6 ms·

I have been toying with the idea to create a Wikipedia Cloning Platform that would allow people to basically host their worldview on a subdomain, so they can ch

I have been toying with the idea to create a Wikipedia Cloning Platform that would allow people to basically host their worldview on a subdomain, so they can change and edit wikipedia along their perceived worldview without external edits, and even import "truths" from other fringe worldviews, while maintaining links to the base Wikipedia where they see fit. At first this sounds like the worst idea ever as it would allow even more bifurcation of the global consensus narrative, but I believe having all this in a structured manner would allow for a better discussability of the topics in question and allow for a place to store arguments on topics in a structured long form instead of asinine twitter discussions or spats blogs or comment sections of newspapers. Lawful content moderation while trying to keep an unbiased reputation would probably be a nightmare though.

weaksauce 6y ago
> allow for a better discussability of the topics or give nut jobs more validity than they deserve. it used to be one guy in the corner of a bar spouting off his mouth and that was his sphere of influence... now that guy has a megaphone and the smarter people are mostly doing things and don't have the time or the inclination to say "no that's obvious bullshit because x y z" so the crap rises to the top.
- XorNot 6y ago
  In most respects, this was distributed fact-checking: the 20 people who heard him, most of them went "that guys crazy" and relayed "I saw a crazy guy at the bar" rather then took a tape-recorder and then played back exactly what they heard to their social group of 20 people (and then repeated it endlessly).
  - throwaway201103 6y ago
    Agree. No guarantees, but I think the most reliable way to expose bad ideas is to actually expose them. Shine the light of critical examination on them. Don't try to stuff them into a closet and lock the door.
    - intended 6y ago
      This idea needs to be put to rest. Shine the critical light of examination on this "belief" that the most reliable way to expose bad ideas is to expose them. Have you seen this tested? Have you evidence that this works? Crucially, does this work at internet scale or in social medai-esque content environments? ----- I can say that we know for a fact, that exposing conspiracy theories by letting people broadcast them independently is a sure shot way of having them infect more people. We've seen this evidenced all over web forums, and social media. Bad ideas get amplified. Worse, the more complex the logical counter argument, the far better the bad idea will fare. Here are what we know, for certainty: 1) People DO NOT want to spend cognitive power. 1.1) Content that forces cognitive expenditure will gain fewer views and therefore be harder to go viral. 2) Emotion driven processing is cheaper. 2.1) Therefore emotion engaging content will proliferate 3) this is worsened over general demographics 3.1) Proofs or logical arguments that require more than common knowledge will need novel approaches to propagate. Our human web of knowledge is a growth medium that suits conspiracy theories, self referential beliefs, and superstition. Reason is the interloper here.
    - XorNot 6y ago
      This is not even remotely what I was saying.
  - zackees 6y ago
    From the article: "I wonder if there’s a similar effect in the antivax movement – autism seems to really be on the rise (0.7 to 1.5% in this century)." CDC is reporting that Autism has increased MUCH MUCH more than this. By their own reporting standards it was 1 in 150 in 2000, to 1 in 68 by 2010 (https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/images/autism_data_graphic2012.jpg https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/images/autism_data_graphic...) and the exponential increase has continued. The idea that Autism and Vaccines is not linked is fake news. The CDC's own experts have blown the whistle saying their research was faked at the behest of the CDC to engage in a coverup. An entire book was released on this subject: https://www.amazon.com/Vaccine-Whistleblower-Exposing-Autism-Research-ebook/dp/B013V73MTE https://www.amazon.com/Vaccine-Whistleblower-Exposing-Autism... And the semi-secret vaccine court which is heavily stacked against vaccine injury claimants, recently found that Autism was caused by a vaccine and paid out millions in damages. