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I completely lost trust in Wikipedia once I realized recent history is literally being rewritten by biased editors. For one, check the edit history of anything

I completely lost trust in Wikipedia once I realized recent history is literally being rewritten by biased editors. For one, check the edit history of anything Russia/Ukraine war related, it's a complete shitshow.

prox 4y ago
History was always written by the victors, we only see it happen in real time now.
- trasz2 4y ago
  And with revision log.
- 411111111111111 4y ago
  ...and to a much greater degree then people realize, really. As a simple example, WW2. There where several polls over the decades in Germany which country contributed the most to the fall of Nazi Germany. In the beginning, it was mostly attributed to Russia (something like 80%) with the USA mostly protecting Europe from getting integrated into Russia after the fall. But over time this opinion has been overturned to being mostly the USA with Russia playing a minor role... And the fact that Russia could've likely just taken over Europe completely has been forgotten entirely.
  - phkahler 4y ago
    >> And the fact that Russia could've likely just taken over Europe completely has been forgotten entirely. Well, seeing how Russia can't even take over Russia today, people have doubts! That's a joke, don't get all serious ;-)
  - sheepz 4y ago
    s/Russia/Soviet Union/g. The huge role of Soviet Union was pushed by the Soviet Union as part of its Great Patriotic War narrative is continued to this day by Russia's propaganda. Without the US Lend-Lease, the situation could have turned out much differently for the soviets (as even Stalin himself admitted).
    - hardlianotion 4y ago
      And the Royal Merchant Marine making huge efforts at resupply, and the UK's own material response.
      - 411111111111111 4y ago
        I wasn't trying to claim that the USSR was the sole contributor to the defeat of the fascists, sorry if it sounded like that. I just wanted to make a pretty strong example of the winners rewriting history and how this propaganda becomes fact for the society. I'm sure everyone here agrees that it's good that the fascists lost the war and that the USA enabled Europe to stay democratic. It was a very brutal period of time in which human life was sadly undervalued.
        sheepz 4y ago
        Ironically a better example of this would your own claim that focuses solely on the crimes of Nazism without any mention of Communist crimes. Since USSR was on the Allied side, Communism never quite turned into the embodiment of evil that Nazism has become. Due to this, today many academics are proud to call themselves Communists, whereas you would be hard-pressed to find any self-proclaimed nazis, at least in the mainstream of academia. All because history is written by the victors.
        prox 4y ago
        I like to add a bit of historical context and that is that communism as an ideology,field of study and it’s ideas were quite spread out over Europe and beyond (Way before the Russian revolution and after) Karl Marx ideas were very revolutionary for its time (a good primer can be found in the book The Value of Everything) and set a lot of ideas in motion. And there was also debate in that regard on how to institute communism. So communism could never reach the “evil” moniker like Nazism, even though it was apparent the Soviet Union was quite a brute. So the ideology was kind of separated cognitively from its implementation by the Soviet Union. In the Cold War period, the SU was definitely seen as something that had to be defeated. There was a lot of fear of nuclear escalation between the superpowers. The Soviet Union was seen as different at best, and something to be defeated in all cases. And yes, also evil. Just watch some action movies from that time to get a general idea.
