4 ms·

There are agendas there, just like in every human endeavor, but it definitely hasn't been "hijacked", it's still by far the best single repository of human know

There are agendas there, just like in every human endeavor, but it definitely hasn't been "hijacked", it's still by far the best single repository of human knowledge out there. If I had to choose one website to take with me to a desert island, it's an obvious choice. We should keep talking about the issues and improving things, but don't throw out the baby with bathwater.

komali2 9mo ago
If you can download the Talk pages and edit history, you probably have enough information to, on average, mostly be dealing with objective fact.
slfreference 9mo ago
But by claiming one thing and doing the exact opposite (on a statistical quantitative basis), Wikipedia and all other western outlets have become just a front for propaganda which is also the reason why I don't believe in "Persecution of Uyghurs in China" German Scholars Reveal Shocking TRUTH About China’s Xinjiang Province https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Fp-MZsRhKM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Fp-MZsRhKM
- tim333 9mo ago
  That video's main gripe seems to be that western media gloss over things being kicked off by islamic terrorists but from the Wikipedia: >...Uyghur terrorists killed dozens of Han Chinese in coordinated attacks from 2009 to 2016. These included the September 2009 Xinjiang unrest, the 2011 Hotan attack, the 2014 Kunming attack, the April 2014 Ürümqi attack, and the May 2014 Ürümqi attack. The attacks were conducted by Uyghur separatists, with some orchestrated by the Turkistan Islamic Party (a UN-designated terrorist organization)...
  - slfreference 9mo ago
    "The US government hates China and also hates Muslims but suddenly cares about Muslims in China" - forgot who quoted this. Compare US stance on Gaza. If media can ban discussions on gaza, can't it invent phantom genocide in Xinjiang Province? Something to think about.
- maxglute 9mo ago
  Also let's not forget "Persecution of Uyghurs in China" use to be titled "Uyghur Genocide" or some variation thereof for years. Never mind plurality of UN countries has recognized PRC actions in XJ as counter extremist/terrorists, or even among western bloc most countries did not label it as "genocide", bu somehow wiki and captured editors went with the genocide framing, aka, fucking we lie, we cheat, we steal Mike Pompeo serving as secretary of state for US geopolitical interest designation during sino-us coldwar. Because Wiki NPOV isn't based on reality but "reliable sources" which just happen to be western aligned that parrot each other to manufacture consensus / propaganda. Even "persecution of Uyghurs" still biased considering plurality of world still considers PRC actions in XJ as de-deradicalization / counterterrorism, and the numbers have only swung more in PRC favour over time - geopolitical reality is "Chinese War on Terrorism" whose causalities paled in comparison to wiki's "(Global) War on Terrorism" that would otherwise be characterized as "genocide/persecution of Iraqis/Afghans" which killed and displaced millions. Wonder if Obama would have gotten a Nobel Peace prize if that article title existed.
b65e8bee43c2ed0 9mo ago
it absolutely has been. like every online community, Wikipedia is extremely vulnerable to the terminally online and/or the mentally ill, to whom everything is political. like clockwork, every remotely political article cites opinions only from a certain perspective, often quoting glorified nobodies to assert the narrative the '''editors''' want to present. dissenting opinions, no matter how overwhelmingly common among the real people, are mentioned in passing at best and often derisively.
- philistine 9mo ago
  > mentally ill Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. That Wikipedia has been co-opted by mentally ill people is an extraordinary claim. You should provide more than feelings.
  - nephihaha 9mo ago
    Wikipedia's model does favour autistic* people and those with a lot of time on their hands. You can see this in the sheer volume of some contributions, their focuses and the invention of obscure rules and Wikipedia specific jargon e.g. peacock terms etc. * ASD is not a mental illness but it can produce quirky and obsessive behaviour.
- dataflow 9mo ago
  Links to examples would go a long way.
  - breppp 9mo ago
    https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/epdf/10.1080/25785648.2023.2168939?needAccess=true https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/epdf/10.1080/25785648.2023.2... For example, this article goes over disinformation by polish nationalists on Holocaust related articles. There's a chart with 10 editors accounting for 50% of the edits and another chart that shows disproportionately citing authors that in reality are not academically are under-cited
- tim333 9mo ago
plastic-enjoyer 9mo ago
> We should keep talking about the issues and improving things, but don't throw out the baby with bathwater. Yeah, I wonder what solution people propose that claim that Wikipedia is 'hijacked' or 'compromised' and pushing agendas? While Wikipedia is not perfect, it is the best encyclopedia we currently have, mostly due to collective efforts and maintainers that care about the state of Wikipedia. I would even say that it is a good thing that there is this transparency, that states and capital are trying to influence Wikipedia because then you know that you may take some articles with a grain of salt or can actively push against it. Every alternative to Wikipedia that I have seen so far is one that claims to be more truthful than the original, but in the end these are platforms that push agendas without the transparency and attempt to further obscure power relations under the pretext of truth. Every alternative to Wikipedia will have to solve the problems that Wikipedia already has to be a better alternative. However, I do think these are fundamental unsolvable problems and everyone who claims to have solved this is part of a power struggle over who defines what is considered true.
- flir 9mo ago
  Every discussion about wikipedia, everywhere, now attracts comments from accounts with a poor history claiming it's biased. I assume bad faith.
  - philistine 9mo ago
    It is a great example of the shaping of opinions the OP claims Wikipedia suffers from. It is a textbook example of the way the detractors of Wikipedia comport themselves. Accuse the site of of exactly what you’re doing at this exact moment.
  - brap 9mo ago
    Do I have poor history?
    - flir 9mo ago
      Probably no worse than mine. But you've got to admit, it's a heuristic that saves time.
pydry 9mo ago
I think for anything controversial we need a completely different model. Officially wikipedia is NPOV but an especially contentious and murky political mudfight decides what counts as a "citeable" source and what doesnt and what counts as notable and what doesnt. It also has an incredibly strong western bias. Every government, corporation and billionaire pays somebody to participate in that fight as well, using every dirty trick they can. Until we have a model that can sidestep these politics (which Wikipedia seemingly has no real desire to do) and aggregate sources objectively I think it will continue to suck.
- falcor84 9mo ago
  I agree with the issues, but it definitely doesn't suck if compared to every single other massive endeavor out there. As I see it, it's like that quote about democracy - it's the worst way to attempt to catalogue human knowledge, except for all those other forms that have been tried. > It also has an incredibly strong western bias. What's the issue with that? Why shouldn't English Wikipedia have a strong Western bias? I've explored and participated in several other Wikipedias and other collaborative projects, and each is biased towards the worldviews common to the culture that its main editors come from. I don't think there's a way to have an encyclopedic project without any cultural bias at all (if such a platonic ideal could even be properly defined), and seeing how Western values include a significant focus on pluralism, freedom of expression and scientific inquiry, I think this situation is much better than the alternatives.
  - pydry 9mo ago
    >I agree with the issues, but it definitely doesn't suck if compared to every single other massive endeavor out there. Compared to what? I dont really see much aggregation being done at all on Wikipedia's scale. >What's the issue with that? It's supposed to be impartial and objective and it sells itself as such but if you see how the sausage is made it is patently the exact opposite. >I don't think there's a way to have an encyclopedic project without any cultural bias at all I think it's perfectly possible to have an encyclopedia which is more liberal about allowing more sources to be used and which provides tools and metadata about those sources and gives tools to the user allowing them to filter accordingly. Whereas "Blessing" one group of sources and condemning another will inevitably turn it into a propaganda outlet for whomever controls it. You might think that this is the only way but that represents more of a failure of imagination than a lack of options.
nephihaha 9mo ago
The Scottish Gaelic Wikipedia was very much hijacked. As was the Lowland Scots one, except in the second case the individual made the news. The Gaelic one has a German guy running it who has several vanity articles and has chased most other users off apart from some government employees.

