Wikipedia is up (2001)
web.archive.org
web.archive.org
Bucking that trend somewhat, I was in the cautiously optimistic camp. By that time it was already more useful to me than the Encyclopedia Britannica, and getting better all the time. The trajectory was clear.
It seems like, of all the exciting things from the early web, Wikipedia has been one of the only things that actually panned out the way it was intended. It didn't get commercialized, but it didn't go broke either. It didn't become a cesspool, or try to consume all of my attention. It just does the thing it's supposed to do. If there was a fire on the internet, and I could only save one website, it would be you Wikipedia.
Maybe not every project should be a commercial enterprise.
Typically, at least half of them each day are interesting enough that I'll click to read the full question and the full answer that they picked to highlight. Most of the rest are usually decent questions, but I'm just not interested enough to click.
Of those I do click, maybe half of those turn out to be sufficiently interesting that after reading the featured answer I'll click to see the other answers too.
Like many sites based on user provided content, Quora tries to show you what they think you will be interested in, but "interested in" really means what you'll click on.
I see enough stupid stuff (especially stupid political stuff) elsewhere, so don't click on it on Quora. I seem to be consistent enough with this that their algorithms have figured out there is better stuff to show me to get my click.
I also do not use "sign in with Facebook" or "sign in with Google" there, and am not really active on any social media that exposes user email addresses or that exposes contact lists (or even has contact lists). I don't know if I have any friends who also read Quora, but if I do there is a decent chance that Quora does not know that I do, and so won't be using their interests to try to guess mine.
I don't know why do many others have bad Quora experiences, but for whatever reason it works great for me.
People argue the opposite, that things could be better, that the criticisms could be addressed and everything else would continue on, but I'm not so sure. Where is the large, successful organization -- based on money or not -- which has survived into greatness without these kinds of criticisms?
It reminds me of Marxism/Communisms/various utopian ideas. People have big ideas about how things can be "perfect" and all problems can be abolished. Except for a very few, very small exception, when those ideas have been tried, the outcome has been far worse than the problems that were trying to be avoided.
That, and before you can make a system work, however shitty it is, you really need to make sure everyone knows how to use it. (hence it's important to educate or on-board people. One of the things en.wikipedia is bad at. )
Ok maybe a bit off topic, but what I'm getting at is... well I think that a bit of unpleasantness is simply necessary and unavoidable. How, where, and the correct amount are important, but people seem to be overly outraged over every bit of negativity these days.
Human misery has a tendency to adjust itself to whatever circumstances a person finds themselves in which is why you find people in profound poverty imagining if they just had this they would be happy forever and then you go and look at people who actually have it and find that they are just as likely to be completely miserable.
I think shittiness is necessary in places because without it you'll have some people making really bad choices just to make folks happy and others who no matter what will find something to be miserable about.
So it's not about eliminating all the rough spots, but instead intentionally shaping them to be in the right places at the right intensities.
Online: https://britannica.com
That said... https://www.nature.com/articles/438900a
In my opinion [1,2] is a better source to get an overview of what actually happened.
I am biased though, in this case.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STl7-_f4_eA [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beUt5Ke_DqU
General rule of thumb is the deeper and more topical you go on wikipedia, the more alert your BS detector needs to be. It's not perfect, but it's once of the best sources we have today.
My perception is that the more popular and controversial topics are more likely to attract editors, but also BS. The Mohammad Ali page may attract plenty of BS, intentional or unwitting (lots of people have ideas about Ali); the page on the 1928 Olympic boxing champion probably doesn't attract much of either.
> the more alert your BS detector needs to be
Also, I think the "BS detector" is the most powerful mechanism for spreading mis- and disinformation. People who think they have one are the most prone to being fooled, and I think research shows that. Beyond obvious flaws, unless you already know the correct and complete information (omissions can be just as BS as outright errors), you won't be able to spot errors or omissions.
Think of it this way: Using your BS detector, could you edit your own writing to fool someone else? I think I could easily pass most people's 'BS detectors'. Imagine what someone paid to write BS can do - or just look at the research about massive troll farms and disinformation campaigns.
Finally, the fact is that BS spreads at a magnitude unimagined in human history. Evidently, the BS detectors aren't helping. And if you think you are smarter than everyone else, you are the most vulnerable (also demonstrated by research).
> it's once of the best sources we have today.
IMHO Encyclopedia Britannica is always better where it has coverage (i.e., because I can trust it), as is Google Scholar, authoritative websites by experts, and better journalism. If I want to know about the deer tick, I use a website such as Tree of Life (tolweb.org).
