6 ms·

The Wikipedia war over Paul Revere

37 points by fogus 15y ago

Androsynth 15y ago
A politician's followers are rewriting history to fit what their leader says? How Orwellian.
- code_duck 15y ago
  It happens all the time, only this time we get to see it unfold in detail, with revision history.
Helianthus 15y ago
>The really awful thing, though, is that we live in an age where, on every level, it is considered a sin to be wrong. This seems to me to be really, really incorrect (and dangerous): we must maintain that it is a 'sin' to be wrong. The reason for this is that there are different sorts of wrong, from willful incompetence to dangerous reality-bending, from good-faith incorrectness to (to borrow the tvtropes phrase) Didn't Do The Research. The startup mentality that the writer references--embracing failure and being willing to be wrong--comes from understanding hard facts about risk and managing it. Palin and her ilk _actively distort reality_ to suit their worldview, and that is _wrong_. That's why the battle over the wikipedia page is important (and fear not, the page is now protected). So the writer misses the point. Palin can't admit she was wrong because that would unmask her 'sin,' which is _why_ her 'renfields' (a term I rather like) are up in arms on Wikipedia. He also repeats the FUD mantra about Wikipedia. Meh. If you're gonna cover a story on Wikipedia, there are basics I expect.
- kevinskii 15y ago
  You're taking the author's words out of context and misrepresenting his opinion. He actually agrees with you. Here's the relevant text: The really awful thing, though, is that we live in an age where, on every level, it is considered a sin to be wrong. From advertisers to kids on the playground to the world of corporate PR to politicians, the all-too-common wisdom is to defend the indefensible. That's what Palin is doing and that is what her renfields on Wikipedia are doing, and that's sad, because as anyone remotely successful in Silicon Valley can tell you, without owning our mistakes we cannot learn from them and without learning, we cannot win.
  - Helianthus 15y ago
    I should have been more clear: the author is conflating the ways one can be wrong in a vein I find distasteful. In Silicon Valley it is not a sin to be wrong because in being willing to be wrong you are embracing reality--the accountability is that you will suffer from your mistakes. Palin's just a loose cannon on the ship of factuality, and that shit needs to get tied down before she punches holes in Wikipedia and sinks our ability to see reality clearly. The author is saying that the types of wrongness are equal, which is clearly not so. We expect people who inform our knowledge, our leaders and government, to be devoted to the truth. Politicians must have accountability. edit: The fundamental point is that Palin _should not have said that stuff about Revere in the first place_, because being that wrong is just _depressing_.
    - michael_dorfman 15y ago
      I hate to be dense, but I am not following you here. What are the two ways of being wrong that the author is conflating? It seems to me that in either case-- whether you are a Silicon Valley leader or a faux-politician-celebrity, if you are wrong, you should own up to it, and suffer the consequences (and, one would hope, learn the lessons). I think everybody should be devoted to the truth. Could you elaborate on what you found distasteful in the OP, because I'm not getting it.
      - Helianthus 15y ago
        Any method in which Palin could own up to being so disastrously wrong would be admitting that she was being idiotic with her knowledge of history. She just isn't going to do that, because being as wrong as she was ought to (and will, eventually) get her tossed. Being able to own up to your mistakes only works when you're trying really hard to be right. That's the difference between the two forms of being wrong; one's a consequence of trying, and the other's the sin of political drudgery. Either OP doesn't get that Palin's not trying very hard to be right so she can't realistically admit she was wrong, or he thinks that it's ok for her not to be devoted to the truth.
  - jbooth 15y ago
drivebyacct2 15y ago
I've stopped being angry about Palin and have just entered a morbid sadness for this country.
macrael 15y ago
Is there any way to see the age of the text on a wikipedia page? Might be a good way to combat the sense that everything on the page is solid. If most of the page is years old except for a couple of sentances from the last two days, I might check the history to see the motivation behind the change.
- thwarted 15y ago
