3 ms·

It worked for a time and now it is dying at the hands of bad-faith actors who have worked within their mechanism.

wpietri 4y ago
That's an interesting claim. Where's your evidence? I'll also note you must have missed my question, as I don't think you have answered it.
- nkingsy 4y ago
  disclaimer: Yes the grayzone hires RT reporters and has a strongly anti-us take on pretty much everything. Please don't spout "russian propagandist" takes. They've been heard plenty. This is the lack of truth I'm talking about. These are investigative journalists--a dying breed that western propagandists are attempting to make extinct. https://thegrayzone.com/2020/06/10/wikipedia-formally-censors-the-grayzone-as-regime-change-advocates-monopolize-editing/ https://thegrayzone.com/2020/06/10/wikipedia-formally-censor...
  - wpietri 4y ago
    That's not evidence, that's a series of disconnected vague complaints from a publisher who is salty that they're not considered a reliable source. They complain about conflicts of interest, but I didn't see them even acknowledging their own. I also couldn't find any financial transparency, so it's not clear to me who is funding this or their other writing. And I'll point out for the last time that you still haven't answered my initial question. If you're just going to keep dodging, I think I'm done here.
    - nkingsy 4y ago
      I thought the article answered your question pretty well and they clearly state on their about page that they are not backed by any government and rely on donations. The entire internet points to wikipedia and its consensus mechanism is inherently vulnerable to editors for hire, as clearly demonstrated with scores of links. So my answer is "pick any publication from 1980 and it is better because its bias can be audited and it is not polluting every search query I make"
      - wpietri 4y ago
        They claim they are not backed by any governments, but decline to say who is backing them. Just as an example I came across yesterday, the San Francisco Standard is "not backed by any government and rely on donations", but their funding comes from a billionaire venture capitalist. The same claim could be truthfully made by a site backed by a Russian oligarch just as well. And regardless, there's no evidence. I agree that Wikipedia's mechanism has its challenges; anybody who knows the site does. But it's vastly better than "any publication from 1980" because every edit is tracked, the citations should be available for all to see, and people can object to and/or edit bad content. Just as an example of how a book from the olden tymes could go wrong, consider Trump's "The Art of the Deal". It sold more than a million copies, but its ghostwriter took 20 years to admit that it was a lot of horseshit: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/07/25/donald-trumps-ghostwriter-tells-all https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/07/25/donald-trumps-... Wikipedia is way more auditable than that book or most books from that era. And way more auditable than The Gray Zone that you've chosen to cite.
        akolbe 4y ago
        The former Wikimedia CEO (she left in 2021) is now on the Atlantic Council and currently serves on the US Department of State’s Foreign Affairs Policy Board: https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/expert/katherine-maher/ https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/expert/katherine-maher/ Then-US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sent Richard Boly as a representative of the Office of eDiplomacy to the 2012 Wikimania conference. At the time, Boly was "leading an ambitious State Department initiative that uses social media and online platforms to change the way employees communicate and reach outside their boundaries to advance U.S. foreign policy interests" according to the Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/federal-faces-richard-boly/2012/06/25/gJQAz2r82V_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/federal-fac... Boly's Wikimania speech is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0NsY48OQdc&t=457s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0NsY48OQdc&t=457s A few years later, the person put in charge of facilitating the Wikimedia Strategy 2030 process was Hillary Clinton's former Trips Director, Whitney Williams: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2017/People/Core_team https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/... The PR company that has looked after Wikimedia for the past decade or so is Minassian Media, run by the chief communications and marketing officer of the Clinton Foundation, who formerly was assistant press secretary and director of television news in the White House for President Bill Clinton: https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/wikipedias-deep-ties-to-big-tech https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/wikipedias-d... The Chief Advancement Officer at Wikimedia is the politically very well connected lady here: https://sfgov.org/civilservice/sites/default/files/Documents/civil_service/FINAL_Annual_Report10_11.pdf#page=13 https://sfgov.org/civilservice/sites/default/files/Documents... The current CEO is Maryana Iskander; she has been a speaker at the Clinton Global Initiative and presented her work to Bill Clinton when he visited South Africa: https://www.itnewsafrica.com/2018/11/harambees-exceeds-youth-employment-commitment-to-clinton-global-initiative/ https://www.itnewsafrica.com/2018/11/harambees-exceeds-youth... Wikimedia also partners extensively with the Tides Foundation and Tides Advocacy ... So there are very significant political connections in the US.

