Comment by sph | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sph | Hacker News Reader

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> Wikipedia may have been an amazing idea in the beginning.

> I would gladly pay for an encyclopedia written by actual experts.

While you're entitled to your opinion, this is a case of "the grass is always greener on the other side".

I'm not a fan of the Wikipedia internal politics, but as a user, Wikipedia is one of the best showcases of the Internet and in my opinion the greatest collaboration project in human history.

For the first time we have knowledge available to all, for (almost) free. You want to pay because you're privileged, but that's not the way of improving humanity as a whole, rich and poor, privileged and stuck in a mud hut with a crappy phone.

Of course we can do better, but I find it incredibly dismissive not to recognise the incredible achievement Wikipedia is.

Blame the fact that as a species we're quite tribalistic and selfish, not the collective effort we're making while trying the hardest limit our biases and shortcomings as much as (humanly) possible.

I used to be big on OSS and free for all (maybe because I'm an incredible cheapskate) but I changed my mind. Every service provided for free is maintained by someone working for free.

After being on the maintainer side, working my ** off and not getting anything but more work without recognition or even a "thank you", I can't say I'm happy or positive towards OSS or services that can't sustain themselves. The human cost can't be ignored.

At the same time, working for free is rarely conducive of high quality, even when good engineers are behind it. Even when the quality is good, you can't expect maintenance.

Most of the OSS I use is either unmaintaned, of questionable quality or fake OSS maintained by business to attract/retain developers. There are famous exceptions in OSS (eg. Linux) driven by a few exceptional (and well off) individuals, but that's not the majority of the community. Students doing CV building are another segment of people doing OSS and hoping to get paid in recognition.

If it wasn't for the low level OSS got us used to, it would be easier to have a market of small independent developers selling software and maintaining it.

The same goes for wiki.

Honestly I feel where you’re coming from, I used to think exactly like you. But I slowly came to my current sad realization.

Right now I do believe that free wrong info is actually more damaging than paid correct info. But I am open to and wish for a third option or a solution which is more inclusive and less "for the privileged".

What examples do you have of this? I also feel Wikipedia is a success, but I'd like any data points of failures as well.

Could you cite specific examples of wrong or actually harmful information?

That would give more credence to your arguments.

Maybe also link to your rejected contributions to show that you are not just disgruntled because your edits were reverted.

I do agree that there are lots of inaccuracies in articles, but having Wikipedia with at least somewhat helpful information is infinitely better than having nothing at all.

Political content is a landmine, articles are often locked because vandals are often indistinguishable from those with better information but still controversial.

One example: Britishfinance/"Ireland as a tax haven"[1]

Summary: A user, Britishfinance (believed to be Paddy Cosgrave, disgruntled founder of the web summit, a major EU tech event that moved from Ireland to Lisbon as the Irish government wouldn't give him what he wanted) spent about a year primarily editing articles related to Ireland to make a link of claims about the country being a tax haven the most prominent feature of them. Case in point, look at the overview for the article on Ireland after the user edited it [2]. It's since been rolled back somewhat by other wikipedia editors who felt that was a disproportionate amount of space given to that discussion.

But Wikipedia isn't so well equipped to handle this kind of dispute.

1. Ireland certainly has benefited from its tax policies, including both competitive but undisputed to be the right of the country, like having a lower corporate headline tax rate than its neighbours, and

2. Ireland has been involved in tax loopholes, such as the now defunct double irish/dutch sandwich stuff

3. You can find sourced articles for all of this.

So at what point does putting this information as the most prominent information in a wide variety of Ireland related articles cross from being just adding facts to encyclopedia articles to being politically motivated? When one side is an active wikipedia admin and the other side is a bunch of casual editors or users who don't edit, who gets the benefit of the doubt?

1: https://old.reddit.com/r/ireland/comments/bgyfet/til_theres_...

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Republic_of_Irela...

All very well and true, but isn't this also a problem in closed encylopedias?? Surely even a paid editor has her biases, and at the very least would have to make a judgement call on whether or not to include that information in the opening paragraph and so on. Wikipedia actually has the advantage here as the discussion is completely open and you can see the all arguments and the process that led to a decision.

Should I believe that the Republic of Ireland's wikipedia entry had an issue with how it talked about taxes, but now wikipedia has corrected that issue?

Yeh if you read the talk pages (which are hard to find and many people wouldn’t even know about) you will find so many people pushing an agenda rather than trying to adhere to some neutrality. Small subtle changes designed to push someone’s world view.

I think it’s so rare these days to find people who can remain objective and leave their opinions at the door. Everyone seems fueled by rage, it’s like their political views are their purpose in life.

> at least somewhat helpful information is infinitely better than having nothing at all

Maybe, at least as long as we still have a good ratio between reliable and unreliable info (whatever that ratio may be). But as long as someone can piggy-back on this reputation, and most people simply take all that info for granted, the effect of a disingenuous Wiki article is far higher than your average FB "fake news". It's that implicit trust that makes a Trojan horse more dangerous.