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/family-to-receive-15m-plus-in-first-ever-vaccine-autism-court-award/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/family-to-receive-15m-plus-in-f... There are secret studies buried by the CDC showing profound increases in auto-immune diseases that RFK Jr. had to dig up via FOIA, example: https://twitter.com/Perpetualmaniac/status/1204057720585883648 https://twitter.com/Perpetualmaniac/status/12040577205858836... The idea that anti-vaxxers are misguided and need to be algorithmically silenced by some form techno-fascism will be seen as the scariest time in human history. This is nothing but a coverup for big pharma. It will go down in history as the biggest medical coverup in human history, dwarfing the "cigarettes are healthy for you" that the CDC pushed in the '60s. The fact that the left is pushing this anti-free speech mantra is absolutely disgusting. The left used to stand for liberal values like free speech. Now they stand for big pharma, big tech and chinese style censorship to invoke cancel culture. How shameful!
    - weaksauce 6y ago
      > "I wonder if there’s a similar effect in the antivax movement – autism seems to really be on the rise (0.7 to 1.5% in this century)." > CDC is reporting that Autism has increased MUCH MUCH more than this. By their own reporting standards it was 1 in 150 in 2000, to 1 in 68 by 2010 (https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/images/autism_data_graphic https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/images/autism_data_graphic...) and the exponential increase has continued. What do you think 1/150 and 1/68 translates to? now ask yourself if you are that wrong about a fundamental condition of your argument what else could you be mistaken on?
numpad0 6y ago
I agree on a basic level...some sort of a hierarchical system, a compartmentalized partial context system is definitely in need. The “full truth” is often too much for an average joe to handle. I’ve seen “so that’s what those corrupt reporters from that whatever Lancet magazine want us to believe” wrt COVID...you can start from anywhere but no chance loading necessary contexts in full into a wonders of the world like that.
webnrrd2k 6y ago
One example of what you're talking about is the conservapedia: https://conservapedia.com/Main_Page https://conservapedia.com/Main_Page. Although it doesn't allow tracking edits like you mentioned.
- schoen 6y ago
  In another post I pointed out that I think Conservapedia is a bit of a tragedy. An encyclopedia, with or without an explicit point of view, should ideally be an interesting and useful reference work. That goal needs to be front-and-center, over and above questions of how to resolve editorial disputes or whatever. An encyclopedia with a point of view should still have high quality standards and a focus on collecting information that readers will want. Conservapedia seemed to instantly go in a direction of "hey, a forum to score political points! whoo!!". One thing that might help (apart from cultural issues about people's motivations for contributing, maybe?) would be to say that articles are still expected to present all significant points of view (just as Wikipedia NPOV aspires to do), without the constraint that the article has to avoid favoring one of them (or has to give them weight in proportion to their presence in particular media outlets). I've seen the Catholic Encyclopedia and Jewish Encyclopedia try to fairly explain other religions' histories, practices, and tenets, and sometimes then mention the ways that those religious contradict Catholic or Jewish teachings. The main intended use of this information may be missionary or counter-missionary, but it's trying to be careful and thorough and also not tendentious -- it's not like "we have to slip in a THIS IS TOTALLY WRONG AND DUMB AND SO ARE PEOPLE WHO BELIEVE IT remark every other sentence when writing about other belief systems". Also, trying to edit and add encyclopedic content that isn't just focused on disagreements with other points of view or positions... One thing I was just reminded of is Paul Graham's Hierarchy of Disagreement: http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html A great thing would be for consciously-POV encyclopedias to always aim as high up on the Hierarchy of Disagreement as they can, on all topics. Imagine having a POV encyclopedia article on the Israel-Palestine conflict, or the U.S. abortion debate, for example, that argued or concluded that one side was "right" but still tried hard to fairly describe the beliefs and motivations of the "wrong" side and its supporters, and also mentioned historical events or facts that reflected well on the "wrong" side or poorly on the "right" side. More generally, one such that reading it made you genuinely more informed about the background and context of the issue, and better-equipped to have meaningful, substantive conversations about it with someone with a different background or opinion!
