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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

#961

Post by fugalfervor »

A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 wrote: post #919
fugalfervor wrote: post #841

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Voter ID laws disproportionately affect a very specific subset of the population, one that reliably skews in one direction on the political spectrum. However, there is no evidence that voter ID laws reduce fraud, nor is there evidence that the absence of such laws introduces fraud. Something like 90% of voter fraud is people making mistakes on their ballot, or not realizing they were not allowed to vote. Also, voter…

Hmm. Just the perception of fraud among the population is enough to undermine the system. We can argue whether Republicans in this case are simply playing to their base by drumming up doubt in the voting system or rigging the system for their benefit or both, but if you are going to admit that a) people who are not supposed to vote do vote b) argue that laws to penalize such votes don't work, you sound about as parti…

> Why is that important to you?

I am telling you that people are being prevented from voting. Why is that _not_ important to you?

It is important to me because it is not fair.

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

#963

Post by fugalfervor »

A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 wrote: post #919
fugalfervor wrote: post #841

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Voter ID laws disproportionately affect a very specific subset of the population, one that reliably skews in one direction on the political spectrum. However, there is no evidence that voter ID laws reduce fraud, nor is there evidence that the absence of such laws introduces fraud. Something like 90% of voter fraud is people making mistakes on their ballot, or not realizing they were not allowed to vote. Also, voter…

Hmm. Just the perception of fraud among the population is enough to undermine the system. We can argue whether Republicans in this case are simply playing to their base by drumming up doubt in the voting system or rigging the system for their benefit or both, but if you are going to admit that a) people who are not supposed to vote do vote b) argue that laws to penalize such votes don't work, you sound about as parti…

> if you are going to admit that a) people who are not supposed to vote do vote

They do. And the system already functions: their votes are caught and discarded.

> b) argue that laws to penalize such votes don't work

I didn't argue that. I argued against voter ID laws, which are not "laws that penalize such voters". Those laws already exist, catch fraud, and penalize those who commit fraud intentionally. Those who do so accidentally have their votes discarded. There's no evidence the existing laws are insufficient. The available evidence shows that incidences of voter fraud are rare in the USA.

> you sound about as partisan as they do ( and merely arguing for 'your' side ). Just sayin

What? I haven't argued for a side. I have spoken what I understand based on the research I have done. I have cited sources in other posts. I don't like being accused of being partisan when I'm basically just repeating the conclusions of those who have studied this. Knowledge isn't partisan.

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

#964

Post by acdha »

krupan wrote: post #946
acdha wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re painting with an awfully broad brush, omitting both the magnitude of the difference and far overstating the homogeneity of one of those sides.

"Yeah, but they did it worse" is a very. weak. argument.

You’re still making the error of acting like there’s a single, simple “it”. For example, what you say is a very weak argument is a fundamental feature of our entire legal system: we have different penalties for not picking up after your dog vs. leaving toxic waste in the same place, stealing a hot dog versus a car, punching someone versus hitting them with a bat, etc.

In this case, it’s even more than the simple question of degree because intention matters, and we have enormous differences around that. Criminal charges are often far heavier if they can show intent, and it factors heavily in things like whether inaccurate business statements were honest errors or intentionally misleading investors. In the case mentioned, it would be especially key whether someone was trying to suppress misinformation in good faith because they honestly thought they were performing a public safety good by preventing dangerous advice from spreading during a crisis — and that shows why Martin’s threats to are at an entirely different level since there’s no emergency and they’re clearly protected speech which has no direct harm or even a path to substantially contribute to harm.

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

#965

Post by peakskill »

munchler wrote: post #764
peakskill wrote: post #734

Wikipedia IS ideologically captured and a propaganda target. This is not up for debate. What it needs now is a bipartisan, sybil resistant algorithm like X’s community notes’ in order to accept/reject edits.

> Wikipedia IS ideologically captured and a propaganda target. This is not up for debate. What an absurd claim to make without any evidence. Citation needed.

Lived experience. I am the source, lib. Why would you be against a bipartisan curation algorithm like the one employed by community notes if you didn’t subconsciously agree with me?

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

#966

Post by YZF »

terribleperson wrote: post #418
YZF wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?…

Harder to change doesn't make it more or less correct, just means wrong information sticks around longer. Because revision history is kept and changes are instant, it's easy to fix bad changes. For topics that see extensive astroturfing, they can be restricted.

But a review process can make it both harder to change and more correct. A delay in impacting the official version makes it harder for people to vandalize.

We do this in software all the time.

In software if there's a critical bug sometimes we accelerate a fix. We can have a process like that for "wrong information". But you'd think most articles about established topics should not see a lot of churn. Yes- Sometimes they find a new fossil that calls some preexisting science into question, but these are relatively rare events and we can deal with that e.g. by putting a note on the relevant topic while the new article gets worked on.

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

#967

Post by kurtreed2 »

krisoft wrote: post #881
kurtreed2 wrote: post #868

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the goalpost is being moved. Your initial criteria was all about the resilency against state-sponsored disinformation attempts and the gaming of systems. For that criteria we don't have a comparable sample to look into when evaluating Wikipedia's. By comparable, I'm meaning an alternative or competitor that had gained equal prominence as Wikipedia, in terms of Google search results, and the eyes of the whole…

> Your initial criteria was all about the resilency against state-sponsored disinformation attempts and the gaming of systems. I believe you are mistaking me with someone else. Please pay attention to the usernames when you are re-reading the thread. What i’m saying is what you describe as survivorship bias is not survivorship bias.

My bad. But my point still stands because I was using their initial criteria when talking about survivorship bias.

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

#968

Post by krupan »

acdha wrote: post #964
krupan wrote: post #946

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Yeah, but they did it worse" is a very. weak. argument.

You’re still making the error of acting like there’s a single, simple “it”. For example, what you say is a very weak argument is a fundamental feature of our entire legal system: we have different penalties for not picking up after your dog vs. leaving toxic waste in the same place, stealing a hot dog versus a car, punching someone versus hitting them with a bat, etc. In this case, it’s even more than the simple ques…

I'm sorry, would you hire someone that regularly steals hot dogs and only punches people instead of using a bat on them? Especially for a position of leadership and great power over others? Do you see how ridiculous that sounds?

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

#969

Post by psychoslave »

flask_manager wrote: post #233
sedev wrote: post #213

I am going to say a thing I say a lot: please edit Wikipedia. It is easier to do than you probably think! Wikipedia's biggest constraint is no longer money or server space, it's editor time (especially since LLM-based garbage is a force multiplier on disruptive editing that does not have a corresponding improvement to good-faith editing). Any topic area you know about and/or care about can benefit from your attention…

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…

Not everything meets Wikipedia editorial goals, but you still have a lot more of latitude in Wikibooks and Wikiversity, the latter also admitting original researches.

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

#970

Post by 20after4 »

20after4 wrote: post #573
stogot wrote: post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have excess money as an org, why don’t they hire SWEs to improve it?

My impression has been that the project has never been fully scoped and kind of bounced around between teams with nobody ever fully dedicated to seeing it through to completion. Scope creep and a whole lot of competing ideas, on top of a genuinely hard to solve set of problems has caused it to get put on the back burner more than once. Sometimes perfect is the enemy of good enough.

I should disclose that I am a former employee of Wikimedia, however, my impression is based solely on reading about the projects on publicly available project planning pages. That is, on https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki and https://phabricator.wikimedia.org
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