  I was thinking that an interface that colored content based on how old it was would be pretty cool. Then I realized that, duh, a SCM style blame function would be cool for wikipedia (which may be available in the diff functionality, I don't remember or use the history diffing ability on wikipedia enough to know off hand). Then I thought, it would be nice to have wikipedia content in SCM anyway, and was thinking of writing something to import it into git. And it may already exist. A search turned up http://scytale.name/blog/2009/11/announcing-levitation http://scytale.name/blog/2009/11/announcing-levitation and the code is at https://github.com/scy/levitation https://github.com/scy/levitation
- esrauch 15y ago
  I've seen a lot of proposals for wikipedia to go over to a system that has this sort of thing, I think the primary issue is that it's difficult to come up with a visual indication of this information without significantly detracting from the usability.
- kahirsch 15y ago
  See http://www.wikitrust.net/ http://www.wikitrust.net/ I just tried it on the Paul Revere page and it said "There is no trust coloring information currently available for the revision you requested. Please try again in about a minute, when the coloring should be complete." For comparison, I tried it on Halitosis and go this: http://imgur.com/PNBXU http://imgur.com/PNBXU The colored stuff is newer.
tobylane 15y ago
I find this funny, but typical as in the facts win, and the losers get shown up. My mum just said "There's no hope, when there's people like [Palin]" I hope Palin keeps on bumbling while she's on this tour.
bugsy 15y ago
Palin's account was more correct than the accounts of her detractors. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2011/06/sarah-palin-says-paul-revere-warned-the-british.html http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2011/06/sarah-pal... This is similar to the Orwellian incident where Palin made a true and factual comment about the fact that you can see Russia from an island in Alaska, Tina Fey made fun of it by changing the words to say that you could see Alaska from her house or office, then people started promoting the Tina Fey comedy routine as if it was reality. edit: downvote this all you want it won't change reality
- burgerbrain 15y ago
  The point of Tina Fey making fun of Palin in that way was to point out how absurd it is to suggest that being able to see Russia from Alaska is related to competency in foreign politics. It seems like this has escaped pretty much nobody but Palin supporters.
  - yty77 15y ago
    She was making a joke. Calm down.
    - burgerbrain 15y ago
      I know, and I think it's a funny one too....
- philwelch 15y ago
  "This is similar to the Orwellian incident where Palin made a true and factual comment about the fact that you can see Russia from an island in Alaska, Tina Fey made fun of it by changing the words to say that you could see Alaska from her house or office, then people started promoting the Tina Fey comedy routine as if it was reality." Hm, I really saw that as an analog of Bush's "you forgot Poland" incident--it's not so much that the statement itself is wrong, so much as the fact that it's a hilarious non-sequitur to the question at hand. Being able to see Russia from an island in Alaska does not magically grant the governor of Alaska with foreign policy experience, just as Poland joining the US, UK, and Australia in the initial invasion of Iraq doesn't turn a handful of countries into a strong multilateral force.
shii 15y ago
This is an example of why I like Wikipedia and was an Editor there for several years: they handle drama and follow a set of principles pretty rigidly. NPOV is a clear rule to follow and it's great when I see it being enforced without flame drama to distract.
nitrogen 15y ago
Is there any way to disable those Apture Wikipedia pop-ups and just get to the real Wikipedia directly? The article refers to the Paul Revere revision page, but there's no clear way to see the revision history from the annoying Apture window.
- endian 15y ago
  Ghostery. It's like AdBlock, but for all 3rd-party code.
InnocentB 15y ago
Jay Walsh's estimate for the number of articles under protection is quite a bit off. I count 7631 right now, not 1500 (see http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:ProtectedPages&namespace=0&type=edit&level=0&sizetype=min http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:ProtectedP...). His count is pretty close to the number of fully-protected pages, so he may just be confusing the two numbers. Still a small number of the total articles, but I do regularly come across articles that I want to do some editing on, and am unable to without logging in (or in some cases, without being an administrator).
lurkinggrue 15y ago
I do wonder if she is just trolling us as a way to keep in the media to fund raise.
- Helianthus 15y ago
  The difference between intent and effect is not always clear.