- elgar1212 4y ago
  > History was always written by the victors, we only see it happen in real time now. A modern spin on this: history is no longer written by the victors, but by people with literally no life outside of writing crap on the internet
  - totalZero 4y ago
    Not sure how that links to the article considering that these IP ranges are linked to professional institutions.
  - californiadreem 4y ago
    This was true of medieval clerics and Enlightenment historians as well. It's almost always the idle writing history because everyone else is too busy working or living their own lives. The exception to this rule is patronage history (e.g. paying others to write flattering histories) but that's exactly what this kind of astroturfing on Wikipedia is.
  - pastacacioepepe 4y ago
    > A modern spin on this: history is no longer written by the victors, but by people with literally no life outside of writing crap on the internet Still acting on the basis of the propaganda they drank like kool-aid, but pretty much. Hard to exclude some biased editors aren't actually paid from organizations/parties tho.
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    > A modern spin on this: history is no longer written by the victors, but by people with literally no life outside of writing crap on the internet There’s perhaps a narrow sense in which this is true of how it is written, but that's really not the sense the original gets at, anyhow. Which elements of the writing of those “people with literally no life” gets distributed, amplified, and becomes crystallized as history is still actively shaped by the victors, not only of the clashes between societies, but of the class and subculture conflicts within them. And that editorial and distribution control, not the actual mechanical act of writing, is what the original was about.
- pessimizer 4y ago
  A simpler way to describe history that is happening in real time is things that are happening now. This is not a case of "history being written by the victors," this is an example of populations being propagandized by their governments and oligarchs about the things those governments and oligarchs are currently doing. The sense of alienation is overwhelming here. We're not reading stories about something that once happened to someone, we're being sold stories about what is happening to us, and what we are doing, right now. ----- edit: Walter Lippmann did this stuff for a living, and wrote a lot about it and the political implications of imbalances of information. I don't think it's such a huge difference that people 100 years ago only got two newspapers a day worth of information (early and late editions), and we now get our information rations in smaller portions.
  - prox 4y ago
    What’s a pivotal work of Walter Lippmann one could read?
krisoft 4y ago
> For one, check the edit history of anything Russia/Ukraine war related, it's a complete shitshow. I went and checked randomly a few edits. I’m not seeing anything I would describe as a “complete shitshow”. Can you please provide examples and tell us what you find objectionable?
- pastacacioepepe 4y ago
  You should look better then, I won't do your job for you. Keep in mind, English is not the only language on Earth, and definitely not the only one on Wikipedia.
spookthesunset 4y ago
Of course it is gonna be a shitshow. It’s still happening! Everybody has a vested interest in making those pages reflect their version of reality. And the non-cynic part of me says that is fine and to be expected. In the fog of war there is no true, objective reality yet. It takes a good long while for humanity to settle down and cooler heads can then piece together an accurate view of events. There is plenty of good content on Wikipedia… you just won’t find it for highly potent current events unfolding right this instant.

