5 ms·

I agree that Wikipedia is one of the great success stories of the open Internet. Therefore, it is somewhat sad that Wales is being attacked from all sides in th

I agree that Wikipedia is one of the great success stories of the open Internet. Therefore, it is somewhat sad that Wales is being attacked from all sides in this thread.

mcv 4y ago
"This thread" on HN or on Twitter? Because I don't see him being attacked much here, but Twitter is turning into an Elon Musk echo chamber, so it's only to be expected there.
bluescrn 4y ago
[flagged]
bjackman 4y ago
Bear in mind that Twitter reply threads are now dominated by Elon musk fans, because people who pay for Twitter have their replies shown first. People who aren't willing to do that don't really bother engaging with stuff like this any more, or if they do they get buried. So Wales being under attack on Twitter is sad but doesn't necessarily represent "public opinion". I think we are in the last days of major figures like Jimmy Wales still treating Twitter as a respectable arena for public engagement.
- hutzlibu 4y ago
  "because people who pay for Twitter have their replies shown first" I don't really go to Twitter, so I don't know, but am curious: Is this an established fact? A quick search did not show anything official confirming this.
  - concordDance 4y ago
    https://help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/twitter-blue https://help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/twitter-blue > Prioritized rankings in conversations and search: Tweets that you interact with will receive a small boost in their ranking. Additionally, your replies will receive a boost that ranks them closer to the top. Twitter Blue subscribers will appear in the Verified tab within other users’ notifications tab which highlights replies, mentions, and engagement from Blue subscribers. The rationale was that paying $8/month is the best way to filter out bots, but...
    - hutzlibu 4y ago
      Oh, so it officially is "pay to win" now. Nice. Free speech to everyone, but if you actually want to be heard, you have to pay up. At least it is somewhat honest and not, oh, we didn't meant to do this, in our effort to convince more people into paying.
      - mcv 4y ago
        So why do we still post Twitter conversations here? Shouldn't we be posting links to conversations on Mastodon instead? Or are we still somewhat addicted to Elon Musk's influence?
      - madeofpalk 4y ago
        It actually kind of has the opposite effect. Turns out the people that want to pay to have their opinions heard probably don't have great things to say, so it creates an easy demarcation in the replies. You can just ignore all the posts at the top with a blue check, and then go down to the higher quality organic posts at the bottom.
        hutzlibu 4y ago
        Thanks for the advice, but I think I will just continue to ignore Twitter. Important things will still probably reach me in embedded shape or quote on other sites, but currently I cannot remember a single tweet at all, that not reading it, would have changed my life for the worse. So no doubt good content is hidden underneath, but all this drama makes it not worth it for me.
        CiaranMcNulty 4y ago
        Blocking blue ticks also works well for this
        bleep_bloop 4y ago
        Actually Elon gifted thousands of blue ticks to any accounts that had over 1M followers and other notable accounts in order to obfuscate who paid for their tick and who did not.
  - jahnu 4y ago
    Out of all the questionable changes made it’s by far the worst. It has uniquely changed the tone of Twitter from a place where the discussion would be in some way shaped by the followers of the OP. I.e. You had some idea whether or not the replies would be interesting to you based on who was being replied to or maybe how controversial or informative the post was. It was complex but interesting dynamic. Now… it’s just a predictable hoard of of internet howler monkeys below any post that isn’t just some quiet odd corner of Twitter. It’s what is reducing my engagement and anecdotally that of anyone I know too. Even friends who decided to pay are tired of being “lumped in” with these people.
    - anonymousiam 4y ago
      So who gets the megaphone, those who support the platform, or the ideological moderators behind the scenes?
      - bandyaboot 4y ago
