I think individuals like FredPret have never tried to run any kind of forum or publicly editable resource on the internet. Bad actors telling simple lies for l

I think individuals like FredPret have never tried to run any kind of forum or publicly editable resource on the internet. Bad actors telling simple lies for lol's and/or profit do exist and they will ruin communities. Inline fact checking is a feature of all successful forums, whether the fact checking is done by the institution or the community is immaterial to the true existence of the need. If computers with all of their precision require checksums and error correction in data transfer protocols it seems arrogant and perhaps willfully ignorant to think humanity does not also require this for the continued propagation of accurate and useful data. People often conflate "general existential uncertainty" with the "knowability of truth inside a shared frame of reference", in this case our shared frame of reference is physical reality and propositional statements can be "grounded". Some people just stop trying because they are tired. Some because they lack the tools to evaluate data and create confidence intervals. Like most nerd skills, talented data analysts can be hard to find. The very existence of this article and the ensuing discussion shows that the internet continues to surface facts and route around censorship. The efficacy and methodologies forums use will continue to evolve and require refinement, and have evolved from the early BBS days, some forums will also tend to be run in an overly authoritarian/restrictive/harmful way, just like in the old BBS days. All online community that philosophically and practically reject error correction tend to end up shut down by the state for child pornography or overwhelmed with snake oil salesmen preying on the credulous.