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Comment by rm_-rf_slash | Hacker News Reader

While it seems there is little we can do to prevent the influence of money in our politics, truly democratic spaces like Wikipedia remain an important place for knowledge to be shared and verified. If we allow centralized sources of trust to become bought, sold, and politicized, then we risk fracturing into an Internet dark age, where your source of information is a function of your world view. What if instead of one Wikipedia, there was a pseudo version for people who strictly believe in creationism, or a version imposed on residents of Turkey that actively omits and reports to the government any complaints about the prime minister or references to the Armenian Genocide?

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Wikipedia is far from truly democratic. It's tightly controlled by a small cabal of volunteers with their own biases and agendas. I'm not sure how someone would solve that, but paid people editing certainly wouldn't help.

Not really. Any user is welcome to edit any page. The problem occurs when people don't follow the rules.

The problem is that "the rules" are now complicated enough, and fuzzy enough, that anything the established cabal doesn't like is against the rules.

This means that while anyone can edit an article, almost everyone gets their edits reverted.

And people can revert those reversions and justify them.

Again, no. There is no "established cabal", and the rules are usually pretty clear. Sometimes there is some disagreement, but virtually always you can get consensus. If there's a problem with POV pushing, you can get outside help on the various project boards, ask for arbitration, admin intervention, etc. etc. There are lots of options if you take the time and effort to understand how wikipedia works.

In over 10 years of editing, I've never come across an issue that couldn't be solved by one of the above methods. If you think there is some article that is having a problem, please post it.

This is like saying that because there is the possible to sue over discrimination, discrimination doesn't happen.

Their are cabals that require extreme investments to fight. Most people aren't willing to put in that investment. Much the same that many people who face discrimination don't take it to court because they don't have the resources to throw at it and the expected return is too small.

Just because a system exists to resolve issues doesn't mean that everyone has equal access to the issue resolution.

I didn't say POV pushing and bias doesn't happen. I said that there are tools to deal with it. It does take time to learn how to navigate wikipedia, but it's not beyond the reach of the average person to do so if they have the time and motivation. I would urge more people to spend time editing wikipedia to deal with issues like this.

The average person doesn't have the time and motivation to learn, which is why Wikipedia is bleeding editors at a very fast rate, which just serves to make the problem worse and self-reinforcing.

> What if instead of one Wikipedia, there was a pseudo version for people who strictly believe in creationism

There is something like that: Conservapedia[0]. Reading it is fairly infuriating. Mostly because it is so extremely one sided and trying to argue an agenda in every single article.

[0] http://www.conservapedia.com/Main_Page

> Reading it is fairly infuriating

I think you mean hilarious

Agreed. I think the problems is that he is reading it the wrong way by taking what is written as factual. Clearly it makes more sense if you consider the articles are written in "the onion" style.

Except they aren't. The founder of Conservapedia certainly takes it seriously, and he zealously guards the site to make sure it fits his viewpoint

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Schlafly

Just because he takes it seriously doesn't mean anyone else has to.

The point is that it isn't written in an "onion" style like the person I replied to claimed

Wow. That thing is right from the loony bin.

> What if instead of one Wikipedia, there was a pseudo version for people who strictly believe in creationism, or a version imposed on residents of Turkey that actively omits and reports to the government any complaints about the prime minister or references to the Armenian Genocide?

It is already true for Wikipedias in different languages, which are maintained almost like separate websites. I didn't check, but I'm sure that Armenian and Turkish wikipedia don't have the same content on the matter.

> there was a pseudo version for people who strictly believe in creationism

http://www.conservapedia.com/Evolution

Nicholas_C was a minute late so I'll respond to yours. Good timing!

With that example in mind, imagine there being no trusted force for everyone, because every other source could be dismissed as "Conservative brain-washing" or "Anarchist propaganda."

We barely trust our governments and our bosses' bosses. Not all of us live where we can trust our news. I know a lot of us on HN are business- and libertarian-minded, but we should recognize that places on the web like Wikipedia are special, and for all of us.

Isn't this the premise of Conservapedia. It doesn't claim to be biased, but to be free of the hegemonic liberal bias of Wikipedia (and academia, business, most forms of religion, etc).

There is no trusted source for everyone. Anyone with a bias they can't get into Wikipedia is free to spread FUD on the egregious nature of its biases and misinformation.

Interesting... It's like the Fox News of Wikipedia. People are going to get information from sources that semi align with their worldview. I really like Wikipedia because it's neutral in tone for the most part.

> I really like Wikipedia because it's neutral in tone for the most part.

Assuming that the conventional perspective of white straight males with an interest in sci-fi is neutral. ;)

Can we stop centralized sources of trust to become bought, sold, and politicized? They must be financed by somebody, so they will be bought and sold. They must be organized internally and they must interface externally with other organizations, so they will be politicized. Trying to stop it upfront is impossible. What we should struggle for is transparency, where we allow the money and the politics to flow but in a agreeable manner.

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