Comment by plastic-enjoyer | Hacker News Reader

Comment by plastic-enjoyer | Hacker News Reader

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plastic-enjoyer

> We should keep talking about the issues and improving things, but don't throw out the baby with bathwater.

Yeah, I wonder what solution people propose that claim that Wikipedia is 'hijacked' or 'compromised' and pushing agendas? While Wikipedia is not perfect, it is the best encyclopedia we currently have, mostly due to collective efforts and maintainers that care about the state of Wikipedia. I would even say that it is a good thing that there is this transparency, that states and capital are trying to influence Wikipedia because then you know that you may take some articles with a grain of salt or can actively push against it. Every alternative to Wikipedia that I have seen so far is one that claims to be more truthful than the original, but in the end these are platforms that push agendas without the transparency and attempt to further obscure power relations under the pretext of truth.

Every alternative to Wikipedia will have to solve the problems that Wikipedia already has to be a better alternative. However, I do think these are fundamental unsolvable problems and everyone who claims to have solved this is part of a power struggle over who defines what is considered true.

More transparency around the admins and the hierarchy above it would be a good start, as would some kind of countervailing pressure to the ballooning of meta rules (bylaws). For instance:

- Oppose the "Super Mario" effect: if admins do something ordinary users would get banned for, they get banned too, they don't just lose their admin title.

- Implement restrictions on Arb Com to make it worthy of its "supreme court" moniker. Provide prior notice, allow representation, access to evidence ahead of the case, and require the Arb Com to disclose the logic of any automated scripts they use for mass judging (e.g. counting proportion of edits being reverts, or that counts every change to a reference as "reference vandalism"). Grant defendants the ability to force the Committee's judgment to be disclosed to the public, with PII redacted if necessary.

- Require that precedent be recorded for unclear meta rules: what counts as a violation of e.g. canvassing? When do reversions become evidence or proof of "ownership"?

- Create an independent appeals body for Arb Com decisions. Like the Arb Com itself, the logic or source code for any scripts they use to aid their decisions, should be public. Ideally, choose the independent appeals body by different means than the Arb Com itself is chosen, e.g. by random selection of users with a certain activity level, independent of the ordinary admin track.

- Grant all users the right to be forgotten (courtesy vanishing), not just users in good standing, so that users bullied off the platform can remove their proverbial stockade.

- Create a mechanism that forces rules to be refactored or reduced in scope. Just spitballing, one possible way might be to limit the growth of any given WP: page per unit time, require negative growth for some of them, or in some way reward editors who reduce their extent.

There may be fundamental unsolvable problems, but that doesn't mean the current system can't be improved.

Every discussion about wikipedia, everywhere, now attracts comments from accounts with a poor history claiming it's biased. I assume bad faith.

It is a great example of the shaping of opinions the OP claims Wikipedia suffers from. It is a textbook example of the way the detractors of Wikipedia comport themselves.

Accuse the site of of exactly what you’re doing at this exact moment.

Do I have poor history?

Probably no worse than mine. But you've got to admit, it's a heuristic that saves time.

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