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I spent ~2 years actively editing Wikipedia for multiple hours every day. I remember taking my laptop out at airports for 20 minutes between transfers, just to

I spent ~2 years actively editing Wikipedia for multiple hours every day. I remember taking my laptop out at airports for 20 minutes between transfers, just to tweak an article or improve a source. While I originally started because I found some articles lackluster, I quickly realized how vigorous the editing process could be on controversial topics. For what simple HTML you see on the surface, you would be absolutely shocked to see how many hundreds of thousands of hours are spent to create an encyclopedia that, to be honest, is about as unbiased, astroturf-free, and low barrier of entry as you can get. It's not built with crappy automation but instead hand crafted with love and respect. I would bet my salary on Wikipedia turning to shit within a year if the editors who signed the Editor Strike[0] leave en masse. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wiki_Workers_United_solidarity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wiki_Workers_United_...

SkinTaco 5mo ago
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- mulmen 5mo ago
  [flagged]
- jfengel 5mo ago
  If you think that's bad, you should compare the pages for Genghis Khan and Mr. Rogers.
  - SkinTaco 5mo ago
    You should've checked those pages first, they're actually very neutral lol.
    - ryoshu 5mo ago
      If Ghengis Khan was raping & pillaging in 2026 his Wikipedia article might have a more modern slant.
      - deleted 5mo ago
        [deleted]
    - faidit 5mo ago
      How is the Trump or Obama article not neutral? You can literally correct them yourself if there is anything untrue or biased.
      - appreciatorBus 5mo ago
        You could correct them but the admins responsible for the slant will just revert them or debate you until you give up. https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/how-wikipedia-whitewashes-mao https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/how-wikipedia-whitewashe...
      - nekzn 5mo ago
        [flagged]
        hackyhacky 5mo ago
        > you can’t say some politician filled a country with immigrants from the third world. You can absolutely say that, if it's true. As it stands, I don't know of country "filled with immigrants", so it's possible your edits are getting revoked for being incendiary hyperbole. I'm also not aware of any politician described as racist in the first paragraph of their article. Can you indicate who you have in mind? More realistically, controversies about racism and immigration are likely to be mentioned in a section of the given article, not in the first paragraph. That strikes me as a very fair way to handle it, which conveniently disarms accusations of bias against Wikipedia.
        deleted 5mo ago
        [deleted]
        portmanteur 5mo ago
        “Filled with immigrants” will always be a subjective term. Does it need to be 100% immigrants to count as “filled”? 50%? 25%? Canadian residents, for example, as of 2021 [1], were 23% foreign-born, and further 2.5% non-permanent residents. In the five year period from 2016 to 2021, the number of foreign-born Canadians increased by 18% alone, which to me is significant growth. The number of non-permanent residents doubled from 2016 to 2021, and tripled again by July 2024 [2]. The share of third-generation+ Canadians, defined as those born in Canada to parents born in Canada, was 56% in 2021 [1]. When the 2026 census data is released next year, it’s estimated that number could be as low as 52%. [1] https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2021/as-sa/fogs-spg/page.cfm?topic=9&lang=E&dguid=2021A000011124 https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2021/as-sa/fo... [2] https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/91-215-x/91-215-x2024001-eng.htm?utm_source=chatgpt.com https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/91-215-x/91-215-x2024001...
- pesus 5mo ago
  Have you considered the differences are because those are different people who have done much different things? I don't see a strong slant either way in these articles.
  - SkinTaco 5mo ago
    Agreeing with the negative portrayal does not make it an unbiased article.
    - pesus 5mo ago
      What exactly do you see as a "negative portrayal"? And disagreeing with the supposed "negative portrayal" or disapproving/approving of the actions of one does not make an article biased.
    - louisbourgault 5mo ago
      If you think about the most salient or well covered things by the news in each of their presidencies, they're right there in the header. I'd say it's difficult to write in an unbiased sense about these issues, and given the difficulty, Wikipedia has done a decent job.
- Klonoar 5mo ago
  [flagged]
- RC_ITR 5mo ago
  It is an extremely weak argument to just post the links. Please supply actual instances of the supposed bias.
- dgacmu 5mo ago
  It is sometimes said that reality has a liberal bias. But it is literally the case that historians rank these two presidents at nearly opposite ends of the spectrum, and the article's tone seems to reflect that. Which isn't really an example of bias in Wikipedia - it is supposed to reflect what reliable sources say.
  - stogot 5mo ago