IME it's a question for any Wikipedia page. I remember a mathematics professor reviewing a page in their field, saying it omitted key topics and gave prominence, as major figures, to people the reviewer hadn't heard of.
Also, I've experienced that any minor topic can be controversial or political to someone. For a page I'm almost certain you've never heard of, I saw someone create an article in a newsy blog that that supported their made-up claim and cite it in Wikipedia, then cite Wikipedia in the article, and then give interviews to other websites saying the same thing, creating a web if citations. Even after I tracked it down and fixed it - a lot of work to do for free for a low-traffic Wikipedia page - they waited a month and started again. I ran out of time (and trust).
Meanwhile, the foundation is some sort of self-perpetuating money vacuum expanding at a great rate while expenditures for actually running Wikipedia is stagnant, if anything getting cheaper. It turns out a wishy-washy NGO save the world mission is a lot more exciting than the daily struggle of community building, and with the foundation all these do-gooders don't even have to forgo the competitive salary.
Obviously a bit exaggerated, but there is a lot of truth here.
https://www.wired.com/2007/08/wiki-tracker/
https://web.archive.org/web/20190410141316/old.ycombinator.c... (Item #23)
Thanks for that.
"Wikipedia is losing editors": https://mashable.com/2013/01/08/wikipedia-losing-editors/?eu...
"Nearly all of Wikipedia is written by just 1 percent of its editors": https://www.vice.com/en/article/7x47bb/wikipedia-editors-eli...
"Wikipedia’s diversity gap echoes around the internet": https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2021/04/04/wikipedias-diver...
"Wikipedia has cancer": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_C...
Years ago I had a friend who worked for Wikimedia Foundation and was very enthusiastic about it. That optimism didn't last for long. He left after a few years citing WF's messaging style of "holding the content hostage" during fundraising drives and the established, exclusive contributor community that, more often than not, would drive away new contributors with snippy responses and arcane editing rules.
Wikipedia seems to somehow be hanging by its fingernails for the last decade or so, despite being somewhere in the 20's on that list.
I guess something was done right. Next time even better?
"have anything better? how specifically is is it bad or biased compared to alternatives?"
silence
Kudos to you, Jimmy (and team). Keep up the great work.
Note the article is written by the same guy who wrote the email in the original post.
You can't trust wiki when it pertains to politics.
Russian Wikipedia doesn’t have such article. They only have “military conflict in eastern Ukraine” https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%92%D0%BE%D0%BE%D1%80%D1%83... That article does not list Russia on the right panel under “belligerents” section. Many sections simply tell official Russian version. When it does tell some bits of truth it uses wordings like “allegedly” and “according to Ukrainian side”. The “casualties and losses” section only contains losses on Ukrainian side.
Look at the "reactions in Russia" section. There is not a single positive sentiment expressed there about the situation in Crimea. I guarantee you that this is not representative of the the public opinion in Russia (whether or not you agree with it). All citations are from opposition people nobody has ever heard of. Not a single one from the official media? That's neutral? Really?
If all the people in Crimea are victims and are controlled by evil bad Russia, how come Ukraine turned off their water supply? The one they didn't build. Don't they want those poor oppressed souls to come back into the fold? Where's that reference in the article?
And in the interest of keeping an open mind: here come the downvotes! The people clicking that arrow probably think of themselves as very open minded too.
These sources aren’t exclusively western, e.g. Al Jazeera is based in Qatar.
Another thing, I have some sources outside of the Internets. I personally know a few people who fought the war, and many civilians who fled the war. Their stories match these 600 sources of the English version of Wikipedia.
Interesting point to illustrate, why wikipedia's articles are not as good as the scientific ones. Because don't you think, this truth is a matter of perspective?
Because to my understanding, a real war between Ukraine and Russia would look a bit different and would have been over long ago.
There are definitely strong elements of a civil war, despite russias covert and open engagement. And with the US and EU involvment on the pro west Ukrainian side - it is complicated geopolitics. Hard to find simple truths there, when all involved sides are engaged with disinformation and propaganda.
If there are Russian soldiers firing guns and occupying Ukrainian territory then it's not a "matter of perspective"; it's an act of war.
Russians have started the war, and have been fighting the war from the very beginning in March 2012. That’s not a controversial theory, but a well-established fact with verifiable references all over the internets.
Yet Russian version of Wikipedia seems unaware.
That's up for Ukrainians to decide, not Russia.
But the concept of "handing over" Ukraine really underlines why the rest of the world views Russia as such a threat to world peace.
