[HN Gopher] Wikipedia is up (2001)
___________________________________________________________________
Wikipedia is up (2001)
Author : altilunium
Score : 257 points
Date : 2021-05-09 15:32 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (web.archive.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (web.archive.org)
| rattray wrote:
| Very fun browsing the links... one of my favorite is [the article
| ](https://web.archive.org/web/20010409192226/http://www.wikipe...
| ) on Larry Sanger, who's listed as co-creator of Wikipedia and
| CEO of Nupedia, a predecessor project. To be honest I hadn't
| heard of him before. A fun quote:
|
| > Presently living in Las Vegas for a few months and then it's on
| to Russia for a few more months; possibly Ireland after that...
| Larry can move around like this because he works online. You
| should be envious. He would be if he weren't he.
|
| And here's the less flavorful [Jimbo Wales article](https://web.a
| rchive.org/web/20010412200157/http://www.wikipe...), in which he
| mentions this in the comment thread:
|
| > [druglady.com is] my mom and dad's pharmacy. I made a website
| for her. It's on the same machine as wikipedia. That will
| probably change soon, as we are rearranging things.
|
| > I have many websites.
| [deleted]
| _joel wrote:
| .. and lo, countless hours were lost going down the Wikipedia
| rabbit hole.
| respondo2134 wrote:
| Global productivity loss not experienced since the release of
| Doom
| macksd wrote:
| There are much worse ways to lose hours than in Wikipedia. A
| _lot_ of my general knowledge comes from constantly looking up
| topics I encounter on Wikipedia.
|
| Try a new dish at a restaurant? I look it up. Interesting
| origin story and nutritional information.
| cpach wrote:
| Indeed!
|
| I also use it a lot to discover new music.
|
| And geography! I hated geography in school. After school my
| interest in geography has increased sharply. Wikipedia and
| Google Maps are indispensable for that kind of stuff.
| xNeil wrote:
| Wikipedia is one of, if not the best thing(s) to happen to the
| internet. It achieved basically what the internet's aim was: to
| democratize information.
|
| Even when I have to learn something, ANYTHING, I'll go to
| Wikipedia, after which I read the sources of the article for in
| depth research. And while I dislike their political articles a
| lot, the science, math, history and arts articles are genuinely
| incredible to read.
| rvnx wrote:
| Information is like internet. It should be organized, but
| decentralized.
|
| Wikipedia is a place of ultra-centralization where a handful of
| influential contributors have most of the power and will
| enforce the content they want using administrative processes
| (or arbitrary locking of pages) until you give up.
|
| Otherwise don't be disappointed the day you disagree with the
| Wikipedian "neutral" point of view.
| respondo2134 wrote:
| The internet is neither of these in its current
| implementation. It is a highly centralized but self-healing
| network with no organization above the oeprational level,
| itself built on centralized adherence to rules. Asking for
| organzation built on top of this to be decentralized is a
| weird expectation.
| ohuf wrote:
| It's still way better than the old times when lexica were a
| thing and you needed a printing press to convey knowledge.
| gumby wrote:
| A nice idea, but depends on the good will of other people. A
| fatal flaw. And encyclopedias depend on experts to sift through
| the dross and figure out what's worth it. That costs mone. This
| wiki may fill up with articles about star trek episodes but who's
| going to take the time to write about hard biology topics or
| medieval history?
|
| Also: English only. There are other languages you know!
| leoh wrote:
| And traditional encyclopedias don't require the good will of
| others?
| wpietri wrote:
| IS this a reproduction of a critique from 2001? Because
| suggesting something that has been around 20 years has a "fatal
| flaw" is perplexing to me. When exactly will this fatality
| happen?
|
| It's also absurd to say it's English-only. There are currently
| 18 Wikipedia languages with more than 1m articles:
| https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedias#1_000_000...
|
| The notion that it would fill up with poorly sourced fan
| garbage is also woefully out of date. That's what fan wikis are
| for. A good example here is the "Endor Holocaust", the fan-
| generated notion that when the Death Star was blown up the
| material would have rained down on Endor and wrecked the
| ecosystem. That was removed from Wikipedia a little over 15
| years ago:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Endor_Holocaust&a...
| gumby wrote:
| This is a contextual comment from the date of the 2001 post.
|
| Obviously those criticisms have mostly (and in some case
| completely) proven false.
|
| A cautionary point on the criticism (and enthusiasm) of
| contemporary inventions -- in any age.
| sedatk wrote:
| What doesn't depend on the good will of other people?
| rahulsingh789 wrote:
| ???
| maxcan wrote:
| Ah yes, the day a few softcore porn peddlers decided to create
| the greatest repository of knowledge in all of human history. One
| thing I love about the internet..
|
| Yes, I'm aware of the flaws and criticisms of wikipedia but I
| stand by my assessment.
| [deleted]
| uncletammy wrote:
| > Ah yes, the day a few softcore porn peddlers decided to
| create the greatest repository of knowledge in all of human
| history.
|
| TIL : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomis
|
| Although I lived through these events, I was far too busy
| optimizing my MySpace profile to notice.
| rattray wrote:
| Very impressive how much they did before launch: 6,000 articles,
| several languages, many features (flexible categorization themes,
| even!), etc.
| poisonborz wrote:
| Someone prove me wrong, but I think of Wikipedia as one, if not
| the largest cooperation of human beings on a very specific
| project. Most of the criticism it recieves is true, but it's a
| wonder that it could remain, and even grow in the state like it
| is.
|
| I wish more organisational involvement would happen on the
| editorial level - companies, governments, or education. I wish
| academia wouldn't despise it. There is so much untapped potential
| still.
| marcodiego wrote:
| I agree. It is something I often say: "Wikipedia is probably
| the biggest collaborative project in human history."
| cpach wrote:
| Yep. Wikipedia and Linux are true marvels of collaboration.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| I think that the fact that so many of those organizations
| haven't (in the past) jumped onto it, is probably part of why
| Wikipedia turned out as well as it did. It's run by those who
| mostly care about Wikipedia, rather than some other
| organization.
|
| But as to your first point: definitely. It is the equivalent of
| the Library at Alexandria in ancient times; a step function
| rise in the information actually available to people.
| [deleted]
| truth_ wrote:
| (2001)
| grensley wrote:
| > Humor me. Go there and add a little article. It will take all
| of five or ten minutes.
|
| What a perfectly phrased ask. How can you read "Humor me." and
| NOT add an article?
