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> Wikipedia may have been an amazing idea in the beginning. > I would gladly pay for an encyclopedia written by actual experts. While you're entitled to your

> Wikipedia may have been an amazing idea in the beginning. > I would gladly pay for an encyclopedia written by actual experts. While you're entitled to your opinion, this is a case of "the grass is always greener on the other side". I'm not a fan of the Wikipedia internal politics, but as a user, Wikipedia is one of the best showcases of the Internet and in my opinion the greatest collaboration project in human history. For the first time we have knowledge available to all, for (almost) free. You want to pay because you're privileged, but that's not the way of improving humanity as a whole, rich and poor, privileged and stuck in a mud hut with a crappy phone. Of course we can do better, but I find it incredibly dismissive not to recognise the incredible achievement Wikipedia is. Blame the fact that as a species we're quite tribalistic and selfish, not the collective effort we're making while trying the hardest limit our biases and shortcomings as much as (humanly) possible.

nickpp 6y ago
Honestly I feel where you’re coming from, I used to think exactly like you. But I slowly came to my current sad realization. Right now I do believe that free wrong info is actually more damaging than paid correct info. But I am open to and wish for a third option or a solution which is more inclusive and less "for the privileged".
- r00fus 6y ago
  What examples do you have of this? I also feel Wikipedia is a success, but I'd like any data points of failures as well.
- the_duke 6y ago
  Could you cite specific examples of wrong or actually harmful information? That would give more credence to your arguments. Maybe also link to your rejected contributions to show that you are not just disgruntled because your edits were reverted. I do agree that there are lots of inaccuracies in articles, but having Wikipedia with at least somewhat helpful information is infinitely better than having nothing at all.
  - throwaways885 6y ago
    Political content is a landmine, articles are often locked because vandals are often indistinguishable from those with better information but still controversial.
    - Macha 6y ago
      One example: Britishfinance/"Ireland as a tax haven"[1] Summary: A user, Britishfinance (believed to be Paddy Cosgrave, disgruntled founder of the web summit, a major EU tech event that moved from Ireland to Lisbon as the Irish government wouldn't give him what he wanted) spent about a year primarily editing articles related to Ireland to make a link of claims about the country being a tax haven the most prominent feature of them. Case in point, look at the overview for the article on Ireland after the user edited it [2]. It's since been rolled back somewhat by other wikipedia editors who felt that was a disproportionate amount of space given to that discussion. But Wikipedia isn't so well equipped to handle this kind of dispute. 1. Ireland certainly has benefited from its tax policies, including both competitive but undisputed to be the right of the country, like having a lower corporate headline tax rate than its neighbours, and 2. Ireland has been involved in tax loopholes, such as the now defunct double irish/dutch sandwich stuff 3. You can find sourced articles for all of this. So at what point does putting this information as the most prominent information in a wide variety of Ireland related articles cross from being just adding facts to encyclopedia articles to being politically motivated? When one side is an active wikipedia admin and the other side is a bunch of casual editors or users who don't edit, who gets the benefit of the doubt? 1: https://old.reddit.com/r/ireland/comments/bgyfet/til_theres_a_wikipedia_editor_called/ https://old.reddit.com/r/ireland/comments/bgyfet/til_theres_... 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Republic_of_Ireland&oldid=837235350 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Republic_of_Irela...
      - andrepd 6y ago
        All very well and true, but isn't this also a problem in closed encylopedias?? Surely even a paid editor has her biases, and at the very least would have to make a judgement call on whether or not to include that information in the opening paragraph and so on. Wikipedia actually has the advantage here as the discussion is completely open and you can see the all arguments and the process that led to a decision.
- mountainb 6y ago
  I think if you just read the articles without following the footnotes you can easily get the impression that Wikipedia is a good encyclopedia. The writing quality is often pretty good, which unfortunately makes it more deceptive as to information quality.
- pixl97 6y ago
  There is plenty of paid correct info out there. You just need to look in the field of data that you're interested in. I'm pretty sure the days of a general data encyclopedia are past us. The amount of data to gather to make it useful is going to insanely expensive, and will in general be available from many sources for free, thereby decreasing its value.
jokethrowaway 6y ago
I used to be big on OSS and free for all (maybe because I'm an incredible cheapskate) but I changed my mind. Every service provided for free is maintained by someone working for free. After being on the maintainer side, working my ** off and not getting anything but more work without recognition or even a "thank you", I can't say I'm happy or positive towards OSS or services that can't sustain themselves. The human cost can't be ignored. At the same time, working for free is rarely conducive of high quality, even when good engineers are behind it. Even when the quality is good, you can't expect maintenance. Most of the OSS I use is either unmaintaned, of questionable quality or fake OSS maintained by business to attract/retain developers. There are famous exceptions in OSS (eg. Linux) driven by a few exceptional (and well off) individuals, but that's not the majority of the community. Students doing CV building are another segment of people doing OSS and hoping to get paid in recognition. If it wasn't for the low level OSS got us used to, it would be easier to have a market of small independent developers selling software and maintaining it. The same goes for wiki.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
Aeolun 6y ago
> For the first time we have knowledge available to all, for (almost) free That’s fantastic unless that ‘knowledge’ is wrong. We can get that kind of knowledge on Facebook.

