5 ms·

I agree with Larry about abuse by Facebook and Twitter. I also strongly encourage him to look at state of wikipedia moderations. Specially in a country like In

by iamsb 7y ago

I agree with Larry about abuse by Facebook and Twitter. I also strongly encourage him to look at state of wikipedia moderations. Specially in a country like India. Lot of pages related to political content is moderated by people who are deeply partisan and have no respect for facts.

nsajko 7y ago
Larry Sanger left Wikipedia more than ten years ago, and has been critical of its accuracy for longer than that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Sanger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Sanger
jessriedel 7y ago
Do you think he would disagree with you about the problems with Wikipedia moderation? It's not under his control, and it shouldn't be.
- iamsb 7y ago
  yes but he can create better systems where moderation is not controlled by groups of higher privilege. Essentially, from my limited understanding, it is not possible to take away moderation privileges from individuals. Please feel free to correct me on this.
  - jessriedel 7y ago
    I think even if you had complete control to re-write the Wikipedia system from scratch, creating effective moderation systems is a super challenging. Trying to change the current system given the existing entrenched interest is damn near impossible. If you have a specific system change you thought could and should be made by Sanger, let's hear it (though I won't be able to assess).
    - duskwuff 7y ago
      > If you have a specific system change you thought could and should be made by Sanger As I've tried to point out elsewhere: Mr. Sanger departed from the Wikipedia project in 2002, and, in the time since, has been openly critical of the project. He really isn't in much of a position to make changes to the project he departed from 17 years ago.
      - jessriedel 7y ago
        Thanks
  - dinkudunk 7y ago
    Wikipedia doesn't have moderators. They do have Administrators, who can be "removed by a ruling of the Arbitration Committee" [0]. They can also be removed for other reasons, such as inactivity, and similar. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators#Review_and_removal_of_adminship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators#Revie...
DyslexicAtheist 7y ago
India seems to have a huge problem with propaganda being spread on WhatsApp such as fake videos that mobilize mobs prior election campaigns etc: "India: Fake News and Agitprop": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0LgwL6rMPk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0LgwL6rMPk
- iamsb 7y ago
  India has many problems with media. Fake news media, crypto fake media, deep fake media. Fake media is easy to identify. Crypto media and deep fake is more difficult. Recently google sponsored data journalism award was given to one of the most partisan website. And new think tanks which are sponsored by unknown forces come up all the time. One of the recent ones which I am investigating is called equality labs which recently did a dubious study claiming that there is absolutely no abuse of a majority group on Internet by a minority group. A simple search can disapprove that in seconds.
  - gabcoh 7y ago
    What is crypto fake media?
    - bobsil1 7y ago
      Unidentified fakes
      - iamsb 7y ago
        That. And in specifically in India lot of people use false identities by impersonating a person from different socio-economic background. For example - there might be a protest by farmers, but most of the farmers in the protest are not actually farmers.
  - denzil_correa 7y ago
    > Recently google sponsored data journalism award was given to one of the most partisan website. Fake news is not the same as partisan news. > One of the recent ones which I am investigating is called equality labs which recently did a dubious study claiming that there is absolutely no abuse of a majority group on Internet by a minority group. Link to the study?
tenpies 7y ago
> state of wikipedia moderations I'm glad others are keeping an eye on this issue. It is incredibly ironic to me that anyone in a leadership role at Wikipedia would criticize Zuckerberg or Dorsey. It's not even just political content, it's getting to the point where history is being actively re-written and re-interpreted to match a radical narrative. In some sort of temporal example of humour, I've gone back to recommending people use Britannica as a starting point and for surface level reading.
- gerikson 7y ago
  > It is incredibly ironic to me that anyone in a leadership role at Wikipedia would criticize Zuckerberg or Dorsey. According to (ironically) Wikipedia[1], Sanger left the project in 2006^W the early 2000s: > Frustrated by sustained content battles and feeling he had a lack of support from Wales, Sanger eventually left the project. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Sanger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Sanger
  - iamsb 7y ago
    Thanks. My bad.
- KKPMW 7y ago
  It's not even just political content or history. Take for example economics: There is an article about economics, obviously. And in its "criticism" section there is a long paragraph about criticism of economics from a feminist point of view. However wikipedia also has an article about feminist economics. Which is almost equal in length to the article about economics in general. And if you go to the feminist economics page - there is no criticism section. But you can open the talk page, and there is a discussion, where editors argue that criticism hurts the neutrality of the article and should not be added there. It just doesn't seem impartial to me.
  - nsajko 7y ago
    You say that the "feminist economics" article does not seem impartial to you, but have you tried improving it? You could add that Criticism section.
hirundo 7y ago
> I also strongly encourage him to look at state of wikipedia moderations. I think that the solution is similar to what he's proposing for the social networks: decentralization. One example would be to take hint from github, and allow articles to be forked when they reach some threshold of editing warfare. Embrace and aggregate partisan takes rather pursuing the noble but chimeric goal of neutrality.
- skribbj 7y ago
  Forking Wikipedia articles based on partisanship is actually a super interesting idea.
  - CharlesW 7y ago
    Like Conservapedia? https://www.conservapedia.com/ https://www.conservapedia.com/
    - brighter2morrow 7y ago
      Rationalwiki for those for whom Wikipedia isn't leftwing enough.
      - mftrhu 7y ago
        Conservapedia is trying to be a Wikipedia alternative - an Internet encyclopedia, from a fundamentalist point of view. RationalWiki is not, and I'm not sure why you mentioned it. It's not a Wikipedia fork or alternative. It's not even trying to be one, it has completely different goals. The only thing they have in common is the fact that they are both wikis, but there's thousands of those around.
        brighter2morrow 7y ago
        Rationalwiki defers to Wikipedia on some things but writes articles on topics when they think the Wikipedia article doesn't go far enough in a direction they would like. Most rationalwiki articles would be redundant if their goal wasn't to overwrite Wikipedia
mythrwy 7y ago
Exactly. Larry isn't wrong, it's just Wikipedia isn't completely clean either.
duskwuff 7y ago
Mr. Sanger hasn't been involved with Wikipedia since 2002. There's nothing preventing him from looking into the situation as an individual, but he has no special knowledge or authority here -- the site today is very different from the one he was involved with 17+ years ago.
scarejunba 7y ago
Got to be honest with you, no one believes the India stuff because there's a long tradition of unsophisticated puffery from there. When you read the articles they all have that tone to them: like it's being written by the fan club.
not_a_cop75 7y ago
Just India you say? It seems Wikipedia has become an active source for partisanship everywhere. Even experts on a subject have problems submitting things unless they are already on the Wikipedia inside. That being said, I don't hate Wikipedia but every centralized system that exists is obviously rife with its abuses. You can go back 500 years and see the exact same problems with totally different centralized institutions.

