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How Wikipedia became the last good place on the internet

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Re: How Wikipedia became the last good place on the internet

#561

Post by silent_cal »

nvy wrote: post #533
silent_cal wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take this passage from the vaccination page for example: > Some studies have claimed to show that current vaccine schedules increase infant mortality and hospitalization rates;[103][104] those studies, however, are correlational in nature and therefore cannot demonstrate causal effects, and the studies have also been criticized for cherry picking the comparisons they report, for ignoring historical trends that suppor…

Goodness, are you not familiar with the phrase "correlation does not imply causation"? There are ways to establish causal relationships, the gold standard of which is to conduct a double-blind controlled trial. To claim as you have that a correlational study establishes a causal relationship is deeply misguided, irrespective of whether or not it is peer-reviewed.

Yes I am - you don't seem to know that all a double-blind controlled trial produces is (at best) a very strong correlation. I'm not claiming that a correlational study implies causation. I'm claiming that ALL statistical analyses can only prove correlation, and never causation. You're wrong about double-blind controlled trials proving causation.

Re: How Wikipedia became the last good place on the internet

#562

Post by momirlan »

kayxspre wrote: post #128

I have since distanced myself from Wikipedia as I feel I was increasingly pushed out of the "Cabal" (a term used to describe editors with aligned interest who usually worked together to set standards others must follow) who vigorously enforced the policy without considering the experience of, and willingness to engage with, new editors. I would rather have them create their own world while I move on to contribute to…

i think there is a "cabal" everywhere where moderation is involved. i have hit the wall on various platforms. i just try to move on, there are things that are more important in life than who is right on the internet.

Re: How Wikipedia became the last good place on the internet

#563

Post by extraduder_ire »

cabalamat wrote: post #376
bnralt wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the fundamental problems with most things on the internet is that there’s unlimited output. A socially dysfunctional shut-in living on the internet is simply going to have a much larger output than someone with a healthy social life that only uses the internet in moderation. Someone who is judicious about their upvotes is going to have a much smaller impact than some who just reflexively upvotes or downvotes e…

> Someone who is judicious about their upvotes is going to have a much smaller impact than some who just reflexively upvotes or downvotes everything based on kneejerk reactions. It would be very easy for websites to weight upvotes so that one from someone who seldom uses them weighs more.

I think slashdot did something like that, but limited the amount of total votes you have per day. But that site's a little before my time. Would be nice if you could set the weights on voting yourself, along with other aspects of site moderation/ranking.

Re: How Wikipedia became the last good place on the internet

#564

Post by fyokdrigd »

gosub100 wrote: post #133

One band-aid that would help (but not fix) the internet is a revolt or at least a separation between web2.0 and web1.0. There should be organized, easy ways to consume and switch between 2.0 and 1.0, and while I know this already exists to some extent, I am referring to a social movement on top of the technical differences. Publishers should be pressured to offer web 1.0 (or at least know that a sizeable subset of vi…

disable JavaScript. internet becomes beautiful.

it's one click away with uBlockOrigin. disable for all and enable per domain as they deserve it.

hit a link that don't load? hit back and try another. it's not like there's no alternatives for everything.

Re: How Wikipedia became the last good place on the internet

#565

Post by ruune »

HPsquared wrote: post #68
yason wrote: post #24

All places ever deemed 'good' have had sufficient technological or financial, and above all intellectual barriers of entry that filter out regular joes. BBS's in the 80's. Usenet till the early 90's. WWW till the late 90's. IRC till early 00's. Forums replaced usenet groups but have been in decline for years. Once those barriers are broken and the masses flood in then the supply side will emerge and takes over with s…

Maybe a blockchain-based chat protocol, where there is a cost to posting? That's a pretty steep barrier to entry.

The idea and sentence work just as well if you remove "blockchain-based" part. Where is the advantage using complicated things when easy things work just as well?

Re: How Wikipedia became the last good place on the internet

#566

Post by rewmie »

aidenn0 wrote: post #464
bebop404 wrote: post #434

One thing (perhaps the thing) that makes Wikipedia great is that it doesn't seek the truth. Instead, it seeks verifiability. This means that editors don't have to be experts to write articles, which is the main reason the site is useful at all. The truth can be very elusive. So it makes sense to move that burden to the sources.

Also, there are enough people meticulous enough to follow up on the sources. When a source is not freely available online that often involves going to the library and looking things up; there are people who spend many hours a week doing this, unpaid as a hobby.

