Well seems the war on truth has started. There is a 1984 quote about history that escapes me now.
replies(6):
You can't love the web without loving Wikipedia, so I'm wary of anyone who disrespects it.
But no seriously, having finished reading it, this article is incredibly Christian-centric and Americentric.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/25/health/nejm-prosecutor-le...
The Barack Obama article completely fails to mention many well-known scandals: Benghazi, the IRS scandal, the AP phone records scandal, and Fast and Furious, to say nothing of Solyndra or the Hillary Clinton email server scandal—or, of course, the developing “Obamagate” story in which Obama was personally involved in surveilling Donald Trump.
This is not a matter of whether you watch Fox News or not.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Benghazi_attack
They creatively censored it under the title “2012 Banghazi Attack”
Wikipedia could also stop operating as a 501c3 and incorporate.
But the typical out for these organizations are that they are not responsible for what people post. I don’t feel like that is very responsible. They already have moderation on the platform.
But Wikimedia/pedia can’t claim 501c3 status. It could spin off the political content/controversial into 501c4 which has more leeway. It can tighten editorial controls, emphasize first amendment, look at Section 230. Publish reports showing how misinformation is identified and corrected, partner with fact checking organizations.
But also if they cannot police their own content without an unpaid army of volunteers then herein lies the bigger issue with their model.
Unfortunately for Americans, it has to get worse before it can get better. Much worse.
The institutions are deeply corrupt, and have been for decades. They must be destroyed and possibly replaced. It sucks, and it will hurt. It may even possibly require an entire revolution, as many of the deeply evil US institutions such as the CIA and FBI are so deeply and tightly integrated with the federal government that it may require destruction of the state itself.
The status quo has been comfy for a lot of Americans, but the world as a whole is not a better place because Facebook and Lockheed and the US CIA exist.
This has been pending for most of a century.
What comes after will be more transparent, more fair, and more integrated with society.
That doesn’t mean that random people who don’t know who an organisation is should be giving political donations to that organisation.
In short, your logical fallacy is: whataboutism
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Edit for Fauntleroy below due to rate limit:
No. The only thing I have discussed is the accusations against actblue, which I did not bring up. I have bought up no other topics.
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Edit for deadfred: hence asking about if anyone is alleging identical behaviour from WinRed earlier. From what I have seen, they are not.
Edit 2 for deadfred: "You narrowed to ActBlue" no I did not. mikeyouse bought ActBlue up. "there is no need to go into specifics of ActBlue" yes there is - either they did what they are being accused or they did not.
https://www.trustpilot.com/review/winred.com?stars=1
It turns out the name of the political donation game is recurring donations and spammy messages. I 100% believe people donated to some random cause via act blue and didn’t realize they were signing up for recurring donations through there —- like all political fundraising arms do as evidenced by all the people complaining that WinRed incessantly removes money from their account that they didn’t authorize. But again, only 1 of the 2 is being investigated and it’s obviously a corrupt investigation so here we are.
Please donate now to show your support. It's time to fight back against this crap.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclop%C3%A9die
[1] "Show me the man and I'll show you the crime." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Give_me_the_man_and_I_will_giv...
No claims, no evidence. No sources, except "it has come to my attention" and "information received by my office".
I just feel that logically this doesn't make any sense. Having the view or even promoting the idea that a mythical creature is "gender fluid" isn't an overt political action. It doesn't help any political party or politician. There are numerous fully-compliant tax-exempt organizations that directly aid LGBTQIA+ individuals. How are these above board but having someone submit content to your organization that claims the Nure-onna might be genderfluid is crossing into the realm of politics by influencing election outcomes?
Can you walk me through how you see this playing out, step-by-step?
I want to believe!
Edit in response: The broader conversation is about weaponizing government power against political opponents, ActBlue was just one example give in many being discussed. You narrowed to ActBlue to have something you felt you could condemn safely, while ignoring the larger pattern. That selective focus is the weaponization your argument is trying to distract from.
Edit: Stepping back and noting the pattern there is no need to go into specifics of ActBlue. Especially when this VERY administration is blatantly selling access with their shill coin. Your hyper focus is a weaponized distraction, a 'gotcha' from the larger discussion. The administration does not care about corruption in fundraising, they care about targeting their opposition and shutting down any influence they have via fundraising, via information/knowledge sharing on the web, via universities with students willing to challenge the status quo.
How Trump will end up in the history books wholly depends on whether he succeeds in his attempts to curtail globalism and save the USA from becoming insolvent due to the rising debt. If the economy fails his presidency will as well and with that he'll be remembered for all the controversy around his political career. If he succeeds he'll be seen as a 'realpolitiker' who pulled the USA out of the downward spiral it had been in since ... the late 90's? The end of the cold war?
Of course there is also the chance of a large-scale conflict breaking out during his watch in which case his place in the history books also depends on how that ends.
Time will tell.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W._Bush
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_attack_on_American_cultur...
This is getting ridiculous. Is there anyone associated with this administration who does not have a record of promoting Russia's positions?
Yo dawg, I heard you like to appeal to conspiracy theory types...
Why would someone introduce lots of seemingly indiscernible edits into important articles, fully knowing that the edit history is available to anyone who wants to look?
It would make more sense to spread propaganda in a place that doesn't fully track it.
Unless the exposition of such tracking edits as an obvious smoking gun exists to be staged to look like someone else did it.
Of course, it could all be to trigger a recursive conspiracytheorypocallipse that further erodes any belief in community generated content.
What should we do, Master Anakin? There's too many of them conspiracies.
Anyone who's edited Wikipedia long enough will recognize the pattern of what I'm describing. It's not a misrepresentation.
Over the last hundred years, American military and paramilitary forces, and their vendors, have subverted transparency and democracy to turn America into a military dictatorship.