komali2 9mo ago

If you can download the Talk pages and edit history, you probably have enough information to, on average, mostly be dealing with objective fact.

slfreference 9mo ago

But by claiming one thing and doing the exact opposite (on a statistical quantitative basis), Wikipedia and all other western outlets have become just a front for propaganda which is also the reason why I don't believe in "Persecution of Uyghurs in China" German Scholars Reveal Shocking TRUTH About China’s Xinjiang Province https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Fp-MZsRhKM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Fp-MZsRhKM

tim333 9mo ago
That video's main gripe seems to be that western media gloss over things being kicked off by islamic terrorists but from the Wikipedia: >...Uyghur terrorists killed dozens of Han Chinese in coordinated attacks from 2009 to 2016. These included the September 2009 Xinjiang unrest, the 2011 Hotan attack, the 2014 Kunming attack, the April 2014 Ürümqi attack, and the May 2014 Ürümqi attack. The attacks were conducted by Uyghur separatists, with some orchestrated by the Turkistan Islamic Party (a UN-designated terrorist organization)...
- slfreference 9mo ago
  "The US government hates China and also hates Muslims but suddenly cares about Muslims in China" - forgot who quoted this. Compare US stance on Gaza. If media can ban discussions on gaza, can't it invent phantom genocide in Xinjiang Province? Something to think about.
maxglute 9mo ago
Also let's not forget "Persecution of Uyghurs in China" use to be titled "Uyghur Genocide" or some variation thereof for years. Never mind plurality of UN countries has recognized PRC actions in XJ as counter extremist/terrorists, or even among western bloc most countries did not label it as "genocide", bu somehow wiki and captured editors went with the genocide framing, aka, fucking we lie, we cheat, we steal Mike Pompeo serving as secretary of state for US geopolitical interest designation during sino-us coldwar. Because Wiki NPOV isn't based on reality but "reliable sources" which just happen to be western aligned that parrot each other to manufacture consensus / propaganda. Even "persecution of Uyghurs" still biased considering plurality of world still considers PRC actions in XJ as de-deradicalization / counterterrorism, and the numbers have only swung more in PRC favour over time - geopolitical reality is "Chinese War on Terrorism" whose causalities paled in comparison to wiki's "(Global) War on Terrorism" that would otherwise be characterized as "genocide/persecution of Iraqis/Afghans" which killed and displaced millions. Wonder if Obama would have gotten a Nobel Peace prize if that article title existed.