    OP’s chosen example was terrible. I’d agree with the premise, based anecdotoly but what a terrible selection of articles to prove a point. Better to link the discussion articles where the editors actively slant the articles People become more conservative as they age, so maybe the reality quote is about the young and the young edit Wikipedia more
    - kenlefeb 5mo ago
      I think people become more conservative as they get wealthier. Getting older just correlates with increasing wealth.
      - stirfish 5mo ago
        I think it's more about the way things are vs the way things "should" be. e.g "teens are going to experiment with sex, so comprehensive sex education is the best way to keep them safe" vs "Teens should not have sex, so abstinence-only education is the best way to keep them safe"
        im3w1l 5mo ago
        "The purpose of a system is what it does". Dangerous principle to apply too literally but almost always worth considering. In this case, the purpose of abstinence-only education is to increase teenage births and the purpose of modern sex education is to decrease it.
- amandare 5mo ago
  I'm not seeing what's biased about Donald Trump's article? It's all accurate info citing legal cases where he was literally convicted of things. A president being convicted of the things he's been convicted of is the story. Not mentioning it in the intro and elsewhere would be biased. Your issue seems to be not with "bias" but with how topicality of Donald Trump's actions require them to be prominent within an encyclopedia entry. Which has nothing to do with bias of the editors.
- snvzz 5mo ago
  If you think these are biased, have a load of this one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamergate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamergate https://grokipedia.com/page/Gamergate https://grokipedia.com/page/Gamergate
- 20after4 5mo ago
  Reality has a well known liberal bias¹ - Steven Colbert 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Reality_has_a_well_known_liberal_bias&redirect=no https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Reality_has_a_well_known_lib...
  - __david__ 5mo ago
    From his 2006 speech/routine at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, speaking to then president George Bush: > Now, I know there are some polls out there saying this man has a 32 percent approval rating. But guys like us, we don't pay attention to the polls. We know that polls are just a collection of statistics that reflect what people are thinking in reality. And reality has a well-known liberal bias... His whole thing was phenomenal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJ-a2KeyCAY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJ-a2KeyCAY
Wikipedianon 5mo ago
From a brief skim, the list includes pretty much all active Arbitration Enforcement (AE) admins. For those not in the loop, AE is the main mechanism to enforce civility and neutrality in contentious areas (obvious stuff like Israel-Palestine, American Politics, but also India-Pakistan, casteism, etc etc). It removes editors that are obviously only on the site to astroturf a specific belief relating to a globally controversial topic. This requires painstaking review of one's conduct and is the main reason Wikipedia is not astroturfed in the same way Reddit or other discussion forums are. If the strike goes forward, Wikipedia will have a massive realignment towards whatever political groups can amass the most accounts agreeing with them. Grokipedia would unironically become more neutral in a year.
- Pay08 5mo ago
  [flagged]
  - nvme0n1p1 5mo ago
    Considering Wikipedia has remained high quality for so long, you're going to have to expand on this. As is, it exudes the same naivety as "the building hasn't gotten robbed, so why are we spending money on security?"
    - hulitu 5mo ago
      > remained high quality That was ten years ago. Now, political stuff (countries articles for example) is biased. It really looks like CIA fact book.
      - fsflover 5mo ago
        Links?
  - HerbManic 5mo ago
    It is probably one of those things, once they are gone you will see just how effective they were.
LewisVerstappen 5mo ago
[flagged]
- idiotsecant 5mo ago
  I need you to think real hard about the second order implications of this...
- philistine 5mo ago
  Where does OpenAI take its information?
  - skissane 5mo ago
    I’ve seen cases where Wikipedia is completely missing any coverage of some topic, but AIs can cover it easily, because they are capable of doing a few web searches and pulling up relevant news articles or journal articles. Admittedly this is mainly an issue for the long tail of more obscure topics. And of course AI is still reliant on some human to produce those articles it is using as input. But Wikipedia isn’t in the picture.
- ninkendo 5mo ago
  Yeah. Also, I basically stopped visiting my building’s first floor because all the amenities I need are on my level now. I’m not sure I agree with the whole “buildings need foundations” stuff anymore.
  - paulddraper 5mo ago
    Unironically an excellent analogy
    - smersh96 5mo ago
      How could it ever be perceived as ironic?
  - LewisVerstappen 5mo ago
asixicle 5mo ago
Just want to express gratitude for you and all who contributed to a Wikipedia "hand crafted with love and respect". Your contributions will last-- some of us set up Kiwix and a local copy of pre-AI Wikipedia that we'll keep forever, GFS style. No matter what happens your work will be preserved and used.