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| related then from today
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27097494
|
| obviously a ton of wayback links could share
| kiba wrote:
| I found google doesn't lead me to wikipedia as often anymore.
| Also wikipedia is kinda stagnant in quality.
|
| These are of course, my own personal experience. Still a very
| useful resources whenever I want to learn about a given subject.
| cpach wrote:
| Fairly often I simply go to https://en.wikipedia.org/ and type
| my query in the search box there instead of googling it.
| whoooooo123 wrote:
| I recommend setting a search keyword in your browser so you
| can eg just type "w hacker news" in the address bar to be
| taken to the Wikipedia page for hacker news. I use this
| shortcut dozens of times per day.
| cpach wrote:
| Does Google Chrome support that?
| uncletammy wrote:
| > I found google doesn't lead me to wikipedia as often anymore.
|
| Ive also noticed this. Wikipedia used to always be in the first
| few results for any Google search I made. It was amazing
| becauase it was frequently the exact thing I was trying to
| find.
|
| Now I have to add 'wiki' to the search terms or it wont even
| show up in the first page.
| adventured wrote:
| It got to the point where over half of all Google search
| results were producing Wikipedia as the top result. No doubt
| they noticed and made some targeted adjustments to subtly
| downrank Wikipedia.
|
| Which might be a good thing if it leads to other quality
| sites getting more traffic.
| alfonsodev wrote:
| just curious, is the css missing, or was released like that ?
| meibo wrote:
| This is a mailing list from 2001, they mostly still look like
| that nowadays.
| marban wrote:
| Having enough disk-space to install all Encarta CDs your grandpa
| "borrowed" from the office: Priceless.
| aruggirello wrote:
| You can download zim files with all Wikipedia content (for
| offline browsing via Kiwix) here:
|
| http://download.kiwix.org/zim/wikipedia/
| chronogram wrote:
| I'd rather download only featured or featured+good articles.
| Ayesh wrote:
| Saving a click, the download size of all content in English
| is ~82GB, compressed.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| That's... Actually pretty small? Probably compresses well,
| but still.
| cpach wrote:
| Taking into account that it's just text, I consider it
| huge.
| vimoveremacs wrote:
| still damn cool tho
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| here is the post where the idea of making a wiki was proposed 7
| days earlier
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20030414014355/http://www.nupedi...
|
| "Jimmy Wales thinks that many people might find the idea
| objectionable, but I think not."
|
| Good idea Larry.
| rvba wrote:
| Can someone explain to me the recent trend to add long quotes in
| Wikipedia articles?
|
| Very often the article starts with a concise definition, some
| additional explanations and then it has some random long
| quotation. For example some random critic's opinion about a book.
|
| Those quotes often do not provide much information - a concise
| text would simply be better.
|
| I have a feeling that the idea is to make Wikipedia easier to
| use, when in reality it becomes harder to use
|
| In fact those quotes often look like a hidden vehicle to try to
| promote the quoted person (if person X was quoted, but person Y
| was not quoted, then you could come to a conclusion that X is
| more important).
| rvnx wrote:
| 150+ million USD is spent per year by the organization while most
| of the work is done by volunteers. Quite a serious money-making
| engine.
| nearbuy wrote:
| For the employees and contractors? It's a bit strange to
| describe a non-profit as a money-making engine.
| zamadatix wrote:
| You're a bit off on the number (maybe you were thinking net
| assets?).
|
| For those curious of the breakdown
| https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Statistical_analysis_of_Wiki...
| inimino wrote:
| 112 million in 2020.
|
| So... not that far off?
| superasn wrote:
| Speaking as someone who has absolutely no knowledge of how
| Wikipedia is run.. what is the biggest expense? Is it the
| hosting, bandwidth, or maybe HR.. I mean the stuff that takes
| the lion's share of this $150M?
| h_anna_h wrote:
| "Hosting wikipedia accounts for roughly 2% of their total
| expenses" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26056276
|
| The links in the post explain where the stuff is spent.
| superasn wrote:
| That was super informative.. thanks! Only 2% is insane - I
| was thinking a lot lot more!
| ghaff wrote:
| Well, that's internet hosting. The biggest expense
| (almost half) is people, at least some of which is
| doubtless related to operating that internet hosting.
| They also give out a fair bit in grants/awards.
| Egidius wrote:
| It's fantastic to see the impact Wikipedia still has. Jimmy Wales
| and his team can be proud of what they have achieved.
| lucasnortj wrote:
| Wikipedia is absolute garbage, that people take it seriously
| shows how doomed humanity is.
| karaterobot wrote:
| I was in library school around this time (a couple years later,
| actually), and I remember that Wikipedia was a hot topic: can it
| be trusted, and why is the answer "no"?
|
| Bucking that trend somewhat, I was in the cautiously optimistic
| camp. By that time it was already more useful to me than the
| Encyclopedia Britannica, and getting better all the time. The
| trajectory was clear.
|
| It seems like, of all the exciting things from the early web,
| Wikipedia has been one of the only things that actually panned
| out the way it was intended. It didn't get commercialized, but it
| didn't go broke either. It didn't become a cesspool, or try to
| consume all of my attention. It just does the thing it's supposed
| to do. If there was a fire on the internet, and I could only save
| one website, it would be you Wikipedia.
| paulz_ wrote:
| A few months ago Tyler Cowen had Jimmy Wales on the
| Conversations with Tyler podcast[0].
|
| He spends some time talking about why he thinks Wikipedia
| turned out the way it did and avoid some of the potential traps
| you pointed out.
|
| Really enjoyed listening to it and made me think a lot of about
| structure of organizations.
|
| [0] https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/jimmy-wales/
| ClosedPistachio wrote:
| In a similar way, an interview with departing CEO Katherine
| Maher on the Why Is This Happening? podcast.
|
| https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9wb2RjYXN0ZmVlZHM.
| ..
| [deleted]
| ghaff wrote:
| Yeah. While there are plenty of things to criticize, in
| general, it works. And a number of different approaches to a
| crowdsourced encyclopedia, e.g. Google Knol, have clearly not
| worked. There are big incentives to game anything like this--
| see also Quora.
| colechristensen wrote:
| You essentially can't get that big, survive that long, or be
| so relevant without deserving criticism. Until people are
| angels, large complex efforts that survive necessarily need
| to be kind of shitty in one way or another. Linux (and Linus)
| are in the same boat. The ways that they are shitty have
| maintained (and are necessary for) the ways that they are
| great.
|
| People argue the opposite, that things could be better, that
| the criticisms could be addressed and everything else would
| continue on, but I'm not so sure. Where is the large,
| successful organization -- based on money or not -- which
| _has_ survived into greatness without these kinds of
| criticisms?
|
| It reminds me of Marxism/Communisms/various utopian ideas.
| People have big ideas about how things can be "perfect" and
| all problems can be abolished. Except for a very few, very
| small exception, when those ideas have been tried, the
| outcome has been far worse than the problems that were trying
| to be avoided.
