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Comment by coding123 | Hacker News Reader

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Wikipedia's purpose is freedom of information, not freedom of speech.

The two are cousins at best.

Wikipedia is has nothing to do with free speech. It's there to (in my words) document the world around us. To explain things factually, or as factually as we can. It's not about anyone's opinions or ideas.

Still, free speech is what allows such a project. And Wikipedia also explains philosophical opinions, political positions, NSFW concepts, etc., which is only possible to that extent due to free speech.

So I would disagree both that Wikipedia has nothing to do with free speech, and that it’s not about anybody’s opinions or ideas.

There was a far more productive reading you could have taken.

Free speech allows Wikipedia to publish unpopular or controversial speech, but that's not the same as having an editorial policy that contributors are allowed to express themselves on the platform, which would obviously be inappropriate.

Wikipedia documents opinions and ideologies but that's not the same as supporting the expression of the opinions and ideologies of its contributors. (See above.)

> There was a far more productive reading you could have taken.

As an individual, sure. But it's still a massively "go to" source of facts for billions of people.

> Free speech allows Wikipedia to publish unpopular or controversial speech

Do you really feel like Wikipedia has unpopular opinions? My impression is kinda opposite.

> Wikipedia documents opinions and ideologies

It would have been awesome if it was actually plural.

I'm _not_ claiming that Wikipedia has or doesn't have unpopular opinions. I'm making a distinction between the legal framework in which Wikipedia exists (they _can_ publish unpopular or controversial speech) and what Wikipedia does (they intend not to express their own opinions at all; whether you believe they succeed is immaterial).

OP was conflating the two, but Wikipedia has no obligation or principle to be a platform for free speech. It's completely irrelevant.

Ah, I get it. I think the OP was referring not to the legal definition of free speech, but rather to the spirit of it.

Care to share your edits for people to judge what you tried to contribute?

Are you making sure to include citations to proven reliable sources to back up your contributions? If so, then you can dispute any reverts on the article's Talk page. My experience with Wikipedia is that they are extraordinarily open and fair, and honestly they give more benefit of the doubt to editors than most of them deserve.

Certainly the task of determining "the truth" is a difficult one, but Wikipedia's definition of reliable sources is not very good and basically just means "mainstream, well-funded news organization."

This is the better criticism of Wikipedia. But it's really not a criticism of Wikipedia directly - it's more of a indictment on how media creates Zeitgeists and reality conforms to them.

But it is a criticism of Wikipedia directly. There is no reason why they couldn't come up with a more thoughtful, complete validation method. Instead, they just default to a last-century model of trust.

It's hard to imagine that Wikipedia with a centralized authority to handle "validation" would be remotely the same Wikipedia.

I already find it to be highly centralized and with a very obvious monoculture.

Let me guess - a leftist bias?

No, not really. More like a broadly Western one. It’s more complicated and specific than that, but I don’t really want to get into it here. All I’ll say is that if you read a variety of different opinions on subjects, the viewpoint of Wikipedia becomes fairly easy to predict and observe.

What other "validation method" do you have in mind?

I don’t have anything in mind, because I don’t run a Wikipedia competitor. I haven’t spent enough time thinking about it. But certainty anything other than “just trust what the big media companies say” would be an improvement.

In general I find Wikipedia articles to be written from a very specific viewpoint that highlights certain facts and hides others. Whether this is from Wikipedia writers themselves or is merely a reflection of their sources, I’m not sure. But if the goal is to provide the truth, I don’t think they make a particularly good effort at incorporating alternative perspectives.

The thing is: mainstream validation works. Whenever little-known sources are introduced, the chances of information being false or misleading just skyrockets. Moderator rings are often detected that way - all citing the same obscure publications that turn out to be factually incorrect.

The internal essay on "verifiability, not truth" [1] comes to mind. Determining what is Actually True is difficult and often contentious; determining what reliable sources say about the topic is easier and can itself convey important information when those sources disagree.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability,_not_t...

A lot of citations just use Fox News, Vox, CNN, etc. as fact.

Wikipedia isn't very serious about scientific/objective truth.

This and lots of highly opinionated literature.

Not that there is anything wrong with opinions, but they should at least be referenced as such when there is a clear debate.

Otherwise it just erodes trust - this actually seems to be an awfully common sentiment towards wikipedia, as it is evident even from neighboring comments.

Now this leaves me wondering, should I agree because I have had similar experiences when trying to improve some frankly unintelligible proofs in certain sections of CS wikipedia, or should I carefully disagree because of the suspicious second part of your comment? :=)

What is free speech if people cannot disagree with you?

Wikipedia, while still extremely useful, has slowly become a hivemind that remove changes if they disagree with them, even if they're backed by good sources.

Wikipedia is not a place for opinions and bias, but for facts.

OP should share his edits so we can see ourselves, maybe they're just bad, but I've also had edits removed from bias, especially on controversial topics.

I don't think it makes sense to equate English speaking Wikipedia (I'm assuming that's what you're referring to) with a different language Wikipedia. Different cultures, most likely fewer people sitting around spending every free moment starting drama on wikipedia

Wikipedia is a very popular "no brainer" source of information, which inherently politically becomes a focal point of conflict of opinions.

So, actually, lots of drama.

While there are many legitimate questions about Wikipedia’s openness to new edits and editors, this is such a wild topic derail that I find it a little suspicious. Are you arguing that this isn’t a great loss for freedom of speech?

> this is such a wild topic derail

How is this a topic derail? What's the topic then exactly?

Wait, are you suggesting that people shouldn’t be allowed revert Wikipedia contributions? That would, er, swiftly leave it rather pointless.

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