bberenberg 5mo ago
I have a hard time with the idea that Wikipedia is unbiased when the main source in most cases is news reporting. Wikipedia is a societal form of Gell-Mann Amnesia.
- hsuduebc2 5mo ago
  This is not entirely fair. The overwhelming majority of Wikipedia is not meaningless politics, but stated facts backed by decent sources. The phenomenon you are referring to usually happens in areas where there is ideological or political friction. Sure, some articles can be biased, because staying perfectly factual in the middle of an active political debate or social change is difficult for most people. But in that case, there is still the option to edit the page or start a discussion. If something is created by a community and editable by anyone, then yes, you can safely assume that certain topics will not be perfectly unbiased. But the fact that you can see the sources, edit history, and discussions that led to a given decision is already a major advantage. Personally, I do not know a better alternative. I have a friend who told me Wikipedia is biased, so he refuses to use it. When I asked him what he uses instead, he said, completely seriously, “X is my main source of information.”
  - skissane 5mo ago
    > But in that case, there is still the option to edit the page or start a discussion. Honestly, I think on any politicised topic, that’s a waste of time - there’s a large contingent of Wikipedia editors with a shared deeply ingrained perspective that will reliably back each other up. There are better uses of one’s time than fighting such a losing battle. > Personally, I do not know a better alternative. I have a friend who told me Wikipedia is biased, so he refuses to use it. When I asked him what he uses instead, he said, completely seriously, “X is my main source of information.” I tend to use AI to surface sources and concepts, and then go read the sources for myself to verify the AI’s claims. AI has a strong tendency to e.g. misrepresent what journal articles say, but (if they are open access or otherwise available-and they generally are if an AI is citing them) you can then read them yourself and make up your own mind. AI has genuinely taught me things I didn’t know before about topics of interest to me-e.g. Islamic history-but I’m careful to verify its claims with reliable sources rather than just trusting them-which of course one should do with Wikipedia too
emilfihlman 5mo ago
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- paulddraper 5mo ago
  See: Spanish Flu
- bobanrocky 5mo ago
  [flagged]
  - oska 5mo ago
    Gentle suggestion for you to read the guidelines again https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]
- farfatched 5mo ago
  The first draft of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Barrington_Declaration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Barrington_Declaration was very biased, but over time it has been neutered. I see this as a win for Wikipedia. Though arguably it being biased during the time of its relevance achieved the goals of the original biased editors.
shrubby 5mo ago
Wikipedia is a threat to the technofeodalist AI mind shaping consortium. As long as it's reasonably decent, the AI can't go full biased without consequences, but once it's gone there's nowhere normal people can easily to go and get a good enough sanity check.
- slg 5mo ago
  If I saw this comment 5 years ago, I would have thought you were some crazy conspiracy nut. Today I read it and worry that you might be right. I wonder what I will think seeing this sentiment 5 years from now. I personally don't know if the world is on some sort of precipice. It seems like that's possibly the case. The strongest piece of evidence is that many of the rich and powerful, including those big tech leaders, are behaving like it is and that they think they're close to some sort of victory.
  - shrubby 5mo ago
    I see this as a line. Other end is concentrated power (via money, violence, manipulation,...) so something like a dollar per universal vote. Other end is one vote for each, including the future generations. Wikipedia is an obstacle for the first one that must be taken down. Perhaps one of the last barriers before the endgame. And there's no fuzzy middle option, we've (me included) have thought in our comfort for too long that us vs. them scenario that both the left and the right (at least mainstream ones) is possible. But it's now clear that there's no lukewarm at-right or green social democrat version. Only full fascism or full democracy. We might still have the time but one by one the platforms that would enable this (wiki included) keep being ingested thus making it less and less likely. But like you said five years ago this level of consciousness would have been out of the question for us both so perhaps there are more of us?
  - shrubby 5mo ago
    https://youtu.be/TaKrm5txGCQ?si=VQ3R64fSeQ9Xv_Rr https://youtu.be/TaKrm5txGCQ?si=VQ3R64fSeQ9Xv_Rr this is something I keep coming back to. It doesn't seem so fictional anymore.
  - datsci_est_2015 5mo ago
RobotToaster 5mo ago
It's certainly not unbiased, it's IMCO very prone to a pro-western bias. That said it's still the best we have for most things.
bad_username 5mo ago
> honest, unbiased, astroturf-free That is not the case, sorry. Pre-2015 Wikipedia was as honest and unbiased as we can get. Now the political, historical, philosophical segments of English Wikipedia is very biased and I cannot recommend or support it.