| _joel wrote:
| Indeed, it's no Yahoo Answers (RIP)
| kiba wrote:
| Quora degrades because you're trying to fit a business model
| into a square hole where it won't fit.
|
| Maybe not every project should be a commercial enterprise.
| ghaff wrote:
| Quora also degrades because as soon as you have a popular
| site that individuals can push unfiltered content to, the
| scammers, spammers, or just people with positions/products
| to push show up. It's pretty clear that moderation (both
| community and admins) are a pretty important part of a
| popular crowdsourced site. (Not that I disagree with your
| point as well.)
| guerrilla wrote:
| Is quora so bad? I usually use it for little questions
| before I ask something on stackexchange and it seems to
| work fine enough...
| tzs wrote:
| They email me a daily digest of maybe a dozen questions
| and answers they think I might find interesting.
|
| Typically, at least half of them each day are interesting
| enough that I'll click to read the full question and the
| full answer that they picked to highlight. Most of the
| rest are usually decent questions, but I'm just not
| interested enough to click.
|
| Of those I do click, maybe half of those turn out to be
| sufficiently interesting that after reading the featured
| answer I'll click to see the other answers too.
|
| Like many sites based on user provided content, Quora
| tries to show you what they think you will be interested
| in, but "interested in" really means what you'll click
| on.
|
| I see enough stupid stuff (especially stupid political
| stuff) elsewhere, so don't click on it on Quora. I seem
| to be consistent enough with this that their algorithms
| have figured out there is better stuff to show me to get
| my click.
|
| I also do not use "sign in with Facebook" or "sign in
| with Google" there, and am not really active on any
| social media that exposes user email addresses or that
| exposes contact lists (or even has contact lists). I
| don't know if I have any friends who also read Quora, but
| if I do there is a decent chance that Quora does not know
| that I do, and so won't be using their interests to try
| to guess mine.
|
| I don't know why do many others have bad Quora
| experiences, but for whatever reason it works great for
| me.
| TNorthover wrote:
| It's a pretty notorious hideout for cranks, both benign
| and weird nationalist ones.
| ghaff wrote:
| There's a lot of dross on there. Every now and then a
| search will lead me to a useful answer but it was a much
| more interesting site when it started out. More active
| interesting people and fewer worthless or scammy
| questions and answers.
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| And for some reason they seem to actively merge only
| tangentially-related questions and answers. I often see
| answers that have nothing to do with the question.
| convery wrote:
| Worth noting that the whole "can it be trusted" mainly revolves
| around political or otherwise controversial topics. Where
| entire pages can switch from "freedom fighter helping the
| world" to "literally Hitler" overnight with news
| articles/interviews being blacklisted for not being reliable
| while sourcing random blog-posts. For a good example, check the
| edit history of the Gamergate page, well known editors even got
| banned for wanting accuracy rather than pushing narratives.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > the whole "can it be trusted" mainly revolves around
| political or otherwise controversial topics
|
| IME it's a question for any Wikipedia page. I remember a
| mathematics professor reviewing a page in their field, saying
| it omitted key topics and gave prominence, as major figures,
| to people the reviewer hadn't heard of.
|
| Also, I've experienced that any minor topic can be
| controversial or political to someone. For a page I'm almost
| certain you've never heard of, I saw someone create an
| article in a newsy blog that that supported their made-up
| claim and cite it in Wikipedia, then cite Wikipedia in the
| article, and then give interviews to other websites saying
| the same thing, creating a web if citations. Even after I
| tracked it down and fixed it - a lot of work to do for free
| for a low-traffic Wikipedia page - they waited a month and
| started again. I ran out of time (and trust).
| paulpauper wrote:
| maybe 1% of articles, especially about politics or current
| events, are perhaps biased but overall it is better than most
| sources
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Maybe it's 5%? 20%? Who can say? Also, things are often
| just plain wrong, through commission and omission, and not
| biased.
| respondo2134 wrote:
| This is a cool healing mechanism built into the nature of
| wikipedia; popular, big topics get far more exposure and
| tend to be more accurate over time. Combined with the
| visiblity from metadata on edits, the contention and
| disagreement is far more visible than say, deciding if we
| should trust the new book on climate change that's on the
| front page right now.
|
| General rule of thumb is the deeper and more topical you go
| on wikipedia, the more alert your BS detector needs to be.
| It's not perfect, but it's once of the best sources we have
| today.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > General rule of thumb is the deeper and more topical
| you go on wikipedia, the more alert your BS detector
| needs to be.
|
| My perception is that the more popular and controversial
| topics are more likely to attract editors, but also BS.
| The Mohammad Ali page may attract plenty of BS,
| intentional or unwitting (lots of people have ideas about
| Ali); the page on the 1928 Olympic boxing champion
| probably doesn't attract much of either.
|
| > the more alert your BS detector needs to be
|
| Also, I think the "BS detector" is the most powerful
| mechanism for spreading mis- and disinformation. People
| who think they have one are the most prone to being
| fooled, and I think research shows that. Beyond obvious
| flaws, unless you already know the correct _and complete_
| information (omissions can be just as BS as outright
| errors), you won 't be able to spot errors or omissions.
|
| Think of it this way: Using your BS detector, could you
| edit your own writing to fool someone else? I think I
| could easily pass most people's 'BS detectors'. Imagine
| what someone paid to write BS can do - or just look at
| the research about massive troll farms and disinformation
| campaigns.
|
| Finally, the fact is that BS spreads at a magnitude
| unimagined in human history. Evidently, the BS detectors
| aren't helping. And if you think you are smarter than
| everyone else, you are the most vulnerable (also
| demonstrated by research).
|
| > it's once of the best sources we have today.
|
| IMHO Encyclopedia Britannica is always better where it
| has coverage (i.e., because I can trust it), as is Google
| Scholar, authoritative websites by experts, and better
| journalism. If I want to know about the deer tick, I use
| a website such as Tree of Life (tolweb.org).
| notahacker wrote:
| The real fun is on the marginal articles: the politicians so
| obscure that nobody bothers to edit war over them so that
| most of the article is written either by their party PR team
| or somebody with an axe to grind against them (or in the case
| of one obscure British MP, an editor that was apparently
| their partner!). The academic theories that are so fringe
| nobody's even really critiqued them as fringe, and yet
| because they _just about_ pass notability they get the same
| prominence as entire schools of academic thought on list
| pages. The pages where someone makes a joke edit and it doesn
| 't get removed ten minutes later.
| ghaff wrote:
| Notability is one of the funny things on Wikipedia that
| doesn't have a great solution given that _many_ people are
| notable in some community (physical or professional). You
| can make a case for most of the following being notable:
| pretty much any elected politician even if they 're some
| county registrar of wills, journalists who may have
| thousands of bylines, tenured professors with lots of
| papers. Yet, many of these won't have a lot written _about_
| them especially in print publications which can run afoul
| of verifiability requirements beyond a statement about
| things that they 've done.
