The things I find on this orange website haha
Hacker News is an FPS
Okay, you’re going to have to expand on that one. Even if we’re going for the very loosest of metaphors, I don’t see it.
Wikipedia is an MMORPG
51–60 of 121 posts
Re: Wikipedia is an MMORPG
#52I’d be grateful if, in this thread, anybody with an anecdote about how their perfectly fine edit was reverted by the evil career Wikipedians, could provide a link so we can judge for ourselves.
Re: Wikipedia is an MMORPG
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you provide a link to one of those newspaper articles or government documents? That would go a long way toward establishing your credibility.
Sure, but not publicly. Provide contact.
I'm going to bite, as well. My pubkey is in keybase from my profile, and my e-mail is on github (or you can just use keybase chat)
Re: Wikipedia is an MMORPG
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
Scary when you consider that "winning" this game means you get to control the interpretation of facts.
Yes but interestingly it's also somewhat calming because the "winners" tend to see winning as the goal. Maliciously changing facts is almost never their goal because Wikipedia itself is their main (maybe obsessive) focus. It might not be good for them but it's not that dangerous for us readers.
That just means they are enforcing their biases on the information. Winning doesn't mean they got it correct, just that they achieved control of the narrative.
That's going to push the means of winning to editing towards the collective biases of the majority of wikipedia editors. Just consider the fact that at various times in our history that commonly accepted knowledge was that the Earth was flat, the Sun, Moon and Stars revolved around it and that slaves were property instead of people.
Effectively this is a proof that mob-sourced information tends towards the mob's interpretation of information and is not necessarily the truth.
I think a lot of people reading Wikipedia forget this and makes me disagree with your last statement -- there's a high potential for danger to the reader if the prevailing mob opinion is outwardly destructive or self-destructive.
Re: Wikipedia is an MMORPG
#55Re: Wikipedia is an MMORPG
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes but interestingly it's also somewhat calming because the "winners" tend to see winning as the goal. Maliciously changing facts is almost never their goal because Wikipedia itself is their main (maybe obsessive) focus. It might not be good for them but it's not that dangerous for us readers.
That just means they are enforcing their biases on the information. Winning doesn't mean they got it correct, just that they achieved control of the narrative. That's going to push the means of winning to editing towards the collective biases of the majority of wikipedia editors. Just consider the fact that at various times in our history that commonly accepted knowledge was that the Earth was flat, the Sun, Moon and…
That's just what encyclopedias are though, the collective mentality of it's editors, their ideology, so to speak. You were never free to just consume encyclopedias, they were always meant to be understood in the context of their creation. What makes Wikipedia different from its competitors is the sheer diversity of editors contributing.
Re: Wikipedia is an MMORPG
#57I’d be grateful if, in this thread, anybody with an anecdote about how their perfectly fine edit was reverted by the evil career Wikipedians, could provide a link so we can judge for ourselves.
Not an edit I made, but the final straw for me was a debate about the article name of the turkey (the animal) on the German wikipedia. The only commonly used name is "Truthahn" which refers to both the female and male animal if you are not being specific. But one especially vocal Wikipedian insists that in his ornithology book, the generic term is always the female term, so "Truthuhn" (with u). That sounds like "turkeychicken" to the average German. I have never heard this outside of Wikipedia. You might use it to contrast the female from the male animal in a zoological setting, but the thing you eat or the thing that makes "gobbeldigock" is called "Truthahn". So this was a win of technically correct over useful.
I've also had many small edits on technical subjects (particle physics and supersymmetry) reversed by people who were self-professedly not experts, with comments like they could not find it in their beginners' textbook. So I just gave up. (Edit: this was over ten years ago, and I can't find it anymore - not even sure what my username was - but one dispute was about the naming convention of some exotic particles. I was quoting from the famous "review of particle physics" and respectable textbooks, but it kept being reverted to a made-up notation...)
Re: Wikipedia is an MMORPG
#58I’d be grateful if, in this thread, anybody with an anecdote about how their perfectly fine edit was reverted by the evil career Wikipedians, could provide a link so we can judge for ourselves.
I always ask for this every time Wikipedia critics come telling their tales of woe. But as a rule they don’t provide it.
Re: Wikipedia is an MMORPG
#59I’d be grateful if, in this thread, anybody with an anecdote about how their perfectly fine edit was reverted by the evil career Wikipedians, could provide a link so we can judge for ourselves.
Not an edit I made, but the final straw for me was a debate about the article name of the turkey (the animal) on the German wikipedia. The only commonly used name is "Truthahn" which refers to both the female and male animal if you are not being specific. But one especially vocal Wikipedian insists that in his ornithology book, the generic term is always the female term, so "Truthuhn" (with u). That sounds like "turk…
The non-expert with a beginners' textbook having strong opinions about the subject is everything that's wrong with places like wikipedia and reddit. I just hate it.
Re: Wikipedia is an MMORPG
#60I think they should lean into this. Imagine how many contributors they could end up with if their on-boarding experience was as smooth as World of Warcraft.
Or maybe not. It's not like they are lacking contributors and using addictive systems to attract people isn't the most ethical thing, plus I seriously question the quality of the contributors.