37 points by fogus 15y ago

Androsynth 15y ago

A politician's followers are rewriting history to fit what their leader says? How Orwellian.

code_duck 15y ago
It happens all the time, only this time we get to see it unfold in detail, with revision history.

Helianthus 15y ago

>The really awful thing, though, is that we live in an age where, on every level, it is considered a sin to be wrong. This seems to me to be really, really incorrect (and dangerous): we must maintain that it is a 'sin' to be wrong. The reason for this is that there are different sorts of wrong, from willful incompetence to dangerous reality-bending, from good-faith incorrectness to (to borrow the tvtropes phrase) Didn't Do The Research. The startup mentality that the writer references--embracing failure and being willing to be wrong--comes from understanding hard facts about risk and managing it. Palin and her ilk _actively distort reality_ to suit their worldview, and that is _wrong_. That's why the battle over the wikipedia page is important (and fear not, the page is now protected). So the writer misses the point. Palin can't admit she was wrong because that would unmask her 'sin,' which is _why_ her 'renfields' (a term I rather like) are up in arms on Wikipedia. He also repeats the FUD mantra about Wikipedia. Meh. If you're gonna cover a story on Wikipedia, there are basics I expect.

kevinskii 15y ago
You're taking the author's words out of context and misrepresenting his opinion. He actually agrees with you. Here's the relevant text: The really awful thing, though, is that we live in an age where, on every level, it is considered a sin to be wrong. From advertisers to kids on the playground to the world of corporate PR to politicians, the all-too-common wisdom is to defend the indefensible. That's what Palin is doing and that is what her renfields on Wikipedia are doing, and that's sad, because as anyone remotely successful in Silicon Valley can tell you, without owning our mistakes we cannot learn from them and without learning, we cannot win.
- Helianthus 15y ago
  I should have been more clear: the author is conflating the ways one can be wrong in a vein I find distasteful. In Silicon Valley it is not a sin to be wrong because in being willing to be wrong you are embracing reality--the accountability is that you will suffer from your mistakes. Palin's just a loose cannon on the ship of factuality, and that shit needs to get tied down before she punches holes in Wikipedia and sinks our ability to see reality clearly. The author is saying that the types of wrongness are equal, which is clearly not so. We expect people who inform our knowledge, our leaders and government, to be devoted to the truth. Politicians must have accountability. edit: The fundamental point is that Palin _should not have said that stuff about Revere in the first place_, because being that wrong is just _depressing_.
  - michael_dorfman 15y ago
    I hate to be dense, but I am not following you here. What are the two ways of being wrong that the author is conflating? It seems to me that in either case-- whether you are a Silicon Valley leader or a faux-politician-celebrity, if you are wrong, you should own up to it, and suffer the consequences (and, one would hope, learn the lessons). I think everybody should be devoted to the truth. Could you elaborate on what you found distasteful in the OP, because I'm not getting it.
    - Helianthus 15y ago
      Any method in which Palin could own up to being so disastrously wrong would be admitting that she was being idiotic with her knowledge of history. She just isn't going to do that, because being as wrong as she was ought to (and will, eventually) get her tossed. Being able to own up to your mistakes only works when you're trying really hard to be right. That's the difference between the two forms of being wrong; one's a consequence of trying, and the other's the sin of political drudgery. Either OP doesn't get that Palin's not trying very hard to be right so she can't realistically admit she was wrong, or he thinks that it's ok for her not to be devoted to the truth.
- jbooth 15y ago

drivebyacct2 15y ago

I've stopped being angry about Palin and have just entered a morbid sadness for this country.

macrael 15y ago

Is there any way to see the age of the text on a wikipedia page? Might be a good way to combat the sense that everything on the page is solid. If most of the page is years old except for a couple of sentances from the last two days, I might check the history to see the motivation behind the change.

