I agree that Wikipedia is one of the great success stories of the open Internet. Therefore, it is somewhat sad that Wales is being attacked from all sides in this thread.
The response from @GSR6669 resonates with me:
> Wikipedia suspended edits & changed the definition of recession at request of the US Government. Everyone likes to poke holes in Elon’s Twitter yet no choice is infallible.
> Throwing rocks in a glass house is what makes you a real hypocrite though.
Was also corrected by people replying pointing out that this didn't actually happen.
Wikipedia is being corrupted and you should be aware of it. Having a (single) source of truth* has to end like this.
edit: *: More precisely institutions and people treating it like a single source of truth.
Why?
Using Wikipedia as an example: Everyone can edit Wikipedia, however if your edit survives is determined by a hierarchical structure that involves people (with an opinion). It doesn't need a big conspiracy, but only a few people that select which people may act on their behalf. A concrete example would be the Wikipedian Feliks in German Wikipedia who is by now convicted of defamation (via Wikipedia) and still remains part of the "Politburo" of Wikipedia altho obviously violating the official ethos.
In regards to changing Wikipedia, try removing opinions (or just circular citation) from an entry of Feliks or Kopilot (or anyone of the Politburo) and look what happens. Most likely your account is gone, but if you're lucky your edit is just reverted.
Much of it is how Wikipedia is being treated. It is/was an excellent reference book for quickly looking up information about a topic - well, just like an encyclopedia, however it's bad as a source of truth.
Does the topic matter? Is it binary? Why is it a good or bad source of truth, not some level of trust?
Nitpicks
You talk about circular references, I assume you mean someone cites wikipeida which then cites...something else? Either way Wikipeidia isn't a primary source and if someone uses it as one they are wrong and that's the fault of the person.
How would someone defame someone on Wikipedia without providing false sources or no source at all. If they did it could be discovered and changed. This could happen on social media, news organizations, books, or in person. What source of information is immune to this ? (If none are then I don't believe it's a valid criticism)
You say that people who want to corrupt will be attracted to it. Aren't there protections against that? Does it happen often? Is it so frequent that you have zero trust or you think it's "bad source of truth"
In my opinion none.
> You say that people who want to corrupt will be attracted to it. Aren't there protections against that? Does it happen often? Is it so frequent that you have zero trust or you think it's "bad source of truth"
Why are people so obsessed with a source of truth? We never had that and we still don't disregard how much we pretend that we have or wish we had one. It's not the first time in history we pretended that one exists either, but it usually ends bad.
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Recession&action=...
The thing is, everybody is politically motivated, whether your actions directly affect an organized political party or not. Labeling these specific edits as such is not really saying anything. If there is clearer evidence of a pattern then sure, let's have at it. Until then I remain unconvinced that there is any sort of conspiracy involved here.
So Wales being under attack on Twitter is sad but doesn't necessarily represent "public opinion".
I think we are in the last days of major figures like Jimmy Wales still treating Twitter as a respectable arena for public engagement.
Even before Musk took over twitter was a very specific, very tiny, slice of the English speaking world.
There was a film theory a few months ago which looked at movies and trending on twitter, and dug a little deeper. Twitter for exmaple completely ignored major cultural phenomenon like Yellowstone, but really bigged up stuff the vast majority of the world doesn't care about ("the Snyder cut")
Presumably this applies to pretty much any subject.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMTazviRabg
https://www.summarize.tech/www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMTazviRa...
I don't really go to Twitter, so I don't know, but am curious: Is this an established fact? A quick search did not show anything official confirming this.
> Prioritized rankings in conversations and search: Tweets that you interact with will receive a small boost in their ranking. Additionally, your replies will receive a boost that ranks them closer to the top. Twitter Blue subscribers will appear in the Verified tab within other users’ notifications tab which highlights replies, mentions, and engagement from Blue subscribers.
The rationale was that paying $8/month is the best way to filter out bots, but...
At least it is somewhat honest and not, oh, we didn't meant to do this, in our effort to convince more people into paying.
Important things will still probably reach me in embedded shape or quote on other sites, but currently I cannot remember a single tweet at all, that not reading it, would have changed my life for the worse.
So no doubt good content is hidden underneath, but all this drama makes it not worth it for me.
But if this is what is happening to the prioritisation of replies it might actually be a useful change.
Any ideas?
>A notorious Russian "troll factory" had a $1.25 million [monthly] budget in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election to interfere in the US political system, according to charges filed by the Department of Justice.
https://www.businessinsider.com/russian-troll-farm-spent-mil...
And the official site also mostly just says, that mainly you have to pay and have a phone number. No sentence that they actually verify you are a living human being.
"Only accounts actively subscribed to Twitter Blue are eligible to receive the blue checkmark.
Our team uses an eligibility criteria on when the checkmark is given to ensure we maintain the integrity of the platform. Your account must meet the following criteria to receive or retain the blue checkmark:
Complete: Your account must have a display name and profile photo
Active use: Your account must be active in the past 30 days to subscribe to Twitter Blue
Security: Your account must be older than 30 days upon subscription and have a confirmed phone number
Non-Deceptive:
Your account must have no recent changes to your profile photo, display name, or username (@handle)
Your account must have no signs of being misleading or deceptive
Your account must have no signs of engaging in platform manipulation and spamhttps://help.twitter.com/en/managing-your-account/about-twit...
It's not like a fuzzy statistical boost, it's literally just all Blue replies come above all non-Blue replies. The only exception is that a non-Blue reply can sometimes get boosted in order to be able to show a blue 2nd-level reply.
If you scroll through replies you'll often find a bunch of zero-like replies like "lol" and "me too" from Blue users, then below that a handful of insightful replies with dozens of likes, from non-Blue users. You can see why the latter are not gonna keep posting those replies much longer.