| syshum wrote:
| Unfortunately as science becomes more and more politicized I
| am starting to see the narrative vs truth debate come to more
| and more topics than just political controversy
| harles wrote:
| I have to imagine it's an order of magnitude better than the
| old encyclopedias, even for controversial articles.
| veddox wrote:
| I'm guessing you haven't used too many ,,real"
| encyclopedias? The quality of writing on those was very
| high. In terms of readability, understandability, and
| reliability, I find the average print article to be
| significantly better than your average Wikipedia article.
| Their big downsides being, of course, that they were not
| _as_ exhaustive on any given topic as Wikipedia is (though
| this actually helped with the understandability), and they
| were quickly out of date (especially as they were too
| expensive to replace every few years).
| wolverine876 wrote:
| They are available online, not just in print. In fact, I
| think they've stopped printing them ?
|
| Online: https://britannica.com
| ghaff wrote:
| One of the things that traditional encyclopedias (as well
| as a given book/magazine/etc.) have is a very clear view
| of the persona that they're writing for. With Wikipedia,
| this differs considerably from article to article
| depending upon the topic. With respect to many technical
| topics, especially in areas like math and physics,
| Wikipedia articles often dive right into equations and
| many articles are largely incomprehensible to anyone not
| already familiar with the subject matter.
| notahacker wrote:
| And on the flip side, there are other technical topics
| where large parts of the article are written by people
| unschooled in the subject citing magazine and news
| articles which are online rather than the field's core
| texts which aren't...
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| Can you elaborate on the Gamergate example? I'm not
| especially familiar with the editors of Wikipedia nor the
| narratives involved in the controversy itself.
| Akronymus wrote:
| In the media GG is portrayed as evil to its core, along
| with mainly being about hating women. Because those sources
| are deemed reliable, that is how it is portrayed in
| wikipedia. While in reality it was a reaction to a large
| swath of people being called misogynist or similar.
|
| In my opinion [1,2] is a better source to get an overview
| of what actually happened.
|
| I am biased though, in this case.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STl7-_f4_eA [2]
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beUt5Ke_DqU
| stefan_ wrote:
| Has it? Wikipedia is primarily edited by an insulated, slowly
| dying clique of mostly ignorant people who would rather nothing
| be written at all than a domain expert outsider article.
|
| Meanwhile, the foundation is some sort of self-perpetuating
| money vacuum expanding at a great rate while expenditures for
| actually _running Wikipedia_ is stagnant, if anything getting
| cheaper. It turns out a wishy-washy NGO save the world mission
| is a lot more exciting than the daily struggle of community
| building, and with the foundation all these do-gooders don 't
| even have to forgo the competitive salary.
|
| Obviously a bit exaggerated, but there is a lot of truth here.
| coliveira wrote:
| I could be much worse, corporations could have taken over.
| pilingual wrote:
| Wikipedia is absolutely in need of disrupting. If that
| happens, it should be done very thoughtfully.
|
| https://www.wired.com/2007/08/wiki-tracker/
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20190410141316/old.ycombinator.c.
| .. (Item #23)
| respondo2134 wrote:
| "Wikipedia is in desperate need of thoughtful disruption"
|
| Thanks for that.
| mekoka wrote:
| Citations desperately needed. What do you hope to communicate
| with this tirade ? You're basically saying _I spewed out a
| bunch of things, some of it is true. Figure out which._
| stefan_ wrote:
| Found the Wikipedia admin. These are well known issues:
|
| "Wikipedia is losing editors":
| https://mashable.com/2013/01/08/wikipedia-losing-
| editors/?eu...
|
| "Nearly all of Wikipedia is written by just 1 percent of
| its editors":
| https://www.vice.com/en/article/7x47bb/wikipedia-editors-
| eli...
|
| "Wikipedia's diversity gap echoes around the internet":
| https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2021/04/04/wikipedias-
| diver...
|
| "Wikipedia has cancer": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:
| Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_C...
| kradroy wrote:
| I'm not sure why this is getting downvoted, because even
| Wikipedia acknowledges the issues with its contributor
| community.
|
| Years ago I had a friend who worked for Wikimedia
| Foundation and was very enthusiastic about it. That
| optimism didn't last for long. He left after a few years
| citing WF's messaging style of "holding the content
| hostage" during fundraising drives and the established,
| exclusive contributor community that, more often than
| not, would drive away new contributors with snippy
| responses and arcane editing rules.
| paulpauper wrote:
| "wiki cannot be trusted"
|
| "have anything better? how specifically is is it bad or
| biased compared to alternatives?"
|
| silence
| caturopath wrote:
| Can you tell me a couple large, human-made things you do
| like?
| _theory_ wrote:
| Computers, computer languages
| wzyoi wrote:
| Domesticated animals
| skrebbel wrote:
| Burritos
| rzzzt wrote:
| The Colossus of Rhodes
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| i would save scihub too.
| bionade24 wrote:
| And wikibooks. I think they're are actually multiple
| websites, so if I had to decide, it would be web.archive.org.
| Yes, this would mean nearly all internet sites, but without
| CGI backends.
| valyagolev wrote:
| The moment the question is "which resource can I unreservedly
| trust", you're already duped. Encyclopedias are written and
| edited by real people, with real agendas, and no collaboration
| or editorial model will get rid of those.
|
| There's a difference in "how exactly should I not trust this or
| that resource" though.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Op said useful, as intended, worthy of saving. Not trusted
| without reservations. No need to strawman.
| valyagolev wrote:
| He quoted people discussing that very question
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Yeah I knew it wasn't a legit "cite" but it was a good entrance
| to rabbit hole from.
| la_fayette wrote:
| Openstreetmap fits IMHO also into this category. Personally, if
| I could save one website, I might choose OSM ;)
| fumblebee wrote:
| AFAIK a large part of why it hasn't yet been corrupted has been
| the total lack of greed on behalf of founder Jimmy Wales.
|
| Kudos to you, Jimmy (and team). Keep up the great work.
| NaturalPhallacy wrote:
| Oh it's definitely been corrupted:
| https://larrysanger.org/2020/05/wikipedia-is-badly-biased/
|
| Note the article is written by the same guy who wrote the
| email in the original post.
| billiam wrote:
| That's basically it. Naked Greed and convincing yourself that
| monetizing a thing you think you invented but which
| invariably turns out to be people's attention is always good
| in and of itself. I've been in or inside lots of wonderful
| things created as the Internet has evolved, and almost all
| end up this way.
| respondo2134 wrote:
| He's extracted a pretty good life from wikipedia, but nothing
| compared to your typical SV start-up founder would demand, so
| I'm totally OK with this.