- thrance 5mo ago
  In what ways? Provide examples.
ssl-3 5mo ago
> I spent ~2 years actively editing Wikipedia for multiple hours every day. I remember taking my laptop out at airports for 20 minutes between transfers, just to tweak an article or improve a source. While I originally started because I found some articles lackluster, I quickly realized how vigorous the editing process could be on controversial topics. That brings to mind an interesting parallel: I spent over ~2 years actively editing Waze for multiple hours every day. I don't fly much, but I remember taking notes about changes and taking my laptop out when I had a chance (wherever I was) to correct the map to better-match reality. While I originally started because the area I edited had way too much basemap[1], I quickly realized how vigorous the editing process could be when the end goal was to provide a map of driveable roads. In some cases, the signal-to-noise ratio was so bad that I selectively nuked large parts of whole cities just to redraw them more-correctly. I was producing good results that unambiguously had better validity than what I started with. The flurry of activity had me rise up quickly through both the editor ranks, and also the role-rankings. It felt good. But eventually, I got to see my careful well-researched edits be reverted by either stupid people or stupid bots. I didn't like this; I started editing Waze to make better maps of my area so I could have better maps with which to navigate with. That was awesome, but I finished those maps. So I branched out to improve adjacent areas and finished those maps, too. That also felt awesome. I was motivated by improvement, not by competition. When the competition showed up to re-arrange my work in ways that didn't make sense, I dropped out of editing maps on Waze as a serious pastime. I don't want to actively compete; I just want to passively fix. I still fix things here or there, but months (instead of hours) will go by between edits. And that's OK, I think: It still works better than it did before I put the effort in. [1]: Oh, right. Basemap. We don't really have a single, official, freely-usable/government-supplied road map source in the US. We instead have counties doing their things with their formats, and 50 differnt states doing whatever they do, and sometimes cities with their own ways, with only the US Census Bureau's old TIGER database covering the whole gamut. That conglomerate dataset is a damned mess, and that damnednness of that mess varies from place to place, but that damned mess is what Waze had to work with for the initial map import. That initial import is known as "basemap." And TIGER is cool and all (I remember an Internet where online census-provided TIGER maps were the only online maps), but it's really geared towards census-takers. It can include every private driveway, and every cowpath -- and it can include them as regular roads. I've cleaned up thousands of square miles of basemap in my area.
866-RON-0-FEZ 5mo ago
> an encyclopedia that, to be honest, is about as unbiased, astroturf-free, and low barrier of entry as you can get. I recently read an article about a notable person. The article attacked her personal appearance as having "Mar-a-Lago Face". I'm certain it was backed up with quality "sources". The outrageous part is that description linked to a deranged multi-page article explaining what that is, written by who I assume must be the most terminally-online basement-dwelling losers on planet Earth. So I'm going to disagree with you.
- thrance 5mo ago
  Surely, you must have taken on yourself to correct this blatant mistake (that you curiously won't link to)? Can you name this "notable person"?
  - wlonkly 5mo ago
    I was also curious. It looks like it's probably Kristy Noem[1], and the citations are to The Week and the NYT: > Noem has since become one of the most prominent examples of so-called "Mar-a-Lago face", a cosmetic surgery trend among conservative women,[370][371] also known as "Republican makeup".[372] Is [370] pushing it for a biography of a living person? Yeah, probably, especially with the "one of the most prominent" and "so-called" in there. But since "Mar-a-Lago face" has its own, cited Wikipedia entry... maybe not? It's not like Wikipedians made up the term, they're citing that _others_ use that term for her. I'm not sure how I'd phrase it to say that she is a prominent example of the plastic surgery common to the Republican inner circle, and reference the "Mar-a-Lago Face" article, without attributing the phrase to her plastic surgery. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristi_Noem#Religion_and_public_image https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristi_Noem#Religion_and_publi... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mar-a-Lago_face https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mar-a-Lago_face [370] https://theweek.com/health/mar-a-lago-face-the-hottest-maga-plastic-surgery-trend https://theweek.com/health/mar-a-lago-face-the-hottest-maga-... [371] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/20/style/kristi-noem-teeth-trump-vice-president.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/20/style/kristi-noem-teeth-t... [372] https://www.thelist.com/1796655/politicians-reporters-republican-makeup/ https://www.thelist.com/1796655/politicians-reporters-republ...