by iamsb 7y ago

nsajko 7y ago

Larry Sanger left Wikipedia more than ten years ago, and has been critical of its accuracy for longer than that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Sanger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Sanger

jessriedel 7y ago

Do you think he would disagree with you about the problems with Wikipedia moderation? It's not under his control, and it shouldn't be.

iamsb 7y ago
yes but he can create better systems where moderation is not controlled by groups of higher privilege. Essentially, from my limited understanding, it is not possible to take away moderation privileges from individuals. Please feel free to correct me on this.
- jessriedel 7y ago
  I think even if you had complete control to re-write the Wikipedia system from scratch, creating effective moderation systems is a super challenging. Trying to change the current system given the existing entrenched interest is damn near impossible. If you have a specific system change you thought could and should be made by Sanger, let's hear it (though I won't be able to assess).
  - duskwuff 7y ago
    > If you have a specific system change you thought could and should be made by Sanger As I've tried to point out elsewhere: Mr. Sanger departed from the Wikipedia project in 2002, and, in the time since, has been openly critical of the project. He really isn't in much of a position to make changes to the project he departed from 17 years ago.
    - jessriedel 7y ago
      Thanks
- dinkudunk 7y ago
  Wikipedia doesn't have moderators. They do have Administrators, who can be "removed by a ruling of the Arbitration Committee" [0]. They can also be removed for other reasons, such as inactivity, and similar. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators#Review_and_removal_of_adminship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators#Revie...

