[HN Gopher] A photo on Wikipedia can ruin your life
___________________________________________________________________
A photo on Wikipedia can ruin your life
Author : akolbe
Score : 181 points
Date : 2021-11-06 10:18 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (en.wikipedia.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (en.wikipedia.org)
| akolbe wrote:
| It should be noted that in the Discovery Channel broadcast, the
| picture of the Florida Nathaniel White was shown only very
| briefly--long enough to recognize the man if you knew him well,
| but probably not long enough to memorize his face if you didn't.
| So in a sense the Wikipedia page was possibly more harmful to him
| than the original TV content, bearing in mind that thousands of
| people looked Nathaniel White up on Wikipedia each time the
| program aired. Overall, more than 125,000 people viewed the
| Wikipedia article while it showed the wrong image. The spikes
| correspond to days when the program aired:
|
| https://pageviews.toolforge.org/?project=en.wikipedia.org&pl...
| akolbe wrote:
| During the past few days, the Google Knowledge Graph panel
| shown in searches for Nathanial White serial killer seems to
| have been cleaned up. While a week ago it showed multiple
| instances of the wrong picture, today it only shows a single
| picture of the actual perpetrator being arrested. The same is
| not true for image searches, however, which continue to be
| completely dominated by pictures of the Florida man who's
| completely innocent of these crimes.
| jefftk wrote:
| While in the TV broadcast the picture was shown only briefly,
| it sounds like they also published an article online, which was
| the Wikipedia editor's source:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2...
| maxerickson wrote:
| It seems an appropriate remedy for Discovery would include
| frequent airing of programming making it clear what the killer
| looked like, and perhaps covering similar media mistakes (with
| an eye towards showing the correct individuals over and over,
| never showing the misidentified people).
|
| Playing it a lot would make it more likely that the people that
| saw the misinformation would see the correction.
| daanlo wrote:
| I am sure that the wikipedia entry was very harmful. E.g. I
| regularly google the name of people that I will have a meeting
| with (as preparation) or trying to find the linkedin profile. I
| am sure many HR departments do this as well.
|
| In this case it would have been something like: 1) google name
| 2) oh. The applicant has the same name as a serial killer 3)
| click on wikipedia article 4) OMG 5) the applicant being
| significantly less likely to receive an offer
| capableweb wrote:
| > In this case it would have been something like: 1) google
| name 2) oh. The applicant has the same name as a serial
| killer 3) click on wikipedia article 4) OMG 5) the applicant
| being significantly less likely to receive an offer
|
| I'd follow the same process if it was a high-value hire. But
| in this process, if I'd discover that it seems to be a serial
| killer, I think I would at least reach out and ask if this is
| the same person, even if the pictures seems to match. Seems
| unlikely that a known serial killer would apply to any jobs I
| usually offer, so making sure it's the same person is surely
| something you'd do first.
| ModernMech wrote:
| Your plan would be to call up someone to ask whether or not
| they are a serial killer? Or do you mean to check their
| references? Because that could do even more damage to this
| person's reputation. Imagine calling up this guy's top
| references, asking them all if the dude they know is a
| serial killer. They go and look up the wiki article, and
| now may or may not have a giant question mark in their head
| as well.
| em-bee wrote:
| i would ask for a formal background check to verify what
| he says
| dylan604 wrote:
| on an applicant? really? if you were headhunting and this
| person really fit the bill for a key role, maybe.
| fortran77 wrote:
| Exactly. This is already a serious problem without Wikipedia
| giving wrong information a stamp of credibility.
|
| There's a man with the exact same name as mine (not a common
| one) and the exact same age who is a disbarred attorney in
| Arizona. More than once I've been asked by a prospective
| client if I ever was an attorney even though it's not on my
| C.V. (I would love to find a way to put these wanna-be
| Sherlock Holmeses who don't know how to google in their
| places!)
|
| Imagine if I had a Wikipedia page and the names got
| conflated. I'd never be able to unwind that.
| 1cvmask wrote:
| There are so many "fake entry" editors on Wikipedia especially on
| national security matters like the infamous Phillip Cross.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28808516
| skhr0680 wrote:
| People need to stop blindly trusting Wikipedia. I have seen
| sourced facts that failed a sniff test, and checking the source
| the article contradicted the source it linked to, and that's only
| the times I noticed. Couple that with the amount of other sites
| and media that copy off Wikipedia (citogenesis) and BS spreads
| like wildfire.
|
| "Why do you still use Wikipedia?" because the good parts are a
| great human achievement and even the OK parts can be adequate as
| a broad outline of a topic.
|
| "Why don't you just fix it?" I try, but it's hard when I have a
| busy day and my edit will be reverted within minutes by a full-
| time Wikipedian / Expert Wikipedia Rules Lawyer and self-
| appointed lord of said article.
| aww_dang wrote:
| At this point I rarely consider directly editing an article. If
| it seems that the edit would be palatable to the prevailing
| dogma I suggest it on the talk page. This allows whichever
| editor to claim it as their own and phrase it accordingly.
| jimmont wrote:
| People need to stop blindly trusting. ~ I simply dropped the
| last word. Just a thought.
| jerry1979 wrote:
| Would you happen to know if anyone is cataloging these false
| facts?
| superdisk wrote:
| > full-time Wikipedian / Expert Wikipedia Rules Lawyer and
| self-appointed lord of said article.
|
| So absolutely true. These people are insufferable. Any time
| I've made a non-trivial edit to Wikipedia I usually end up
| clashing with these people. It really sucks because a lot of
| the time, they don't argue in good faith, and throw every rule
| in the book at you to get their way, while hiding behind a
| facade of impartial rule-abiding.
|
| So frustrating, and has drastically lowered my confidence in
| Wikipedia.
|
| Also, it's fun to note the "lords" of various general topics.
| Find an article about a person in the right-wing political
| sphere and you're very likely to find the same small set of
| "Wikipedian" toadies ruling over it with an iron fist. I'm sure
| the same goes for many other topics that aren't about politics.
| lutoma wrote:
| It's particularly bad in the German Wikipedia. Compared to
| the situation there the English language version is downright
| welcoming.
| mbirth wrote:
| Yes, our "Blockwarter" do this for a decade now. If they
| don't know something, it doesn't exist and also isn't
| "relevant" enough for Wikipedia. It's a shame.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Even for things you'd think were uncontroversial, they are
| insufferable. A number of years ago I tried to fix some
| really obvious errors in the article that described the
| small(ish) company I worked for. I sourced my changes,
| generally with links to the authoritative source, and _still_
| most of them got reverted. By someone who had no actual
| connection to the company, even.
|
| I still browse wikipedia on occasion, due to ease of finding
| things, but I read everything with a very critical eye and
| keep in mind that I'm only getting one carefully curated
| version of reality. And it may be false even so.