| chris_wot wrote:
| If you think it isn't a cesspool, do t go to the admin's
| Noticeboard, and certainly _do not change categories_.
| caturopath wrote:
| Yeah, it's difficult to remember just how audacious an idea
| Wikipedia was. Even as an earlyish contributor, I thought it
| was an impossible dream. It has turned out to be a really great
| tool.
| pfarrell wrote:
| I always liked the quip: Wikipedia works well in practice,
| just not in theory.
| lucasnortj wrote:
| it is absolutely riddled with falsehoods and most articles are
| written by people who know nothing about the topics. It is a
| garbage site
| young_unixer wrote:
| It still can't be trusted for articles related to politics,
| specially if you're reading it in a language different from
| English.
| ChrisKnott wrote:
| Can you post some examples?
| rvba wrote:
| 1. This isn't a political example, but big parts of
| Scottish Wikipedia were basically written by one teenager,
| who took English texts and wrote them with Scottish accent.
| He did not use real Scottish language, but rather some
| strange version of English.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/aug/26/shock-an-
| aw-...
|
| Either nobody reads the relatively small Scottish
| Wikipedia, or (more likely) everyone who complained about
| it got banned by said admin. And since nobody really
| reviews bans (why cant the Wikimedia Foundation have
| someone for it?), then you are generally out of luck.
|
| 2A. There was a Wikipedia administrator who created 80 000
| pages and redirects related to breasts. Also seemed to have
| some obsession over some low key political woman.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/dk17c9/wikiped
| i...
|
| What is more sad in this case, is that every other admin
| knew very well that thousands of such pages were created,
| but nobody did anything. This is the usual situation when
| the clique will never go against one of their own.
|
| It took them an incredible amount of time to do anything
| with that rogue admin and at the end I think he wasn't even
| removed from his role and banned, he simply stepped down on
| his own.
|
| 2B. Compare the rogue admin described in point 2A (who
| created 80 thousand articles and redirects related to
| breasts) with the typical experience of a new wikipedia
| user, whose article will be probably speedy deleted
| immediately after creation. There is a big group of admins
| who try to speed delete everything - because by default
| they treat every new user as human trash and every new
| article as not encyclopedic.
|
| I dont have any statistics,but I assume that after the new
| article is deleted, most new users will simply give up,
| because the alternative is to fight versus the admin clique
| through various "committees" (full of said admins). This
| time is wasted, because instead of improving the article
| you go through a trial of tears.
|
| 2C. Also very possible is that every edit by a new user is
| reverted by default. The new user cannot revert it back -
| since this is an "edit war". I dont feel like searching for
| examples, but there are admins who have literal counters
| that show how many things they reverted - and they pride
| themselves of it.
|
| This basically means thousands of users pushed away of
| trying to improve wikipedia, just because some sad asshole
| sits and reverts everything to paddle his stats.
|
| Other admins dont do anything about it, because it is
| incredibly hard to remove an admin / if they removed that
| guy, then someone else could go after them.
|
| The Wikimedia foundation simply does not care at all. They
| just need those millions for various expensive "projects",
| lunches and so on. A very similar thing happened with
| Firefox, where the Mozilla foundation is interested in
| everything, but not their core product.
|
| If you are a new Wikipedia user a very typical situation is
| that if you create a new article, some admin will "improve"
| it (generally making it worse) and you cannot revert those
| changes, or you get banned by the said admin. On some
| smaller Wikipedia the admins knew each other very well, so
| they ask their friend to ban you.
|
| I am aware that I dont provide any examples for those + I
| sound like a "frustrated person".
|
| If you dont believe me, you can make a second account and
| see how it looks for someone new (using two accounts is
| against Wikipedia terms of service btw).
|
| Perhaps a good way would be to randomize admin names, so
| those assholes get banned by their own friends, or reverted
| by own friends, who like to revert everything.
|
| 3. Regarding examples of "fresh" political cases having a
| lot of problems. You can check the page of Aimee Channelor
| and constant edit wars related to that person
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Aimee_Challenor
|
| That's the person involved in the reddit scandal in 2021.
|
| If you feel like a detective, you can also try to figure
| out who are the people who constantly guard and edit the
| said article.
|
| Btw. I guess I also have to add a disclaimer that I never
| had anything to do with article from point 3.
| strenholme wrote:
| [citation needed]
|
| 1. This is an issue the Wikimedia foundation has been
| dealing with and working to solve: https://meta.wikimedia
| .org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Large_s...
|
| 2A. The general rule with the Wikipedia is that, if you
| can make a redirect to _something_ , it's usually good to
| do so, even if the redirect uses a term which is not
| politically correct. Considering the source of the
| complaint comes from Reddit, Reddit is not a particularly
| reliable source about matters like this.
|
| 2B. As a strict inclusionist sometimes Wikipedia editor,
| I agree 100% with the general gist that the Wikipedia
| makes adding new articles too hard. That said, I have
| with some effort been able to make a new article stay in
| the Wikipedia fairly recently (late 2019):
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ValhallaDSP
|
| It did get tagged for deletion -- https://en.wikipedia.or
| g/w/index.php?title=ValhallaDSP&type=... -- but the
| editor who put the tag removed it when I pointed out the
| subject has been extensively referenced by the music
| press -- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Valha
| llaDSP&type=...
|
| 2C. Please provide evidence; e.g. diffs where you tried
| to edit something and all of your edits were reverted.
| [Citation needed] and all that.
|
| 3. The current version
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aimee_Challenor -- this
| version: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Aimee
| _Challenor&o... -- has the Reddit scandal and other
| scandals prominently described in the lead section.
| Please let us know how the article is not neutral.
| rvba wrote:
| 1. Wikimedia foundation is doing literally nothing. It is
| painfully obvious that they should hire people who would
| sit all day and review actions of admins (their bans,
| reverts, edit wars.. yes admins participate in them too,
| but nobody does anything about it). Obviously we end up
| with a question "who watches the watchmen", but this
| could be made all public too.
|
| For example Wikipedia has a role called CheckUser - what
| is a person that has special access rights to check IP
| addresses of all other users. This is mainly used to see
| if a person doesn't use multiple sock puppet accounts to
| make various types of abuse (e.g. vote manipulation).
|
| I know a local Wikipedia, where the CheckUser literally
| refuses to check if admins don't have sock puppet
| accounts. This means that the admins can literally make
| any sock puppet they want and always win any vote,
| including future votes for a new CheckUser.
|
| What can you do about it? Nothing.
|
| Can you write about this to Wikimedia Foundation? Nope.
| There even isnt any official way to contact them. They
| basically let local Wikipedia branches run themselves.
