5 ms·

How would any alternative be any less biased?

chris_wot 8y ago
I had an idea that you could create a Wikipedia with the same content, but allow for certain, more opinionated alternative articles. A link to these would be incorporated into the UI of the site and by default the best, most neutral one would be shown but you would suspend neutrality on the alternative articles. All the other Wikipedia policies would still apply.
- Cthulhu_ 8y ago
  How would you judge neutrality? I think that's the main challenge. Plus if it's about idk, community votes, those are easily cheated on with bots, farms and/or brigades.
- mirimir 8y ago
  That makes sense to me. Instead of aiming for a consensus article, just point searches to a consensus neutral article. Or maybe not even that, if there's too much contention, but just a list of labeled articles. Just as there are now disambiguation pages. But of course, you'd need consensus labels, but at least that seems more feasible than consensus articles.
  - chris_wot 8y ago
    You'd just branch the article, or tag it - much like you do in git.
    - mirimir 8y ago
      Right. So could that ever happen in Wikipedia as it stands? As it is now, there's pressure to merge forks, right?
      - chris_wot 8y ago
        It wouldn't. Someone would need to develop an alternative. It could work - just use the existing Wikipedia, but branch it. In essence change Wikipedia to a decentralized model.
        mirimir 8y ago
        OK, Wikipedia uses open-source software, so one could clearly branch that. And given Creative Commons licensing, I suppose that one could clone the entire site, as the basis for an alternative. Providing attribution, and marking changes, would be somewhat hairy, but conceivably doable. And indeed, I see that Larry Sanger has been championing a blockchain-based alternative, Everipedia.[1] Wikipedia calls it "commercial".[2] And I see that its business model relies so far on ads and sponsorship notices. However, I gather that they didn't just clone existing Wikipedia content. But accounts are invite-only, and I don't do either Telegram or Reddit. I wonder why they didn't use Wikipedia content. Maybe they don't want to use Creative Commons licensing. Edit: Damn, Telegram wants a mobile number, which Mirimir doesn't have. So is there another way to get an invitation to Everipedia? 0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ 1) https://everipedia.org/ https://everipedia.org/ 2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everipedia
      - textaural 8y ago
        In 2002 there was an attempt to fork the Spanish Wikipedia. https://www.wired.co.uk/article/wikipedia-spanish-fork https://www.wired.co.uk/article/wikipedia-spanish-fork. There was a lot of internal pushback to the forking, but they did it. But the technical and economic issues of keeping a fork of Wikipedia up and running was one of the biggest obstacles. Wikipedia requires huge amounts of infrastructure (both technical and human maintained).
        Kim_Bruning 8y ago
        The technical infrastructure to run a fork isn't that horrendous. The real challenge is to build a community that actually wants to work on it. For Wikipedia forks, you face a big uphill fight against the network effect. Smaller wikis sometimes have been successfully forked though. And true: Spanish Wikipedia DID pull it off, I guess due to being early. :-)
- JCharante 8y ago
  For example, Wookiepedia shows the cannon articles by default, but at the top you're able to select the Legends version of the article, which uses sources that were retconned. Just replace Legends with a different name/bias, and add multiple tabs.
  - chris_wot 8y ago
    Precisely my idea!

I had an idea that you could create a Wikipedia with the same content, but allow for certain, more opinionated alternative articles. A link to these would be incorporated into the UI of the site and by default the best, most neutral one would be shown but you would suspend neutrality on the alternative articles. All the other Wikipedia policies would still apply.

Cthulhu_ 8y ago
How would you judge neutrality? I think that's the main challenge. Plus if it's about idk, community votes, those are easily cheated on with bots, farms and/or brigades.
mirimir 8y ago
That makes sense to me. Instead of aiming for a consensus article, just point searches to a consensus neutral article. Or maybe not even that, if there's too much contention, but just a list of labeled articles. Just as there are now disambiguation pages. But of course, you'd need consensus labels, but at least that seems more feasible than consensus articles.
- chris_wot 8y ago
  You'd just branch the article, or tag it - much like you do in git.
  - mirimir 8y ago
    Right. So could that ever happen in Wikipedia as it stands? As it is now, there's pressure to merge forks, right?
    - chris_wot 8y ago
      It wouldn't. Someone would need to develop an alternative. It could work - just use the existing Wikipedia, but branch it. In essence change Wikipedia to a decentralized model.
      - mirimir 8y ago
        OK, Wikipedia uses open-source software, so one could clearly branch that. And given Creative Commons licensing, I suppose that one could clone the entire site, as the basis for an alternative. Providing attribution, and marking changes, would be somewhat hairy, but conceivably doable. And indeed, I see that Larry Sanger has been championing a blockchain-based alternative, Everipedia.[1] Wikipedia calls it "commercial".[2] And I see that its business model relies so far on ads and sponsorship notices. However, I gather that they didn't just clone existing Wikipedia content. But accounts are invite-only, and I don't do either Telegram or Reddit. I wonder why they didn't use Wikipedia content. Maybe they don't want to use Creative Commons licensing. Edit: Damn, Telegram wants a mobile number, which Mirimir doesn't have. So is there another way to get an invitation to Everipedia? 0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ 1) https://everipedia.org/ https://everipedia.org/ 2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everipedia
    - textaural 8y ago
      In 2002 there was an attempt to fork the Spanish Wikipedia. https://www.wired.co.uk/article/wikipedia-spanish-fork https://www.wired.co.uk/article/wikipedia-spanish-fork. There was a lot of internal pushback to the forking, but they did it. But the technical and economic issues of keeping a fork of Wikipedia up and running was one of the biggest obstacles. Wikipedia requires huge amounts of infrastructure (both technical and human maintained).
      - Kim_Bruning 8y ago
        The technical infrastructure to run a fork isn't that horrendous. The real challenge is to build a community that actually wants to work on it. For Wikipedia forks, you face a big uphill fight against the network effect. Smaller wikis sometimes have been successfully forked though. And true: Spanish Wikipedia DID pull it off, I guess due to being early. :-)
JCharante 8y ago
For example, Wookiepedia shows the cannon articles by default, but at the top you're able to select the Legends version of the article, which uses sources that were retconned. Just replace Legends with a different name/bias, and add multiple tabs.
- chris_wot 8y ago
  Precisely my idea!