SkinTaco 5mo ago

[flagged]

mulmen 5mo ago
[flagged]
jfengel 5mo ago
If you think that's bad, you should compare the pages for Genghis Khan and Mr. Rogers.
- SkinTaco 5mo ago
  You should've checked those pages first, they're actually very neutral lol.
  - ryoshu 5mo ago
    If Ghengis Khan was raping & pillaging in 2026 his Wikipedia article might have a more modern slant.
    - deleted 5mo ago
      [deleted]
  - faidit 5mo ago
    How is the Trump or Obama article not neutral? You can literally correct them yourself if there is anything untrue or biased.
    - appreciatorBus 5mo ago
      You could correct them but the admins responsible for the slant will just revert them or debate you until you give up. https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/how-wikipedia-whitewashes-mao https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/how-wikipedia-whitewashe...
    - nekzn 5mo ago
      [flagged]
      - hackyhacky 5mo ago
        > you can’t say some politician filled a country with immigrants from the third world. You can absolutely say that, if it's true. As it stands, I don't know of country "filled with immigrants", so it's possible your edits are getting revoked for being incendiary hyperbole. I'm also not aware of any politician described as racist in the first paragraph of their article. Can you indicate who you have in mind? More realistically, controversies about racism and immigration are likely to be mentioned in a section of the given article, not in the first paragraph. That strikes me as a very fair way to handle it, which conveniently disarms accusations of bias against Wikipedia.
        deleted 5mo ago
        [deleted]
        portmanteur 5mo ago
        “Filled with immigrants” will always be a subjective term. Does it need to be 100% immigrants to count as “filled”? 50%? 25%? Canadian residents, for example, as of 2021 [1], were 23% foreign-born, and further 2.5% non-permanent residents. In the five year period from 2016 to 2021, the number of foreign-born Canadians increased by 18% alone, which to me is significant growth. The number of non-permanent residents doubled from 2016 to 2021, and tripled again by July 2024 [2]. The share of third-generation+ Canadians, defined as those born in Canada to parents born in Canada, was 56% in 2021 [1]. When the 2026 census data is released next year, it’s estimated that number could be as low as 52%. [1] https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2021/as-sa/fogs-spg/page.cfm?topic=9&lang=E&dguid=2021A000011124 https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2021/as-sa/fo... [2] https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/91-215-x/91-215-x2024001-eng.htm?utm_source=chatgpt.com https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/91-215-x/91-215-x2024001...
pesus 5mo ago
Have you considered the differences are because those are different people who have done much different things? I don't see a strong slant either way in these articles.
- SkinTaco 5mo ago
  Agreeing with the negative portrayal does not make it an unbiased article.
  - pesus 5mo ago
    What exactly do you see as a "negative portrayal"? And disagreeing with the supposed "negative portrayal" or disapproving/approving of the actions of one does not make an article biased.
  - louisbourgault 5mo ago
    If you think about the most salient or well covered things by the news in each of their presidencies, they're right there in the header. I'd say it's difficult to write in an unbiased sense about these issues, and given the difficulty, Wikipedia has done a decent job.
Klonoar 5mo ago
[flagged]
RC_ITR 5mo ago
It is an extremely weak argument to just post the links. Please supply actual instances of the supposed bias.
dgacmu 5mo ago
It is sometimes said that reality has a liberal bias. But it is literally the case that historians rank these two presidents at nearly opposite ends of the spectrum, and the article's tone seems to reflect that. Which isn't really an example of bias in Wikipedia - it is supposed to reflect what reliable sources say.
- stogot 5mo ago
  OP’s chosen example was terrible. I’d agree with the premise, based anecdotoly but what a terrible selection of articles to prove a point. Better to link the discussion articles where the editors actively slant the articles People become more conservative as they age, so maybe the reality quote is about the young and the young edit Wikipedia more
  - kenlefeb 5mo ago
    I think people become more conservative as they get wealthier. Getting older just correlates with increasing wealth.
    - stirfish 5mo ago
      I think it's more about the way things are vs the way things "should" be. e.g "teens are going to experiment with sex, so comprehensive sex education is the best way to keep them safe" vs "Teens should not have sex, so abstinence-only education is the best way to keep them safe"
      - im3w1l 5mo ago
        "The purpose of a system is what it does". Dangerous principle to apply too literally but almost always worth considering. In this case, the purpose of abstinence-only education is to increase teenage births and the purpose of modern sex education is to decrease it.
amandare 5mo ago
I'm not seeing what's biased about Donald Trump's article? It's all accurate info citing legal cases where he was literally convicted of things. A president being convicted of the things he's been convicted of is the story. Not mentioning it in the intro and elsewhere would be biased. Your issue seems to be not with "bias" but with how topicality of Donald Trump's actions require them to be prominent within an encyclopedia entry. Which has nothing to do with bias of the editors.
snvzz 5mo ago
If you think these are biased, have a load of this one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamergate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamergate https://grokipedia.com/page/Gamergate https://grokipedia.com/page/Gamergate
20after4 5mo ago
Reality has a well known liberal bias¹ - Steven Colbert 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Reality_has_a_well_known_liberal_bias&redirect=no https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Reality_has_a_well_known_lib...
- __david__ 5mo ago
  From his 2006 speech/routine at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, speaking to then president George Bush: > Now, I know there are some polls out there saying this man has a 32 percent approval rating. But guys like us, we don't pay attention to the polls. We know that polls are just a collection of statistics that reflect what people are thinking in reality. And reality has a well-known liberal bias... His whole thing was phenomenal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJ-a2KeyCAY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJ-a2KeyCAY