|
| 2A. You write a lot of text to defend literal garbage.
| That admin added 80 THOUSAND incredibly low effort
| redirects related to woman breasts.
|
| "Titty tumors", "Segmental removal of the titties",
| "Constructions of the booby", "Hypoplastic tits",
| "Atrophy of the titties"...
|
| Please explain to me how this is any good?
|
| If a new user made such garbage, it would be speed
| deleted and the user IP banned immediately.
|
| 2B. So basically an experienced Wikipedia user still got
| their article speed deleted, had to fight to get it
| back.. and then somehow what I wrote is wrong. So to sum
| up, if you dont like the facts, you ignore the facts? I
| realy dont understand what is your point here.
|
| 3. Again, you seem to miss the point. Someone asked for
| an example of a political article that was problematic.
| So I provided an article. You can look at the edit
| history to see that there were literal wars about
| everything there.
|
| Also in case of articles about living people, politicians
| etc. it is often quite clear that said politicians or
| their aides are the ones who are tasked with guarding the
| article, editing it.
|
| > Please let us know how the article is not neutral.
|
| Do you represent Wikipedia or Wikipedia foundation in any
| way?
| strenholme wrote:
| You did not provide one link nor citation in your entire
| 400-word rant.
| rvba wrote:
| Hey, please explain to me why "Constructions of the
| booby", or "Atrophy of the titties" are things that
| should be on Wikipedia? I guess you cannot defend this,
| so you just change the subject. Or maybe you are a
| sexist, who thinks that this is ok.
|
| Why do you demand citations when Wikipedia is discussed?
| For any other topic, you dont demand them, or dont use
| them.
|
| I guess you are just some common troll, probably a
| Wikipedia admin. Joke's on me, since I even bothered to
| reply.
| strenholme wrote:
| Those articles aren't on the Wikipedia: https://en.wikipe
| dia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log/delet... -- https:/
| /en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log/delet...
|
| I am demanding citations because you're making
| contentious accusations based on half-truths.
|
| This will be my last reply to you; I do not think a
| productive conversation is possible at this point.
| leephillips wrote:
| It is clear from when he originally brought it up that
| those articles had been, eventually, removed. Indeed,
| part of his point (and a relevant issue, I believe) was
| to ask why this took so long. Since this must be clear to
| you, it seems that your comment is disingenuous.
| strenholme wrote:
| I agree, the Wikipedia process is very slow, and often
| times a lot of discussion happens before something is
| finally done. That's a natural consequence of a process
| where consensus, reliable sourcing, and a desire to be
| neutral and accurate determines what is acceptable and
| not acceptable.
|
| I much prefer the process to what Reddit does, which is,
| in many subreddits, to quickly ban anyone who goes
| against the group think of a given subreddit, even if the
| subreddit is wrong.
|
| In Wikipedia, as a rule of thumb, is that the truth does
| win out, even if it takes a while to get there. As one
| example, while Tara Reade's now-discredited accusation
| [1] against Joe Biden was all over numerous subreddits
| and presented as objective fact, [2] the Wikipedia was
| taking a slower, more measured approach to reporting the
| accusations which ultimately ended up being far more
| accurate than what Reddit was doing at the time. [3]
|
| As another case, a lot of noise was made over how
| horrible the Wikipedia was because Clarice Phelps didn't
| have a Wikipedia article. She has one today. [4]
|
| [1] This probably needs a citation. How about
| https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/what-74-former-
| biden-s... or, yeah, since it's so heavily sourced https:
| //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Biden_sexual_assault_alleg...
|
| [2] For example, https://old.reddit.com/r/WayOfTheBern/co
| mments/it5n91/multip...
|
| [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Joe_Biden/Archive_
| 10#Tara...
|
| [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarice_Phelps
|
| [5] Wikipedia has a hard time with allowing articles
| about cool open source projects and languages. I agree
| this is _really_ annoying, since it means I have to dig
| through GitHub, forums like this one, or (for fonts)
| Google Fonts to find high quality open source programs or
| content.
|
| [6] Adding footnotes without a reference to the footnote
| is an old alt.sysadmin.recovery tradition
| leephillips wrote:
| You sidestepped the point about disingenuously pointing
| out that the articles that the original commenter was
| very clear had been already taken down, were not there.
|
| Do you think that being better than Reddit is a high bar?
| strenholme wrote:
| I didn't side step the issue. Of the _three_ issues the
| OP originally brought up, he only stated that one of
| those issues were resolved by the Wikipedia. He implied
| the other two haven't been dealt with or resolved, while,
| in fact, all the issues are resolved or are being
| discussed.
|
| I brought up Reddit because the OP brought up Reddit.
| leephillips wrote:
| I believe you did. In rvba's item 2A, he is clear that
| the issue was addressed, after "an incredible amount of
| time". Your reply provides the information that the
| articles no longer exist on the platform, as if it were a
| refutation of rvba's point. This is what I am calling
| disingenuous, and I think my characterization is
| warranted.
|
| EDIT: But perhaps I am wrong or confused. Wouldn't be the
| first time. In that case, please clarify what, exactly,
| was the purpose of your citations that began "Those
| articles aren't on the Wikipedia:".
| visarga wrote:
| > by default they treat every new user as human trash and
| every new article as not encyclopedic
|
| Maybe setting a high bar to new edits is not a bad idea.
| Wikipedia is old, it should settle at least on some of
| the topics.
| rvba wrote:
| Nice that you talk about edits (or new articles?) that
| you have not seen. Spoken like a true Wikipedist: be
| hostile to anyone who is outside of the clique and dares
| to criticize it.
|
| The hostile speed deletions and reverts applied to new
| users are never happen admins, or members of the clique -
| even if the quality of things they add is very, very low.
|
| I even wrote above that there are ways to fight it: for
| example by randomizing the names of users who made the
| edits. Although Im quite sure that Wikipedia is full of
| sad people, who will spend a lot of time and effort to
| still be able to bypass such a system.
|
| What is even more sad, is that in this particular
| discussions, you have 3 different users who wrote that it
| happened to them... just look to other replies to the top
| comment.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > Maybe setting a high bar to new edits is not a bad
| idea.
|
| I agree about this. If you're worried that your edit
| might get reverted, the trick is to argue for it on the
| talk page first, wait for any objections to be raised
| there, _then_ if no one objects, make the edit marking it
| as "per talk". At that point, it will be very hard for
| them to just revert, and if they do so without addressing
| your comments they're breaking Wikipedia policy
| themselves.
| leephillips wrote:
| Everyone I know who has tried to contribute to Wikipedia
| would concur with your comments here. I myself dipped my
| little toe tentatively into the Wikipedia swamp a couple
| of times, and can confirm everything you say. It's a
| toxic presence on the web, a cesspool of plagiarism and
| insular politics masquerading as political neutrality. It
| sucks the energy out of the web of creative, individual
| voices that should be the ideal, and substitutes
| crowdsourced mush that reads as exactly what it is:
| something written by a committee.