| leephillips wrote:
| Wikipedia is useful for the lists of references at the end
| of articles and for finding public domain or CC licensed
| images. But there's never a good reason to look at the text
| of a Wikipedia article.
|
| And, as you've found out, trying to improve the cesspool is
| a waste of time.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Wikipedia has a moderately frustrating anti-elite / anti-
| self-promotion bias that will result in the site
| maintaining erroneous information added by natural third
| parties over true information added by those directly
| involved.
|
| Doesn't matter how true it is... If you're an employee of
| the company and get found out, your edits get reverted.
| jgwil2 wrote:
| Good point. I believe primary sources are flat-out
| banned, which could explain why those links didn't cut
| the mustard.
| twofornone wrote:
| >Also, it's fun to note the "lords" of various general
| topics. Find an article about a person in the right-wing
| political sphere and you're very likely to find the same
| small set of "Wikipedian" toadies ruling over it with an iron
| fist. I'm sure the same goes for many other topics that
| aren't about politics.
|
| These people are effectively activists who use wikipedia's
| reputation for objectivity to disguise what amounts to
| propaganda. The network of bullies lean almost exclusively in
| one political direction and any remotely political article
| will be immediately swarmed if edited with wrongthink -
| regardless of how well it is sourced. It's not just
| dishonest, it's dangerous that people are coming to
| wikipedia, reading articles with subtle but overwhelming
| bias, and leaving with the impression that they read
| something objective. Just check the talk page for anything
| adjacent to politics - you will inevitably see rabidly left
| leaning full time editors piling onto any remotely right of
| center edits.
| s5300 wrote:
| > Just check the talk page for anything adjacent to
| politics - you will inevitably see rabidly left leaning
| full time editors piling onto any remotely right of center
| edits.
|
| This seems fairly easy to explain.
|
| Right of center has a long standing notorious history of
| lying. A lot. Like, _all_ the time. _Non-stop_ lying, that
| 's never, ever revised by any real form of media.
|
| It is, funnily enough, referred to as: The Big Lie
|
| See: Hitler
|
| Do you disagree with this? Do you not think that what I've
| said is a valid explanation of your observation?
| irrational wrote:
| This has been my experience also. These people get a mediocum
| of power and let it go to their heads.
| ratww wrote:
| It's not even just controversial topics or politics: people
| try to control the pettiest things. I used to be active
| there, and it was a struggle to add "timelines" of band
| members to some old rock acts even though it was already in
| place in most of the site, because a classic-rock fan
| disliked them. There is also one specific user who gets to
| pick who is metal and who isn't, and reverts addition to
| lists for bands who aren't "metal enough" for him like
| Rammstein or Nu-Metal.
|
| Even with sources and pushback from other moderators, it's
| hard to compete with people with an agenda and a lot of time.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| > Even with sources and pushback from other moderators,
| it's hard to compete with people with an agenda and a lot
| of time.
|
| Exactly! This, writ large, is why a small disciplined group
| can take over a bureaucracy that allows open participation
| in decision making processes.
|
| You see this, for example, in everything from city council
| meetings to the state department.
|
| Which explains why bureaucracies always end up with some
| ideological litmus test of us vs them applied to screen out
| who is allowed to participate, whether because the
| bureaucracy doesn't want to be taken over by an ideological
| group, or whether it has _already been taken over_ by an
| ideological group, the ends result is the same -- every
| bureaucracy develops an ideology that it defends.
|
| Taking this back to wikipedia, we see why no project like
| wikipedia can actually be "neutral". At best you can have a
| variety of ideological biases for different topics, with
| the most fanatical group's ideology dominating any given
| topic.
|
| /rant
| bobthechef wrote:
| The article certainly betrays an ideological alignment that
| is routinely denied by those who moderate Wikipedia, but
| nonetheless is often fairly obvious.
|
| But my general attitude toward Wikipedia is not to take it
| too seriously. These moderators are also generally randos
| with no credibility anyway, and they know it, hence their
| style of moderation.
|
| Also, I would much rather have an encyclopedia with
| individual or a limited number of authors per article (like
| SEP does). If there is significant divergence on a subject,
| those divergences can be represented as alternate articles.
| What you don't want to do is pretend to have a "neutral"
| body of knowledge just because you have some article edited
| by an anonymous, unbounded committee and moderated by an
| asshole.
| yakubin wrote:
| Wikipedia pages are also subject to PR fights and lobbying:
| <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22653716>
| akolbe wrote:
| Absolutely right. What doesn't help here is when the Wikimedia
| PR machine minimizes and whitewashes problems, as it did in the
| Wikimedia blog post about this incident, making everyone think
| that Wikipedia is of uniformly stellar quality, better than
| Britannica and all the rest of it ... When the reality is that
| Wikipedia quality can and does vary tremendously from one
| article to the next, even from one paragraph to the next, and
| reader caution is always indicated. (For six or seven years,
| this specific article contained two different birth dates--one
| in the infobox, one in the lead paragraph. Nobody noticed or
| cared. Then someone picked up on the discrepancy and made both
| dates the same--wrong.)
| FourthProtocol wrote:
| I've had a few experiences with Wikipedia that left me with a
| sour taste. I can't remember details but there was a pretty big
| error on the Lancia page that I fixed, which somebody at
| Wikipedia changed back. This wasn't the first time but it was
| so long ago I can't remember what else I corrected.
|
| Upshot was reverting to my old Microsoft Encarta disks, until I
| discovered Britannica. EUR100 a year and I have it all, and
| it's all from an organization that stakes its reputation on
| accuracy.
|
| Even more useful now that my boy benefits.
| leephillips wrote:
| This is the reason that Wikipedia turned out to be the exact
| type of failure that it was widely predicted to become. The
| crowd-sourcing concept leads to a diffusion of
| responsibility. A similar effect leads to thoughtless mob
| action in real crowds.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > "Why don't you just fix it?" I try, but it's hard when I have
| a busy day and my edit will be reverted within minutes by a
| full-time Wikipedian / Expert Wikipedia Rules Lawyer and self-
| appointed lord of said article.
|
| Reddit has fallen to this same problem with subreddit
| moderators. A subreddit moderator can remove posts and comments
| they don't want anyone to see.
|
| A lot of the popular subreddits and many of the more obscure
| subreddits are moderator-crafted echo chambers. Some moderators
| have unbelievable amounts of free time to observe the subreddit
| and surgically remove discussions they disagree with.
|
| Worse, it's all invisible. These subreddits become an extension
| of what the moderators want without the moderators having to
| show their actions at all. When you visit a subreddit, you
| could be reading a carefully constructed echo chamber of a
| single moderator and have no idea.
