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How paid Wikipedia editors squeeze you dry

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Re: How paid Wikipedia editors squeeze you dry

#51

Post by defrost »

RidiculousBeans wrote: post #50
treffer wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the good news is that there aren't enough of these a*** to destroy it. When Wikipedia started and even like 10-15 years ago that wasn't a common belief. Especially in Germany. "There are some assholes on earth, how could you dare to believe something voluntary and open to everyone will succeed?!?" (others already posted that it's not unfounded given real world experience) Wikipedia though is my preferred counte…

Except that everything regarding contemporary politics in English Wikipedia is biased beyond any belief. And they seem to be adamant about titling the article about Kalashnikov rifle "AK-47", which is simply wrong (there were only handful of actual units of model AK-47 produced, and the mass armament of Soviet army with AKs has started with AKM), and their justification for that is "but that's how AK called in the me…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalashnikov_rifle

links to the English page about the Kalashnikov rifle family.

It's titled Kalashnikov Rifle.

The first image is of an AK-74.

There's a comparative table of about 20+ different members of the family. Each of the types has a seperate page.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AK-108

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AKM

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AK-47

etc.

Perhaps you went directly to the AK-47 page and assumed that was all that was there?

Re: How paid Wikipedia editors squeeze you dry

#52

Post by alecco »

gurchik wrote: post #5

Getting an article created for you or your business is not some mysterious black box. Every article on Wikipedia has to follow WP:NOTE (notability guidelines)[1]. In short, it just means you have to have multiple sources directly about the subject, and these sources are independent from the subject of the article, and the sources are WP:RELIABLE (e.g., from a reputable source like a well known news publisher). The on…

Wikipedia reliable sources list has always very controversial. They used to consider even Buzzfeed (not just BuzfeedNews) as a good reliable source until there was a huge campaign against it. But removing that was a token win in a sea of bias.

Re: How paid Wikipedia editors squeeze you dry

#53

Post by vjk800 »

quartesixte wrote: post #14
idiotsecant wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you and I just had the singular luck to exist at a time where computers were for weirdos, deviants, and dreamers. The internet was full of people who had naive ideas of what it would be used for and built beautiful and horrible things but they were built largely on ideology, not the banal mediocre lukewarm lawful neutral selfish tribal beige tyranny of the rest of the world. The technology is mature enough now th…

Is there anywhere new for us to go? Or must we wait for some new leap forward still?

Alternative internet communities with higher (even if only slightly) barriers for entry and no financial incentives to ruin everything. Maybe mastodon/matrix communities or something? I honestly am not up to speed on what exists in geek online communities space nowadays.

Re: How paid Wikipedia editors squeeze you dry

#54

Post by RidiculousBeans »

defrost wrote: post #51
RidiculousBeans wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that everything regarding contemporary politics in English Wikipedia is biased beyond any belief. And they seem to be adamant about titling the article about Kalashnikov rifle "AK-47", which is simply wrong (there were only handful of actual units of model AK-47 produced, and the mass armament of Soviet army with AKs has started with AKM), and their justification for that is "but that's how AK called in the me…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalashnikov_rifle links to the English page about the Kalashnikov rifle family. It's titled Kalashnikov Rifle. The first image is of an AK-74. There's a comparative table of about 20+ different members of the family. Each of the types has a seperate page. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AK-108 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AKM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AK-47 etc. Perhaps you went direc…

That's not the full story. If you read into https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AK-47, it's clearly written as an article about _both_ AK-47 and AKM. So, all sentences like "100 million belong to the Kalashnikov family, three-quarters of which are AK-47s" and "Việt Cộng soldier armed with an AK-47" - they are simply wrong. The funniest thing is, they openly admit it in the article (deep down the article! not in the lead):

>Most licensed and unlicensed productions of the Kalashnikov assault rifle abroad were of the AKM variant, partially due to the much easier production of the stamped receiver. This model is the most commonly encountered, having been produced in much greater quantities. All rifles based on the Kalashnikov design are often colloquially referred to as "AK-47s" in the West and some parts of Asia, although this is only correct when applied to rifles based on the original three receiver types

And sometimes by "AK-47" the article means the whole AK family - there's a list "manufacturing countries of AK-47", and then the list of countries follow that produce all kinds of AK-type rifles _but_ AK-47. So it's clearly a total mess.

In fact, I'm not the only one that complained about it in the past, there's plenty of complaints on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:AK-47/Archive_6 And the response always was like "we use the most common name, we're not interested in being correct here, get out".