| gpcr1949 wrote:
| https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Site-
| wi...
| kaliali wrote:
| You also have the same problems of history revisionism
| for the far left as well.
|
| You can't trust wiki when it pertains to politics.
| pfarrell wrote:
| citation needed
| Const-me wrote:
| There's an ongoing war in Europe since 2014, between Russia
| and Ukraine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-
| Ukrainian_War The fact is well-established, the article has
| more than 600 sources.
|
| Russian Wikipedia doesn't have such article. They only have
| "military conflict in eastern Ukraine" https://ru.wikipedia
| .org/wiki/%D0%92%D0%BE%D0%BE%D1%80%D1%83... That article
| does not list Russia on the right panel under
| "belligerents" section. Many sections simply tell official
| Russian version. When it does tell some bits of truth it
| uses wordings like "allegedly" and "according to Ukrainian
| side". The "casualties and losses" section only contains
| losses on Ukrainian side.
| nzmsv wrote:
| You don't think that 600 Ukrainian and western sources
| only tell one side of the story though? I went down the
| list. All the Russian sources are actually Ukrainian (in
| Russian language). Just because you disagree with a
| perspective doesn't mean it should be censored.
|
| Look at the "reactions in Russia" section. There is not a
| single positive sentiment expressed there about the
| situation in Crimea. I guarantee you that this is not
| representative of the the public opinion in Russia
| (whether or not you agree with it). All citations are
| from opposition people nobody has ever heard of. Not a
| single one from the official media? That's neutral?
| Really?
|
| If all the people in Crimea are victims and are
| controlled by evil bad Russia, how come Ukraine turned
| off their water supply? The one they didn't build. Don't
| they want those poor oppressed souls to come back into
| the fold? Where's that reference in the article?
|
| And in the interest of keeping an open mind: here come
| the downvotes! The people clicking that arrow probably
| think of themselves as very open minded too.
| Const-me wrote:
| > You don't think that 600 Ukrainian and western sources
| only tell one side of the story though?
|
| These sources aren't exclusively western, e.g. Al Jazeera
| is based in Qatar.
|
| Another thing, I have some sources outside of the
| Internets. I personally know a few people who fought the
| war, and many civilians who fled the war. Their stories
| match these 600 sources of the English version of
| Wikipedia.
| nzmsv wrote:
| I know some people who fled the war as well, to Russia.
| Not liking war doesn't necessarily mean supporting
| handing Ukraine over to the USA. This part is completely
| lost in the "Russia bad" narrative though.
| nemothekid wrote:
| I'm not sure what your anecdotes have to do with the
| matter being discussed. Regardless of the fact if you
| support the war, the truth remains that the war is
| _happening_ between Ukraine and Russia. For Russian
| wikipedia to conceal that fact is censorship.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "the truth remains that the war is happening between
| Ukraine and Russia."
|
| Interesting point to illustrate, why wikipedia's articles
| are not as good as the scientific ones. Because don't you
| think, this truth is a matter of perspective?
|
| Because to my understanding, a real war between Ukraine
| and Russia would look a bit different and would have been
| over long ago.
|
| There are definitely strong elements of a civil war,
| despite russias covert and open engagement. And with the
| US and EU involvment on the pro west Ukrainian side - it
| is complicated geopolitics. Hard to find simple truths
| there, when all involved sides are engaged with
| disinformation and propaganda.
| visarga wrote:
| > supporting handing Ukraine over to the USA
|
| That's up for Ukrainians to decide, not Russia.
| Const-me wrote:
| Apparently, we have very different political positions.
| But that should not be relevant. Wikipedia's declared
| goal is not about politics. It's about preserving
| knowledge about notable enough subjects.
|
| Russians have started the war, and have been fighting the
| war from the very beginning in March 2012. That's not a
| controversial theory, but a well-established fact with
| verifiable references all over the internets.
|
| Yet Russian version of Wikipedia seems unaware.
| scottrogowski wrote:
| I upvoted your first comment because I felt that you were
| making a valid if controversial point.
|
| But the concept of "handing over" Ukraine really
| underlines why the rest of the world views Russia as such
| a threat to world peace.
|
| Ukrainians should decide their own future. It's not
| Russia's to hand over nor is it America's to take.
| Sometimes you hear quotes by high ranking Russian
| military officials and it feels like there is this
| persistent belief that NATO somehow "stole" Eastern
| Europe from Russia when the reality was that Eastern
| Europe fled to NATO to deter Russia after several brutal
| decades in the Soviet sphere of influence.
|
| Certainly the concept of some countries being good and
| others being bad is outdated. The West has engaged in
| more than it's share of evil. But that doesn't justify
| moral relativism in international affairs. Nor does it
| allow one country to attempt annexation of another
| against its will.
| leephillips wrote:
| Al Jazeera is is not just based in Qatar, it is Qatari
| state media.
| bscphil wrote:
| At least officially, the situation is similar to that of
| the BBC. Both AJ and the BBC are government funded, but
| both have editorial independence of their local
| government. Both have been accused of bias in favor of
| their funding governments.
| inamiyar wrote:
| The wikipedia article on NIAC - the National Iranian
| American Council, which seems to be an Iran state-sponsored
| organization, is guarded by their members. Luckily
| Wikipedia is fairly good at pointing it out in this
| instance:
|
| > A major contributor to this article appears to have a
| close connection with its subject. It may require cleanup
| to comply with Wikipedia's content policies, particularly
| neutral point of view. Please discuss further on the talk
| page. (June 2018) (Learn how and when to remove this
| template message)
|
| But going to the talk page shows they still control the
| page and content on it.
|
| > Dear User Wikidave2009, since June 2017 the well-sourced
| March 2017 revelations and implications section has been
| created five times in this page by three different editors
| like Wiki726, Ours18 and myself, you have deleted it every
| single time without providing any credible reference to
| discredit that the sources cited in that section. Your
| claim that these sources are "fringe" and "dubious" is not
| wellfounded. Michael Rubin is a leading expert on Iran at
| the AEI, Darren Tromblay is a veteran intelligence analyst
| and both the Small Wars Journal and Commentary Magazine are
| solid and reliable sources. I do realize that you are very
| dedicated to guarding the NIAC page, however, you're
| forcing your opinion on this page without any regard for
| other editors who disagree with you. Please STOP removing
| content that you don't like, and perhaps find a way to deal
| with this conflict of interest that is obvious. Alwaysf
| (talk) 05:29, 17 January 2018 (UTC)
|
| That section is not on the main page. You can see it in the
| history: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nationa
| l_Iranian_...
