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Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney

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Re: Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney

#871

Post by [deleted] »

zahlman wrote: post #842
teddyh wrote: post #814

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How about I look at some of those cases? Please note that, although there are scores of anecdotes in this thread, precisely none of them link to any examples or give enough details to find them. It’s always like this with Wikipedia detractors; I don’t know why, but it is. Complaints and horror stories galore, but nobody will link to any of it, preventing anybody from investigating what actually happened.

>although there are scores of anecdotes in this thread, precisely none of them link to any examples or give enough details to find them In the past, when I've tried to keep receipts on this sort of thing (which requires an extraordinary amount of effort, and is often only possible if you've anticipated that there would be a need to do so - since content is often deleted or archived without warning, and nobody ever en…

[deleted]

Re: Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney

#872

Post by Kim_Bruning »

zbobet2012 wrote: post #778
flask_manager wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have in the past, but three things put me off doing so now; Pages where I can spot inconsistencies are often controversial, with long dense discussion pages, edits here are almost impossible beyond trivial details. I dont mind fixing trivia, but not if the actual improvement I think I can make is rejected. There is a bit of a deletionist crusade to keep some topics small, for example, Ive had interesting trivia abo…

I've had basic facts about mathematics which are wrong deleted in revisions by editors with no knowledge of the subject beyond having asked ChatGPT (which repeats the wrong shit on Wikipedia). It's hard to be worth it. Wikipedia's biggest problem is the editors.

A new layer of Citogenesis? ( https://xkcd.com/978/ )

Interesting. Do you have an example? I'll go look!

Re: Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney

#873

Post by Kim_Bruning »

YZF wrote: post #380
bawolff wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It just feels like it's too big and there are too many interests that want to distort things. I was surprised to see some article recently removed effectively rewriting history and directing to some alternative version. I just checked again and it's been restored but it just seems like the wild west. In fairness, this does mean the system is working.

Yeah- Maybe it's "eventually working". It's hard to trust when it seems so fluid. Maybe there needs to be some mechanics to make it harder to change. Something like being able to suggest changes/corrections but having those come out on some schedule after a review? (thinking software release process here). Quarterly Wikipedia releases? Creating some "core" of Wikipedia that is subject to tougher editorial standards?…

Control theory (among others) says that a more rapid cycle actually often improves reliability and accuracy of a system. (If on average an iteration will converge on a set point/objective, then more/faster iterations will converge more rapidly, or become stable past some threshold). People keep trying to slow Wikipedia down though. They do succeed somewhat, and that actually hurts accuracy and engagement.

Re: Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney

#874

Post by Kim_Bruning »

Hamuko wrote: post #382
j4coh wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve tried, but every article even the most inconsequential seems to have an angry bird in the roost enforcing whatever their particular vision of the article is.

It's even worse when you add a source and you get reverted for reasons quite clearly disproven in your source. I had to make a single edit three times because it got undone twice by two separate administrators. A less stubborn person would've just given up on the first baseless revert and never edited Wikipedia again.

When it finally got through, were they nice to you at least? (They'd better have been!)

And, it probably wasn't administrators, unless you specifically looked. You do sometimes have to be a bit insistent, you're quite right. If someone reverts you, it's often not personal. Ask on the talk page why they reverted, and if no one says anything for 24 hours (definitely wait this long), just try your edit (or a better one!) again.

I wrote an essay on this once that still gets used a lot on wiki (misquoted even more often). The original version of the essay had a few more tricks up its sleeve -but- if you do it this way you're not likely to get in trouble at least. And otherwise now you know someone you can ask for help.

Re: Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney

#875

Post by dredmorbius »

OgsyedIE wrote: post #655
tomhow wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43799635 . Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Noted, you can expect full compliance from me on that policy with regards any other detection positives in the future.

NB: If you have substantiated concerns, the correct course is to email mods. They are responsive to this.

The problem with in-thread accusations isn't so much the lack of legitimacy but the deletrious effect on discussion quality, which is fragile at best:

On shilling generally: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix=true&page=0&dateR...>

On HN's fragility: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23047709>

Re: Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney

#876

Post by lurk2 »

habinero wrote: post #68
hagbard_c wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that depends on your viewpoint. Those who come from a "democrat" background will certainly consider Trump to be more controversial than Obama while those from a Republican background will see Obama - especially second-term Obama - as far more controversial than Trump. Independents will vary on their interpretation but Obama is not likely to end up in the history books as the 'Change agent' he promised to be and w…

> partly responsible for the deterioration of race relations in the USA This is just a euphemism for "he was black in public and lesser white people didn't like it".

Review the site guidelines:

> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney

#877

Post by dredmorbius »

dang wrote: post #76
jmclnx wrote: post #2

Well seems the war on truth has started. There is a 1984 quote about history that escapes me now.

Ok, but please don't post unsubstantive comments to Hacker News.

The shoe in this case (as with numerous others in recent months) fits exceeding well.

Reality is shifting, rapidly; HN mod policies should adjust accordingly.

Re: Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney

#879

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 »

tsimionescu wrote: post #819
A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 wrote: post #800

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The response seems a little too emotional to be considered rational. Still, lets consider another perspective. Would you agree that people with more money are treated differently from people with less money? Money is not exactly property or power, but would you agree that they stand more to lose than a person without either? If they stand to lose more, they automatically have more skin in the game. In fact, if we cou…

No, this is an absurd idea. People with more money have more options - including easily leaving the country if they don't like its laws. In contrast, people with less money have less options and are more dependent on the state, and more at the state's whims if it decides to turn against them. For example, a wealthy person may be able to appeal a wrongful conviction, even taking things all the way up to international…

If the above is true, then your position that laws governing the country determine skin in the game is not valid, because those individuals pick, which skin they get to wear ( as in, it is not a factor at all for them ). The two positions are not compatible, which suggests that there is a facet to these factors that is not captured within the model you propose.

Careful now, you are dangerously close to suggesting people, who make irrational choices should not vote, which includes just about 99.9% of the voting population.

On the other hand, it costs poor person nothing to vote for themselves somebody else's money and with opportunistic enough a leader a ignorant enough a populace, the sky is literally the limit. Who has more skin in the game here, the person, who gets to lose 50% of their resources to taxes or a person, who was promised someone's taxes to trickle down to them?

Yes, I am setting you up a bit.

Re: Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney

#880

Post by standardUser »

zahlman wrote: post #848
standardUser wrote: post #844

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You actually highlight the problem very well. Any group of people can make their own websites, publish their own papers, produce their own films, cross-refencing each other all along the way, thereby creating the illusion their their alternate reality, though largely fabricated, is as true as the real world we all live in. But it isn't. The "facts" within that sphere are only supported by other "facts" within that sa…

The problem is that you tried to attribute this behaviour to conservative sources specifically, in order to rebuke someone else here, but in reality this is not a specific trait of conservative sources.

I just fucking said that. Any sphere, if sufficiently disconnected from or contradictory to the mass of human knowledge, is highly suspect at best. Most likely it's complete garbage. Pollution that hinders the healthy advancement of human knowledge.
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