Ukrainians should decide their own future. It's not Russia's to hand over nor is it America's to take. Sometimes you hear quotes by high ranking Russian military officials and it feels like there is this persistent belief that NATO somehow "stole" Eastern Europe from Russia when the reality was that Eastern Europe fled to NATO to deter Russia after several brutal decades in the Soviet sphere of influence.
Certainly the concept of some countries being good and others being bad is outdated. The West has engaged in more than it's share of evil. But that doesn't justify moral relativism in international affairs. Nor does it allow one country to attempt annexation of another against its will.
Also, it's funny how all the countries suddenly wanting to change things up government-wise just happen to be on the path of major gas pipelines from Russia. Georgia, Ukraine, Belarus, Armenia. A coincidence, that. Environmentalists also spoke up about the dangers of undersea pipelines with perfect timing (see Nort Stream 2).
And so you have a country whose power structure is literally facing an existential threat. Now, maybe you think that Russian power structure really is better off disappearing into the sunset (and I may even agree with you). But to think it'll do so without a fight is naive.
This thing is bigger than Ukraine. This is a well-orchestrated multi-year operation to change the balance of power in Europe and potentially force a regime change in Russia. Ukrainians have their dreams and admirable spirit, but I think when the dust settles they will be disappointed to find themselves to have been used as pawns in a much bigger game.
It's their country. It's their right to decide whether they want to have gas pipelines there. That this is an existential threat to Russia is kind of a problem of their own making and, quite frankly, not Ukraine's problem. Don't bully 42 million people because you can't solve your own problems.
You do realize what you're advocating for is that Ukraine should be a Russian puppet state?
My opinion is that there is no such thing as 100% self determination, whether for people or for groups of them called countries. We are social creatures and there is no way for us to exist without connections, social norms, etc. A group leaving one sphere of influence will necessarily fall into another one. Puppet or not is a matter of degree of control.
Ukraine's fight for independence is 90% financed by the USA (NPR's number, not mine). Is that really independent? I guess it is for the people already within the US sphere of influence: to them the story is "they are leaving the baddies and we are helping them do it".
To be within the US sphere of influence is self-defined as being free. Is it? Depends on who's making up the definitions I suppose. And now we are back on topic: there's probably no way to write a completely neutral article on a topic like this conflict. The sides can't even agree on what the phrases mean!
I have personally donated thousands of dollars to help Ukraine's fight for independence, and I know people who donated more than me. Just because someone in Ukraine received USD from abroad does not mean USA's financing.
> there's probably no way to write a completely neutral article on a topic like this conflict
In this case, Russians even deny the topic.
In your comments your position is evil but at least somewhat reasonable. You admit there's a war between Russia and Ukraine, and explain how Russian government is stupid enough to think that's a good idea. Despite I don't share that political position I would like to see that info in Wikipedia, it's interesting and relevant.
But Wikipedia's position (which happens to match the official Russian propaganda) is that Russia ain't involved, and Ukraine is fighting a civil war against local rebels. For 7 years and counting.
From Russia's perspective NATO has been progressively taking over countries that were previously part of Russia's safety buffer.
Ukraine entering talks to join the NATO sphere of influence was one step too far for them. Russia has a major naval base at Sevastopol that threatened to "fall into NATO hands." From their own strategic viewpoint they could never allow this to happen without a fight!
And of course, everyone is the good guy in their own story.
You might find this interesting:
[1] https://newmediaacademy.ae/ar-digital-creator/#pll_switcher
[2] https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/nas-daily-israel-palestin...
EDIT: The criticism in [2] is objection by the antisemitic BDS movement to NAS’ refusal to demonize Israel and his attempts to bring people together and promote peace and mutual understanding. It is embarrassing to their narrative when Palestinians like NAS point out that the Palestinians who stayed in Israel after its founding became full members of its society, served in its parliament, and that there is no “apartheid”.
> A major contributor to this article appears to have a close connection with its subject. It may require cleanup to comply with Wikipedia's content policies, particularly neutral point of view. Please discuss further on the talk page. (June 2018) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)
But going to the talk page shows they still control the page and content on it.