> Also, there are enough people meticulous enough to follow up on the sources.

There's an insidious aspect to Wikipedia's reliance on verifiability: any wild claim can be posted, repeated by third parties, and afterwards have Wikipedia refer to those third parties as sources. I know this to be a fact because I read a Wikipedia article on the subject.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_citogenesi...

Re: How Wikipedia became the last good place on the internet

#567

Post by nvm0n2 »

hnbad wrote: post #465
nvm0n2 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They routinely run absolutely massive banner ads for themselves at the top of every page begging for donations they don't need. And these ads are the worst: extremely deceptive, unnecessary, and huge.

There's a huge functional difference between fundraising ads (no matter how manipulative) and the kind of commercial (and behavioral) ads you see everywhere else: the incentive structure it creates. Behavioral ads also require extremely intrusive tracking. Commercial ads incentivise optimising for impressions, i.e. getting users to see as many ads as possible. This leads to clickbait, bloating one-line news bits into…

The Wikipedia ads are nothing but clickbait. Wikipedia itself doesn't need any funds, but the ads urge users to click by claiming that the site may go offline if they don't. Then the money is embezzled and spent on left wing causes. This is pure commercialism of the worst kind, but it's actually worse than that because many countries have various kinds of truth in advertising laws that apply to companies, whereas Wikimedia Foundation can get away with this sort of deception.

Re: How Wikipedia became the last good place on the internet

#568

Post by alkonaut »

mckn1ght wrote: post #532
alkonaut wrote: post #524

I just want to be the lone comment that says I do not see any annoying bias or editorializing on Wikipedia. Not even on sensitive or political subjects. But that’s of course my subjective view of it. Judging the number of times I see that complaint here, I’m starting to think that commenters here have a different political midpoint than the one of the people editing the English Wikipedia? Are HN readers more American…

Have you ever read the edit history of a page on a topic you know to be controversial in society? The constant back and forth is something to behold. And for people who think Wikipedia is just a static unchanging webpage, they’ll never realize that depending on the minute that you read an article, it could be very biased in one direction or the other versus what your grandma saw when she read it an hour ago and poste…

Yes. And it’s roughly what I expect it to be. And while it fluctuates, I find it pretty rare to see the most extreme biases (which I think means that they are quickly removed and averaged out). Obviously there is vandalism and you can be unlucky and see a page at the wrong time but I think it’s so much better than it one might expect. It’s basically a fantastic restaurant where you stick your head into the kitchen and see a knife fight. Yet the food on the plates is almost always impeccable.

Re: How Wikipedia became the last good place on the internet

#569

Post by nvy »

silent_cal wrote: post #561
nvy wrote: post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Goodness, are you not familiar with the phrase "correlation does not imply causation"? There are ways to establish causal relationships, the gold standard of which is to conduct a double-blind controlled trial. To claim as you have that a correlational study establishes a causal relationship is deeply misguided, irrespective of whether or not it is peer-reviewed.

Yes I am - you don't seem to know that all a double-blind controlled trial produces is (at best) a very strong correlation. I'm not claiming that a correlational study implies causation. I'm claiming that ALL statistical analyses can only prove correlation, and never causation. You're wrong about double-blind controlled trials proving causation.

You are factually incorrect.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7081045/

>In clinical medical research, causality is demonstrated by randomized controlled trials (RCTs).

https://www.sagepub.com/sites/default/files/upm-binaries/236...

https://www.statisticssolutions.com/dissertation-resources/r...

https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/understanding-statistics/s...

https://www2.stat.duke.edu/~jerry/Papers/causal.pdf

If you argue this further I'm just going to conclude you're trolling and won't respond again.

You are wrong. Face it.

Re: How Wikipedia became the last good place on the internet

#570

Post by alkonaut »

mckn1ght wrote: post #551
epgui wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> on a topic you know to be controversial in society What else could you reasonably expect? Unanimity without discussion?

GP: “I do not see any annoying bias or editorializing on Wikipedia. Not even on sensitive or political subjects” (emphasis theirs) There is no unanimity being arrived at, it’s simply whomever has made the latest edit by the time a given person arrives at the page. Many people can read the “same” article and if they take it at face value, arrive at different conclusions. I didn’t state my expectations about how WP sho…

I see the edit wars. But I don’t see the suffering quality. A lot of posts on controversial topics quickly get locked down so the wars slow down too.
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