| wpietri wrote:
| Is that about Wikipedia, or more about politics in general?
|
| Another way to put it: is there another source you'd trust
| more? I'm only familiar with English-language Wikipedia, but
| from what I've seen, NPOV and other standards mean that the
| battling factions of editors tend to produce something that
| does a better job of portraying multiple points of view than
| most other sources.
| s17n wrote:
| I think the issue is if an article doesn't get enough
| attention, it's easy for people to slip in blatantly false
| or misleading information for self interested reasons. I
| imagine this is worse on non-english wikipedia but it does
| also happen on English.
|
| So on Wikipedia, you need to always be thinking about
| whether anyone has a motivation to manipulate the article
| and checking to see whether they in fact have. You could
| argue that this is true of everything though, and at least
| on Wikipedia people are usually pretty clumsy about
| revealing their biases.
| bscphil wrote:
| Well said. The major problem with Wikipedia is that
| unless a topic is extremely popular, most of the editors
| interested in working on the topic will have a huge bias
| toward one particular point of view. They will directly
| cite advocacy organizations that support their view in
| the body of the article over neutral sources. Fixing this
| is basically impossible. "The encyclopedia that anyone
| can edit" is true in the sense that "anyone can become an
| editor" which is true in the sense of "anyone can become
| a millionaire." In reality, reforming a problematic
| article on Wikipedia would take a major investment into
| getting an account with the requisite reputation and
| friends in similar positions of power. Most of us can't
| be bothered.
|
| The _other_ major problem with Wikipedia is the low
| quality of many of its writers, at least (again) for
| topics a little outside mainstream interest. Last time I
| edited Wikipedia, I discovered an organized editing
| effort by a professor teaching a course at a community
| college. I tracked it to the course website, and
| apparently as a semester long project, students were
| asked to pick an article and slowly incorporate
| improvements to it as well as check the quality of other
| incoming changes.
|
| Now, I've taught classes at a pretty well regarded public
| university, and having had to grade the writing of
| incoming students from good high schools, my assessment
| of the writing skills provided by America's primary
| education system is Not Great. I can only imagine that
| the caliber of student coming into a typical community
| college is even worse. This isn't to trash this
| particular student or even the class, but to give an idea
| of who's editing Wikipedia, on a good day.
|
| The article I was reading (which I'd regard as important
| - I actually found it after seeing statistics it provided
| quoted by well-known publications) had slowly been turned
| into complete garbage over the course of a few months by
| this student. It was barely coherent English. Statistics
| were misquoted and misinterpreted throughout (everyone
| citing the Wikipedia article had been misled, as a
| result). And this was the result of one editor doing a
| bad job, not even deliberate astroturfing. Suffice it to
| say, it's very dangerous to take Wikipedia seriously on
| any subject of importance unless the article about it has
| been widely reviewed.
| pishpash wrote:
| That's exactly it. It's not that every article is
| unreliable, it's that there is no way to tell. I suppose
| you can take a look at the edit history and see how
| sparsely vetted an article is, but some metric like that
| prominently displayed to portray signal-to-noise would be
| an improvement.
| ghaff wrote:
| I'm sure there are folks here who would disagree but I'd
| generally trust mainstream global news sources like The
| Economist, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal. (Which
| is not to say they don't get stories or even whole
| narratives wrong.)
| yashap wrote:
| Agreed. They certainly have their biases, but they are at
| least correct about the facts they state almost all the
| time, and when they have factual inaccuracies, they seem
| to be rare, honest mistakes. Better than a lot of sources
| of information related to politics, that are full of
| intentionally incorrect facts.
| ghaff wrote:
| I was interviewed for a fairly trivial story in the WSJ
| based on something I wrote on Twitter a while back. Total
| nothingburger comment and, from a 30 minute conversation,
| total nothingburger quote. But the amount of back and
| forth, confirming quote and associated details, etc. was
| incredible. Most pubs would have just quoted the tweet.
|
| (That said, I've also been interviewed for a breaking
| news story and that's simply run.)
| im3w1l wrote:
| Wikipedia is in this uncanny valley of reliability, where
| it looks impartial when you take a superficial glance, but
| when you look closer it isn't. This lulls you into false
| sense of security that allows the occasional lie* through
| your filters.
|
| * I saw lie, because if you tried to fix the inaccuracy it
| would not be allowed.
| nailer wrote:
| Wikipedia is not a primary source. You wouldn't describe it
| as a source or cite it. That people don't know this is one
| of Wikipedia's failings.
| osrec wrote:
| Unfortunately, politics is riddled with opinion. No piece on
| politics is really that trustworthy, regardless of whether
| it's in an encyclopedia or a tabloid newspaper.
| belorn wrote:
| The reason it can't be trusted is methodology used to create
| articles: weight based statements using reliable sources. The
| concept does not work with politics. You can't take the top
| 10 news sites, sum up how often a certain statement is made,
| and then derive the truth.
|
| When you have two polarizing sides, the extremist that are
| the most popular view might not even be close to reality or
| even the majority opinion. With two narratives that define
| their own "good" side and a "bad" side, the messy truth might
| not be found in news articles but rather in hindsight a few
| decades later (or fringe analysts that is struggling to
| survive).
|
| Political topics do however get fairly good coverage by
| citing reliable sources of what kind of narratives have been
| made, and except for correct weighting, might give some clues
| about the truth.
| jll29 wrote:
| Whether or not we can fully trust Wikipedia is one thing,
| and it is true that truth should not just be a result of
| frequency counting.
|
| I'd say Wikipedia, like the scientific process, works in
| the limit; any snapshot may contain errors, but there's a
| process for weeding out errors that leads to conversion
| towards the right direction, if not always in a strictly
| monotonic fashion.
|
| There are countries in which things said on Wikipedia are
| not permissible to be viewed, or where it is banned in
| whole. I prefer to live in a place where you can view
| everything (e.g, [1,2]) and make up your mind for yourself,
| weighing the evidence.
|
| [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20110512173914/http://seatt
| letim...
|
| [2] https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%85%AD%E5%9B%9B%E4%BA%
| 8B%E4...
|
| [3] https://www.history.com/news/who-was-the-tank-man-of-
| tiananm...
| NaturalPhallacy wrote:
| You can't trust it any more or less than any other source.
|
| The circumcision (a euphemism for male genital mutilation)
| page for example is run and moderated by pro-circumcision
| people. And you can tell because there's any support for it
| whatsoever.
| jll29 wrote:
| > If there was a fire on the internet, and I could only save
| one website, it would be you Wikipedia.
|
| Well said, I concur, and I'm borrowing your quote for my
| fortunes file.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-05-09 23:01 UTC)