Re: How paid Wikipedia editors squeeze you dry

#56

Post by ben_w »

neilv wrote: post #17
idiotsecant wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you and I just had the singular luck to exist at a time where computers were for weirdos, deviants, and dreamers. The internet was full of people who had naive ideas of what it would be used for and built beautiful and horrible things but they were built largely on ideology, not the banal mediocre lukewarm lawful neutral selfish tribal beige tyranny of the rest of the world. The technology is mature enough now th…

Yeah, I think that's the biggest part of a lot of disappointing things that have happened and are happening. There's also a separate factor in some problems, which is that the power and reach of bad actors are increased by tech. To use a familiar and relatively innocuous example, before the popular Internet, virtually no scammers from some developing nation halfway around the globe would be able to reach the US, whic…

> I also wonder whether sociopathy is being normalized more or faster than before

I doubt it, bad behaviour is more likely to be called out and borderline cases probably pushed towards cooperation. Sociopathy is, I think, the condition where one can't be pushed towards cooperation by social pressure.

I think that the acts of calling people out (in addition to your point about tech empowering bad actors), just makes it seem like they are being normalised.

Re: How paid Wikipedia editors squeeze you dry

#57

Post by ctrw »

idiotsecant wrote: post #7
Smoosh wrote: post #4

Perhaps I’m just getting old and weary and the scales are falling from my eyes, but the number of assholes in the world who are willing to destroy some valuable resource or community for a small benefit to themselves seems to be increasing, and also increasing their efforts and their effectiveness.

No, you and I just had the singular luck to exist at a time where computers were for weirdos, deviants, and dreamers. The internet was full of people who had naive ideas of what it would be used for and built beautiful and horrible things but they were built largely on ideology, not the banal mediocre lukewarm lawful neutral selfish tribal beige tyranny of the rest of the world. The technology is mature enough now th…

You just need to be as disreputable to the current establishment as we were to the previous one.

Slap a swastika on it and you'll never have people trying to take over your project. Same way goatse kept the old forums from being overran by normies: https://web.archive.org/web/20040109213953/http://www.goatse...

Re: How paid Wikipedia editors squeeze you dry

#58

Post by ctrw »

vjk800 wrote: post #53
quartesixte wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there anywhere new for us to go? Or must we wait for some new leap forward still?

Alternative internet communities with higher (even if only slightly) barriers for entry and no financial incentives to ruin everything. Maybe mastodon/matrix communities or something? I honestly am not up to speed on what exists in geek online communities space nowadays.

No, the people who run those are the people who couldn't cut it as reddit mods.

If you want the old internet vibe the dark Web is the place to be. Tor, freenet, i2p.

I'm quite partial to freenet because it's completely segregated from the regular internet and refreshes as the speed of dial up. No interactive web2.0 here.

Re: How paid Wikipedia editors squeeze you dry

#59

Post by csydas »

lukan wrote: post #44
riffraff wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I share the same feeling (and we likely are not thinking of the same politicians) it's worth noting every age has had people complaining about * The current government/politicians, which are worse then the ones we had * The youth, who have it easy and are not as good as the old generation We have actual texts from ancient civilizations saying this, so _maybe_ it's just a seesaw, or _maybe_ it's just getting old…

"The youth, who have it easy " Is this still currently a thing? I would think, with Covid lockdowns, social networks designed to manipulate them from early age and a future prognosed of climate change and war, not many people could think the new generation has it easy.

I think there's a lot of handwaving by older generations as to the issues younger generations are having, yes. Children who try to become interested in social/political issues who realize their future is bleak are often dismisses as immature or idealistic and have their (usually valid) concerns ignored, etc.

From what I've seen the youth's complaints are usually "heard", but not recognized. There is definitely an arrogance to many positions from older generations and a tendency towards dismissiveness for too many reasons that do not address the concerns from the youth at all.

I don't wish ill on anyone, but it does seem that many of these issues that the youth are aware of and even want to change will not go away until the ideas die along with the older generations that continue to do everything to maintain a status quo that the youth have openly said "nah we're not going to do that anymore" -- often just because the older generation's have it so ingrained that there is no other option besides the former status quo for whatever reason.

Re: How paid Wikipedia editors squeeze you dry

#60

Post by lifeisstillgood »

idiotsecant wrote: post #7
Smoosh wrote: post #4

Perhaps I’m just getting old and weary and the scales are falling from my eyes, but the number of assholes in the world who are willing to destroy some valuable resource or community for a small benefit to themselves seems to be increasing, and also increasing their efforts and their effectiveness.

No, you and I just had the singular luck to exist at a time where computers were for weirdos, deviants, and dreamers. The internet was full of people who had naive ideas of what it would be used for and built beautiful and horrible things but they were built largely on ideology, not the banal mediocre lukewarm lawful neutral selfish tribal beige tyranny of the rest of the world. The technology is mature enough now th…

No. The technology is different this time. I argue software is a form of literacy, and literacy demands openness.

My great hope is the VW emissions scandal where the CTO of the company had to commit lines of code that said “do billion dollar crime”.

In a git repo.

We can see your crimes now.

Wikipedia is this in microcosm - we can see the edits, we can use software to watch for us, everything is in the open and the feudalism and rent seeking exist best in the hidden darkness

What we do with that is up to us.

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