There is nothing to suggest that the fall of the United States and subsequent replacement (with whatever may come) will reverse the thousand year trend of increased education and decreased violence.
The culture of the 3.6% of people who live in the current territory of the USA will be irreparably damaged, however. This may not be entirely a bad thing, given how significant an outlier the US lifestyle is compared to the rest of the world.
There is a long legacy of authoritarian regimes attacking curious places, universities, historians, museums, books or any institution that grounds itself in reality which provides you a way to reasonably criticize authoritarian actions. Many authortarian regimes will "purge" as many of the country's intellectuals as they are able.
Wikipedia is absolutely the enemy of this administration and authoritarians everywhere in the world would love to see it's demise or collapse into chaos.
Whether the Wikipedia page for Israel says Gaza is a genocide or not, or that it's an ongoing debate matters. It matters because it influences what people think and therefore what they consent to or what they deem worth fighting for or applying resources to and that goes for just about any issue out there. If you can't read about the suffering that racism has caused, then how bad is racism really? If there are no examples of successful labor movements, then why would you hopelessly start one?
That's a fantasy. His mere existence in the position, contradicts the premise. Hillary hoped to be in a similar position...history would have also been kind to her, despite her vicious nature by the obvious virtuous implications (a woman can become POTUS).
We can see similar problems with other sites that rely on volunteer labor, like Reddit.
There's certain individual or group that edited under the name "Icewhiz", was banned, and now operates endless sockpuppet accounts in the topic area to influence Wikipedia's coverage on the Middle East. One of them was an account named "Eostrix", that spent years making clean uncontroversial edits until one day going for adminship.
Eostrix got 99% approval in their request for adminship. But it didn't matter, because an anonymous individual also spent years pursuing Eostrix, assembling evidence, and this resulted in Eostrix's block just days before they became a Wikipedia administrator.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investiga...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Arbitration_Com...
It's a useful contrast to a place like Reddit, where volunteer moderators openly admit to spreading terrorist propaganda or operating fake accounts when their original one gets banned. You don't get to do that on Wikipedia. If you try, someone with far too much time on their hands will catch you because Wikipedia doesn't need to care about Daily Active Users and the community cares about protecting a neutral point of view.
Not denying the existence of influence campaigns. There have been several major pro-Palestinian ones recently, which is probably why this letter has been sent. But the only reason you know about them is because Wikipedia openly fights them instead of covering them up. Most social media websites don't care and would rather you don't bring it to their attention. That is why Reddit banned /r/bannedforbeingjewish.
So, is it better than reddit? I agree, probably. That bar doesn't seem very high though.
Part of the issue with gamergate discussion is that there's a lot of vapid perspectives along the lines of "it's just video game journalism who cares" which allows an infinite amount of bad behavior, dishonesty and manipulation in the name of an abstract greater good. I believe it was used as a prototype for future wikipedia manipulation for "more important" topics.
Oh shit! That happened already, didn't it? How is it going at attracting talented individuals?
We should remember that anti-wikipedia propaganda exists for decades now. Despite of that, it is a place cherished by many (including non commies). Its demise would be a public disaster.
Hoarders will maintain copies of it. And if there is bias, there will be tons of biased bootlegs around.
Further investigation would be more wise than rapid decisions by instinct.
> In view of public criticisms, including those expressed by Wikipedia Co-Founder Dr. Lawrence M. Sanger, regarding the opacity of editorial processes and the anonymity of contributors, what justification does the Foundation offer for shielding editors from public scrutiny?
Larry Sanger has been criticizing Wikipedia for more than 20 years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Sanger#Criticism_of_Wiki...
The author of that letter is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Martin_(Missouri_politician... - "the first U.S. attorney for D.C. in at least 50 years to be appointed without experience as a judge or a federal prosecutor".
You've cherry-picked a few bogeymen.
What about Norman Borlaug, Bell Laboratories, the Gates Foundation, Margaret Sanger and the Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology?
“ Lawrence Mark Sanger (/ˈsæŋər/ ⓘ;[1] born July 16, 1968) is an American Internet project developer and philosopher who co-founded Wikipedia along with Jimmy Wales. Sanger coined Wikipedia's name, and provided initial drafts for many of its early guidelines, including the "Neutral point of view" and "Ignore all rules" policies.”
Wikipedia hasn't shifted particularly Left since 2020. Centrists are just blind to shifts of the Center. it's the political equivalent of the equivalence principle.
When Gamergate went to the Arbitration Committee over certain individuals pushing a point of view, a ton of "anti-Gamergate" people that were trying to take over the article and prevent pro-Gamergate editors from having an impact got banned.[1] This was in 2014, when people advocating against these leftist journalists were seen as fringe and meaningless.
If the WMF got eliminated tomorrow, the gap will probably get filled by a big for-profit tech site. You'll get a bunch of leftist (because they don't have jobs) volunteer moderators with an agenda. The company will provide zero oversight and ban you for criticizing those moderators because it could cause bad publicity. Reddit is a low bar but that's what the Wikipedia replacement will be.
It's incredibly short-sighted, especially from a right-wing perspective.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests...
The ADL and other Jewish organizations have pointed out that aside from articles about Israel that articles about or mention Jewish topics generally have been editing with disinformation or that made Jews out to be the aggressors.
I agree with you that in order to believe in the ideals of liberal democracy that we must have a core belief in truth. And it's absolutely true that the Trump administration has taken a position that is deeply chilling on the issue of speech. It's clear they want to be the sole arbiters of what "truth" is and they want to use their power to manipulate the reality.
All that said, I cannot as a Jew ignore the fact that Wikipedia is not in itself neutral, and that "more eyes" does not negate systemic bias. What I've seen as a Jew is what the true meaning of marginalized minority is, which is to say that if you are truly a minority and truly marginalized then in a vote of "truth", your reality will be dismissed if it conflicts with the vast majority, and that Jews are only 0.2% of the world population.
