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Comment by nsajko | Hacker News Reader

> in a leadership role at Wikipedia

Nitpick: Sanger is not part of Wikipedia or the WMF as far as I know.

> t's not even just political content, it's getting to the point where history is being actively re-written and re-interpreted to match a radical narrative.

Mind giving some examples?

> In some sort of temporal example of humour, I've gone back to recommending people use Britannica as a starting point and for surface level reading.

In what way could Britannica possibly be better than Wikipedia. It is usually based on a single viewpoint, instead of Wikipedia's thousands.

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> n what way could Britannica possibly be better than Wikipedia.

> Mind giving some examples?

Google can help you with these questions, to your own satisfaction.

You mean "Google can help you on a reality tunnel choose your own adventure"?

I'm not sure what that's supposed to mean, but I assume it has something to do with arguing about choosing the alternate source of fact on top of the discussion about criticism of wikipedia, which is used as a source of fact.

This is not a winnable debate, but differing views exist.

This is an incomplete list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedia_controversie...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict-of-interest_editing_o...

https://www.quora.com/Am-I-the-only-frustrated-former-Wikipe...

etc.

The dubious nature of wikipedia's editing is recorded within books and articles from over the last decade that are casually discoverable from google. AFAIK, anyone who implies they aren't aware of the biases of editors, are either willfully ignorant (since this is covered under multiple topics within wikipedia itself) or trolling.

But is it documented only because it is documentable? Other encyclopedias don't have an openly visible history of edits. Their bias isn't non existent it's just hidden.

Regarding your parent comment, see [0].

All the criticism of Wikipedia that you raise is valid, but there are some things implied in your posts that are dubious:

* That there exists an encyclopedia better than Wikipedia (or some other Wikimedia project).

* That Wikipedia can just be ignored.

Considering the placement Wikipedias currently have, it is hard to imagine a better or more influential project being created, so we might as well try improving what already exists.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_tunnel

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