schoen 6y ago
I think that would be great, though I've been thinking of problems that would make it likely not to work that well. There was one fork called "Conservapedia" which aimed to be a conservative POV version of Wikipedia. But they did a bad job in terms of quality and engagement, and it's moved more and more in the direction of political advocacy until all that anyone edits or that appears there is political advocacy content. You could contrast this with the old Catholic Encyclopedia (https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/ https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/) which is more like an actual encyclopedia that someone, including a non-Catholic, would actually want to use to get the Catholic perspective on a topic. Wikipedia's NPOV policy is impressive and the community's efforts to apply it are impressive, but it's ultimately very difficult to find an objective NPOV account of things, and one that's satisfactory to everyone. One difficulty here is the Undue Weight policy (which, to be clear, is probably necessary to make NPOV workable). This says, in effect, that it's considered NPOV to mention something at greater length than its relevance to the topic at hand warrants, or in a context where it's not particularly important. Unfortunately judgments of relevance, salience, or importance are themselves quite POV and Wikipedia's solution is mostly to rely on "reliable sources" -- typically published journalistic and academic writing. But journalistic and academic writing itself contains all sorts of biases (many of which Wikipedians are extremely aware of and have discussed at some length), including the likelihood that nobody will have actually written a journalistic analysis of the Mormon/vegan/Russian government/left-anarchist/Hindu nationalist/Reformed Christian/Maoist/gender-critical/Extinction Rebellion take on specific person or topic X. Which could very likely, if it existed, place much more weight on some aspect or issue than would be considered "due" in most other published analyses. You can also read many Wikipedia articles and see that, to the extent they relied on sources, the sources all held the view that the subject of the article was good/legitimate/appropriate/normal, or was bad/illegitimate/sketchy/questionable, and it is in principle "NPOV" to not report on any other views (if they don't have reliable sources mentioning them). However there must be people who have substantive reasons to take another perspective but don't have the ability, resources, motivation, or desire to produce reliable sources reflecting that perspective. In the absence of that, those views can be described in their own article but can't be used to color any other article. I think forks always have a huge network effects problem. There was a famous Wikipedia fork called Enciclopedia Libre y Universal en Español, which started as a result of ideological disagreements with or concerns about Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enciclopedia_Libre_Universal_en_Espa%C3%B1ol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enciclopedia_Libre_Universal_e... The Enciclopedia Libre was bigger than Wikipedia for two years but ended up getting surpassed by Wikipedia, I think largely due to network effects. Even now if you wanted to make a fork based on an ideological disagreement, or in order to be consciously and avowedly POV in some way, you would have to find people who wanted to actively edit and maintain a whole encyclopedia with high quality standards -- which is probably tough because Wikipedia has, by default, the mindshare, brand, infrastructure, and community to be the most comprehensive and up-to-date. I don't see an obvious way out of this quandary, even though I would love for there to be more thorough, high-quality POV encyclopedias.
john4532452 6y ago
I don't know if this will work or not, definitely worth experimentation. This is a true original idea. Hearing for the first time.