> Dear User Wikidave2009, since June 2017 the well-sourced March 2017 revelations and implications section has been created five times in this page by three different editors like Wiki726, Ours18 and myself, you have deleted it every single time without providing any credible reference to discredit that the sources cited in that section. Your claim that these sources are "fringe" and "dubious" is not wellfounded. Michael Rubin is a leading expert on Iran at the AEI, Darren Tromblay is a veteran intelligence analyst and both the Small Wars Journal and Commentary Magazine are solid and reliable sources. I do realize that you are very dedicated to guarding the NIAC page, however, you're forcing your opinion on this page without any regard for other editors who disagree with you. Please STOP removing content that you don't like, and perhaps find a way to deal with this conflict of interest that is obvious. Alwaysf (talk) 05:29, 17 January 2018 (UTC)
That section is not on the main page. You can see it in the history: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=National_Iranian_...
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/aug/26/shock-an-aw-...
Either nobody reads the relatively small Scottish Wikipedia, or (more likely) everyone who complained about it got banned by said admin. And since nobody really reviews bans (why cant the Wikimedia Foundation have someone for it?), then you are generally out of luck.
2A. There was a Wikipedia administrator who created 80 000 pages and redirects related to breasts. Also seemed to have some obsession over some low key political woman.
https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/dk17c9/wikipedi...
What is more sad in this case, is that every other admin knew very well that thousands of such pages were created, but nobody did anything. This is the usual situation when the clique will never go against one of their own.
It took them an incredible amount of time to do anything with that rogue admin and at the end I think he wasn't even removed from his role and banned, he simply stepped down on his own.
2B. Compare the rogue admin described in point 2A (who created 80 thousand articles and redirects related to breasts) with the typical experience of a new wikipedia user, whose article will be probably speedy deleted immediately after creation. There is a big group of admins who try to speed delete everything - because by default they treat every new user as human trash and every new article as not encyclopedic.
I dont have any statistics,but I assume that after the new article is deleted, most new users will simply give up, because the alternative is to fight versus the admin clique through various "committees" (full of said admins). This time is wasted, because instead of improving the article you go through a trial of tears.
2C. Also very possible is that every edit by a new user is reverted by default. The new user cannot revert it back - since this is an "edit war". I dont feel like searching for examples, but there are admins who have literal counters that show how many things they reverted - and they pride themselves of it.
This basically means thousands of users pushed away of trying to improve wikipedia, just because some sad asshole sits and reverts everything to paddle his stats.
Other admins dont do anything about it, because it is incredibly hard to remove an admin / if they removed that guy, then someone else could go after them.
The Wikimedia foundation simply does not care at all. They just need those millions for various expensive "projects", lunches and so on. A very similar thing happened with Firefox, where the Mozilla foundation is interested in everything, but not their core product.
If you are a new Wikipedia user a very typical situation is that if you create a new article, some admin will "improve" it (generally making it worse) and you cannot revert those changes, or you get banned by the said admin. On some smaller Wikipedia the admins knew each other very well, so they ask their friend to ban you.
I am aware that I dont provide any examples for those + I sound like a "frustrated person".
If you dont believe me, you can make a second account and see how it looks for someone new (using two accounts is against Wikipedia terms of service btw).
Perhaps a good way would be to randomize admin names, so those assholes get banned by their own friends, or reverted by own friends, who like to revert everything.
3. Regarding examples of "fresh" political cases having a lot of problems. You can check the page of Aimee Channelor and constant edit wars related to that person
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Aimee_Challenor
That's the person involved in the reddit scandal in 2021.
If you feel like a detective, you can also try to figure out who are the people who constantly guard and edit the said article.
Btw. I guess I also have to add a disclaimer that I never had anything to do with article from point 3.
Maybe setting a high bar to new edits is not a bad idea. Wikipedia is old, it should settle at least on some of the topics.
The hostile speed deletions and reverts applied to new users are never happen admins, or members of the clique - even if the quality of things they add is very, very low.
I even wrote above that there are ways to fight it: for example by randomizing the names of users who made the edits. Although Im quite sure that Wikipedia is full of sad people, who will spend a lot of time and effort to still be able to bypass such a system.
What is even more sad, is that in this particular discussions, you have 3 different users who wrote that it happened to them... just look to other replies to the top comment.
Even so Wikipedia is still one of my top 3 sites. I'm doing NLP and I see the Wikipedia corpus used in hundreds of papers. It's useful in many ways.
I agree about this. If you're worried that your edit might get reverted, the trick is to argue for it on the talk page first, wait for any objections to be raised there, then if no one objects, make the edit marking it as "per talk". At that point, it will be very hard for them to just revert, and if they do so without addressing your comments they're breaking Wikipedia policy themselves.
The trick of it is that there are very high odds that the actual reverter will enter discussion with you; which means you're talking with exactly the right person on exactly the right topic at exactly the right time. O:-)
You can then proceed to figure out what (either of you [2]) are doing wrong, and get something on the page that works.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:BOLD,_revert,_discus...