DyslexicAtheist 7y ago

India seems to have a huge problem with propaganda being spread on WhatsApp such as fake videos that mobilize mobs prior election campaigns etc: "India: Fake News and Agitprop": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0LgwL6rMPk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0LgwL6rMPk

iamsb 7y ago
India has many problems with media. Fake news media, crypto fake media, deep fake media. Fake media is easy to identify. Crypto media and deep fake is more difficult. Recently google sponsored data journalism award was given to one of the most partisan website. And new think tanks which are sponsored by unknown forces come up all the time. One of the recent ones which I am investigating is called equality labs which recently did a dubious study claiming that there is absolutely no abuse of a majority group on Internet by a minority group. A simple search can disapprove that in seconds.
- gabcoh 7y ago
  What is crypto fake media?
  - bobsil1 7y ago
    Unidentified fakes
    - iamsb 7y ago
      That. And in specifically in India lot of people use false identities by impersonating a person from different socio-economic background. For example - there might be a protest by farmers, but most of the farmers in the protest are not actually farmers.
- denzil_correa 7y ago
  > Recently google sponsored data journalism award was given to one of the most partisan website. Fake news is not the same as partisan news. > One of the recent ones which I am investigating is called equality labs which recently did a dubious study claiming that there is absolutely no abuse of a majority group on Internet by a minority group. Link to the study?

tenpies 7y ago

> state of wikipedia moderations I'm glad others are keeping an eye on this issue. It is incredibly ironic to me that anyone in a leadership role at Wikipedia would criticize Zuckerberg or Dorsey. It's not even just political content, it's getting to the point where history is being actively re-written and re-interpreted to match a radical narrative. In some sort of temporal example of humour, I've gone back to recommending people use Britannica as a starting point and for surface level reading.

gerikson 7y ago
> It is incredibly ironic to me that anyone in a leadership role at Wikipedia would criticize Zuckerberg or Dorsey. According to (ironically) Wikipedia[1], Sanger left the project in 2006^W the early 2000s: > Frustrated by sustained content battles and feeling he had a lack of support from Wales, Sanger eventually left the project. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Sanger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Sanger
- iamsb 7y ago
  Thanks. My bad.
KKPMW 7y ago
It's not even just political content or history. Take for example economics: There is an article about economics, obviously. And in its "criticism" section there is a long paragraph about criticism of economics from a feminist point of view. However wikipedia also has an article about feminist economics. Which is almost equal in length to the article about economics in general. And if you go to the feminist economics page - there is no criticism section. But you can open the talk page, and there is a discussion, where editors argue that criticism hurts the neutrality of the article and should not be added there. It just doesn't seem impartial to me.
- nsajko 7y ago
  You say that the "feminist economics" article does not seem impartial to you, but have you tried improving it? You could add that Criticism section.

hirundo 7y ago

> I also strongly encourage him to look at state of wikipedia moderations. I think that the solution is similar to what he's proposing for the social networks: decentralization. One example would be to take hint from github, and allow articles to be forked when they reach some threshold of editing warfare. Embrace and aggregate partisan takes rather pursuing the noble but chimeric goal of neutrality.

skribbj 7y ago
Forking Wikipedia articles based on partisanship is actually a super interesting idea.
- CharlesW 7y ago
  Like Conservapedia? https://www.conservapedia.com/ https://www.conservapedia.com/
  - brighter2morrow 7y ago
    Rationalwiki for those for whom Wikipedia isn't leftwing enough.
    - mftrhu 7y ago
      Conservapedia is trying to be a Wikipedia alternative - an Internet encyclopedia, from a fundamentalist point of view. RationalWiki is not, and I'm not sure why you mentioned it. It's not a Wikipedia fork or alternative. It's not even trying to be one, it has completely different goals. The only thing they have in common is the fact that they are both wikis, but there's thousands of those around.
      - brighter2morrow 7y ago
        Rationalwiki defers to Wikipedia on some things but writes articles on topics when they think the Wikipedia article doesn't go far enough in a direction they would like. Most rationalwiki articles would be redundant if their goal wasn't to overwrite Wikipedia

mythrwy 7y ago

Exactly. Larry isn't wrong, it's just Wikipedia isn't completely clean either.

duskwuff 7y ago

Mr. Sanger hasn't been involved with Wikipedia since 2002. There's nothing preventing him from looking into the situation as an individual, but he has no special knowledge or authority here -- the site today is very different from the one he was involved with 17+ years ago.

scarejunba 7y ago

Got to be honest with you, no one believes the India stuff because there's a long tradition of unsophisticated puffery from there. When you read the articles they all have that tone to them: like it's being written by the fan club.

not_a_cop75 7y ago

Just India you say? It seems Wikipedia has become an active source for partisanship everywhere. Even experts on a subject have problems submitting things unless they are already on the Wikipedia inside. That being said, I don't hate Wikipedia but every centralized system that exists is obviously rife with its abuses. You can go back 500 years and see the exact same problems with totally different centralized institutions.