Comment by housemusicfan | Hacker News Reader

Comment by housemusicfan | Hacker News Reader

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No one seems to understand Wikipedia operates as a system of lords and serfs, where a powerful few pull this crap all the time.

Most relevant example I can think of is when Mac OS X was renamed and stylized to "macOS" someone went and systematically did a find and replace all instances of "OS X" to macOS even in situations where it made absolutely no sense as the article was explicitly talking about prior versions. It was like rewriting history in real time.

Imagine if someone went into a library and started editing history books with a Sharpie to reflect future events.

I'll never understand people who are sticklers for 'correctly' using some corporation's trademarks. "Can you xerox a copy of that for me?" "You know, our photocopy machine is made by HP and the Xerox corporation doesn't like when people genericize their..." Why the hell do they care on the corporations behalf? If you aren't being paid by that corp to care.. then why?

"Can you xerox for me, or can you IBM my software" ?

Never heard of such, I understand why they get upset if someone sprinkle the sentences with ads.

I'm not talking about people who are unfamiliar with the term xerox, meaning 'photocopy' (which has been in use this way for decades.) I'm talking about people who object to the use of this term because the Xerox company hates it (they could in principle lose their trademark because of it, but that's not my problem.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox#Trademark

Legos is another one of those which I never got why people were so insistent on quoting the corporate statements on it so vehemently.

See also Kleenex

And for that, you can just "google it"

The classic British example is "hoover".

"xerox" is a pretty common term for photocopy (particularly in Asia), just as "google" is a pretty common term for looking something up on the internet.

they don't even have to pay their winston smiths to work

There are probably hundreds of articles that mention macOS. What are you suggesting that they do, edit them all individually by hand? That could take months. If more than half of the instances deserve to be updated, then replace all saves time. You can always check the diff and undo any damage.

I think lagging behind is better than a wrong correction.

I think you’ve (inadvertently) pointed out a serious weakness in Wikipedia’s editorial process.

I think it’s a balance based on harm of not changing vs harm if changing incorrectly.

I’m this example, there very little perhaps no harm of not changing because it’s just a corporate brand and the corporation cares and if they cared, they would edit.

The harm of incorrectly changing means information is wrong and makes understanding wrong and readers either have the wrong knowledge or spend time researching and correcting something they normally wouldn’t.

I don’t think the goal is absolute accuracy of cosmetic branding, I think the goal is accurately capturing humanity’s information to improve human understanding and knowledge.

That's not nearly as irresponsible and illegal as editing a weather map with a Sharpie to reflect a fictitious future natural disaster and cover up lying in a tweet.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/04/trump-hurrican...

>Altering official government weather forecasts is against the law.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2074

>18 U.S. Code § 2074 - False weather reports

>Whoever knowingly issues or publishes any counterfeit weather forecast or warning of weather conditions falsely representing such forecast or warning to have been issued or published by the Weather Bureau, United States Signal Service, or other branch of the Government service, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ninety days, or both.

>(June 25, 1948, ch. 645, 62 Stat. 795; Pub. L. 103–322, title XXXIII, § 330016(1)(G), Sept. 13, 1994, 108 Stat. 2147.)

You win the non-sequitur of the day award.

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