8 ms·

The archive.is guy provides mirrors of rotten links to Wikipedia also, although not as the result of any official agreement with Wikipedia, just on his own init

The archive.is guy provides mirrors of rotten links to Wikipedia also, although not as the result of any official agreement with Wikipedia, just on his own initiative, which I think was nice of him. Enclyclopedia Dramatica is generally not a reputable source of truth, being the site that it is, but while looking for some more information on archive.is mirroring of links from Wikipedia articles, I found an article on ED that I found interesting. It is heavily advocating one side of the story but at least it backs it up with some links, which is rather seldom on ED (most links on ED usually go to other pages on ED in my experience). https://encyclopediadramatica.se/Archive.is https://encyclopediadramatica.se/Archive.is

necessity 10y ago
It's amazing to me how Wikipedia ends up being a reasonably good website with such a cancerous community behind it.
- caf 10y ago
  Perhaps this is the genius of Wikipedia - it keeps many of those of a certain type of personality occupied amongst themselves while using the energy of their machinations to produce a product of wider social good.
- TorKlingberg 10y ago
  What are you referring to?
  - corobo 10y ago
    I'm not necessarily agreeing with the OP here and I don't even know what the community is like but this seems a decent page to start[1]. I do like how Wikipedia keeps a page on it's own controversies - I mean it makes sense, but I like that they're open about it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedia_controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedia_controversie...
- cooper12 10y ago
  You know ED heavily dramatizes stuff right? (It's in the name) They also have a huge hate boner for Wikipedia in my experience. Anyway, I think it's unfair to call the community cancerous when in this case archive.is was spamming Wikipedia with bots. Spam from any website is spam, regardless of how useful, and in this case it's a severe breach of the community's trust. Anyway, archive.is was recently removed from the blacklist, so it's silly to paint the whole community as "cancerous", which is also a juvenile term to use.
smsm42 10y ago
The thing with the links on wiki is that if they lead to obscure third-party site, the user would trust them at the level of trust for Wikipedia. But if Wikipedia community has no idea what this site is, they'd feel uncomfortable using these for linking. Especially if there's danger than in 10 years whoever runs this site gives up, loses the domain, some spammer or criminal buys it and gets all the naive people from Wikipedia coming to them and trusting them since Wikipedia referred them. For archive.org it is a known, established and trusted organization. It's actually has an office within walking distance from Wikimedia offices, AFAIK :) - not that it is very important, just an interesting fact. The point is there's no reputation problem. But for site that is less known, there is. I understand the frustration of people about not being trusted, but that's how it works - trust needs to be earned. I don't see any way to it but for whoever runs the bot to talk to Wikipedia community and earn their trust. Name-calling won't exactly be helpful here like some do here in comments. Shady practices used by whoever wrote the bot like using tons of IPs and not identifying the bot properly also doesn't help. You can't be sneaky and complain there's no trust at the same time.

necessity 10y ago

It's amazing to me how Wikipedia ends up being a reasonably good website with such a cancerous community behind it.

caf 10y ago
Perhaps this is the genius of Wikipedia - it keeps many of those of a certain type of personality occupied amongst themselves while using the energy of their machinations to produce a product of wider social good.
TorKlingberg 10y ago
What are you referring to?
- corobo 10y ago
  I'm not necessarily agreeing with the OP here and I don't even know what the community is like but this seems a decent page to start[1]. I do like how Wikipedia keeps a page on it's own controversies - I mean it makes sense, but I like that they're open about it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedia_controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedia_controversie...
cooper12 10y ago
You know ED heavily dramatizes stuff right? (It's in the name) They also have a huge hate boner for Wikipedia in my experience. Anyway, I think it's unfair to call the community cancerous when in this case archive.is was spamming Wikipedia with bots. Spam from any website is spam, regardless of how useful, and in this case it's a severe breach of the community's trust. Anyway, archive.is was recently removed from the blacklist, so it's silly to paint the whole community as "cancerous", which is also a juvenile term to use.

smsm42 10y ago

The thing with the links on wiki is that if they lead to obscure third-party site, the user would trust them at the level of trust for Wikipedia. But if Wikipedia community has no idea what this site is, they'd feel uncomfortable using these for linking. Especially if there's danger than in 10 years whoever runs this site gives up, loses the domain, some spammer or criminal buys it and gets all the naive people from Wikipedia coming to them and trusting them since Wikipedia referred them. For archive.org it is a known, established and trusted organization. It's actually has an office within walking distance from Wikimedia offices, AFAIK :) - not that it is very important, just an interesting fact. The point is there's no reputation problem. But for site that is less known, there is. I understand the frustration of people about not being trusted, but that's how it works - trust needs to be earned. I don't see any way to it but for whoever runs the bot to talk to Wikipedia community and earn their trust. Name-calling won't exactly be helpful here like some do here in comments. Shady practices used by whoever wrote the bot like using tons of IPs and not identifying the bot properly also doesn't help. You can't be sneaky and complain there's no trust at the same time.