Wikipedianon 5mo ago

From a brief skim, the list includes pretty much all active Arbitration Enforcement (AE) admins. For those not in the loop, AE is the main mechanism to enforce civility and neutrality in contentious areas (obvious stuff like Israel-Palestine, American Politics, but also India-Pakistan, casteism, etc etc). It removes editors that are obviously only on the site to astroturf a specific belief relating to a globally controversial topic. This requires painstaking review of one's conduct and is the main reason Wikipedia is not astroturfed in the same way Reddit or other discussion forums are. If the strike goes forward, Wikipedia will have a massive realignment towards whatever political groups can amass the most accounts agreeing with them. Grokipedia would unironically become more neutral in a year.

Pay08 5mo ago
[flagged]
- nvme0n1p1 5mo ago
  Considering Wikipedia has remained high quality for so long, you're going to have to expand on this. As is, it exudes the same naivety as "the building hasn't gotten robbed, so why are we spending money on security?"
  - hulitu 5mo ago
    > remained high quality That was ten years ago. Now, political stuff (countries articles for example) is biased. It really looks like CIA fact book.
    - fsflover 5mo ago
      Links?
- HerbManic 5mo ago
  It is probably one of those things, once they are gone you will see just how effective they were.

LewisVerstappen 5mo ago

[flagged]

idiotsecant 5mo ago
I need you to think real hard about the second order implications of this...
philistine 5mo ago
Where does OpenAI take its information?
- skissane 5mo ago
  I’ve seen cases where Wikipedia is completely missing any coverage of some topic, but AIs can cover it easily, because they are capable of doing a few web searches and pulling up relevant news articles or journal articles. Admittedly this is mainly an issue for the long tail of more obscure topics. And of course AI is still reliant on some human to produce those articles it is using as input. But Wikipedia isn’t in the picture.
ninkendo 5mo ago
Yeah. Also, I basically stopped visiting my building’s first floor because all the amenities I need are on my level now. I’m not sure I agree with the whole “buildings need foundations” stuff anymore.
- paulddraper 5mo ago
  Unironically an excellent analogy
  - smersh96 5mo ago
    How could it ever be perceived as ironic?
- LewisVerstappen 5mo ago

asixicle 5mo ago

Just want to express gratitude for you and all who contributed to a Wikipedia "hand crafted with love and respect". Your contributions will last-- some of us set up Kiwix and a local copy of pre-AI Wikipedia that we'll keep forever, GFS style. No matter what happens your work will be preserved and used.

bberenberg 5mo ago

I have a hard time with the idea that Wikipedia is unbiased when the main source in most cases is news reporting. Wikipedia is a societal form of Gell-Mann Amnesia.