While I brought it up, I am not debating the issue of antisemitic bias in Wikipedia[1] as anything other than an illustration of your point of objective truth being true, but also that we can't simply rely on the wisdom of the crowd to materialize that truth.
To preemptively address the issue that's bound to come up when I post this- I'm not arguing that the evils of silencing the entire Wikipedia project are equal to or a fair response to Wikipedia's antisemitic bias. I do believe Wikipedia needs to address its bias problem and that's best done through internal reform.
Two wrongs don't make a right, nor are two wrongs always of equal weight.
[1] Firstly because my point is separate, and secondly because I've encountered the exact issues I've found in Wikipedia elsewhere, which is why I'm sure I'll be voted down.
FTFY. If you go dig deeper at foundation.wikimedia.org you'll inevitably come across an Israeli court document describing systemic smear defamation and libel campaign mounted by toxic editors against an academic, which lasted around a decade.
Acting like they are the same shamefully diminishes the previous administrations actions, which is particularly dangerous since their documented suppression of the now widely accepted lab leak theory has resulted in little action to prevent further illegal gain of function research. Its inevitable we will face yet another worldwide pandemic in the next decade or so while this careless research continues without proper safety controls or scrutiny.
Really need a viable means to fight it, say allowing an elected official's constitutes being able to sue them for no less than $10,000 for incidence of bearing false witness. Help erode the dark money networks.
Also having a 4th branch of Governments, the people with State and Federal binding resolution, would help. Only way to overrides those in power is to unionize the will.
What do you consider a leftist? Why do you think they don't have jobs?
I agree that Icewhiz is an Emmanuel Goldstein-like figure at this point who's used by pro-Hamas editors/ultranationalists. A bunch of those pro-Palestinian editors that loved to complain about Icewhiz to deflect from their own behaviour were topic-banned from Israel-Palestine area a few months ago in January.[2]
It's challenging to deal with the Israel-Palestine conflict on any website that allows for user contributions. There's astroturfing and nation-state backed influence operations from probably a dozen countries. I don't think there's any website that has successfully navigated that minefield as well as Wikipedia.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests...
[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests...
Regardless - whether you choose to describe Sanger's early involvement with Wikipedia as a "founder" or not, 2002 was a long time ago, especially online. The site which he was involved with was very different from the one which exists today.
We're talking about long-term cycles of change here so it is difficult to opine with certainty leaving a lot of room for differing opinions. Unfortunately, however, I think the end of Pax Americana will usher in increased conflict and violence, particularly in the West which has experienced a long period of peace due to American dominance.
Today, not so much. I can’t remember where I read it, but there was an analysis of just one topic where it was shown that circular referencing was used to establish a narrative.
Coming back to the point at hand: the US attorney targeting Wikipedia is merely restating allegations which have been made by many others on Wikipedia’s biases for and against certain topics and individuals.
Read it for yourself.
IA is at risk too.
Well said.
Hannah Arendt wrote a great book about this, but it sounds like you might have already read it.
Power corrupts...
They also position things in such a way that implies antisemitic things, such as saying that Zionism is only 200 years old, or discussing the Israel wars only or primarily through an Arab lens.
These biases around Jewish topics are small individually but large in aggregate, especially in how they present Jews and Jewish topics.
Multiple Jewish and civil rights organizations have done a more comprehensive job at discussing this, even organizations who don't usually agree on things. While they talk about "anti-Israel bias" Wikipedia articles on or mentioning Zionism (80% of Jews are Zionist) are IMHO just as, if not more damaging, and demonstrate the issue.
Most importantly though, talk to the Jews in your life about this. They will tell you.
https://www.worldjewishcongress.org/en/news/wikipedia-entrie...
https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/article-846563
https://cameraoncampus.org/blog/seven-tactics-wikipedia-edit...
https://www.adl.org/resources/report/editing-hate-how-anti-i...
https://www.standwithus.com/post/it-s-time-to-correct-wikipe...
https://www.piratewires.com/p/how-wikipedia-s-pro-hamas-edit...
Once one believes that those who disagree with them are "pro-genocide", then they can easily dismiss anything the other has to say say or any view they have, since they're functionally dehumanized.
I would ask that, if you can, try to consider that there are nuances, and that using triggering language does not bring understanding, it only amplifies conflict.
That said, this conversation has been too difficult for me, and I'm not going to engage with you on it further.
I agree this was a terrible move on the ADL's part, and there have been others, but you're essentially labeling the oldest anti-hate group "fascist" because you disagree with one statement they made.
This dismisses any concerns they raise, or if someone else says the same as them, then they too must be pro-facist.
Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data.
https://emilygorcenski.com/post/on-truth/
""But one of the most significant differences critical for moving from polarization to productivity, is that the Wikipedians who write these articles aren’t actually focused on finding the truth. They’re working for something that’s a little more attainable, which is the best of what we can know right now. "
Not defending it, but just saying that being on RT doesn't necessarily imply anything.
These things are complicated. Alex Jones and Michio Kaku were both on Genesis for instance https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genesis_Communications_Netwo...
We have the capability of being adults here. Whether we are or not is always a choice.
There's a survivorship bias in play here as we don't have a good other sample or more to compare to. After Wikipedia went big in the 2000s it was for a very long time a de-facto monopoly for people seeking out reference information on the Internet. Even Google's Knol project, which was intended to be a Wikipedia competitor, faltered after a few years. Same goes for Everipedia as well.
This is false. The talk page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Gamergate_(harassment_cam... lays it out clearly: because of the nature of Gamergate (misogynist harassment campaign), the page about Gamergate is heavily scrutinized in order to make sure that all source cites follow the same reliable-source rules that are in force across all of Wikipedia. Please don't lie about Wikipedia.
https://manhattan.institute/article/is-wikipedia-politically...