There is no action being taken to make this process of correcting information more open and transparent, and out of the hands of a few people. Especially since it's been shown in the past that this kind of power was sold for money in PR campaigns, or used for revenge edits.

> the effect of a disingenuous Wiki article is far higher than your average FB "fake news"

Wikipedia doesn't profit by weaponizing misinformation. That's FB's business model.

All those people who stormed the capital. You think they were FB users or Wiki users? The thought of them diligently reading encyclopedia entries and becoming radicalized has me cackling.

Well, they could have been reading conservapedia

Sure. The article for Bill Ayers describes him as an "elementary education theorist." That's not what he's notable for.

And the article for John Wilkes Booth describes him as an "American stage actor" even though that's not what he's known for. If you keep reading the article, however, it's almost completely about what he is known for (a statement true for both cases). That's just standard wikipedia formatting.

"Standard wikipedia formatting" being burying the lead is not a compelling defense. It's damn near misleading.

I find "an American stage actor who assassinated President Abraham Lincoln" to be a ridiculous introduction; it should read "an American assassin who killed President Abraham Lincoln" -- the man's profession is completely irrelevant; he is notable for this one act.

It isn't even consistently applied: Ted Kaczynski is listed as a domestic terrorist, Sirhan Sirhan is "a Palestinian Christian militant," but then Charles Guiteau is a "writer and lawyer."

Ted Kaczynski hasn't been anything other than a domestic terrorist since 1969 when he dropped out of academia at the ripe old age of 27. Sirhan Sirhan didn't have a profession, as far as I can tell he was working at a health food store when he assasinated RFK, and has spent the past 53 years incarcerated for it.

Charles Guiteau had a long career prior to assassinating Garfield, as did Booth before assassinating Lincoln. While both committed assassinations, there was no point in time where you could have hired either to assassinate someone for you, it wasn't either of their professions.

My whole point here is that their professions are not noteworthy, relevant, or interesting, but Wikipedian bureaucracy causes them to be mentioned, and I think it's dumb.

> I find "an American stage actor who assassinated President Abraham Lincoln" to be a ridiculous introduction; it should read "an American assassin who killed President Abraham Lincoln"

One sentence fragment conveys that Lincoln was assassinated, the assassin's nationality, and the assassin's profession in 67 characters. The other conveys that Lincoln was assassinated and the assassin's nationality in 58 characters.

You like the wrong sentence. It's stylistically kooky, too: you need to point out that an assassin killed someone? That doesn't feel a little redundant to you?

> the man's profession is completely irrelevant

Hardly. But mostly it's strange that you'd want wikipedia to make that determination for you. It's not necessary.

> "Standard wikipedia formatting" being burying the lead is not a compelling defense.

Burying the lede would involve putting the information you're burying somewhere other than the middle of the first sentence of the first paragraph.

Maybe you missed the part where I wrote about their notability rules. Boothe was notable because of an assassination. At no point was his stage career even worth mentioning.

Booth assassinated Lincoln in the theater while Lincoln was attending Booth's play and the fact everyone there knew he was an actor contributed directly to his escape from the scene. Just because you are uninterested in context does not make it irrelevant.

I think, if you looked a bit closer, you'd find that Wikipedia is more opinionated about certain topics than others. On Wikipedia, Ted Kaczynski is a domestic terrorist first, and a mathematician second, but Bill Ayers is an education theorist first, and a domestic terrorist second. I don't really see any "standard" here. To my eyes, the bias is fairly consistent - somewhat left of American center plus a little bit of libertarian - not dissimilar to hacker news.

I mention Bill Ayers specifically because I asked a friend if they had heard of the Weather Underground recently and they said "sounds familiar, remind me?" And I said "Google Bill Ayers" and they paused and then said "the elementary education theorist?" And I said "lol, yeah, that's funny." That first sentence is what shows in Google results on mobile devices - it matters.

He was part of the weather underground years ago, he has spent decades as an education theorist since then. Education theorist is his current profession. Ted Kaczynski abandoned his mathematics career in 1969 when he was 27, and has spent the past 40 years either bombing people or serving time for doing so.

Similarly, Donald Trump is described as an American politician and the 45th president in his opening sentence, with discussion of his past in business and as a media personality reserved for later in the article. The standard wikipedia introduction is to list common aliases, nationality, and their current/last profession.

I will also note that on my mobile device if you google Bill Ayers, the first two sentences of his wikipedia article come up. The entire second sentence is about his involvement in the Weather Underground.

That seems to be a problem with Google as much as Wikipedia.

I think if you just read the articles without following the footnotes you can easily get the impression that Wikipedia is a good encyclopedia. The writing quality is often pretty good, which unfortunately makes it more deceptive as to information quality.

There is plenty of paid correct info out there. You just need to look in the field of data that you're interested in.

I'm pretty sure the days of a general data encyclopedia are past us. The amount of data to gather to make it useful is going to insanely expensive, and will in general be available from many sources for free, thereby decreasing its value.

> For the first time we have knowledge available to all, for (almost) free

That’s fantastic unless that ‘knowledge’ is wrong. We can get that kind of knowledge on Facebook.

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