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Comment by sgift | Hacker News Reader

Source article this is based on: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02684527.2020.1...

(Found it since I cannot read the full economist article)

Ok, since people seem to be liking this better, we've switched to it from https://www.economist.com/europe/2020/05/26/maximator-a-euro.... Thanks!

Thank you for this complete version.

Random detail, but "Maximator" is a type of beer (a Starkbier/Doppelbock) brewed by the the very popular Augustiner brewery, not a brand in itself. In fact, it's a Bavarian tradition for the names of Doppelbocks to generally end in "-ator": Celebrator, Optimator, Animator...

The article covers this fact well. I like the idea that a super secret cabal name is based on the drink they were having at the time. It humanizes the whole endeavour showing how they agree on more than secrecy.

Or the place they were having the drink in, like the Beer Hall Putsch

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_Hall_Putsch

(offtopic) Huh funny, there's a Czech beer called Primátor and I wondered for a second if it was named in the same tradition. However it is the title of a mayor of a "statutory city" [1] - which is apparently something like a City that isn't governed as part of a larger county/state/district.

[1] https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prim%C3%A1tor

Ha!

(offtopic 2) How's the beer?

They make decent beer but it's not so widespread (round here the main brands are Pilsner Urquell, Radegast ... or Starobrno. Don't bother with the latter) and you can only get it in supermarkets or a few bars.

There is a German Wikipedia page on the topic. I created an English one that paraphrases the German one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:Maximator_(Spying_Allian...

.. but it's stuck in Wikipedia's review queue, which means it will be weeks before it goes live, if ever.

> it's stuck in Wikipedia's review queue, which means it will be weeks before it goes live, if ever.

Does that happen for all new articles on Wikipedia now?

If so, I'm glad I no longer edit Wikipedia.

Only if you're a new user or a user with very few edits or are editing without being logged in.

So can older users with more rep vouch for pages to pull them out of the queue?

No, there are much more stringent requirement for that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Articles...

> If so, I'm glad I no longer edit Wikipedia.

You should give it a try. Though, original research is not allowed (and the much maligned bureaucratic processes around frequently vandalized and controversial topics get tiresome), a lot of topics are simply missing or have inadequate or out-of-date information. A lot of content that goes into blogs and other publications can be neatly summarised in a wiki-page, which is really useful to anyone doing a quick research on the topic.

> a lot of topics are simply missing

One of the last articles I created on Wikipedia was of Sunder Katwala[1] who at the time was head of the Fabian Society[2]. Shortly after, a deletionist calling itself Wireless Keyboard stuck a Speedy Deletion notice[3] on my article, even though it was patently obvious to anyone who bothered to follow the links why he was notable.

I've only ever created one Wikipedia article since then. Fuck Wikipedia and fuck deletionists.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunder_Katwala

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabian_Society

3: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sunder_Katwala&ol...

Is it really unexpected that Wikipedia has to protect itself from disinformation, trolls, defamation, and spam, these days?

Edit: and has already gone live at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximator_(Intelligence_allian....

- Hacker News 4 month ago https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Crypto%20AG

- April 8, in Dutch https://www.vpro.nl/argos/lees/nieuws/2020/Nederland-maakt-d...

BTW https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome/ works for circumventing economist paywall.

This is much better than the very brief economist article, many thanks!

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