The US system was never designed to be fair to individuals in the first place, pointing at it as a failure of democracy is IMHO pulling the actual issues under the rug.
Yes, it might only take a small number of votes in the right place, but either you somehow know the right place, or you have to move a lot of votes.
There's a reasonable discussion to be had along the lines of 'these guys seem to be doing everything they whine about', but could they get a big operation done without a) bragging openly about it, b) leaving a big trail, or c) having a falling out with a conspirator who then tells all.
Adding on, certainly gerrymandering and voter supression laws affect voting results, but I have trouble calling that stealing an election.
That's not definitive, to be sure. But it's sufficient for me to believe that we did this to ourselves. Now all we can do is figure out how we're going to get through it.
https://www.youtube.com/live/kdvpXxXVyok?si=XALuK7No9-PLQBAr...
And the times I've brought up the fact that Wikipedia can be unreliable before, I've had numerous editors come in and claim that wasn't true and that people could rely on the claims they find in Wikipedia. This runs counter to the claim that Wikipedia editors know about these influence campaigns and openly fight about them. A lot of the active and vocal editors are openly dismissing such concerns.
Pages where I can spot inconsistencies are often controversial, with long dense discussion pages, edits here are almost impossible beyond trivial details. I dont mind fixing trivia, but not if the actual improvement I think I can make is rejected.
There is a bit of a deletionist crusade to keep some topics small, for example, Ive had interesting trivia about a cameras development process simply deleted. Maybe it is truly for the better, but it is not really that easy to add to the meat of the project, without someone else's approval.
Third, the begging banners really feel a bit gross; I know the size of the endowment, and how long it would be able to sustain the project (forever essentially)... It really feels like the foundation is using the Wikipedia brand to funnel money to irrelevant pet causes. This really puts me off contributing.
If your taxable income was $50,000 and you donate $10,000, and (some other conditions) your taxable income would now be $40,000; same as if you managed to move the money pre-tax.
However. If you donate aprechiated capital assets, you get two benefits. Your taxable income is offset by the value of the asset, and the capital gains disappear. It's much better than selling the asset and donating the proceeds; and it's handy if you don't have good records for your cost basis.
It’s not supposed to have many rules (according to the Jimbo gospel), but admins apply policy pages as law , and given how many inane and convoluted policies there are, you can be censured for practically anything with the right quote. You can see these sockpuppet brigades watching and pouncing on the edit history of any semi controversial page.
It’s a pathetic monoculture that lacks any self awareness or sense of introspection. Critical discussions are quickly shut down and the authors are put into a penalty box.
Leadership needs to address the power dynamics, and come up with a better self regulating structure. Editors need to identify themselves and their agenda. Networks & brigades need to be monitored and shutdown using activity tracking.
Wikipedia’s social network is operating with 1990s era protocols but their influence via syndication on every common news surface means they are way too influential. Google, Alexa, LLMs and mainstream media all syndicate Wikipedia content as gospel. But the content is completely unregulated.
And don’t get me started on Wikimedia Foundation.
What seems to be overlooked in these conversations is the skill with which American voters have been disenfranchised by partisan forces.
It’s easy to blame people for not voting if you ignore the real difficulties in actually casting a vote for many Americans.
I'm not sure who's claiming that here. The RT appearance in question is about him spreading disinformation and Russian propaganda on the eve of Ukraine invasion.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Rhododendrites#Don...
I think wikipedia's approach of centralizing in one place but allowing downloading backups and making all sourcecode and server config public is better. If the worst happens anyone can setup a fork.
https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/reliable-sources-how-wik...
I can’t read the WP article because it’s paywalled, however I have been suspicious of Wikimedia for a long time. I used to donate to them thinking I was helping to keep the severs running, then being alarmed to find the money was going on all sorts of nonsense. The former CEO (Maher) was blatantly a political/intelligence operator. Fits the pattern of the establishment/powers-that-be abusing the NGO/non-profit sector to illicitly further their aims, so I’m not surprised the new DoJ are looking into them.
Yes, of course NPR is more on the side of democrats than republicans.
But, it is very much pro-business, and often pro-war status quo ("right"). And, as I mentioned ("identity politics"), also very much pro-diversity in race/gender/etc. ("left").
So, IMHO, very much "centrist", not "left" (except on race/sex/gender).
I would also note that the last straw for companies like Parler was involvement in a violent attempt to overthrow the government whereas in this case the objection appears to be constitutionally-protected speech. Again, those are nowhere near comparable situations. Where is something like, say, going after a right-wing non-profit because they published content which criticized Biden?
It reads like a cartoon. Everything from China is loaded with secret spyware snooping on you for countless unspecified evils - everything out of Russia by anyone is part of some secret global propaganda network.
I point it out as absurd and reductive whenever I see it and people dogpile on me like I desecrated a sacred cow.
The world is incredibly complex and a simple label doesn't cut it. Wernher von Braun was a Nazi but that doesn't mean his work on rocketry was fictional lies.
You need to assess things based on the merits of the thing, not on any narratives of attributive associations you're choosing to assign.
Authority is never legitimate. Those that claim special rights to it because they bring "truth" or "reason" are the most suspect of them all.
> Many authortarian regimes will "purge" as many of the country's intellectuals as they are able.
This is a letter not the killing fields.
> It matters because it influences what people think
That people find this a defensible position and believe that just finding the "right editors" or "true guardians" can vouchsafe this poor outcome for humanity is always surprising to me.
Shouldn't people have access to reported information and then come to their own educated conclusions?
> If there are no examples of successful labor movements, then why would you hopelessly start one?
The existence of Wikipedia is a convenience and perhaps not one that should be given tax free status. I think the selected history of labor movements will be just fine.