|
| I think the Reddit situation would be very different if it had
| a "showdead" style option that let readers see removed
| comments.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| As a general rule of thumb, this is a truth worth remembering
| about online fora in general:
|
| In general, the voices with the most power aren't the most
| correct; they're the boxes with the most time (leisure or
| paid) to dedicate to being online.
| hutrdvnj wrote:
| You can subscribe reddit subs with RSS and fetch
| aggressively, this way you will see all comments and posts
| before the mods had time to delete them.
| yreg wrote:
| I am a mod on a subreddit that has public mod logs. There is
| a bot with mod permissions that logs every action any
| moderator takes including saving the content of erased posts
| and makes it publicly available.
|
| I think more subreddits should use a tool like this.
| pydry wrote:
| >Reddit has fallen to this same problem with subreddit
| moderators. A subreddit moderator can remove posts and
| comments they don't want anyone to see. A lot of the popular
| subreddits and many of the more obscure subreddits are
| moderator-crafted echo chambers.
|
| Coz it's cheaper to pay moderators with a power trip than
| with money.
|
| I've yet to see a viable solution to this economic dilemma.
|
| * Decentralized moderation tends to end up meaning no
| moderation coz normal users are not really motivated to clean
| up spam, etc.
|
| * Free centralized moderation like reddit does inevitably
| means the space becomes a fiefdom from people who have their
| own reasons for doing grunt work for free (e.g. pushing their
| agenda, marketing, etc).
|
| * Paid moderation isn't usually something people are willing
| to pay for.
| evandwight wrote:
| Normal users browse new and vote for good content. This
| works pretty well!
|
| Could you designate a bunch of people as mini moderators
| and have the majority vote of mini mods decide moderation?
|
| Then have one moderator curate the list of mini mods. By
| spreading the work out, more actual time can be spent on
| the decision and feedback given.
| Tildey wrote:
| That sounds like a good idea, but in practice it turns
| into an unmanageable disaster of petty removals and
| biased moderation.
|
| r/science has something like 1500 moderators, most of
| which only have the power to remove comments. The rules
| are applied seemingly at random, and the problematic
| posts/titles are rarely actually fixed, they just have a
| sea of [removed] under them. This makes the biased posts
| even worse as the comments correcting them and the
| discussion about it disappears.
| evandwight wrote:
| That explains it why /r/science is such a graveyard!
| Thank you!
|
| It sounds like if any of the 1500 mods dislike a comment,
| then that comment disappears. That's extremely biased
| towards removing comments.
|
| My suggestion would have those 1500 mini mods vote "keep"
| or "remove" - majority wins. The main mod can look at
| contentious votes and override the mini mods decisions.
| Further the main mod can remove mini mods that are voting
| poorly.
| winternett wrote:
| The solution is found in proper accounting.
|
| Hrmmm... Reddit pays mods? It would be very interesting to
| know how much they get paid by reddit. We didn't know how
| much Twitch streamers made until that info was leaked this
| year, and it encouraged many others to stop wasting their
| time on the platform in hopes of fairness.
|
| It seems to me that reddit mods, and even the platform,
| often do(does) side deals with certain accounts to allow
| and help posts to reach the front page as well, while
| reddit also fosters this with paid promotions on the site.
| Lots of things that make it to the front page are not
| likeable, but somehow embedded with political and marketing
| messages, that's what corrupted the overall experience of
| browsing reddit for me... Not proven fact, but my opinion
| as a web developer mind you.
|
| People play with anonymity that social media can provide to
| make money, now companies also do it. If transparency isn't
| practiced on the corporate side, everything online becomes
| a carefully controlled reality show while the shady deals
| go on behind the curtains.
|
| Reddit removing public metrics, like displaying both
| upvotes and downvotes next to each other allows brigading
| to go on unchecked, and it enables an ideal that certain
| things are popular or likeable without dispute... The ideal
| that things make it to the front page because they are
| favorable, controversial, or popular is a big lie in itself
| especially if the numbers aren't truly accurate and/or
| transparent.
| dane-pgp wrote:
| > Paid moderation isn't usually something people are
| willing to pay for.
|
| Is there any reason to think that paid moderation wouldn't
| lead to its own (possibly worse) biases?
| DFHippie wrote:
| I guess the reason would be that they could take away
| your pay.
| dane-pgp wrote:
| But who is "they"? The one who pays the piper picks the
| tune.
| martincmartin wrote:
| Hacker News has paid moderators, and seems to be higher
| signal than Reddit.
| short12 wrote:
| HN moderation is pretty terrible considering the slow
| amount of posts per day
| joconde wrote:
| What's wrong with it?
| brightball wrote:
| Yep. There's clearly a reward structure being created to
| silence contrary information.
| dylan604 wrote:
| > a "showdead" style option that let readers see removed
| comments.
|
| If it had this option, why even allow the moderation at all?
| skinkestek wrote:
| Same reason as for HN, to allow transparency of moderation?
|
| I.e. we (mods and flagging users) remove stuff, but for
| those who wonder (and have a small amount of "karma"?) they
| can always use showdead to see what they are missing out on
| and even vouch for things that have been killed for no good
| reason.
|
| This works beautifully here, except for stories where it
| seems a few can kill it with next to no trace except in the
| server logs. (You sometimes find them in /active even after
| they are flagged off the front page.)
| rtpg wrote:
| I mean your criticism in the abstract applies to basically any
| source. The argument is very general and applies to everything
| out there!
|
| Hell, for contentious articles given you have antagonistic co-
| authors it's more likely to be fact checked than in the Wapo "2
| Pinocchios" echo chamber.
|
| Words are written by people...
| Retric wrote:
| Wikipedia avoids original research which in practice severely
| limits it's accuracy. At best it's an imperfect copy of
| whatever the original source was before adding its own slant
| and errors.
| akolbe wrote:
| The way Wikipedia generates its content though is susceptible
| to particular problems that traditional sources did not have.
| Multiple people--all differing in age (from 7 to 100+),
| educational status and subject matter knowledge--all editing
| the same article, often without reading all the parts of it
| that the others have written.
|
| The amount of scrutiny individual Wikipedia articles receive
| differs vastly-the article on a top politician or a top
| science topic like a major planet will have hundreds of
| eagle-eyed watchers, while more obscure articles like the one
| discussed here may not be watched at all, and then anything
| goes. (This article for example had two different birth dates
| for six years, and then someone made them consistent--both
| wrong!)
|
| Here are some more examples of the sorts of errors that are
| specific to a crowd-sourced work like Wikipedia:
|
| https://www.theregister.com/2017/01/16/wikipedia_16_birthday.
| ..
|
| Few if any of these--like intentional hoaxes and undetected
| vandalism or a completely ignorant writer merely pretending
| to know a topic, by copying another text and then changing
| the name of one chemical substance in it to make it sound
| like the text was written about this substance--could or
| would have occurred in the traditional process of writing a
| reference work.
