Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

#460

Post by dragonwriter »

visarga wrote: post #280
ironSkillet wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like there is a universal sense in which statements like 1+1=2" or "7 is a prime number" are true, no?

I disagree, it is not universal. 1+1=2 is just a specific system of notation with consistency. There was a time when no human conceptualized this idea of 1+1=2, they did not have numerals or know about addition. Before you get to 1+1=2 you need a bunch of prior concepts that are themselves contingent on culture and history.

> 1+1=2 is just a specific system of notation with consistency.

So, that that is system of notation which has consistency is itself a truth, isn’t it?

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