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>There are two ways one can "figure out a person" who rarely states their beliefs explicitly, specifically a public figure: >You can infer from their descripti

>There are two ways one can "figure out a person" who rarely states their beliefs explicitly, specifically a public figure: >You can infer from their descriptions and prescriptions about things—that's slow, takes times, but it will give you the most accurate image to the extent of the public information. See who they follow on Twitter. This feels like an appeal to tribalism against Bill. My politics are left-leaning and I sponsor Bill/Odin. I even cancelled several subscriptions to donate more monthly. I dislike the politicizing in this article as a means of deciding whether Bill's statements on Wikipedia are valid. Let his stated rhetoric be as it is written, and judge that. Bill may seem blunt, especially by his word online, but I have seen too much truly benevolent behavior from the guy in the Odin Discord server over the years not to believe he's a decent man. He's very patient with newcomers, has been inclusive to a diverse group of people in the server, and puts in a ton of work to help people focus on their needs/problems in their pursuit to becoming better programmers. The guy really cares, and has managed to attract a host of very reliable people who are uber helpful and knowledgeable. (Shoutout @Barinzaya) If you haven't tried Odin, it's worth a close look. I believe it has an insane ratio of shipped, production software to popularity for a reason. The language works. There are a lot of ideas in it which point you toward great productivity. It feels like a "common C." C is hard to collaborate with for rich GUI applications. C invites mess in the absence of very strong principles and habits, but having formed those makes for notoriously opinionated programmers. I see Odin as a language which allows "people who like C" to work together. I happen to like it more than the more popular stuff. A lot more. I'd rather use Rust if lives were at stake, but Zig is too much friction for me to still end up with an unsafe program. Odin feels just right. Whether Odin belongs on Wikipedia or not; it's inarguably popular for a programming language. You have to understand there are tens of thousands of languages, and hundreds created each year... maybe thousands more. You'd probably be irked by Wikipedia as well if you were in his position. Maybe even provoked to say some things which are highly critical of it. Personally, I think Wikipedia is a decent historical encyclopedia, but it's not at all good at "pop culture" and that's what we're talking about.

willdr 3mo ago
Encyclopedias are not designed to report on pop culture. The entire nature of an encyclopedia is to be downstream of good secondary sources, ideally academic, and summarise what those good secondary sources have said about specific topics. Side note, it is very funny that the same people lamenting the state of Wikipedia seem to be desperate to have their topic included on it. If the site sucks, why care about it so much?
- rq1 3mo ago
  Because it’s supposedly open?
  - cygx 3mo ago
    When open online spaces gain popularity, the threat of devolving into a cesspool of bigotry and misinformation rears its head. Sadly, moderation isn't optional. But how do you moderate? Do you establish your own ministry of truth? Only allow contributors with a university email address (shoutout to the arXiv)? Wikipedia decided to externalize part of the vetting process by placing formal restrictions on the sources you're allowed to collect information from. Sadly, there currently aren't any such sources for Odin.
- lerno 3mo ago
  It's funny. Today people say that of Wikipedia, as if it was trustworthy. But it used to be common knowledge to just "don't trust anything on Wikipedia". Wikipedia was never like a regular encyclopedia, it just wanted to be one. Its biggest advantage over traditional encyclopedias was its breadth and how quickly it could be updated. The trade-off was that articles could vary greatly in quality and could be edited by anyone, making accuracy less consistent than in traditionally edited reference works. So the effort to reduce breadth and say it shouldn't be updated quick... that's just strikes me (as someone fairly old) as kind of funny.
  - shash 3mo ago
    TBH, "Don't trust anything on Wikipedia" was always just stuck up posturing. Plenty of badly sourced, badly edited and biased articles in regular encyclopedias too, but because Wikipedia is contributed to by the unwashed masses, don't trust it. "Don't use Wiki as a primary source" is much more to the point - it's not meant to be. Use it to find the primaries. Also, I don't see this as "reducing breadth" so much as attempting to hold to a minimum standard of "has this been written up anywhere by someone other than the people who started it?" which isn't perfect, but it's been the stance since the beginning.
Imustaskforhelp 3mo ago
+1 I remember joining the discord server and I think that Bill even responded to me and the community was helpful!
de_nied 3mo ago
The author of this article seems quite politically driven like the mods on Wikipedia, and created it disingenuously. I feel it's an attempt to overwhelm the readers through massive amounts of text so that they are too tired to see what's being said at the beginning and end are completely unrelated.
- joenot443 3mo ago
  I got the same impression. It was pretty disappointing to realize they had an axe to grind completely unrelated to Odin or Wikipedia.
strenholme 3mo ago
Agreed. This blog entry was really good, but then it started getting really left-leaning and making leftist cancel-culture type arguments by the end. Why is it relevant that Odin’s developer follows Matt Walsh on Twitter? Would Matt Walsh really call himself a “White supremacist”, or that a label placed on him by people who don’t like Walsh? These culture war “hot takes” at the end of the article distract from what was otherwise a reasonable look at how online culture brings out people who believe conspiracy theories, don’t care about objective fact, and post content with far more heat than light.
vitaminCPP 3mo ago
I don't know men. I do hang out in the handmade Discord from time to time, and Bill has not been very kind, to say the least. Maybe I just met him on a bad day.
- leecommamichael 3mo ago
  I think “kindness” is somewhat different than what I’m referring to. I’d agree he’s not always kind.