[2] Analogous to unit testing, where the bug could be in the test or in the main program; the problem here could lie with the BOLD editor or with the Reverter, or even both! If you assume good faith[3] and talk it out together, you can go far.
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Assume_good_faith
Of course it is, but it's way less unwiki than the alternative (revert wars and wiki blocks)! Being 'BOLD' works very well when you expect your edit to stick; if you have reason to think someone will revert your edit, it's just way better to proactively show good faith by arguing for your edit on the talk page.
Be BOLD, but don't be reckless! Do show good faith, Do also follow all the other policies and guidelines, Do be respectful of others; Do also put a comment on the talk page; Don't start an edit war, and then you definitely won't get blocked!
Wikipedia policies and guidelines are not an optional, pick the ones you like kind of affair. When used together they document optimal processes found over years of experience.
When you follow optimal process and act in a decisive, clear and respectful manner, you'll find that you and your other co-editors can edit more rapidly, effectively and amicably, and you'll even get into less trouble along the way.
Analogously thus with a wiki. One of the things that make a wiki (hawaiian for "quick") work is that it (potentially) has very short feedback loops when editing.
One reason wikipedia is often slower than it can be is because very many people have the "slow but fine" intuition; but less people have/(or used to have) experience with the "coarse but fast correction" regime, and thus lack the intuition that comes with that.
1. This is an issue the Wikimedia foundation has been dealing with and working to solve: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Large_s...
2A. The general rule with the Wikipedia is that, if you can make a redirect to something, it’s usually good to do so, even if the redirect uses a term which is not politically correct. Considering the source of the complaint comes from Reddit, Reddit is not a particularly reliable source about matters like this.
2B. As a strict inclusionist sometimes Wikipedia editor, I agree 100% with the general gist that the Wikipedia makes adding new articles too hard. That said, I have with some effort been able to make a new article stay in the Wikipedia fairly recently (late 2019): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ValhallaDSP
It did get tagged for deletion — https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=ValhallaDSP&type=... — but the editor who put the tag removed it when I pointed out the subject has been extensively referenced by the music press — https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=ValhallaDSP&type=...
2C. Please provide evidence; e.g. diffs where you tried to edit something and all of your edits were reverted. [Citation needed] and all that.
3. The current version https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aimee_Challenor — this version: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Aimee_Challenor&o... — has the Reddit scandal and other scandals prominently described in the lead section. Please let us know how the article is not neutral.
For example Wikipedia has a role called CheckUser - what is a person that has special access rights to check IP addresses of all other users. This is mainly used to see if a person doesn't use multiple sock puppet accounts to make various types of abuse (e.g. vote manipulation).
I know a local Wikipedia, where the CheckUser literally refuses to check if admins don't have sock puppet accounts. This means that the admins can literally make any sock puppet they want and always win any vote, including future votes for a new CheckUser.
What can you do about it? Nothing.
Can you write about this to Wikimedia Foundation? Nope. There even isnt any official way to contact them. They basically let local Wikipedia branches run themselves.
2A. You write a lot of text to defend literal garbage. That admin added 80 THOUSAND incredibly low effort redirects related to woman breasts.
"Titty tumors", "Segmental removal of the titties", "Constructions of the booby", "Hypoplastic tits", "Atrophy of the titties"...
Please explain to me how this is any good?
If a new user made such garbage, it would be speed deleted and the user IP banned immediately.
2B. So basically an experienced Wikipedia user still got their article speed deleted, had to fight to get it back.. and then somehow what I wrote is wrong. So to sum up, if you dont like the facts, you ignore the facts? I realy dont understand what is your point here.
3. Again, you seem to miss the point. Someone asked for an example of a political article that was problematic. So I provided an article. You can look at the edit history to see that there were literal wars about everything there.
Also in case of articles about living people, politicians etc. it is often quite clear that said politicians or their aides are the ones who are tasked with guarding the article, editing it.
> Please let us know how the article is not neutral.
Do you represent Wikipedia or Wikipedia foundation in any way?
Why do you demand citations when Wikipedia is discussed? For any other topic, you dont demand them, or dont use them.
I guess you are just some common troll, probably a Wikipedia admin. Joke's on me, since I even bothered to reply.
I am demanding citations because you’re making contentious accusations based on half-truths.
This will be my last reply to you; I do not think a productive conversation is possible at this point.