Even if Wikipedia died tomorrow because of one letter you could still walk into any bookstore in America and buy a book on any subject you want.
Plus, you are saying it like all propaganda is somehow the same. Rosie the Riveter != "Russia isn't going to do anything...well, it's America's fault...NATO something something...actually, Ukraine basically deserved it."
https://www.propublica.org/article/ed-martin-trump-interim-d...
It's always projection with the MAGA crowd
It's a pretty simple case of Wittgenstein's ruler for me. It tells me more about ADL as an org than the content.
This has been the pattern for awhile now. The pool of politically unengaged people are especially Trumpy compared to regular voters: https://abcnews.go.com/538/vote-back-trump/story?id=10909062...
“Gerrymandering” also has no effect on Presidential elections. And in 2024, Republicans won a larger share of the House popular vote than their share of House seats.
https://commonslibrary.org/authoritarianism-how-you-know-it-...
What are the Top 10 Elements of the Authoritarian Playbook?
1. Divide and rule: Foment mistrust and fear in the population.
2. Spread lies and conspiracies: Undermine the public’s belief in truth.
3. Destroy checks and balances: Quietly use legal or pseudo-legal rationales to gut institutions, weaken opposition, and/or declare national emergencies to seize unconstitutional powers.
4. Demonize opponents and independent media: Undermine the public’s trust in those actors and institutions that hold the state accountable.
5. Undermine civil and political rights for the unaligned: Actively suppress free speech, the right to assembly and protest and the rights of women and minority groups.
6. Blame minorities, immigrants, and “outsiders” for a country’s problems: Exploit national humiliation while promising to restore national glory.
7. Reward loyalists and punish defectors: Make in-group members fearful to voice dissension.
8. Encourage or condone violence to advance political goals: Dehumanize opposition and/or out-groups to justify violence against them.
9. Organize mass rallies to keep supporters mobilized against made-up threats: Use fearmongering and hate speech to consolidate in-group identity and solidarity.
10. Make people feel like they are powerless to change things: Solutions will only come from the top.
https://results.aec.gov.au/27966/website/HouseInformalByStat...
This article contains a fun breakdown of the types of informal votes including a category for "the usual anatomical drawings" (0.7% of informal votes):
https://www.crikey.com.au/2025/04/22/2025-federal-election-p...
It is important to point out that Russian propaganda is actually excellent propaganda. However, their message is the at the very bottom:
There is no truth, up is down, nothing matters, the invader is the victim, etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_propaganda_in_the_Russia...
I would really like you to read this back to yourself and think about it deeply, really deeply.
Stop trying to make everything equal.
https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/reliable-sources-how-wik...
"Reliable Sources: How Wikipedia Admin David Gerard Launders His Grudges Into the Public Record"
https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/reliable-sources-how-wik...
Who has claimed all Russians are part of a large propaganda network. This is about a government news network.
If you can generalize about non-voters, it’s that they’re broadly more anti-institution than voters—which is what causes them to put less stock in the institutional practice of voting. In the U.S. in the Trump era, that has meant that non-voters or infrequent voters support Trump somewhat more strongly than regular voters.
Even if it ends up supporting causes I agree with, why would I need the Wikimedia Foundation as an intermediary? I could just give money directly to the causes!
Pretend I want a snack, I can choose between a cookie and an apple. If I dislike both then I also have the option to not get a snack. Neither is selected.
This is different from not voting because a candidate still wins.
It is obvious that Wikipedia admins communicate with each other. The fact that Aljazeera is referenced is also okay.
In fact, this is not the official Israeli narrative, it seems rather trustworthy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli%E2%80%93Palestinian_co...
900+ upvotes
- it has nothing to do with tech
- it's about a hot button political issue
- it helps the Republican cause.
Not flagged
what about evidence?
Because it's a convenience?
The Internet Research Agency explicitly focused on the masses.
This is like citing an entire book to prove a point.
Your first statement is a sweeping generalization that you can't prove
This is the equivalent of stating that dinosaurs evolved into birds then when asked for one piece of evidence directing a person to a book, by another author, on how dinosaurs evolved into birds
https://history.yale.edu/news/timothy-snyder-has-been-awarde...
Apparently Snyder received the Hannah Arendt Prize for Political Thought.
He quotes her here: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2017/04/preparing-for-an...
After the Reichstag fire, political theorist Hannah Arendt wrote that “I was no longer of the opinion that one can simply be a bystander.” Courage does not mean not fearing, or not grieving. It does mean recognizing and resisting terror management right away, from the moment of the attack, precisely when it seems most difficult to do so.
I don't think it is was that hard to vote. That is a straw man to avoid facing the hard truth of American apathy. Now next election, perhaps we can have a conversation on that point. Things a trending rather poorly right now.
It can never be 0 and every country will have a minimum requirement, but the degree to which it is done in the US is far ahead of most western country.
Gerrymandering has an effect on the criteria for voter eligibility, the voting rules in the state etc. It's not direct but who's in power has a sizeable effect on who will have an easier time voting.
If nothing else, that establishes a willingness to tamper with elections.
My edit was reverted, twice, because apparently there is no such thing as a notable source for lines from a 1980s British TV episode, not even a fan website that has a transcript for all of them. Gave up after that.
In the modern era, we should probably narrow the franchise, instituting civics tests and restricting voting to natural born citizens. Statistically, both of these would have hurt my party in 2024, so this isn’t self-interest speaking.
I agree but it doesn't actually matter. 97% can vote by mail, early, or another method besides election day according to this article https://www.cbsnews.com/news/map-early-voting-mail-ballot-st...
>There is no incentive when there are known costs... is the result of the tyranny of indifference.
What is the cause of the Indifference in your opinion ?