|
| Traditional works have different problems, of course--instant
| obsolescence being one of them--and even the biggest ones
| have a far smaller scope than Wikipedia. But readers should
| bear in mind just how the Wikipedia sausage is made. Many
| seem to somehow believe that the Wikipedia process is, in
| terms of the results it produces, just like an orderly
| process with a professional writer and editors and fact
| checkers that try to verify everything before publication.
| That is not how crowdsourcing works.
| DenverCoder99 wrote:
| It's not just that Wikipedia is vulnerable to human error
| just like anything else, it seems to be driven by activists.
| Larry Sanger, one of Wikipedia's co-founders, has been trying
| to warn people that his own creation has been bastardized.
|
| I still use Wikipedia for pure STEM subjects, but beyond
| that, I wouldn't trust it.
| MereInterest wrote:
| Even for pure STEM subjects, the further you go into
| esoterica, the less checking there can be on it. I remember
| one instance, mainly because it added an hour or two to a
| problem set in grad school.
|
| (Apologies for any errors, as it's been the better part of
| a decade since then.) Wikipedia gave simplified formulas
| for the asymptomatic forms of the modified Bessel
| functions, and each formulas they gave were correct.
| However, each simplification used a different branch cut,
| so subtracting two of the asymptomatic forms wouldn't give
| the correct result. Tracing back that error, and why I was
| consistently off by a factor of 2*pi took a long time.
| cronix wrote:
| Here's a pretty good interview Larry did on Tim Pools show
| about 7 months ago, outlining just how bad it is. It's a
| topical show and not 100% focused on Larry though. Tim also
| outlines how hard it is to correct factually inaccurate
| information on what people write about him in his wiki
| entry (stating he created a "blimp" etc). Also goes into
| the fake, circular references and activists gaming the
| system.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWQaVx5mGco
| unreal37 wrote:
| Google trusts Wikipedia. And that's sort of the problem with
| this case. Google was showing this guys picture on the search
| results page in an infobox as a serial killer.
| brightball wrote:
| Completely agree with this. Some of the locked topics are the
| worst too. They end up locked because people are fighting to
| include more information that's not being allowed. It's a huge
| problem.
| caseysoftware wrote:
| Wikipedia is steadily trending towards Gell Man Amnesia at
| scale for any remotely contentious topic.
| notriddle wrote:
| Considering how Wikipedia considers newspapers to be reliable
| sources, this should be expected.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Certain newspapers, but not all... Specially if they don't
| lean the way most prolific author on article wants.
| blondin wrote:
| this is concerning.
|
| i can't say we can predict where all this is going or what
| will come out of this case. but wikipedia seems to have too
| much power over what constitute the "truth".
|
| i recently read a book on cognitive science that has most of
| their sources from wikipedia.
| WhyNotHugo wrote:
| > "Why do you still use Wikipedia?"
|
| It has mistakes, just like any other human-made source of
| knowledge too.
|
| it's not like we have a god-given encyclopedia which is known
| to be completely right. I can use Google, DDG, or the library
| instead of wikipedia, and there's also chances that the sources
| there are mistaken or outdated too.
| [deleted]
| lbacaj wrote:
| Man, we've built an internet where you literally can't trust
| anything.
| pas wrote:
| Or, we have built an Internet where fake/true things are
| eventually uncovered.
|
| Do we have a baseline for how trustworthy print/TV media was
| before?
| tehjoker wrote:
| Most people that have knowledge of a news story are often
| incredulous reading one due to incorrect framing or outright
| mistakes.
|
| More insidiously, the news is also molded by a set of
| institutional incentives that often results in a highly
| distorted picture of the world.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34LGPIXvU5M
| visarga wrote:
| Price of free speech on internet - we're swimming in lies and
| ideology.
| Ekaros wrote:
| How isn't Wikipedia considered a publisher? I can understand that
| Twitter or Facebook or Youtube not be one. But Wikipedia? It is
| clearly publishing. And there are community editors. It is not
| social media.
| capableweb wrote:
| It's mentioned in the very top of the article, in the green
| box:
|
| > In its order granting the Wikimedia Foundation's motion to
| dismiss, the court affirmed that "interactive computer service
| providers" such as the Foundation generally cannot be held
| liable for third-party content like Wikipedia articles and
| photographs. ... the plaintiff argued that the Foundation
| should be treated like a traditional offline publisher and held
| responsible as though it were vetting all posts made to the
| sites it hosts, despite the fact that it does not write or
| curate any of the content found on the projects. The court
| rejected this argument because it directly conflicts with
| Section 230 ...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230
|
| Wikipedia (nor Twitter, Facebook or YouTube) reviews content
| _before_ it's made available online, they only review content
| afterwards. That being one of the major differences between
| providing 3rd party content and "publishing".
| akolbe wrote:
| Wouldn't it be more correct to say that they (I mean the
| Wikimedia Foundation in this case, as the operator of the
| Wikipedia platform) don't review content at all?
| makomk wrote:
| Section 230 is extremely broad and powerful. The whole point of
| it is to allow websites full immunity from legal action over
| the content of their website regardless of how much editorial
| control they exercise over it, so long as they're not the ones
| writing the actual words or posting the actual pictures. They
| can use their power to shape what is and isn't allowed to be
| said into a chosen narrative and still be immune from legal
| action over that narrative. It's just that any criticism of
| this is outside the realm of mainstream discourse, seemingly
| because one of the major ways in which websites have used that
| responsibility-free narrative shaping power recently is against
| Donald Trump and so questioning Section 230 is associated with
| Trump support.
| akolbe wrote:
| Actually, Democrats have criticised Section 230 as well. They
| complain that websites use Section 230 as a shield in order
| not to do any moderation of hate speech and the like at all.
| Nancy Pelosi e.g. has called Section 230 a "gift" to tech
| companies "that could be removed." See https://www.nytimes.co
| m/2019/08/06/technology/section-230-ha...
| blululu wrote:
| Calls to end section 230 have come from across the isle. Note
| that without section 230 Twitter could have been sued for
| allowing Trump to post some of the things he wrote over the
| past 5 years. I recall a New York Times oped from last summer
| that advocated for such a policy. The trouble is government
| regulations of speech generally have serious implications,
| and every attempt to limit free speech struggles to replace
| it with anything better. Chesterton's fence comes to mind
| here. The motivation for section 230 is to let the Internet
| operate as a publishing medium for small voices. Free speech
| isn't always pretty. A more general curtailment of the law
| would have chilling effects that would likely hit
| small/medium businesses more than Facebook or Twitter which
| already have content moderation policies.