thwarted 15y ago
I was thinking that an interface that colored content based on how old it was would be pretty cool. Then I realized that, duh, a SCM style blame function would be cool for wikipedia (which may be available in the diff functionality, I don't remember or use the history diffing ability on wikipedia enough to know off hand). Then I thought, it would be nice to have wikipedia content in SCM anyway, and was thinking of writing something to import it into git. And it may already exist. A search turned up http://scytale.name/blog/2009/11/announcing-levitation http://scytale.name/blog/2009/11/announcing-levitation and the code is at https://github.com/scy/levitation https://github.com/scy/levitation
esrauch 15y ago
I've seen a lot of proposals for wikipedia to go over to a system that has this sort of thing, I think the primary issue is that it's difficult to come up with a visual indication of this information without significantly detracting from the usability.
kahirsch 15y ago
See http://www.wikitrust.net/ http://www.wikitrust.net/ I just tried it on the Paul Revere page and it said "There is no trust coloring information currently available for the revision you requested. Please try again in about a minute, when the coloring should be complete." For comparison, I tried it on Halitosis and go this: http://imgur.com/PNBXU http://imgur.com/PNBXU The colored stuff is newer.

tobylane 15y ago

I find this funny, but typical as in the facts win, and the losers get shown up. My mum just said "There's no hope, when there's people like [Palin]" I hope Palin keeps on bumbling while she's on this tour.

bugsy 15y ago

Palin's account was more correct than the accounts of her detractors. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2011/06/sarah-palin-says-paul-revere-warned-the-british.html http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2011/06/sarah-pal... This is similar to the Orwellian incident where Palin made a true and factual comment about the fact that you can see Russia from an island in Alaska, Tina Fey made fun of it by changing the words to say that you could see Alaska from her house or office, then people started promoting the Tina Fey comedy routine as if it was reality. edit: downvote this all you want it won't change reality

burgerbrain 15y ago
The point of Tina Fey making fun of Palin in that way was to point out how absurd it is to suggest that being able to see Russia from Alaska is related to competency in foreign politics. It seems like this has escaped pretty much nobody but Palin supporters.
- yty77 15y ago
  She was making a joke. Calm down.
  - burgerbrain 15y ago
    I know, and I think it's a funny one too....
philwelch 15y ago
"This is similar to the Orwellian incident where Palin made a true and factual comment about the fact that you can see Russia from an island in Alaska, Tina Fey made fun of it by changing the words to say that you could see Alaska from her house or office, then people started promoting the Tina Fey comedy routine as if it was reality." Hm, I really saw that as an analog of Bush's "you forgot Poland" incident--it's not so much that the statement itself is wrong, so much as the fact that it's a hilarious non-sequitur to the question at hand. Being able to see Russia from an island in Alaska does not magically grant the governor of Alaska with foreign policy experience, just as Poland joining the US, UK, and Australia in the initial invasion of Iraq doesn't turn a handful of countries into a strong multilateral force.

shii 15y ago

This is an example of why I like Wikipedia and was an Editor there for several years: they handle drama and follow a set of principles pretty rigidly. NPOV is a clear rule to follow and it's great when I see it being enforced without flame drama to distract.

nitrogen 15y ago

Is there any way to disable those Apture Wikipedia pop-ups and just get to the real Wikipedia directly? The article refers to the Paul Revere revision page, but there's no clear way to see the revision history from the annoying Apture window.

endian 15y ago
Ghostery. It's like AdBlock, but for all 3rd-party code.

InnocentB 15y ago

Jay Walsh's estimate for the number of articles under protection is quite a bit off. I count 7631 right now, not 1500 (see http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:ProtectedPages&namespace=0&type=edit&level=0&sizetype=min http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:ProtectedP...). His count is pretty close to the number of fully-protected pages, so he may just be confusing the two numbers. Still a small number of the total articles, but I do regularly come across articles that I want to do some editing on, and am unable to without logging in (or in some cases, without being an administrator).

lurkinggrue 15y ago

I do wonder if she is just trolling us as a way to keep in the media to fund raise.

Helianthus 15y ago
The difference between intent and effect is not always clear.