        It’s being passed around amongst the crypto spammers and each of the 10,000 or so “people” vying for the title of hottest 18 year old on OnlyFans.
      - jahnu 4y ago
        I’m just saying it was better before, not perfect before.
  - bjackman 4y ago
    It's so obvious when you use Twitter as to not really need confirmation. It's not like a fuzzy statistical boost, it's literally just all Blue replies come above all non-Blue replies. The only exception is that a non-Blue reply can sometimes get boosted in order to be able to show a blue 2nd-level reply. If you scroll through replies you'll often find a bunch of zero-like replies like "lol" and "me too" from Blue users, then below that a handful of insightful replies with dozens of likes, from non-Blue users. You can see why the latter are not gonna keep posting those replies much longer.
- concordDance 4y ago
  The bigger reason this reply thread will be dominated by elon musk fans is that its about elon musk and elon musk fans vs elon musk haters is the divide that gets you the biggest blue vs non-blue ratio.
- ta1243 4y ago
  > So Wales being under attack on Twitter is sad but doesn't necessarily represent "public opinion". Even before Musk took over twitter was a very specific, very tiny, slice of the English speaking world. There was a film theory a few months ago which looked at movies and trending on twitter, and dug a little deeper. Twitter for exmaple completely ignored major cultural phenomenon like Yellowstone, but really bigged up stuff the vast majority of the world doesn't care about ("the Snyder cut") Presumably this applies to pretty much any subject. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMTazviRabg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMTazviRabg https://www.summarize.tech/www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMTazviRabg https://www.summarize.tech/www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMTazviRa...
  - bjackman 4y ago
    Yeah that's definitely also true, it just became a different and (to my tastes) more objectionable slice!
- Mizoguchi 4y ago
  Right, we are now in the days of public figures like Jimmy Wales promoting Erdogan's courts and judges as a respectable arena for freedom of speech justice.
AnonCoward42 4y ago
If you put yourself on a pedestal don't be surprised if you get knocked off of it. The response from @GSR6669 resonates with me: > Wikipedia suspended edits & changed the definition of recession at request of the US Government. Everyone likes to poke holes in Elon’s Twitter yet no choice is infallible. > Throwing rocks in a glass house is what makes you a real hypocrite though.
- theK 4y ago
  This rumor about US gov intervention seems to be unsubstantiated. Where is the proof?
  - 20after4 4y ago
    Government intervention? No probably not. Politically motivated wiki editors with the power to lock pages and revert edits? Absolutely! The edit history is right there and it's plain to see for yourself: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Recession&action=history https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Recession&action=...
    - theK 4y ago
      I went through the first page of edits presented on mobile, there is some editing contention amongst multiple editors about whether the2quarter definition needs to be in the first paragraph of the summary or not (In all versions it is mentioned in the body of the page). TBH, having edited Wikipedia in the past, I've seen worse for less. The thing is, everybody is politically motivated, whether your actions directly affect an organized political party or not. Labeling these specific edits as such is not really saying anything. If there is clearer evidence of a pattern then sure, let's have at it. Until then I remain unconvinced that there is any sort of conspiracy involved here.
      - 20after4 3y ago
        Probably no conspiracy - like you say, everyone is at least a little bit politically motivated. Without invoking a conspiracy, however, it's plainly obvious that Wikipedia is a high value target for manipulation and every political party, 3 letter agency and PR firm has some incentive to obtain and maintain influence over certain Wikipedia articles. Much of the influence is actually exercised indirectly by influencing virtually every media publication that Wikipedia will accept as a valid source.