willdr 3mo ago

Encyclopedias are not designed to report on pop culture. The entire nature of an encyclopedia is to be downstream of good secondary sources, ideally academic, and summarise what those good secondary sources have said about specific topics. Side note, it is very funny that the same people lamenting the state of Wikipedia seem to be desperate to have their topic included on it. If the site sucks, why care about it so much?

rq1 3mo ago
Because it’s supposedly open?
- cygx 3mo ago
  When open online spaces gain popularity, the threat of devolving into a cesspool of bigotry and misinformation rears its head. Sadly, moderation isn't optional. But how do you moderate? Do you establish your own ministry of truth? Only allow contributors with a university email address (shoutout to the arXiv)? Wikipedia decided to externalize part of the vetting process by placing formal restrictions on the sources you're allowed to collect information from. Sadly, there currently aren't any such sources for Odin.
lerno 3mo ago
It's funny. Today people say that of Wikipedia, as if it was trustworthy. But it used to be common knowledge to just "don't trust anything on Wikipedia". Wikipedia was never like a regular encyclopedia, it just wanted to be one. Its biggest advantage over traditional encyclopedias was its breadth and how quickly it could be updated. The trade-off was that articles could vary greatly in quality and could be edited by anyone, making accuracy less consistent than in traditionally edited reference works. So the effort to reduce breadth and say it shouldn't be updated quick... that's just strikes me (as someone fairly old) as kind of funny.
- shash 3mo ago
  TBH, "Don't trust anything on Wikipedia" was always just stuck up posturing. Plenty of badly sourced, badly edited and biased articles in regular encyclopedias too, but because Wikipedia is contributed to by the unwashed masses, don't trust it. "Don't use Wiki as a primary source" is much more to the point - it's not meant to be. Use it to find the primaries. Also, I don't see this as "reducing breadth" so much as attempting to hold to a minimum standard of "has this been written up anywhere by someone other than the people who started it?" which isn't perfect, but it's been the stance since the beginning.

Imustaskforhelp 3mo ago

+1 I remember joining the discord server and I think that Bill even responded to me and the community was helpful!

de_nied 3mo ago

The author of this article seems quite politically driven like the mods on Wikipedia, and created it disingenuously. I feel it's an attempt to overwhelm the readers through massive amounts of text so that they are too tired to see what's being said at the beginning and end are completely unrelated.

joenot443 3mo ago
I got the same impression. It was pretty disappointing to realize they had an axe to grind completely unrelated to Odin or Wikipedia.

strenholme 3mo ago

Agreed. This blog entry was really good, but then it started getting really left-leaning and making leftist cancel-culture type arguments by the end. Why is it relevant that Odin’s developer follows Matt Walsh on Twitter? Would Matt Walsh really call himself a “White supremacist”, or that a label placed on him by people who don’t like Walsh? These culture war “hot takes” at the end of the article distract from what was otherwise a reasonable look at how online culture brings out people who believe conspiracy theories, don’t care about objective fact, and post content with far more heat than light.

vitaminCPP 3mo ago

I don't know men. I do hang out in the handmade Discord from time to time, and Bill has not been very kind, to say the least. Maybe I just met him on a bad day.

leecommamichael 3mo ago
I think “kindness” is somewhat different than what I’m referring to. I’d agree he’s not always kind.