nickpp 6y ago

Honestly I feel where you’re coming from, I used to think exactly like you. But I slowly came to my current sad realization. Right now I do believe that free wrong info is actually more damaging than paid correct info. But I am open to and wish for a third option or a solution which is more inclusive and less "for the privileged".

r00fus 6y ago
What examples do you have of this? I also feel Wikipedia is a success, but I'd like any data points of failures as well.
the_duke 6y ago
Could you cite specific examples of wrong or actually harmful information? That would give more credence to your arguments. Maybe also link to your rejected contributions to show that you are not just disgruntled because your edits were reverted. I do agree that there are lots of inaccuracies in articles, but having Wikipedia with at least somewhat helpful information is infinitely better than having nothing at all.
- throwaways885 6y ago
  Political content is a landmine, articles are often locked because vandals are often indistinguishable from those with better information but still controversial.
  - Macha 6y ago
    One example: Britishfinance/"Ireland as a tax haven"[1] Summary: A user, Britishfinance (believed to be Paddy Cosgrave, disgruntled founder of the web summit, a major EU tech event that moved from Ireland to Lisbon as the Irish government wouldn't give him what he wanted) spent about a year primarily editing articles related to Ireland to make a link of claims about the country being a tax haven the most prominent feature of them. Case in point, look at the overview for the article on Ireland after the user edited it [2]. It's since been rolled back somewhat by other wikipedia editors who felt that was a disproportionate amount of space given to that discussion. But Wikipedia isn't so well equipped to handle this kind of dispute. 1. Ireland certainly has benefited from its tax policies, including both competitive but undisputed to be the right of the country, like having a lower corporate headline tax rate than its neighbours, and 2. Ireland has been involved in tax loopholes, such as the now defunct double irish/dutch sandwich stuff 3. You can find sourced articles for all of this. So at what point does putting this information as the most prominent information in a wide variety of Ireland related articles cross from being just adding facts to encyclopedia articles to being politically motivated? When one side is an active wikipedia admin and the other side is a bunch of casual editors or users who don't edit, who gets the benefit of the doubt? 1: https://old.reddit.com/r/ireland/comments/bgyfet/til_theres_a_wikipedia_editor_called/ https://old.reddit.com/r/ireland/comments/bgyfet/til_theres_... 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Republic_of_Ireland&oldid=837235350 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Republic_of_Irela...
    - andrepd 6y ago
      All very well and true, but isn't this also a problem in closed encylopedias?? Surely even a paid editor has her biases, and at the very least would have to make a judgement call on whether or not to include that information in the opening paragraph and so on. Wikipedia actually has the advantage here as the discussion is completely open and you can see the all arguments and the process that led to a decision.
mountainb 6y ago
I think if you just read the articles without following the footnotes you can easily get the impression that Wikipedia is a good encyclopedia. The writing quality is often pretty good, which unfortunately makes it more deceptive as to information quality.
pixl97 6y ago
There is plenty of paid correct info out there. You just need to look in the field of data that you're interested in. I'm pretty sure the days of a general data encyclopedia are past us. The amount of data to gather to make it useful is going to insanely expensive, and will in general be available from many sources for free, thereby decreasing its value.

jokethrowaway 6y ago

I used to be big on OSS and free for all (maybe because I'm an incredible cheapskate) but I changed my mind. Every service provided for free is maintained by someone working for free. After being on the maintainer side, working my ** off and not getting anything but more work without recognition or even a "thank you", I can't say I'm happy or positive towards OSS or services that can't sustain themselves. The human cost can't be ignored. At the same time, working for free is rarely conducive of high quality, even when good engineers are behind it. Even when the quality is good, you can't expect maintenance. Most of the OSS I use is either unmaintaned, of questionable quality or fake OSS maintained by business to attract/retain developers. There are famous exceptions in OSS (eg. Linux) driven by a few exceptional (and well off) individuals, but that's not the majority of the community. Students doing CV building are another segment of people doing OSS and hoping to get paid in recognition. If it wasn't for the low level OSS got us used to, it would be easier to have a market of small independent developers selling software and maintaining it. The same goes for wiki.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

Aeolun 6y ago

> For the first time we have knowledge available to all, for (almost) free That’s fantastic unless that ‘knowledge’ is wrong. We can get that kind of knowledge on Facebook.