hsuduebc2 5mo ago
This is not entirely fair. The overwhelming majority of Wikipedia is not meaningless politics, but stated facts backed by decent sources. The phenomenon you are referring to usually happens in areas where there is ideological or political friction. Sure, some articles can be biased, because staying perfectly factual in the middle of an active political debate or social change is difficult for most people. But in that case, there is still the option to edit the page or start a discussion. If something is created by a community and editable by anyone, then yes, you can safely assume that certain topics will not be perfectly unbiased. But the fact that you can see the sources, edit history, and discussions that led to a given decision is already a major advantage. Personally, I do not know a better alternative. I have a friend who told me Wikipedia is biased, so he refuses to use it. When I asked him what he uses instead, he said, completely seriously, “X is my main source of information.”
- skissane 5mo ago
  > But in that case, there is still the option to edit the page or start a discussion. Honestly, I think on any politicised topic, that’s a waste of time - there’s a large contingent of Wikipedia editors with a shared deeply ingrained perspective that will reliably back each other up. There are better uses of one’s time than fighting such a losing battle. > Personally, I do not know a better alternative. I have a friend who told me Wikipedia is biased, so he refuses to use it. When I asked him what he uses instead, he said, completely seriously, “X is my main source of information.” I tend to use AI to surface sources and concepts, and then go read the sources for myself to verify the AI’s claims. AI has a strong tendency to e.g. misrepresent what journal articles say, but (if they are open access or otherwise available-and they generally are if an AI is citing them) you can then read them yourself and make up your own mind. AI has genuinely taught me things I didn’t know before about topics of interest to me-e.g. Islamic history-but I’m careful to verify its claims with reliable sources rather than just trusting them-which of course one should do with Wikipedia too

emilfihlman 5mo ago

[flagged]

paulddraper 5mo ago
See: Spanish Flu
bobanrocky 5mo ago
[flagged]
- oska 5mo ago
  Gentle suggestion for you to read the guidelines again https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]
farfatched 5mo ago
The first draft of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Barrington_Declaration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Barrington_Declaration was very biased, but over time it has been neutered. I see this as a win for Wikipedia. Though arguably it being biased during the time of its relevance achieved the goals of the original biased editors.

shrubby 5mo ago

Wikipedia is a threat to the technofeodalist AI mind shaping consortium. As long as it's reasonably decent, the AI can't go full biased without consequences, but once it's gone there's nowhere normal people can easily to go and get a good enough sanity check.

slg 5mo ago
If I saw this comment 5 years ago, I would have thought you were some crazy conspiracy nut. Today I read it and worry that you might be right. I wonder what I will think seeing this sentiment 5 years from now. I personally don't know if the world is on some sort of precipice. It seems like that's possibly the case. The strongest piece of evidence is that many of the rich and powerful, including those big tech leaders, are behaving like it is and that they think they're close to some sort of victory.
- shrubby 5mo ago
  I see this as a line. Other end is concentrated power (via money, violence, manipulation,...) so something like a dollar per universal vote. Other end is one vote for each, including the future generations. Wikipedia is an obstacle for the first one that must be taken down. Perhaps one of the last barriers before the endgame. And there's no fuzzy middle option, we've (me included) have thought in our comfort for too long that us vs. them scenario that both the left and the right (at least mainstream ones) is possible. But it's now clear that there's no lukewarm at-right or green social democrat version. Only full fascism or full democracy. We might still have the time but one by one the platforms that would enable this (wiki included) keep being ingested thus making it less and less likely. But like you said five years ago this level of consciousness would have been out of the question for us both so perhaps there are more of us?
- shrubby 5mo ago
  https://youtu.be/TaKrm5txGCQ?si=VQ3R64fSeQ9Xv_Rr https://youtu.be/TaKrm5txGCQ?si=VQ3R64fSeQ9Xv_Rr this is something I keep coming back to. It doesn't seem so fictional anymore.
- datsci_est_2015 5mo ago

RobotToaster 5mo ago

It's certainly not unbiased, it's IMCO very prone to a pro-western bias. That said it's still the best we have for most things.

bad_username 5mo ago

> honest, unbiased, astroturf-free That is not the case, sorry. Pre-2015 Wikipedia was as honest and unbiased as we can get. Now the political, historical, philosophical segments of English Wikipedia is very biased and I cannot recommend or support it.