All the pro-Palestinian anti-Israel country would be enemies of the US then, including Japan. You’d be supporting Trump’s tariffs and anti-China us or them stance then towards every country that has friendly business relations with China, which is everybody at this point. Heck, even Taiwan and China are friends more than Westerners would like to think. Meanwhile, America is friends with countries like Saudi Arabia and countries that keeps a blind eye to the funding of terrorism in America
There’s a reason the famous saying is “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” rather than “the friend of my enemy is my enemy”
No. His complaint is:
> The Barack Obama article completely fails to mention many well-known scandals: Benghazi
Visit:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama
Read:
> Libya
> Main articles: 2011 military intervention in Libya and 2012 Benghazi attack
> In February 2011, protests in Libya began against long-time dictator Muammar Gaddafi as part of the Arab Spring. They soon turned violent. In March, as forces loyal to Gaddafi advanced on rebels across Libya, calls for a no-fly zone came from around the world, including Europe, the Arab League, and a resolution[378] passed unanimously by the U.S. Senate.[379] In response to the passage of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973 on March 17, the Foreign Minister of Libya Moussa Koussa announced a ceasefire. However Gaddafi's forces continued to attack the rebels.[380]
> On March 19, a multinational coalition led by France and the United Kingdom with Italian and U.S. support, approved by Obama, took part in air strikes to destroy the Libyan government's air defense capabilities to protect civilians and enforce a no-fly-zone,[381] including the use of Tomahawk missiles, B-2 Spirits, and fighter jets.[382][383][384] Six days later, on March 25, by unanimous vote of all its 28 members, NATO took over leadership of the effort, dubbed Operation Unified Protector.[385] Some members of Congress[386] questioned whether Obama had the constitutional authority to order military action in addition to questioning its cost, structure and aftermath.[387][388] In 2016 Obama said "Our coalition could have and should have done more to fill a vacuum left behind" and that it was "a mess".[389] He has stated that the lack of preparation surrounding the days following the government's overthrow was the "worst mistake" of his presidency.[390]
The link is there (I don't know how long it's been there but don't care to investigate), but there is no text about the Benghazi attack on the US Embassy - just other topics. Many people can and would criticize Barack Obama and his then-Secretary of State for inaction to protect the embassy from an attack the embassy saw coming.
Most discussions are of the war in Ukraine which also connects to US politics. It's going to be negative and treated extremely suspect because Putin is ex KGB, lied that he wouldn't invade, the war itself, and their influence in US elections.
This is about the Russian government though. If your argument is that it's wrong in these constraints then I disagree but your generalization is valid. My original comment was about Russia as a whole but I think I wrong to try to shift to that as it doesn't come up
I wouldn’t be surprised to see America sell weapons to Russia, and provide them military support in the future when they launch their next invasion.
I used to like Wikipedia but I'm changing my mind. One thing amongst many others was seeing some company that competed with the startup I worked in basically introduce marketing material into the site. It just feels like it's too big and there are too many interests that want to distort things. I was surprised to see some article recently removed effectively rewriting history and directing to some alternative version. I just checked again and it's been restored but it just seems like the wild west.
I'd need some serious convincing to restore my trust in it. There are still some good technical/science articles I guess. It kind of sucks that instead of getting more reliable information on the Internet we're trending towards not being to trust anything. It's not clear how we fix this since reliability can not be equal to popularity.
I guess it can have different interpretation.
Either way I'd really prefer not to see this stuff on Hacker News. We have enough things that push people buttons in other places.
Last time I tried to do that, I flagged a citation that went to a book saying the opposite of what wikipedia was citing it in support of as "failed verification".
This attracted the attention of an editor, who showed up to revert my flag, explaining that as long as the book exists, that's good enough.
Wikipedia could improve noticeably by just preventing the existing editors from making edits.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052970204712904578090... - "What we now know—and still don't—about President Obama's 9/11." is pretty good too.
In fairness, this does mean the system is working.
If only people can have commitments to truth, which organization, institution, or media do you think has a leader that seems to have a commitment to truth, especially truth in their institution? Who is our gold standard of "as good as it gets"?
No amount of shouting from the rooftops that this time was actually different convinced anyone. I can't really blame us collectively, we resoundingly voted for this— it's as much of a mandate you're likely to ever get in the US and we're in the find out stage of fucking around.
Looking back on old social media posts the theme is that everyone, supporters and not, were high on copium that Trump would do <list of things I like | aren't so bad> and the <list of truly terrible things> was just obviously crazy and wouldn't actually happen or were a joke.
Source for that? My impression is that Democracy Now!, while it has a clear perspective and set of biases, has been fairly independent. I don't think Goodman herself would be involved with them, but I think some of her sometimes guests have been.
In general I agree with folks replying to you that RT is not trustworthy and someone being involved with it is a red flag.
Are you asserting that it is standard that Americans are writing and moderating all of these articles in other languages?
Well that is apparently very false when it comes to american politics and jewish matters. On the positive side, for other countries and languages the biases are very different and quite wide ranging.
Maybe this threat by the US government is a good thing, it will force wikipedians to take their head out of the sand and go back to wide-ranging NPOV , and remove all those judgemental adjectives and epithets that are thrown around in so many articles.
I don't believe the idea of wikipedia can be threatened because it is a really resilient idea across political lines and there are billions who will want to recreate it.
What does "heading in a totalitarian direction" mean in this context exactly?
I'm not trying to use this as a "cherry pick" but this was news from today: "Trump administration reverses abrupt terminations of foreign students’ US visa registrations
DOJ announced the reversal in federal court after weeks of intense scrutiny by courts and dozens of restraining orders issued by judges."
How is this consistent with your theory/hypothesis?