|
| https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Chesterton%27s_Fence
| samus wrote:
| 230 could be limited to apply only if content creators are
| natural persons and accredited academic institutions*.
| There should be no inhibition for natural persons to share
| information and their opinions.
|
| However, incorporated content producers are often fronts
| for political parties, wealthy private donators and foreign
| actors to amplify their opinion. They are quite resourceful
| and influental already and don't need further amplification
| by allowing social networks and news aggregators to share
| their content for them.
|
| Edit: The term "academic institutions" should be understood
| to also include government archives open to the public and
| content from museums and the like.
| akolbe wrote:
| It's because of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act,
| which says: "No provider or user of an interactive computer
| service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any
| information provided by another information content provider."
|
| In this case, the Wikimedia Foundation (which owns Wikipedia)
| is the "provider ... of an interactive computer service".
|
| The "information content provider" is the individual user of
| Wikipedia who writes or edits an article--usually doing so
| under a pseudonym. (They're all unpaid volunteers--anyone can
| click "Edit" at any time and add something to a Wikipedia
| article.)
|
| For better and worse, this is the legal situation in the US.
| Ekaros wrote:
| One makes wonder. If someone was to make a meta publisher of
| other publishers, even anonymous ones they could monetize
| content that is libellous? And they couldn't be punished for
| the act?
| elliekelly wrote:
| In theory Mr. White could sue the individual wikipedia
| contributor rather than wikipedia themselves. I tend to agree
| with GP, though. There is a fundamental difference between a
| "content provider" who is attributing content _to themselves_
| (as on social media platforms) vs a content provider whose
| content is attributed _to the interactive computer service_.
|
| Surely if @Jack sent a defamatory tweet both he and Twitter
| could be held responsible. He's both a user and an agent of
| Twitter. I think Wikipedia contributors are both users _and_
| agents in the same way.
| mjw1007 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Biographies_of_...
| describes the process changes WP are making in response.
|
| That seems to amount to adding the following paragraph to their
| policies:
|
| << Any police photograph used to imply that the person depicted
| was charged with or convicted of a specific crime must be sourced
| to a top-quality reliable source with a widely acknowledged
| reputation for fact-checking and accuracy that links the relevant
| image to the specific incident or crime in question. >>
|
| That seems like an improvement to me, though it would be nice to
| also see an announcement that the Wikimedia Foundation are going
| to use some of their large piles of cash to pay someone to check
| that all their existing articles follow the new rule.
| akolbe wrote:
| Yes, that would be good, but knowing the Wikimedia Foundation I
| am quite certain that it will not happen. And volunteers won't
| do it either.
| cm2187 wrote:
| The worst culprit in this game I think is google news. They often
| add an image to a news topic, however this image is automaticaly
| picked from one of the news website, and the algorithm seems to
| frequently pick a random picture on the website, unrelated to the
| story. This leads to headlines like "serial killer arrested",
| illustrated by the smily portrait of a celebrity.
|
| I don't know if section 230 would protect google there.
| veeti wrote:
| "Ask HN: Google is confusing me with others in a harmful way -
| what can I do?"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28216733
| akolbe wrote:
| Google was sued too. I understand Section 230 protected it as
| well.
| ViViDboarder wrote:
| That's interesting. The timeline here doesn't dictate someone
| publishing the photo to Google. I expect Google crawled out
| and that they decided to use it in search results and decided
| to collocate it with articles.
|
| Google search isn't really a publishing platform, but they do
| have lots of money and lawyers, which counts for something, I
| guess.
| akolbe wrote:
| Well, no one needs to publish the photo to Google. They
| just crawl the sites and display what they find on their
| search results pages. It's a little different with the
| Knowledge Graph panel shown in the top right corner of the
| Google search results page. Right now, that again shows the
| colour photo of the Florida White who had nothing to do
| with this. There's three pictures of him, and one of the
| actual perpetrator. https://www.google.com/search?q="nathan
| iel+white"+"serial+ki...
| akolbe wrote:
| Google surely know about this--they were, after all, a
| party to the suit--but apparently are unable, or can't be
| bothered, to get it sorted.
| fortran77 wrote:
| I feel very bad for this guy, and someone needs to dig deep into
| their pocket to make this man whole again.
| jmclnx wrote:
| I fully agree, I tried to find out if he got any relief, but
| nothing was found, so I assume everyone dropped it.
|
| In this day and age, any false accusation can ruin your life,
| especially if posted on popular sites. In the old days, you
| could move to started over if need be, not today. So Discovery
| and Wikipedia needs to make things right for him.
| akolbe wrote:
| The Discovery case is still ongoing (and they're not
| protected by Section 230). What you can do is try to help
| raise awareness. It is a scandal to my mind that the only
| media report about this case is this article in a local paper
| published last year:
| https://tallahassee.com/story/news/2020/08/28/man-
| confused-r...
| andrew_ wrote:
| > Yet here we have a case where a very real black life was
| severely harmed, with Wikipedia playing a secondary, but still
| highly significant part in the sorry tale. The Wikimedia blog
| post contains no acknowledgement of this fact. Instead it is
| jubilant - jubilant that the Wikimedia Foundation was absolved of
| all responsibility for the fact that Mr. White was for over two
| years misrepresented as a serial killer on its flagship site, the
| result of a pseudonymous Wikimedian trusting a source that proved
| unreliable.
|
| Personally, this is the excerpt that really hit home. The same
| kind of criticism has been levied on popular-activism in the
| past. I would have liked to see a more benevolent response from
| an organization which purports to be so.
| visarga wrote:
| Wikipedia is quite open about other people's mistakes. But when
| it's their mistake, it's another matter.
| filmgirlcw wrote:
| I have such an intense love/hate relationship with Wikipedia. On
| the one hand, I'm so thankful that a resource exists to give me
| instant access to lots of mundane shit -- on the other hand, the
| internal politics, the so-called professional Wikipedian class
| (in truth, largely un(der)employed obsessives who have genuinely
| nothing better to do than fight over mundane bureaucratic issues)
| make it a resource that both cannot be relied upon and that is
| largely impossible to correct. It is both such a scourge and yet
| such an important resource.
|
| For most things of any import (aside from areas like geography or
| fundamental parts of science, which are usually trustworthy), I
| rely on the sources cited by Wikipedia to try to suss out actual
| information, rather than Wikipedia itself, but that often takes a
| lot of time and doesn't change the fact that Wikipedia, for
| better or worse, _is_ the central general knowledge repository of
| our time.
|
| The adage that teachers still teach, "don't cite Wikipedia" --
| has some merit, sure, but also has increasingly become a joke
| because actual edited encyclopedias (which yes, had their own
| issues, but also had standards and oversight that needed to be
| answered to) have basically become extinct -- so what are people
| supposed to use?
