3 ms·

I watched an interesting video recently about how one of the ex Yugoslavia countries had their Wikipedia essentially hijacked by (quasi?) fascists. They were ab

I watched an interesting video recently about how one of the ex Yugoslavia countries had their Wikipedia essentially hijacked by (quasi?) fascists. They were able to purge all dissenting opinion after getting enough of their people moderator / admin privileges. Something to keep in mind when decentralizing moderation.

AStonesThrow 2y ago
The English Wikipedia draws the most coverage, it's the first and the largest project. But since all the per-language projects are segregated and autonomous, there's a lot of space for self-governance by speakers of extremely niche languages. Observers may be familiar with the scandal of the Scots Wikipedia: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/aug/26/shock-an-aw-us-teenager-wrote-huge-slice-of-scots-wikipedia https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/aug/26/shock-an-aw-... This was possible because (1) few others actually spoke the language, or had enough interest to maintain a Wiki of it, and (2) the small population on that project was unable to support enough vigilant and fluent administrators. The Spanish Wikipedia forked off, a long long time ago, but eswiki has made a comeback in its own right. All projects are considered autonomous, and admins from other projects are really expected to stay out of local disputes. Therefore, it's quite easy for the smaller wikis to diverge and get hijacked by special interests, especially nationalist ones. I'd say it's unavoidable with the existing governance structure.
dartos 2y ago
> Something to keep in mind when decentralizing moderation. FWIW federated isn’t decentralized. Federated instances can have whatever moderation rules without affecting all other instances, but decentralized systems usually try to achieve some kind of consensus, which isn’t necessary in federated systems.

3 ms·

I watched an interesting video recently about how one of the ex Yugoslavia countries had their Wikipedia essentially hijacked by (quasi?) fascists. They were ab

by GPerson 2y ago

AStonesThrow 2y ago
The English Wikipedia draws the most coverage, it's the first and the largest project. But since all the per-language projects are segregated and autonomous, there's a lot of space for self-governance by speakers of extremely niche languages. Observers may be familiar with the scandal of the Scots Wikipedia: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/aug/26/shock-an-aw-us-teenager-wrote-huge-slice-of-scots-wikipedia https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/aug/26/shock-an-aw-... This was possible because (1) few others actually spoke the language, or had enough interest to maintain a Wiki of it, and (2) the small population on that project was unable to support enough vigilant and fluent administrators. The Spanish Wikipedia forked off, a long long time ago, but eswiki has made a comeback in its own right. All projects are considered autonomous, and admins from other projects are really expected to stay out of local disputes. Therefore, it's quite easy for the smaller wikis to diverge and get hijacked by special interests, especially nationalist ones. I'd say it's unavoidable with the existing governance structure.
dartos 2y ago
> Something to keep in mind when decentralizing moderation. FWIW federated isn’t decentralized. Federated instances can have whatever moderation rules without affecting all other instances, but decentralized systems usually try to achieve some kind of consensus, which isn’t necessary in federated systems.