I much prefer the process to what Reddit does, which is, in many subreddits, to quickly ban anyone who goes against the group think of a given subreddit, even if the subreddit is wrong.
In Wikipedia, as a rule of thumb, is that the truth does win out, even if it takes a while to get there. As one example, while Tara Reade’s now-discredited accusation [1] against Joe Biden was all over numerous subreddits and presented as objective fact, [2] the Wikipedia was taking a slower, more measured approach to reporting the accusations which ultimately ended up being far more accurate than what Reddit was doing at the time. [3]
As another case, a lot of noise was made over how horrible the Wikipedia was because Clarice Phelps didn’t have a Wikipedia article. She has one today. [4]
[1] This probably needs a citation. How about https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/what-74-former-biden-s... or, yeah, since it’s so heavily sourced https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Biden_sexual_assault_alleg...
[2] For example, https://old.reddit.com/r/WayOfTheBern/comments/it5n91/multip...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Joe_Biden/Archive_10#Tara...
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarice_Phelps
[5] Wikipedia has a hard time with allowing articles about cool open source projects and languages. I agree this is really annoying, since it means I have to dig through GitHub, forums like this one, or (for fonts) Google Fonts to find high quality open source programs or content.
[6] Adding footnotes without a reference to the footnote is an old alt.sysadmin.recovery tradition
Do you think that being better than Reddit is a high bar?
While the post was quite heated and it’s hard to separate facts from expressions of anger, to me he strongly implied the other two haven’t been dealt with or resolved, while, in fact, all the issues are resolved or are being discussed, in Wikipedia’s typical style of discussing things to death (I remember when discussing whether to host pro-pedophile advocacy was a thing on Wikipedia, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Pedophile_movement/Archiv... )
I brought up Reddit because the OP brought up Reddit; I agree they are horribly inaccurate, and if something I read on Reddit makes me angry, I check other sources to make sure I’m not getting worked up over a lie.
EDIT: But perhaps I am wrong or confused. Wouldn’t be the first time. In that case, please clarify what, exactly, was the purpose of your citations that began “Those articles aren’t on the Wikipedia:”.
That poster was being, to say the least, quite disingenuous asking me that question: They were making a direct personal insult against me, and they were stating that I advocated a position that I do not advocate. In other words, they were asking me a “are you still beating your wife?” type of question, and they worded their question as if those redirects are still on the Wikipedia.
Indeed, a point you missed they never stated the redirects went away.
Let’s look at what they actually said: >>>What is more sad in this case, is that every other admin knew very well that thousands of such pages were created, but nobody did anything. This is the usual situation when the clique will never go against one of their own.
It took them an incredible amount of time to do anything with that rogue admin and at the end I think he wasn't even removed from his role and banned, he simply stepped down on his own.<<<
Did this poster state the pages were removed? No, they did not. The poster only stated they they “[did] anything” with the admin, inaccurately stated he wasn’t banned (he was topic banned, which is a pretty serious punishment on the Wikipedia), and the OP never said what happened with the redirects.
A reasonable person reading what the OP wrote would not be given the impression the redirects were removed.
Now, back to me: I merely stated that the Wikipedia is a little more loose about redirects than about articles (“if you can make a redirect to something, it’s usually good to do so, even if the redirect uses a term which is not politically correct”); I agree that the particular redirects the OP incorrectly accused me of supporting go beyond the pale, and are examples of why I said “usually good” and not always good. The Wikipedia community agrees they went beyond the pale: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_no...
It would be like if someone asked me “Why is it that pro-pedophile advocacy should be on the Wikipedia?”; it is in no way “disingenuous” to answer “that hasn’t been on the Wikipedia since 2007”, even if they previously pointed out that the Wikipedia did “something” about pedophilia a while ago, and even if I previously said that Wikipedia errs on the side of supporting free speech.
Personally, I think it’s pretty disingenuous to defend someone who was flaming me so hard, @dang had to intervene, and to incorrectly imply they OP said something they never actually said when falsely claiming I was being “disingenuous”. But that’s just my opinion.
[1] It seems to have picked up some during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020
You can make your substantive points without any of that, and it's also in your interests to do so!
When you have two polarizing sides, the extremist that are the most popular view might not even be close to reality or even the majority opinion. With two narratives that define their own "good" side and a "bad" side, the messy truth might not be found in news articles but rather in hindsight a few decades later (or fringe analysts that is struggling to survive).
Political topics do however get fairly good coverage by citing reliable sources of what kind of narratives have been made, and except for correct weighting, might give some clues about the truth.