I think what's important is not to look solely at evidence supporting your idea. The important thing is to find things that disprove your idea. That's the scientific method. I.e. finding something that weakens your hypothesis is what you need to look for. If you're not able to find anything at all disproving your theory then we should be really worried but I think there are actually many things going on that are consistent with a functioning democracy. Keep in democracy doesn't necessarily mean acting in ways that you consider to be good. You might think it's crazy to make deep cross cuts in the government but if this is what people voted for then maybe that can play out. Yes, it seems arbitrary and maybe important things are being cut, which is no different than what you'll see when companies do layoffs. But there's also a lot of resilience. At least I don't think it's anti-democratic to run on a platform of reducing government costs and then act on it. If anything the opposite. It might be really bad, but democratic, or it might end up being a good idea. Another example is you probably think it's crazy for the US to abandon Ukraine. I don't like that either but the US government can set foreign policy and it was reasonably clear that's the way they were going to go before the elections. Is this good for the world? I don't think so. Is it anti-democratic. I don't think so either. How will it play out? Who knows.
I would say that Trump is pushing the limits of presidential powers more than others before him. Some of the actions his administration is taking are borderline anti-democratic and borderline legal. But many of them are actually legal and some others will work their way through the courts. Even the Supreme Court which is generally right leaning has rebuked Trump and will likely not blindly side with him.
I'm not a fan of this administration but at least so far it doesn't look like it's the end of democracy in America. That seems like fear mongering. I think the "opposition" would be better off trusting democracy more, highlighting how its policies contrast with the current government policies, the problems it would solve better for Americans compared with the current government etc. This is probably going to end up being better for America's democracy in the long run. The erosion of democracy is partly due to the incessant attacking and divisiveness/polarization. Focus on common ground which I think is actually larger than what most think and trying to let better ideas win vs. being critical of everything is better. Not that you shouldn't speak out against obviously bad actions but it seems we are just 100% focused on attacks.
The US states also have a lot of power. The citizenry have a lot of power. Senate/congress. Courts. I think you guys will be fine but let's see how it goes. To me the bigger risk is the loss of common ground and polarization. If you have half the country basically feeling the other half is the enemy rather than debate policies that's something that can lead to trouble.
So really it isn't enough to identify something as Russian propaganda - it is necessary to analyse whether it is propaganda of the accurate and informative variety, or the inaccurate variety.
Propaganda really just means someone is arguing a viewpoint. The BBC is classic propaganda, but nonetheless a pretty reliable source of information and a lot of the views are very agreeable.
1. Is all of us, on the "right" or the "left". Let's not do this.
2. Here you could say maybe the government is doing a little. But I would still say most of the lies and conspiracies that are reverberating in our society are not originating from there. This is like 95% on all of us (or social media). 5% you can maybe blame Trump.
3. I don't really see this happening yet.
4. I would say the "left" has been demonizing the right very effectively. But sure, goes both ways. This just seems to be standard for political debate today (it's the end of the world if those guys get power). I think it's mostly up to us to push back against this. So if you're a democrat push back against casting Trump as a dictator (I don't think he is) and if you're a republican push back against all this "stop the steal" and "lock her up" whatever nonsense.
5. Not happening IMO.
6. I guess Trump is blaming illegal immigrants for the rise in crime. I don't think is is a perfect match to the intention here. America is so multi-cultural/diverse anyways so this tactic doesn't really work.
7. Trump sort of does this but not really to the extent that I think the author of the list meant. So far it seems there's no fear from voicing dissent. Musk went ballistic on Navarro calling him a moron and is critical of Trumps tariffs. Many other republicans are critical. This is more of a kindergarden than authoritarianism.
8. Not happening. Would be very worrying if we get there.
9. Not happening. We had large rallies before the election but you don't see the sort of things you might see in Iran or Turkey. Again this would be a worrying sign if we get here.
10. Also not happening. You see universities fighting back against Trump. you see courts. you see states. you see people. If anything it seems people feel like they have a lot of power.
Not sure.
I assure you French prior, dueing and after French revolution was not pinacle of great governance. More like, the low.
States are very different beasts, unlike human individual which have clear skin borderies as a given, they are able to take parts of each other and assimilate them. Even when they are not in official direct opposition, rampant dirty plots are always going on in the parallel background of any the official sympathy to everyone, be it because even within a state there is a broad variation of contenders.
Nitpick: Trump got less than 50% of the votes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidentia...)
More importantly, I think quite a few who voted for Trump didn’t vote for this extreme version of Trump.
Consistently, the first thing every lawyer has said to me when preparing for any interaction with third parties that had a legal aspect was "never volunteer information you were not explicitly asked for". Of course lawyers would practice this among themselves. The law requires him to suspect something wrong to investigate, so he states "I hereby formally suspect something wrong". If the investigation leads to a court filing, the law would then require him to submit evidence, so he will strategically decide which evidence to submit and submit it. Why would he commit in advance to what evidence he believes relevant if not required by law?
But also, if reading the letter as if written in good faith - which I find hard to do - those are all true reasons to suspect something wrong (it is common knowledge and well established that Wikipedia is a very influential source of knowledge, and that there are attempts at foreign influence), and great questions to ask to investigate whether the Foundation is making a reasonable effort to fight it if you were a regulator or auditor or other investigator, all of which have great answers already written up that prove the foundation is doing a very good job at establishing and maintaining processes to ensure the neutrality of its articles. In my headcanon, Wikipedia's lawyer responds simply with a list of URLs.
However they'll be worlds apart on history, economics, anthropology, sexuality, politics, previous leaders and so on.
Our Wikipedia is the world seen through the eyes of the New York Times + Harvard. Our Wikipedia is probably correct about Physics, botany...
The only leak than contains something barely close to Putin and was published on Wikileaks were the Panama Papers, that names three friends of him, not in the government. The lack of any russian officials in those papers speaks volumes.
Best case scenario, they are tools. Worse case, they are assets.
Having principles is orthogonal to striving adoption of ethical fair well being for everyone.