I agree that Wikipedia is one of the great success stories of the open Internet. Therefore, it is somewhat sad that Wales is being attacked from all sides in this thread.

mcv 4y ago

"This thread" on HN or on Twitter? Because I don't see him being attacked much here, but Twitter is turning into an Elon Musk echo chamber, so it's only to be expected there.

bluescrn 4y ago

[flagged]

bjackman 4y ago

Bear in mind that Twitter reply threads are now dominated by Elon musk fans, because people who pay for Twitter have their replies shown first. People who aren't willing to do that don't really bother engaging with stuff like this any more, or if they do they get buried. So Wales being under attack on Twitter is sad but doesn't necessarily represent "public opinion". I think we are in the last days of major figures like Jimmy Wales still treating Twitter as a respectable arena for public engagement.

hutzlibu 4y ago
"because people who pay for Twitter have their replies shown first" I don't really go to Twitter, so I don't know, but am curious: Is this an established fact? A quick search did not show anything official confirming this.
- concordDance 4y ago
  https://help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/twitter-blue https://help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/twitter-blue > Prioritized rankings in conversations and search: Tweets that you interact with will receive a small boost in their ranking. Additionally, your replies will receive a boost that ranks them closer to the top. Twitter Blue subscribers will appear in the Verified tab within other users’ notifications tab which highlights replies, mentions, and engagement from Blue subscribers. The rationale was that paying $8/month is the best way to filter out bots, but...
  - hutzlibu 4y ago
    Oh, so it officially is "pay to win" now. Nice. Free speech to everyone, but if you actually want to be heard, you have to pay up. At least it is somewhat honest and not, oh, we didn't meant to do this, in our effort to convince more people into paying.
    - mcv 4y ago
      So why do we still post Twitter conversations here? Shouldn't we be posting links to conversations on Mastodon instead? Or are we still somewhat addicted to Elon Musk's influence?
    - madeofpalk 4y ago
      It actually kind of has the opposite effect. Turns out the people that want to pay to have their opinions heard probably don't have great things to say, so it creates an easy demarcation in the replies. You can just ignore all the posts at the top with a blue check, and then go down to the higher quality organic posts at the bottom.
      - hutzlibu 4y ago
        Thanks for the advice, but I think I will just continue to ignore Twitter. Important things will still probably reach me in embedded shape or quote on other sites, but currently I cannot remember a single tweet at all, that not reading it, would have changed my life for the worse. So no doubt good content is hidden underneath, but all this drama makes it not worth it for me.
      - CiaranMcNulty 4y ago
        Blocking blue ticks also works well for this
        bleep_bloop 4y ago
        Actually Elon gifted thousands of blue ticks to any accounts that had over 1M followers and other notable accounts in order to obfuscate who paid for their tick and who did not.
- jahnu 4y ago
  Out of all the questionable changes made it’s by far the worst. It has uniquely changed the tone of Twitter from a place where the discussion would be in some way shaped by the followers of the OP. I.e. You had some idea whether or not the replies would be interesting to you based on who was being replied to or maybe how controversial or informative the post was. It was complex but interesting dynamic. Now… it’s just a predictable hoard of of internet howler monkeys below any post that isn’t just some quiet odd corner of Twitter. It’s what is reducing my engagement and anecdotally that of anyone I know too. Even friends who decided to pay are tired of being “lumped in” with these people.
  - anonymousiam 4y ago
    So who gets the megaphone, those who support the platform, or the ideological moderators behind the scenes?
    - bandyaboot 4y ago
      It’s being passed around amongst the crypto spammers and each of the 10,000 or so “people” vying for the title of hottest 18 year old on OnlyFans.
    - jahnu 4y ago
      I’m just saying it was better before, not perfect before.
- bjackman 4y ago
  It's so obvious when you use Twitter as to not really need confirmation. It's not like a fuzzy statistical boost, it's literally just all Blue replies come above all non-Blue replies. The only exception is that a non-Blue reply can sometimes get boosted in order to be able to show a blue 2nd-level reply. If you scroll through replies you'll often find a bunch of zero-like replies like "lol" and "me too" from Blue users, then below that a handful of insightful replies with dozens of likes, from non-Blue users. You can see why the latter are not gonna keep posting those replies much longer.
concordDance 4y ago
The bigger reason this reply thread will be dominated by elon musk fans is that its about elon musk and elon musk fans vs elon musk haters is the divide that gets you the biggest blue vs non-blue ratio.
ta1243 4y ago
> So Wales being under attack on Twitter is sad but doesn't necessarily represent "public opinion". Even before Musk took over twitter was a very specific, very tiny, slice of the English speaking world. There was a film theory a few months ago which looked at movies and trending on twitter, and dug a little deeper. Twitter for exmaple completely ignored major cultural phenomenon like Yellowstone, but really bigged up stuff the vast majority of the world doesn't care about ("the Snyder cut") Presumably this applies to pretty much any subject. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMTazviRabg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMTazviRabg https://www.summarize.tech/www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMTazviRabg https://www.summarize.tech/www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMTazviRa...
- bjackman 4y ago
  Yeah that's definitely also true, it just became a different and (to my tastes) more objectionable slice!
Mizoguchi 4y ago
Right, we are now in the days of public figures like Jimmy Wales promoting Erdogan's courts and judges as a respectable arena for freedom of speech justice.

AnonCoward42 4y ago

If you put yourself on a pedestal don't be surprised if you get knocked off of it. The response from @GSR6669 resonates with me: > Wikipedia suspended edits & changed the definition of recession at request of the US Government. Everyone likes to poke holes in Elon’s Twitter yet no choice is infallible. > Throwing rocks in a glass house is what makes you a real hypocrite though.

theK 4y ago
This rumor about US gov intervention seems to be unsubstantiated. Where is the proof?
- 20after4 4y ago
  Government intervention? No probably not. Politically motivated wiki editors with the power to lock pages and revert edits? Absolutely! The edit history is right there and it's plain to see for yourself: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Recession&action=history https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Recession&action=...
  - theK 4y ago
    I went through the first page of edits presented on mobile, there is some editing contention amongst multiple editors about whether the2quarter definition needs to be in the first paragraph of the summary or not (In all versions it is mentioned in the body of the page). TBH, having edited Wikipedia in the past, I've seen worse for less. The thing is, everybody is politically motivated, whether your actions directly affect an organized political party or not. Labeling these specific edits as such is not really saying anything. If there is clearer evidence of a pattern then sure, let's have at it. Until then I remain unconvinced that there is any sort of conspiracy involved here.
    - 20after4 3y ago
      Probably no conspiracy - like you say, everyone is at least a little bit politically motivated. Without invoking a conspiracy, however, it's plainly obvious that Wikipedia is a high value target for manipulation and every political party, 3 letter agency and PR firm has some incentive to obtain and maintain influence over certain Wikipedia articles. Much of the influence is actually exercised indirectly by influencing virtually every media publication that Wikipedia will accept as a valid source.