weaksauce 6y ago

> allow for a better discussability of the topics or give nut jobs more validity than they deserve. it used to be one guy in the corner of a bar spouting off his mouth and that was his sphere of influence... now that guy has a megaphone and the smarter people are mostly doing things and don't have the time or the inclination to say "no that's obvious bullshit because x y z" so the crap rises to the top.

XorNot 6y ago
In most respects, this was distributed fact-checking: the 20 people who heard him, most of them went "that guys crazy" and relayed "I saw a crazy guy at the bar" rather then took a tape-recorder and then played back exactly what they heard to their social group of 20 people (and then repeated it endlessly).
- throwaway201103 6y ago
  Agree. No guarantees, but I think the most reliable way to expose bad ideas is to actually expose them. Shine the light of critical examination on them. Don't try to stuff them into a closet and lock the door.
  - intended 6y ago
    This idea needs to be put to rest. Shine the critical light of examination on this "belief" that the most reliable way to expose bad ideas is to expose them. Have you seen this tested? Have you evidence that this works? Crucially, does this work at internet scale or in social medai-esque content environments? ----- I can say that we know for a fact, that exposing conspiracy theories by letting people broadcast them independently is a sure shot way of having them infect more people. We've seen this evidenced all over web forums, and social media. Bad ideas get amplified. Worse, the more complex the logical counter argument, the far better the bad idea will fare. Here are what we know, for certainty: 1) People DO NOT want to spend cognitive power. 1.1) Content that forces cognitive expenditure will gain fewer views and therefore be harder to go viral. 2) Emotion driven processing is cheaper. 2.1) Therefore emotion engaging content will proliferate 3) this is worsened over general demographics 3.1) Proofs or logical arguments that require more than common knowledge will need novel approaches to propagate. Our human web of knowledge is a growth medium that suits conspiracy theories, self referential beliefs, and superstition. Reason is the interloper here.
  - XorNot 6y ago
    This is not even remotely what I was saying.
- zackees 6y ago
  From the article: "I wonder if there’s a similar effect in the antivax movement – autism seems to really be on the rise (0.7 to 1.5% in this century)." CDC is reporting that Autism has increased MUCH MUCH more than this. By their own reporting standards it was 1 in 150 in 2000, to 1 in 68 by 2010 (https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/images/autism_data_graphic2012.jpg https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/images/autism_data_graphic...) and the exponential increase has continued. The idea that Autism and Vaccines is not linked is fake news. The CDC's own experts have blown the whistle saying their research was faked at the behest of the CDC to engage in a coverup. An entire book was released on this subject: https://www.amazon.com/Vaccine-Whistleblower-Exposing-Autism-Research-ebook/dp/B013V73MTE https://www.amazon.com/Vaccine-Whistleblower-Exposing-Autism... And the semi-secret vaccine court which is heavily stacked against vaccine injury claimants, recently found that Autism was caused by a vaccine and paid out millions in damages. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/family-to-receive-15m-plus-in-first-ever-vaccine-autism-court-award/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/family-to-receive-15m-plus-in-f... There are secret studies buried by the CDC showing profound increases in auto-immune diseases that RFK Jr. had to dig up via FOIA, example: https://twitter.com/Perpetualmaniac/status/1204057720585883648 https://twitter.com/Perpetualmaniac/status/12040577205858836... The idea that anti-vaxxers are misguided and need to be algorithmically silenced by some form techno-fascism will be seen as the scariest time in human history. This is nothing but a coverup for big pharma. It will go down in history as the biggest medical coverup in human history, dwarfing the "cigarettes are healthy for you" that the CDC pushed in the '60s. The fact that the left is pushing this anti-free speech mantra is absolutely disgusting. The left used to stand for liberal values like free speech. Now they stand for big pharma, big tech and chinese style censorship to invoke cancel culture. How shameful!
  - weaksauce 6y ago
    > "I wonder if there’s a similar effect in the antivax movement – autism seems to really be on the rise (0.7 to 1.5% in this century)." > CDC is reporting that Autism has increased MUCH MUCH more than this. By their own reporting standards it was 1 in 150 in 2000, to 1 in 68 by 2010 (https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/images/autism_data_graphic https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/images/autism_data_graphic...) and the exponential increase has continued. What do you think 1/150 and 1/68 translates to? now ask yourself if you are that wrong about a fundamental condition of your argument what else could you be mistaken on?

numpad0 6y ago

I agree on a basic level...some sort of a hierarchical system, a compartmentalized partial context system is definitely in need. The “full truth” is often too much for an average joe to handle. I’ve seen “so that’s what those corrupt reporters from that whatever Lancet magazine want us to believe” wrt COVID...you can start from anywhere but no chance loading necessary contexts in full into a wonders of the world like that.

webnrrd2k 6y ago

One example of what you're talking about is the conservapedia: https://conservapedia.com/Main_Page https://conservapedia.com/Main_Page. Although it doesn't allow tracking edits like you mentioned.