I'd say Wikipedia, like the scientific process, works in the limit; any snapshot may contain errors, but there's a process for weeding out errors that leads to conversion towards the right direction, if not always in a strictly monotonic fashion.
There are countries in which things said on Wikipedia are not permissible to be viewed, or where it is banned in whole. I prefer to live in a place where you can view everything (e.g, [1,2]) and make up your mind for yourself, weighing the evidence.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20110512173914/http://seattletim...
[2] https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%85%AD%E5%9B%9B%E4%BA%8B%E4...
[3] https://www.history.com/news/who-was-the-tank-man-of-tiananm...
Another way to put it: is there another source you'd trust more? I'm only familiar with English-language Wikipedia, but from what I've seen, NPOV and other standards mean that the battling factions of editors tend to produce something that does a better job of portraying multiple points of view than most other sources.
(That said, I've also been interviewed for a breaking news story and that's simply run.)
So on Wikipedia, you need to always be thinking about whether anyone has a motivation to manipulate the article and checking to see whether they in fact have. You could argue that this is true of everything though, and at least on Wikipedia people are usually pretty clumsy about revealing their biases.
The other major problem with Wikipedia is the low quality of many of its writers, at least (again) for topics a little outside mainstream interest. Last time I edited Wikipedia, I discovered an organized editing effort by a professor teaching a course at a community college. I tracked it to the course website, and apparently as a semester long project, students were asked to pick an article and slowly incorporate improvements to it as well as check the quality of other incoming changes.
Now, I've taught classes at a pretty well regarded public university, and having had to grade the writing of incoming students from good high schools, my assessment of the writing skills provided by America's primary education system is Not Great. I can only imagine that the caliber of student coming into a typical community college is even worse. This isn't to trash this particular student or even the class, but to give an idea of who's editing Wikipedia, on a good day.
The article I was reading (which I'd regard as important - I actually found it after seeing statistics it provided quoted by well-known publications) had slowly been turned into complete garbage over the course of a few months by this student. It was barely coherent English. Statistics were misquoted and misinterpreted throughout (everyone citing the Wikipedia article had been misled, as a result). And this was the result of one editor doing a bad job, not even deliberate astroturfing. Suffice it to say, it's very dangerous to take Wikipedia seriously on any subject of importance unless the article about it has been widely reviewed.
* I saw lie, because if you tried to fix the inaccuracy it would not be allowed.
Also note that rationalism is an ideology.
The circumcision (a euphemism for male genital mutilation) page for example is run and moderated by pro-circumcision people. And you can tell because there's any support for it whatsoever.
Does this mean that Wikipedia is, in a way, kind of a "bad" resource? Absolutely. My personal opinion is that circumcision is indefensible, and we can quickly agree on this. But this kind of resource has value too; what if I want to educate myself on the argument that pro-circumcision people use? There's Wikipedia for that!
I was raised very secular; up to my early 20s I didn't really have an opinion on religion in general because I was simply never really exposed to it; I knew it existed of course, but outside of that: idunnoknow.
After I had some Jehovah's Witnesses at my door I decided to educate myself a bit more about this and looked up, among other things, arguments in favour of God's existence on Wikipedia. I thought they were ridiculous and didn't even hold up to the most basic of critical thinking; I couldn't believe this nonsense was really the best they could come up with. I've been atheist ever since.
However, this doesn't mean that these arguments – ridiculous as I might think they are – don't have a place on Wikipedia, and shouldn't be described there.
He spends some time talking about why he thinks Wikipedia turned out the way it did and avoid some of the potential traps you pointed out.
Really enjoyed listening to it and made me think a lot of about structure of organizations.
[0] https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/jimmy-wales/
https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9wb2RjYXN0ZmVlZHM...
Well said, I concur, and I'm borrowing your quote for my fortunes file.
There’s a difference in “how exactly should I not trust this or that resource” though.
It's still "the world according to people with the most free time (and sometimes strong opinions)". Which mostly works out, but... yeah. Keep that salt handy.
Even when I have to learn something, ANYTHING, I'll go to Wikipedia, after which I read the sources of the article for in depth research. And while I dislike their political articles a lot, the science, math, history and arts articles are genuinely incredible to read.
Wikipedia is a place of ultra-centralization where a handful of influential contributors have most of the power and will enforce the content they want using administrative processes (or arbitrary locking of pages) until you give up.
Otherwise don't be disappointed the day you disagree with the Wikipedian "neutral" point of view.