|
| I genuinely long for the days of stuff like the Encarta CD-ROMs,
| or even expensive encyclopedia sets -- not because I think those
| resources could keep up with the breadth of knowledge that
| Wikipedia obviously has, but because whatever biases they may
| have aside (and every source or text has a bias -- which makes
| Wikipedia's NPOV mandate all the more ironic), they were edited
| and staffed by professionals.
|
| I'm constantly bombarded by pleas for money from
| Wikipedia/Wikimedia Foundation, despite that fact that the
| Wikimedia Foundation has revenues of something like $150 million
| a year, and where most of the budget goes to pay for staff
| (hosting is only $2.5 million), not anyone who actually
| contributes to the content. The whole appeal of Wikipedia is
| supposed to be that anyone can edit it, but that isn't actually
| true (the gatekeepers make even correcting typos a chore) and the
| lack of commitment to verifiability, especially when it comes to
| living people, makes the whole thing utterly depressing.
| ryani wrote:
| > The adage that teachers still teach, "don't cite Wikipedia"
| -- [...] what are people supposed to use?
|
| Wikipedia cites sources. Go to those sources, find the ones
| that best line up with the data you need, and cite them
| directly.
|
| Treat Wikipedia like an aggregator -- you wouldn't cite an HN
| post, you'd cite the link it pointed at.
| shp0ngle wrote:
| Well. Colbert made fun of Wikipedia publishing nonsense... in
| 2006.
|
| 15 years ago.
|
| This is not a new criticism.
| akolbe wrote:
| 15 years ago Wikipedia didn't supply the info in Google's (and
| other search engines') Knowledge Graph panels, and didn't tell
| Apple's Siri, Amazon's Alexa, and other voice assistants what
| to say in response to queries. Wikipedia's and Wikidata's
| dominance in this respect is only like to become stronger for
| the foreseeable future.
| fortran77 wrote:
| Well, legal rulings aside, it's clear that Black Lives _don't_
| matter to the Wikimedia foundation, who has the power and
| resources to try to make this man whole, even though they have no
| legal liability.
|
| I'm glad I've never donated to this organization, and now I
| certainly never will.
| aezell wrote:
| It's easy to conflate Wikipedia and Wikimedia but they are very
| different things, both in practice and in legal definitions. Lots
| of comments here are saying that Wikipedia should do something
| about this. That's equivalent to saying that you should get
| thousands of random Internet people to agree to something. There
| is no organization known as Wikipedia that you can appeal to.
|
| So, then they say, "Wikimedia should do something." Wikimedia has
| very limited control over the content that exists on Wikipedia
| and this ruling relies on and validates that position.
|
| I'm not arguing that this is ideal or preferable. I'm saying that
| the lines between these two words are important and yet sometimes
| difficult to define. The crux is that Wikipedia is wholly
| separate from Wikimedia in all the ways that matter in a case
| like this.
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| These are important conversations to have. I don't think we've
| found the right balance point yet.
| austincheney wrote:
| > The image was inserted into the Wikipedia article by
| User:Vwanweb on 28 May 2018, incorrectly identified as
| originating from the New York State Department of Corrections and
| Community Supervision. It was removed from the article on 4
| September 2020 - an edit attributed by Wikipedia only to an
| American IP address, rather than a registered Wikipedia user
| account.
|
| _Notably, this lawsuit was filed months after Wikipedia editors
| proactively corrected the error at issue in September 2020._
|
| WTF, really? His photo was on there for more than 2 years (28
| months). The damage is done. To somehow claim the lawsuit is
| super extra invalid because it came a couple months later does
| nothing but make me really hate lawyers.
| ncmncm wrote:
| My greatest achievement on Wikipedia was fixing the page on
| Herostratus, to cite him as being _accused_ of torching the
| Temple of Artemis, rather than baldly stating he actually did it.
|
| The article itself says he confessed under torture to having
| torched it so his name would remembered forever. But that doesn't
| even make sense on its own terms: If he wanted to be remembered
| for having torched it, why did they need torture to find out? In
| any case, confession under torture comes nowhere close to
| establishing a fact, not that that has often stopped somebody who
| wanted a body to string up, and didn't much care whose.
|
| I would have many other great achievements, but they get reverted
| by self-important gatekeepers.
| bsenftner wrote:
| The validity of the web is a joke.
| mabbo wrote:
| I feel like Wikipedia could take some small steps to make amends
| to Mr White.
|
| Now that all of this has happened, it feels like he is now a
| minor pubic figure worthy of his own wiki page. Something like
| "Nathaniel White (not serial killer)" with an article describing
| the mistake. Ask a newspaper to do a small article about it,
| interviewing him, and taking a really nice photo of him- which
| can go on the wiki page.
|
| Yes, it would probably be the exact kind of page that Wikipedia
| would take down saying this person isn't important enough. But
| they can choose when and how those rules apply. Give him five
| years with it up, protected from take down.
|
| It doesn't make up for the problem, but it is something they
| _can_ do, at no cost to anyone, and it would make a difference. A
| small amount of compassion can matter.
| akolbe wrote:
| I get where you're coming from. As of now the only press
| article about this is this little piece in the Tallahassee
| Democrat that may have led to the Wikipedia image being
| removed:
|
| https://tallahassee.com/story/news/2020/08/28/man-confused-r...
|
| _Nobody else has written about it._
|
| I suspect though Mr. White might possibly prefer to go back to
| his private life and never hear about Wikipedia again.
|
| If Wikipedia ever covers this, it had perhaps best be in an
| article about Wikipedia controversies (which could be linked
| from the Nathaniel White article).
| ignoramous wrote:
| > _Ask a newspaper to do a small article about it, interviewing
| him_
|
| Per general notability guidelines, a brief article isn't likely
| to help a case for a separate wiki page [0]. Per low-key, may
| be there's a case to be made [1], though there's also concerns
| around advocacy [2].
|
| > _and taking a really nice photo of him- which can go on the
| wiki page._
|
| To get a photo on wikimedia you own, upload it any where
| (preferably flickr / straight up on commons.wikimedia) and
| release it under a wikimedia-compatible license [Ex A]
|
| > _It doesn 't make up for the problem, but it is something
| they can do, at no cost to anyone, and it would make a
| difference._
|
| Wikipedia has its warts, and the community is pretty open about
| what it means to have an article on there and why it may not be
| the best thing for anyone that's famous [3]. Wikipedia favours
| verifiability over truth [4], and is not bothered with
| incorrect information [5], because someone somewhere ought to
| eventually _correct_ it [6].
|
| (And of course, I am wiki-lawyering at this point [7])
|
| --
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:GNG
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:LOWKEY
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:SOAPBOX
|
| [Ex A] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bradfitz-
| sunglasses....