schoen 6y ago
In another post I pointed out that I think Conservapedia is a bit of a tragedy. An encyclopedia, with or without an explicit point of view, should ideally be an interesting and useful reference work. That goal needs to be front-and-center, over and above questions of how to resolve editorial disputes or whatever. An encyclopedia with a point of view should still have high quality standards and a focus on collecting information that readers will want. Conservapedia seemed to instantly go in a direction of "hey, a forum to score political points! whoo!!". One thing that might help (apart from cultural issues about people's motivations for contributing, maybe?) would be to say that articles are still expected to present all significant points of view (just as Wikipedia NPOV aspires to do), without the constraint that the article has to avoid favoring one of them (or has to give them weight in proportion to their presence in particular media outlets). I've seen the Catholic Encyclopedia and Jewish Encyclopedia try to fairly explain other religions' histories, practices, and tenets, and sometimes then mention the ways that those religious contradict Catholic or Jewish teachings. The main intended use of this information may be missionary or counter-missionary, but it's trying to be careful and thorough and also not tendentious -- it's not like "we have to slip in a THIS IS TOTALLY WRONG AND DUMB AND SO ARE PEOPLE WHO BELIEVE IT remark every other sentence when writing about other belief systems". Also, trying to edit and add encyclopedic content that isn't just focused on disagreements with other points of view or positions... One thing I was just reminded of is Paul Graham's Hierarchy of Disagreement: http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html A great thing would be for consciously-POV encyclopedias to always aim as high up on the Hierarchy of Disagreement as they can, on all topics. Imagine having a POV encyclopedia article on the Israel-Palestine conflict, or the U.S. abortion debate, for example, that argued or concluded that one side was "right" but still tried hard to fairly describe the beliefs and motivations of the "wrong" side and its supporters, and also mentioned historical events or facts that reflected well on the "wrong" side or poorly on the "right" side. More generally, one such that reading it made you genuinely more informed about the background and context of the issue, and better-equipped to have meaningful, substantive conversations about it with someone with a different background or opinion!

schoen 6y ago

I think that would be great, though I've been thinking of problems that would make it likely not to work that well. There was one fork called "Conservapedia" which aimed to be a conservative POV version of Wikipedia. But they did a bad job in terms of quality and engagement, and it's moved more and more in the direction of political advocacy until all that anyone edits or that appears there is political advocacy content. You could contrast this with the old Catholic Encyclopedia (https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/ https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/) which is more like an actual encyclopedia that someone, including a non-Catholic, would actually want to use to get the Catholic perspective on a topic. Wikipedia's NPOV policy is impressive and the community's efforts to apply it are impressive, but it's ultimately very difficult to find an objective NPOV account of things, and one that's satisfactory to everyone. One difficulty here is the Undue Weight policy (which, to be clear, is probably necessary to make NPOV workable). This says, in effect, that it's considered NPOV to mention something at greater length than its relevance to the topic at hand warrants, or in a context where it's not particularly important. Unfortunately judgments of relevance, salience, or importance are themselves quite POV and Wikipedia's solution is mostly to rely on "reliable sources" -- typically published journalistic and academic writing. But journalistic and academic writing itself contains all sorts of biases (many of which Wikipedians are extremely aware of and have discussed at some length), including the likelihood that nobody will have actually written a journalistic analysis of the Mormon/vegan/Russian government/left-anarchist/Hindu nationalist/Reformed Christian/Maoist/gender-critical/Extinction Rebellion take on specific person or topic X. Which could very likely, if it existed, place much more weight on some aspect or issue than would be considered "due" in most other published analyses. You can also read many Wikipedia articles and see that, to the extent they relied on sources, the sources all held the view that the subject of the article was good/legitimate/appropriate/normal, or was bad/illegitimate/sketchy/questionable, and it is in principle "NPOV" to not report on any other views (if they don't have reliable sources mentioning them). However there must be people who have substantive reasons to take another perspective but don't have the ability, resources, motivation, or desire to produce reliable sources reflecting that perspective. In the absence of that, those views can be described in their own article but can't be used to color any other article. I think forks always have a huge network effects problem. There was a famous Wikipedia fork called Enciclopedia Libre y Universal en Español, which started as a result of ideological disagreements with or concerns about Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enciclopedia_Libre_Universal_en_Espa%C3%B1ol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enciclopedia_Libre_Universal_e... The Enciclopedia Libre was bigger than Wikipedia for two years but ended up getting surpassed by Wikipedia, I think largely due to network effects. Even now if you wanted to make a fork based on an ideological disagreement, or in order to be consciously and avowedly POV in some way, you would have to find people who wanted to actively edit and maintain a whole encyclopedia with high quality standards -- which is probably tough because Wikipedia has, by default, the mindshare, brand, infrastructure, and community to be the most comprehensive and up-to-date. I don't see an obvious way out of this quandary, even though I would love for there to be more thorough, high-quality POV encyclopedias.

john4532452 6y ago

I don't know if this will work or not, definitely worth experimentation. This is a true original idea. Hearing for the first time.