b65e8bee43c2ed0 9mo ago

it absolutely has been. like every online community, Wikipedia is extremely vulnerable to the terminally online and/or the mentally ill, to whom everything is political. like clockwork, every remotely political article cites opinions only from a certain perspective, often quoting glorified nobodies to assert the narrative the '''editors''' want to present. dissenting opinions, no matter how overwhelmingly common among the real people, are mentioned in passing at best and often derisively.

philistine 9mo ago
> mentally ill Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. That Wikipedia has been co-opted by mentally ill people is an extraordinary claim. You should provide more than feelings.
- nephihaha 9mo ago
  Wikipedia's model does favour autistic* people and those with a lot of time on their hands. You can see this in the sheer volume of some contributions, their focuses and the invention of obscure rules and Wikipedia specific jargon e.g. peacock terms etc. * ASD is not a mental illness but it can produce quirky and obsessive behaviour.
dataflow 9mo ago
Links to examples would go a long way.
- breppp 9mo ago
  https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/epdf/10.1080/25785648.2023.2168939?needAccess=true https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/epdf/10.1080/25785648.2023.2... For example, this article goes over disinformation by polish nationalists on Holocaust related articles. There's a chart with 10 editors accounting for 50% of the edits and another chart that shows disproportionately citing authors that in reality are not academically are under-cited
tim333 9mo ago

plastic-enjoyer 9mo ago

> We should keep talking about the issues and improving things, but don't throw out the baby with bathwater. Yeah, I wonder what solution people propose that claim that Wikipedia is 'hijacked' or 'compromised' and pushing agendas? While Wikipedia is not perfect, it is the best encyclopedia we currently have, mostly due to collective efforts and maintainers that care about the state of Wikipedia. I would even say that it is a good thing that there is this transparency, that states and capital are trying to influence Wikipedia because then you know that you may take some articles with a grain of salt or can actively push against it. Every alternative to Wikipedia that I have seen so far is one that claims to be more truthful than the original, but in the end these are platforms that push agendas without the transparency and attempt to further obscure power relations under the pretext of truth. Every alternative to Wikipedia will have to solve the problems that Wikipedia already has to be a better alternative. However, I do think these are fundamental unsolvable problems and everyone who claims to have solved this is part of a power struggle over who defines what is considered true.

flir 9mo ago
Every discussion about wikipedia, everywhere, now attracts comments from accounts with a poor history claiming it's biased. I assume bad faith.
- philistine 9mo ago
  It is a great example of the shaping of opinions the OP claims Wikipedia suffers from. It is a textbook example of the way the detractors of Wikipedia comport themselves. Accuse the site of of exactly what you’re doing at this exact moment.
- brap 9mo ago
  Do I have poor history?
  - flir 9mo ago
    Probably no worse than mine. But you've got to admit, it's a heuristic that saves time.

pydry 9mo ago

I think for anything controversial we need a completely different model. Officially wikipedia is NPOV but an especially contentious and murky political mudfight decides what counts as a "citeable" source and what doesnt and what counts as notable and what doesnt. It also has an incredibly strong western bias. Every government, corporation and billionaire pays somebody to participate in that fight as well, using every dirty trick they can. Until we have a model that can sidestep these politics (which Wikipedia seemingly has no real desire to do) and aggregate sources objectively I think it will continue to suck.

falcor84 9mo ago
I agree with the issues, but it definitely doesn't suck if compared to every single other massive endeavor out there. As I see it, it's like that quote about democracy - it's the worst way to attempt to catalogue human knowledge, except for all those other forms that have been tried. > It also has an incredibly strong western bias. What's the issue with that? Why shouldn't English Wikipedia have a strong Western bias? I've explored and participated in several other Wikipedias and other collaborative projects, and each is biased towards the worldviews common to the culture that its main editors come from. I don't think there's a way to have an encyclopedic project without any cultural bias at all (if such a platonic ideal could even be properly defined), and seeing how Western values include a significant focus on pluralism, freedom of expression and scientific inquiry, I think this situation is much better than the alternatives.
- pydry 9mo ago
  >I agree with the issues, but it definitely doesn't suck if compared to every single other massive endeavor out there. Compared to what? I dont really see much aggregation being done at all on Wikipedia's scale. >What's the issue with that? It's supposed to be impartial and objective and it sells itself as such but if you see how the sausage is made it is patently the exact opposite. >I don't think there's a way to have an encyclopedic project without any cultural bias at all I think it's perfectly possible to have an encyclopedia which is more liberal about allowing more sources to be used and which provides tools and metadata about those sources and gives tools to the user allowing them to filter accordingly. Whereas "Blessing" one group of sources and condemning another will inevitably turn it into a propaganda outlet for whomever controls it. You might think that this is the only way but that represents more of a failure of imagination than a lack of options.

nephihaha 9mo ago

The Scottish Gaelic Wikipedia was very much hijacked. As was the Lowland Scots one, except in the second case the individual made the news. The Gaelic one has a German guy running it who has several vanity articles and has chased most other users off apart from some government employees.