|
| [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:FAMOUS
|
| [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:VNT
|
| [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS
|
| [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:IMPERFECT
|
| [7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:LAWYER
| tylermenezes wrote:
| I think it'd be more likely to be "The Nathaniel White
| Incident" vs a biography but yeah I broadly agree.
| visarga wrote:
| > because someone somewhere ought to eventually correct it
|
| After what they did to this man, they should be that someone.
| Never had a lower opinion on Wikipedia than today.
| bob229 wrote:
| Wikipedia is an intellectual cancer. In the past I have created
| fake facts about 90s band the charlatans and they have been
| repeated by news outlets like the BBC. Never read wikinonsense
| and never read the news
| rkk3 wrote:
| Confused since the only piece about damages to the victim are for
| the person the Discovery Channel erroneously identified as a
| serial killer.
|
| It doesn't mention Nathaniel White of Florida suing or implying
| damage was done by Wikipedia, or the damages/harm to the other
| Nathaniel White who is suing Wikipedia.
| akolbe wrote:
| It's the same man. Wikipedia (or rather the Wikimedia
| Foundation which operates Wikipedia) was added to the Discovery
| suit later on.
| rkk3 wrote:
| Thanks, you're right, wording confused me, I thought there
| were 3 Nathaniel whites.
| vadfa wrote:
| Interesting, I did not know Wikimedia was politically aligned. If
| there's an organisation that I wouldn't like to be politically
| aligned, it would be an encyclopedia. But hey, here we are; enjoy
| the ride.
| maweki wrote:
| There is no objective truth. Especially not for every author
| and every topic. Even when trying to represent controversy, the
| problem of false balance is quite real.
|
| Maybe we differ on the definition of "political alignment", but
| there is no way that an entity has no angle.
| yesenadam wrote:
| (Sorry to slightly derail the topic, but I think this is an
| important point.)
|
| > There is no objective truth.
|
| And yet you say that like you think it's the (objective)
| truth. Or is that just your opinion, or just true for you,
| etc? I don't think it makes any sense to deny objective truth
| --it's self-contradictory. When you hear "There is no
| objective truth", ask "Is that true?". (At least you
| immediately backpedalled with "Especially for..")
|
| I take your point I think--e.g. more than once on HN I've
| criticized the idea some people have of starting a facts-only
| objective 'unbiased' news service as totally implausible and
| naive. But to deny that anything is or can be true seems
| rather to throw the baby out with bathwater.
| maweki wrote:
| > But to deny that anything is or can be true
|
| Where exactly did I deny that? I was merely noting that the
| an impartial encyclopedia (which is there to document
| everything in existence) is impossible, as there are indeed
| issues of controversy in existence. Even in trying to
| represent the controversy, as opposed to one of the myriad
| points of views, is a stance in itself and subject to false
| balance, selection bias, and I guess a few other fallacies.
|
| We're not talking about a collection of mathematical
| formulas here.
| Jasper_ wrote:
| Even mathematical formulas come with them a wide variety
| of assumptions on shared, uncommunicated base axioms.
| Nobody explicitly points out "assuming we're not modulo
| 2" after stating "1 + 1 = 2".
|
| Context and interpretation matters, and a lot of those
| disagreements over "objective facts" often come down to
| different interpretations of the context.
|
| There's no such thing as "pure data" without a huge
| system of definitions underlying the whole thing, which
| are often unspoken. Do you consider "my website got
| 10,000 views today" to be unambiguous factual data? If
| so, what counts as a "view"? Do bot views count? The
| browser auto-refreshing because it reloaded the tab? What
| about the exact definitions of "today"? What hours do you
| start and stop counting?
|
| Even the most basic facts succumb to this. There's lots
| of talk about birthdays and ages in this thread. Well, in
| South Korea, the cultural standard is that everyone's age
| goes up by one on New Year's Day (so a baby born on Dec.
| 31st turns two years old the next day), so someone's age
| is going to be reported differently when reading Korean
| media. And I know of someone who was born on April 4th,
| but because of some mix-ups at the busy hospital, her
| official records state April 5th instead. She chooses to
| celebrate it on April 4th, but she couldn't legally buy
| any liquor herself until the next day.
|
| Culture and context matter. Different people have
| different takes on what is reasonable, and that's why
| there's no "objective truth" unless you interrogate all
| of your definitions and standards all the way to the
| bottom.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > If there's an organisation that I wouldn't like to be
| politically aligned, it would be an encyclopedia. But hey, here
| we are; enjoy the ride.
|
| You forget that Wikipedia is _already_ biased and has been for
| _years_ despite many complaints (some of which have been
| featured on HN over the time):
|
| - the utter majority of its authors in the English and German
| are young white males, which has led to numerous cases of
| "toxic culture"/"hostility to newcomers" issues as well as
| complaints of bias in deletion requests such as for female
| authors vs male authors.
|
| - the entire Balkan region is, and I say this as a half-Croat,
| a _shitshow_ everywhere. Nationalists of all kinds, from the
| individual ethnicities to "Grand Yugoslavia" Titoists,
| continue past wars in the online world, with both sides
| resorting to whitewashing of atrocities (Ustasa on the Croatian
| Nationalist side, Srebrenica on the Serbian side), fake news
| and other propaganda.
|
| An organization such as Wikipedia can only thrive wenn _all_
| people of this world are represented by it, and yes, that
| includes taking a stance on societal structural discrimination.
| elliekelly wrote:
| Wikipedia needs to implement editor rotation the way CPAs are
| only permitted to audit a public company so many times before
| another firm must take over the audit. It keeps things from
| getting too cozy. Reddit should probably implement the same
| policy with mods for the larger subs.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| The pool of applicants for Wikipedia editors and Reddit
| mods is already small as it is, and neither of it is paid.
| Reddit also expressly forbids moderators from profiting off
| their position (which is why the r/wallstreetbets takeover
| and the oust of u/zjz was reversed in the first place!),
| and Wikipedia disallows paid editing entirely.
|
| Changing that would completely compromise both projects:
| Wikipedia, as it would immediately lead to "whoever bids
| the most controls the narrative" orchestrated by shady PR
| companies eager to white-wash the history of nations and
| individuals (again, it is already difficult enough to
| prevent that with the current model), and Reddit would face
| similar issues.
|
| That said, both are in dire need of more paid and fully
| transparent support staff that mediates issues as well as
| takes over the load of policing outright abuse either by
| mods/admins or by mere contributors. _Way_ too much
| volunteer time is wasted on dealing with low-effort
| bullshit (which is partially why I left Wikipedia over a
| decade ago).
| elliekelly wrote:
| Who said anything about getting paid and bidding? You've
| been the editor on an article for three years? You're
| locked out of making edits for the next year to give
| someone else the opportunity. A major problem with both
| Reddit and Wikipedia is that a small number of volunteers
| exercise an inordinate amount of control over what is
| ostensibly a "community" owned space/resource.