That's an interesting claim. Where's your evidence? I'll also note you must have missed my question, as I don't think you have answered it.

nkingsy 4y ago
disclaimer: Yes the grayzone hires RT reporters and has a strongly anti-us take on pretty much everything. Please don't spout "russian propagandist" takes. They've been heard plenty. This is the lack of truth I'm talking about. These are investigative journalists--a dying breed that western propagandists are attempting to make extinct. https://thegrayzone.com/2020/06/10/wikipedia-formally-censors-the-grayzone-as-regime-change-advocates-monopolize-editing/ https://thegrayzone.com/2020/06/10/wikipedia-formally-censor...
- wpietri 4y ago
  That's not evidence, that's a series of disconnected vague complaints from a publisher who is salty that they're not considered a reliable source. They complain about conflicts of interest, but I didn't see them even acknowledging their own. I also couldn't find any financial transparency, so it's not clear to me who is funding this or their other writing. And I'll point out for the last time that you still haven't answered my initial question. If you're just going to keep dodging, I think I'm done here.
  - nkingsy 4y ago
    I thought the article answered your question pretty well and they clearly state on their about page that they are not backed by any government and rely on donations. The entire internet points to wikipedia and its consensus mechanism is inherently vulnerable to editors for hire, as clearly demonstrated with scores of links. So my answer is "pick any publication from 1980 and it is better because its bias can be audited and it is not polluting every search query I make"
    - wpietri 4y ago
      They claim they are not backed by any governments, but decline to say who is backing them. Just as an example I came across yesterday, the San Francisco Standard is "not backed by any government and rely on donations", but their funding comes from a billionaire venture capitalist. The same claim could be truthfully made by a site backed by a Russian oligarch just as well. And regardless, there's no evidence. I agree that Wikipedia's mechanism has its challenges; anybody who knows the site does. But it's vastly better than "any publication from 1980" because every edit is tracked, the citations should be available for all to see, and people can object to and/or edit bad content. Just as an example of how a book from the olden tymes could go wrong, consider Trump's "The Art of the Deal". It sold more than a million copies, but its ghostwriter took 20 years to admit that it was a lot of horseshit: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/07/25/donald-trumps-ghostwriter-tells-all https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/07/25/donald-trumps-... Wikipedia is way more auditable than that book or most books from that era. And way more auditable than The Gray Zone that you've chosen to cite.
      - akolbe 4y ago
        The former Wikimedia CEO (she left in 2021) is now on the Atlantic Council and currently serves on the US Department of State’s Foreign Affairs Policy Board: https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/expert/katherine-maher/ https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/expert/katherine-maher/ Then-US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sent Richard Boly as a representative of the Office of eDiplomacy to the 2012 Wikimania conference. At the time, Boly was "leading an ambitious State Department initiative that uses social media and online platforms to change the way employees communicate and reach outside their boundaries to advance U.S. foreign policy interests" according to the Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/federal-faces-richard-boly/2012/06/25/gJQAz2r82V_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/federal-fac... Boly's Wikimania speech is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0NsY48OQdc&t=457s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0NsY48OQdc&t=457s A few years later, the person put in charge of facilitating the Wikimedia Strategy 2030 process was Hillary Clinton's former Trips Director, Whitney Williams: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2017/People/Core_team https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/... The PR company that has looked after Wikimedia for the past decade or so is Minassian Media, run by the chief communications and marketing officer of the Clinton Foundation, who formerly was assistant press secretary and director of television news in the White House for President Bill Clinton: https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/wikipedias-deep-ties-to-big-tech https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/wikipedias-d... The Chief Advancement Officer at Wikimedia is the politically very well connected lady here: https://sfgov.org/civilservice/sites/default/files/Documents/civil_service/FINAL_Annual_Report10_11.pdf#page=13 https://sfgov.org/civilservice/sites/default/files/Documents... The current CEO is Maryana Iskander; she has been a speaker at the Clinton Global Initiative and presented her work to Bill Clinton when he visited South Africa: https://www.itnewsafrica.com/2018/11/harambees-exceeds-youth-employment-commitment-to-clinton-global-initiative/ https://www.itnewsafrica.com/2018/11/harambees-exceeds-youth... Wikimedia also partners extensively with the Tides Foundation and Tides Advocacy ... So there are very significant political connections in the US.