I have also came to a realization of this when I saw a number of politically motivated powerful contributors vandalizing a calm and mature page about an old historical topic by introducing irrelevant if not made up content. They locked the page immediately after because "there was a threat of vandalism", ironically. It was really unsettling to see it as it unfolded.
I've defended Wikipedia fiercely, about how it's a reliable source because "you can see the sources that are cited" etc. But it is not always a reliable source for ordinary people. It only takes some determined powerful contributor to mess up.
It is a great tool nevertheless, but it really is centralized.
No need to be cryptic here. Link to the content in question and the relevant edits so others can make a judgement about your experience. Otherwise why post this?
Here is the article I'm talking about: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_War_of_Independence
Its talk page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Turkish_War_of_Independen...
In the introduction, the war was painted as basically an "ethnic cleansing campaign", which nowhere in the article was such words used, and is a gross oversimplification. Although both sides massacred each other (mostly the actions of irregulars), the independence war itself was never defined like that before. Additinally, an odd "Historiography" section was added. To me, it looks pretty clear that these edits were made in bad faith.
I think this comment sums it up: https://www.reddit.com/r/WikipediaVandalism/comments/n4lfcr/...
The "switch" mentioned in the comment is the 1923 compulsory population exchange between Greece and Turkey following an agreement between Greek and Turkish governments, which I think shouldn't have happened as both countries would be more diverse.
If only people valued the idea of "world citizenship" and rejected all forms of extreme nationalism...
I wish more organisational involvement would happen on the editorial level - companies, governments, or education. I wish academia wouldn't despise it. There is so much untapped potential still.
But as to your first point: definitely. It is the equivalent of the Library at Alexandria in ancient times; a step function rise in the information actually available to people.
> Presently living in Las Vegas for a few months and then it's on to Russia for a few more months; possibly Ireland after that… Larry can move around like this because he works online. You should be envious. He would be if he weren't he.
And here's the less flavorful [Jimbo Wales article](https://web.archive.org/web/20010412200157/http://www.wikipe...), in which he mentions this in the comment thread:
> [druglady.com is] my mom and dad's pharmacy. I made a website for her. It's on the same machine as wikipedia. That will probably change soon, as we are rearranging things.
> I have many websites.
Also: English only. There are other languages you know!
It's also absurd to say it's English-only. There are currently 18 Wikipedia languages with more than 1m articles: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedias#1_000_000...
The notion that it would fill up with poorly sourced fan garbage is also woefully out of date. That's what fan wikis are for. A good example here is the "Endor Holocaust", the fan-generated notion that when the Death Star was blown up the material would have rained down on Endor and wrecked the ecosystem. That was removed from Wikipedia a little over 15 years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Endor_Holocaust&a...
Obviously those criticisms have mostly (and in some case completely) proven false.
A cautionary point on the criticism (and enthusiasm) of contemporary inventions — in any age.
I wish Wikipedia counted as "publishing" works. Maybe they should start accepting papers?
For those curious of the breakdown https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Statistical_analysis_of_Wiki...
So... not that far off?
The links in the post explain where the stuff is spent.
What a perfectly phrased ask. How can you read "Humor me." and NOT add an article?
Yes, I'm aware of the flaws and criticisms of wikipedia but I stand by my assessment.
TIL : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomis
Although I lived through these events, I was far too busy optimizing my MySpace profile to notice.
These are of course, my own personal experience. Still a very useful resources whenever I want to learn about a given subject.
Ive also noticed this. Wikipedia used to always be in the first few results for any Google search I made. It was amazing becauase it was frequently the exact thing I was trying to find.
Now I have to add 'wiki' to the search terms or it wont even show up in the first page.
Which might be a good thing if it leads to other quality sites getting more traffic.
Try a new dish at a restaurant? I look it up. Interesting origin story and nutritional information.
I also use it a lot to discover new music.
And geography! I hated geography in school. After school my interest in geography has increased sharply. Wikipedia and Google Maps are indispensable for that kind of stuff.
Very often the article starts with a concise definition, some additional explanations and then it has some random long quotation. For example some random critic's opinion about a book.
Those quotes often do not provide much information - a concise text would simply be better.
I have a feeling that the idea is to make Wikipedia easier to use, when in reality it becomes harder to use
In fact those quotes often look like a hidden vehicle to try to promote the quoted person (if person X was quoted, but person Y was not quoted, then you could come to a conclusion that X is more important).
https://web.archive.org/web/20030414014355/http://www.nupedi...
"Jimmy Wales thinks that many people might find the idea objectionable, but I think not."
Good idea Larry.
obviously a ton of wayback links could share