| mgdlbp wrote:
| Paid editing of Wikipedia (English, at least) is allowed
| with disclosure.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Paid-
| contribution_di...
|
| Edit:
|
| The Wikimedia Foundation ToU allows this in all its
| projects (wikis) and allows project-specific policies:
|
| https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Terms_of_Use/en#:~:
| tex...
|
| List of projects with their own policies:
|
| https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Alternative_paid_contribu
| tio...
|
| FAQ:
|
| https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Terms_of_use/FAQ_on_paid_
| con...
| jfax wrote:
| The idea of a Free encyclopedia and knowledge for all humanity
| is a political aim in itself.
| vadfa wrote:
| Yeah I was expecting someone to drop the "everything is
| political" hot take.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| I think you are responding to this passage from the article?
|
| > The Wikimedia Foundation has in the recent past cited the
| fate of George Floyd and the resulting Black Lives Matter
| protests as its inspiration for the Knowledge Equity Fund, a
| $4.5 million fund set up last year to support racial equity
| initiatives outside the Wikimedia movement. It has declared "We
| stand for racial justice"...
|
| Taking a step back, I wonder what things count as a "political
| alignment". Like, in general. Is, say, being "against murder" a
| poltical alignment? Or being for "being kind to people"?
| Probably not.
|
| So, back to this passage, what aspects strike you as a
| "political alignment", and why? Is being against racism a
| "political alignment", or perhaps it becomes so when expressed
| with the term "racial justice"?
|
| Are all "moral values" also "political alignments", are these
| things the same or different? I think they are not quite the
| same, although probably have overlap. And people can and do
| certainly disagree on moral values too. But I don't think we
| would suggest people, including people working on an
| encyclopedia, either can _or_ should be without "moral
| values". Where is the boundary at which it becomes a "political
| alignment"?
|
| One obvious one to me, and what I first think of when I hear
| "political alignment", is supporting a particular political
| party or candidate or other electoral cause. I don't think
| wikipedia does that, and generally I don't think it should.
|
| (Although even here... supporting or opposing the literal 1930s
| German Nazi Party, in the 1930s, would I suppose, actually
| indeed be a "political alignment", but... now that makes me
| think I wouldn't always want to put "political alignment" off
| the table either. It may be impossible to act morally in the
| world without some political alignment... but I still don't
| want wikipedia supporting particular US parties or candidates
| -- mainly because it would put into question the fairness or
| truth-goals of it's articles. I'm honestly not sure where the
| line is.)
| 5560675260 wrote:
| I am unclear on where a line should be drawn (or would at
| least have to do a lot of introspection to figure it out).
| But any push for _equity_? From my perspective it 's very
| much outside of scope of "being kind to people" and in the
| political/controversial territory. Putting any narrowing term
| before "justice" is a political move and explicitly not
| "against racism".
| veltas wrote:
| Yes, I have found that being "against murder" is political
| and a matter of political alignment. Especially since the
| definition of what is murder, or who is protected by murder
| laws, and the punishments for murder are all controversial.
| For example, if you believe that fetuses are living humans
| then you would tend to argue that arguing against abortion
| was arguing _against murder_. Where you stand on the death
| penalty could make you believe the state murders, or the
| state does not seriously punish murderers.
|
| Similarly, whether or not you think specific instances of
| deaths at the hands of police are murder is political. For
| example, the nature of acceptable violence in self-defense is
| controversial (in the US particularly), and the acceptable
| nature of force used by police is controversial too.
|
| And the brand of "Black Lives Matter" does not exist in a
| vacuum, it been used over a number of years, by many
| different people, and has become associated (whether these
| are 'core tenets' or potentially misattributed) with a number
| of controversial stances, for example anarchist principles,
| support of disorder, vandalism, violence, revolution, etc.
| This might be surprising to some, but it is familiar to
| others. If someone criticizes or dislikes the movement with
| that context, then are they necessarily dismissive of police
| brutality against blacks, do they feel blacks don't deserve
| the same safety as others?
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| I'm not sure we're talking about the same things here. I
| assume you don't really think that wikipedia shouldn't say,
| just in general, that they are opposed to murdering people,
| because it's a "political alignment"?
|
| But ok, are you saying that being opposed to racism in
| itself isn't an inappropriate "political alignment", but
| using the words "Black Lives Matter" is?
|
| No, I don't think that if someone critisizes or dislikes
| the movement "within that context" they are necessarily
| dismissive of police brutality against Black people or feel
| Black people don't deserve the same safety as others. (I do
| think they are mistaken about some things).
|
| But do you think... _refraining from_ critisizing the
| movement under that name is a "political alignment" that
| is inappropriate for wikipedia? I'm trying to understand
| what part of what wikipedia has done you think is an
| inappropriate "political alignment" for them.
| veltas wrote:
| I didn't say anything about what Wikipedia should and
| shouldn't say. I was just responding to what you said
| because I think it's an interesting question whether
| something as broad as "murdering people" could be
| political, and as I say I do think it is political, or
| that people will reliably interpret it that way.
|
| If the question is very literally whether murder in a
| broad sense is bad, it wouldn't be political, no, but it
| would still be interpreted politically probably. There is
| always context. Even broad movements like 60's "peace"
| movements have had political undertones. It's not in
| favor or against them to say they're political; but I
| think it does mean companies and organisations should
| expect simultaneously annoying and encourage different
| groups whenever they support movements that seem in their
| name or basic statement to be fair or innocuous like
| this.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| > I didn't say anything about what Wikipedia should and
| shouldn't say.
|
| Well, of course you did, didn't you? I thought you said
| in your original comment that saying certain things
| indicated wikipedia was politically aligned, and you
| wouldn't like them to be politically aligned. That's what
| I was trying to get more info about, what sorts of
| utterances you thought indicated or led to an
| inappropriate political alignment for wikipedia.
|
| I think? Am I misunderstanding? These conversations often
| somehow do seem like we're speaking different languages,
| that's why I was trying to get clarification.
|
| I'm not following the grammar of "companies and
| organiations should expect simultaneously annoying and
| encourage different groups whenever they support
| movements that seem in their name or basic statement to
| be fair or innocuous like this", I lost the meaning of
| that sentence, sorry. Missing a word maybe?
|
| I agree there are interesting questions here.
| veltas wrote:
| Sorry that should say "companies and organisations should
| expect to simultaneously annoy and encourage different
| groups whenever they support movements, even ones that
| seem in their name or basic statement to be fair or
| innocuous like this".
|
| I iterate what I post a lot and didn't re-read, had
| company. I apologise, I know that is frustrating.
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