2 ms·

Wikipedia makes a good open-source replacement for geopolitical news, just a little behind. For example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Afghanistan_(2001

by tlb 5y ago

Wikipedia makes a good open-source replacement for geopolitical news, just a little behind. For example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Afghanistan_(2001%E2%80%932021) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Afghanistan_(2001%E2%80... gives a much clearer picture of what happened than all the newspaper coverage over the last 20 years.

dredmorbius 5y ago
Wikipedia is exceptionally good at providing an overview of large and complex stories, especially those without a group or interest advocating for a specific narrative. It does less well in other areas: - Covering corporate dealings of substantial companies, especially those which can either drive or suppress specific narratives. - Similarly, political stories of a similar nature, especially by powerful or oppressive regimes. - Generally, the "BLP problem", biographies of living persons. Here, Wikipedia tends to bend over backwards in not crossing live wires or contentious points, though it may do so where sufficiently credibly sourced references exist. Note that this is frequntly predicated on an indepndent press, both in the tradititional sense and in the sense of "independent of Wikipedia itself". BLP also suffers from the partisans / advocates challenge (as well as the opponents / enemies one). None of these problems are exclusive to Wikipedia, and they've long been an issue with both encyclopedias and newspapers. Commercial, advertising-supported newspapers have their own biases, but they've also long had an ancillary function of affording legal cover and protection to their journalists and publishers, a capability that a strictly volunteer effort would lack. Wikipedia's other weakness is in providing consistent and sufficient coverage of small and local concerns. I've noticed this in the case of Covid-19 coverage, something which the site does an excellent job of at large scale, whilst many individual country pages have badly outdated and inaccurate information. Filling in the holes and small details is something Wikipedia does quite unevenly. As a sole source of local small-town news concerning business, politics, crime, and culture, I suspect the Wikipedia approach would prove badly lacking. The emerging news landscape seems to manage with the big picture. It's small and local news that are most neglected.

by tlb 5y ago

dredmorbius 5y ago

Wikipedia is exceptionally good at providing an overview of large and complex stories, especially those without a group or interest advocating for a specific narrative. It does less well in other areas: - Covering corporate dealings of substantial companies, especially those which can either drive or suppress specific narratives. - Similarly, political stories of a similar nature, especially by powerful or oppressive regimes. - Generally, the "BLP problem", biographies of living persons. Here, Wikipedia tends to bend over backwards in not crossing live wires or contentious points, though it may do so where sufficiently credibly sourced references exist. Note that this is frequntly predicated on an indepndent press, both in the tradititional sense and in the sense of "independent of Wikipedia itself". BLP also suffers from the partisans / advocates challenge (as well as the opponents / enemies one). None of these problems are exclusive to Wikipedia, and they've long been an issue with both encyclopedias and newspapers. Commercial, advertising-supported newspapers have their own biases, but they've also long had an ancillary function of affording legal cover and protection to their journalists and publishers, a capability that a strictly volunteer effort would lack. Wikipedia's other weakness is in providing consistent and sufficient coverage of small and local concerns. I've noticed this in the case of Covid-19 coverage, something which the site does an excellent job of at large scale, whilst many individual country pages have badly outdated and inaccurate information. Filling in the holes and small details is something Wikipedia does quite unevenly. As a sole source of local small-town news concerning business, politics, crime, and culture, I suspect the Wikipedia approach would prove badly lacking. The emerging news landscape seems to manage with the big picture. It's small and local news that are most neglected.