thrance 5mo ago
In what ways? Provide examples.

ssl-3 5mo ago

> I spent ~2 years actively editing Wikipedia for multiple hours every day. I remember taking my laptop out at airports for 20 minutes between transfers, just to tweak an article or improve a source. While I originally started because I found some articles lackluster, I quickly realized how vigorous the editing process could be on controversial topics. That brings to mind an interesting parallel: I spent over ~2 years actively editing Waze for multiple hours every day. I don't fly much, but I remember taking notes about changes and taking my laptop out when I had a chance (wherever I was) to correct the map to better-match reality. While I originally started because the area I edited had way too much basemap[1], I quickly realized how vigorous the editing process could be when the end goal was to provide a map of driveable roads. In some cases, the signal-to-noise ratio was so bad that I selectively nuked large parts of whole cities just to redraw them more-correctly. I was producing good results that unambiguously had better validity than what I started with. The flurry of activity had me rise up quickly through both the editor ranks, and also the role-rankings. It felt good. But eventually, I got to see my careful well-researched edits be reverted by either stupid people or stupid bots. I didn't like this; I started editing Waze to make better maps of my area so I could have better maps with which to navigate with. That was awesome, but I finished those maps. So I branched out to improve adjacent areas and finished those maps, too. That also felt awesome. I was motivated by improvement, not by competition. When the competition showed up to re-arrange my work in ways that didn't make sense, I dropped out of editing maps on Waze as a serious pastime. I don't want to actively compete; I just want to passively fix. I still fix things here or there, but months (instead of hours) will go by between edits. And that's OK, I think: It still works better than it did before I put the effort in. [1]: Oh, right. Basemap. We don't really have a single, official, freely-usable/government-supplied road map source in the US. We instead have counties doing their things with their formats, and 50 differnt states doing whatever they do, and sometimes cities with their own ways, with only the US Census Bureau's old TIGER database covering the whole gamut. That conglomerate dataset is a damned mess, and that damnednness of that mess varies from place to place, but that damned mess is what Waze had to work with for the initial map import. That initial import is known as "basemap." And TIGER is cool and all (I remember an Internet where online census-provided TIGER maps were the only online maps), but it's really geared towards census-takers. It can include every private driveway, and every cowpath -- and it can include them as regular roads. I've cleaned up thousands of square miles of basemap in my area.

866-RON-0-FEZ 5mo ago

> an encyclopedia that, to be honest, is about as unbiased, astroturf-free, and low barrier of entry as you can get. I recently read an article about a notable person. The article attacked her personal appearance as having "Mar-a-Lago Face". I'm certain it was backed up with quality "sources". The outrageous part is that description linked to a deranged multi-page article explaining what that is, written by who I assume must be the most terminally-online basement-dwelling losers on planet Earth. So I'm going to disagree with you.

thrance 5mo ago
Surely, you must have taken on yourself to correct this blatant mistake (that you curiously won't link to)? Can you name this "notable person"?
- wlonkly 5mo ago
  I was also curious. It looks like it's probably Kristy Noem[1], and the citations are to The Week and the NYT: > Noem has since become one of the most prominent examples of so-called "Mar-a-Lago face", a cosmetic surgery trend among conservative women,[370][371] also known as "Republican makeup".[372] Is [370] pushing it for a biography of a living person? Yeah, probably, especially with the "one of the most prominent" and "so-called" in there. But since "Mar-a-Lago face" has its own, cited Wikipedia entry... maybe not? It's not like Wikipedians made up the term, they're citing that _others_ use that term for her. I'm not sure how I'd phrase it to say that she is a prominent example of the plastic surgery common to the Republican inner circle, and reference the "Mar-a-Lago Face" article, without attributing the phrase to her plastic surgery. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristi_Noem#Religion_and_public_image https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristi_Noem#Religion_and_publi... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mar-a-Lago_face https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mar-a-Lago_face [370] https://theweek.com/health/mar-a-lago-face-the-hottest-maga-plastic-surgery-trend https://theweek.com/health/mar-a-lago-face-the-hottest-maga-... [371] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/20/style/kristi-noem-teeth-trump-vice-president.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/20/style/kristi-noem-teeth-t... [372] https://www.thelist.com/1796655/politicians-reporters-republican-makeup/ https://www.thelist.com/1796655/politicians-reporters-republ...