prox 4y ago

History was always written by the victors, we only see it happen in real time now.

trasz2 4y ago
And with revision log.
411111111111111 4y ago
...and to a much greater degree then people realize, really. As a simple example, WW2. There where several polls over the decades in Germany which country contributed the most to the fall of Nazi Germany. In the beginning, it was mostly attributed to Russia (something like 80%) with the USA mostly protecting Europe from getting integrated into Russia after the fall. But over time this opinion has been overturned to being mostly the USA with Russia playing a minor role... And the fact that Russia could've likely just taken over Europe completely has been forgotten entirely.
- phkahler 4y ago
  >> And the fact that Russia could've likely just taken over Europe completely has been forgotten entirely. Well, seeing how Russia can't even take over Russia today, people have doubts! That's a joke, don't get all serious ;-)
- sheepz 4y ago
  s/Russia/Soviet Union/g. The huge role of Soviet Union was pushed by the Soviet Union as part of its Great Patriotic War narrative is continued to this day by Russia's propaganda. Without the US Lend-Lease, the situation could have turned out much differently for the soviets (as even Stalin himself admitted).
  - hardlianotion 4y ago
    And the Royal Merchant Marine making huge efforts at resupply, and the UK's own material response.
    - 411111111111111 4y ago
      I wasn't trying to claim that the USSR was the sole contributor to the defeat of the fascists, sorry if it sounded like that. I just wanted to make a pretty strong example of the winners rewriting history and how this propaganda becomes fact for the society. I'm sure everyone here agrees that it's good that the fascists lost the war and that the USA enabled Europe to stay democratic. It was a very brutal period of time in which human life was sadly undervalued.
      - sheepz 4y ago
        Ironically a better example of this would your own claim that focuses solely on the crimes of Nazism without any mention of Communist crimes. Since USSR was on the Allied side, Communism never quite turned into the embodiment of evil that Nazism has become. Due to this, today many academics are proud to call themselves Communists, whereas you would be hard-pressed to find any self-proclaimed nazis, at least in the mainstream of academia. All because history is written by the victors.
        prox 4y ago
        I like to add a bit of historical context and that is that communism as an ideology,field of study and it’s ideas were quite spread out over Europe and beyond (Way before the Russian revolution and after) Karl Marx ideas were very revolutionary for its time (a good primer can be found in the book The Value of Everything) and set a lot of ideas in motion. And there was also debate in that regard on how to institute communism. So communism could never reach the “evil” moniker like Nazism, even though it was apparent the Soviet Union was quite a brute. So the ideology was kind of separated cognitively from its implementation by the Soviet Union. In the Cold War period, the SU was definitely seen as something that had to be defeated. There was a lot of fear of nuclear escalation between the superpowers. The Soviet Union was seen as different at best, and something to be defeated in all cases. And yes, also evil. Just watch some action movies from that time to get a general idea.
elgar1212 4y ago
> History was always written by the victors, we only see it happen in real time now. A modern spin on this: history is no longer written by the victors, but by people with literally no life outside of writing crap on the internet
- totalZero 4y ago
  Not sure how that links to the article considering that these IP ranges are linked to professional institutions.
- californiadreem 4y ago
  This was true of medieval clerics and Enlightenment historians as well. It's almost always the idle writing history because everyone else is too busy working or living their own lives. The exception to this rule is patronage history (e.g. paying others to write flattering histories) but that's exactly what this kind of astroturfing on Wikipedia is.
- pastacacioepepe 4y ago
  > A modern spin on this: history is no longer written by the victors, but by people with literally no life outside of writing crap on the internet Still acting on the basis of the propaganda they drank like kool-aid, but pretty much. Hard to exclude some biased editors aren't actually paid from organizations/parties tho.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > A modern spin on this: history is no longer written by the victors, but by people with literally no life outside of writing crap on the internet There’s perhaps a narrow sense in which this is true of how it is written, but that's really not the sense the original gets at, anyhow. Which elements of the writing of those “people with literally no life” gets distributed, amplified, and becomes crystallized as history is still actively shaped by the victors, not only of the clashes between societies, but of the class and subculture conflicts within them. And that editorial and distribution control, not the actual mechanical act of writing, is what the original was about.
pessimizer 4y ago
A simpler way to describe history that is happening in real time is things that are happening now. This is not a case of "history being written by the victors," this is an example of populations being propagandized by their governments and oligarchs about the things those governments and oligarchs are currently doing. The sense of alienation is overwhelming here. We're not reading stories about something that once happened to someone, we're being sold stories about what is happening to us, and what we are doing, right now. ----- edit: Walter Lippmann did this stuff for a living, and wrote a lot about it and the political implications of imbalances of information. I don't think it's such a huge difference that people 100 years ago only got two newspapers a day worth of information (early and late editions), and we now get our information rations in smaller portions.
- prox 4y ago
  What’s a pivotal work of Walter Lippmann one could read?

krisoft 4y ago

> For one, check the edit history of anything Russia/Ukraine war related, it's a complete shitshow. I went and checked randomly a few edits. I’m not seeing anything I would describe as a “complete shitshow”. Can you please provide examples and tell us what you find objectionable?

pastacacioepepe 4y ago
You should look better then, I won't do your job for you. Keep in mind, English is not the only language on Earth, and definitely not the only one on Wikipedia.

spookthesunset 4y ago

Of course it is gonna be a shitshow. It’s still happening! Everybody has a vested interest in making those pages reflect their version of reality. And the non-cynic part of me says that is fine and to be expected. In the fog of war there is no true, objective reality yet. It takes a good long while for humanity to settle down and cooler heads can then piece together an accurate view of events. There is plenty of good content on Wikipedia… you just won’t find it for highly potent current events unfolding right this instant.