They became too petty and no longer served their purpose as the political party of the ruling class, oligarchy turned. Hell of a way to go out though.
When people say that Russian and Chinese state media are propaganda, it is not always because they are racists. Many people say this because they make a distinction between a government and the people, and understand the difference democracy makes.
It's great that you're trying to emphasize with people in other countries. Empathize deeper and think through how it must be like to live in such a political environment to their full conclusions.
For everything else I won't trust it, which sadly includes matters of war and history, as almost all causal claims about the world rests on counter factuals, and therefore does not merely depend on what is.
Politics also concerns what ought to be, not what is, and most editors of Wikipedia do not agree with me regarding what ought to be or even how one should determine what ought to be.
Wikipedia would do better if they could figure out a way to manage bias rather than try to eliminate it. I don't want to be overly critical. Wikipedia is useful, but it's really very far from ideal and I would not want my tax money going anywhere near it.
I understand the caution, and we need to be more cautious in today’s world. And I do in controversial topics quite frequently. For example, giving points for women during university admissions just for being women in Norway seemed outrageous. And when I feel that way, I immediately start to check its validity, especially that the article “forgot” to mention how many points. At the end they give out 1 or 2 points on a scale of 50, and not to just women but also men, where they are underrepresented. The article just lied about that we should have outrage. It’s a lie.
Larry Sanger wants such lies on Wikipedia. He should be way more cautious when he’s outraged. Also 100% of people who commented under this article on Reddit should do the same.
Can you back up your accusations with facts? I can state that I have not seen any reprehensible reporting from Amy Goodman; but rather the opposite, backed up by facts (e.g. about mass graves on Russian-occupied areas [0]).
[0]: https://www.democracynow.org/2022/9/29/ukraine_russia_mass_g...
A few years previous, most heavy promotion on Wikipedia was music-related. Then business hype dominated. Then political hype took over. Trying to push back in the "post truth" era is valuable but painful.
It was worth doing for a while. But not for too long. It's wearing.
The most gratuitous example is NYT, as documented by Ashley Rindsberg in his book “The Gray Lady Winked.”
Chris Hedges had a show as well.
https://slate.com/technology/2025/02/wikipedia-project-2025-...
Because it is extremely hard to figure out what is going on. Lots of mysterious abbreviations. Unclear timeline.
I still don't really know it, it seems the scandal is, that he had a sockpuppet account? And there is only "private" evidence (meaning not public)?
"The Arbitration Committee has determined through private evidence, including evidence from the checkuser tool, that Eostrix (talk · contribs) (a current RfA candidate) is a sockpuppet of Icewhiz (talk · contribs). Accordingly, the Committee has resolved that Eostrix be indefinitely blocked."
So having a sockpuppet account is the reason for indefinite ban? Or that in combination with edits he made? Really, really hard to figure out for someone just having a quick look into the topic. And this is what prevented me since the beginning to participate in Wikipedia. I always got this impression. I made some edits here and there, but I think was mostly reverted/deleted/ignored - but no idea, I never felt like making the investment to really dive into it - and that seems required to contribute. Casual contribution seems pointless - and they likely miss out a lot through this.
"But the only reason you know about them is because Wikipedia openly fights them instead of covering them up."
So it seems good if wikipedia is more open - but from this story I just take "private evidence" with me and lots of questions about the whole process.
Were these not the actions of private entities rather than official government acts?
(Except the claim as stated isn't always in the source anyway. Best to check.)
Me and Gemini actually found a major fault on one politician's wikipage, but decided there is no change correcting that, because there is no "trusted source".
And the reason for that with government controlled media monopoly it is easy remove any references, only hearsay remains.
Sometimes things are genuinely complicated. If you want to understand the hardest, most elaborate forms of Wikipedia community management you're going to need to work really hard at figuring out what's going on.
Community dynamics at this scale, and with this level of bad actors, are not something that can be explained in a few paragraphs.
There was some attempts at change review (called "pending changes") that is used on very continous articles, but it never really scaled that well. I think its more popular on german wikipedia.
Wikipedia is so dominant that it has kind of smoothered all alternative models. Personally i feel like its kind of like democracy: the worst system except for all the other systems. All things are transient though, i'm sure eventually someone will come up with something superior that will take over, just like wikipedia took over from encyclopedia briticana.
> The way we determine reliability is typically based on the reputation for editorial oversight, and for factchecking and corrections. For example, if you have a reference book that is published by a reputable publisher that has an editorial board and that has edited the book for accuracy, if you know of a newspaper that has, again, an editorial team that is reviewing articles and issuing corrections if there are any errors, those are probably reliable sources.
Roughly ~20 years behind current academic research on most subjects, makes it 10 to 40 years more advanced than other encyclopaedia and school curriculums.
But its value is on the bibliography. You have research papers linked, which makes it infinitely better than most other sources. The only way to get closer to the truth in history is rigorous demonstrations, and those only exist in academic papers.
The view on Wikipedia on the French revolution are mostly Furet's views, which is 20 years behind, as it is the case in the Anglo world. Furet isn't the only one cited in Wikipedia though, and his point of view is nuanced with research from the 90s and 2000s, all with links to actual research. The last time I checked, research from JCM on the recently (late 2000s) discovered 'archives du comité' isn't discussed yet there, but all that makes it infinitely better than encyclopaedia brittanica. Infinitely.
I don't believe this is the case, the Israeli/Palestine are restricted to long-time contributors, so the articles are either messy and unmaintained due to lack of editors, or worse, edited only by members of influence campaigns who have scared away everyone else
And this is kind of like a court decision.
But in a real court, I can see the verdict and the laws that were broken. All in complicated, but readable english. Which makes it clear (usually). But in wikipedia to understand a indefinite ban, I have to understand global wiki community dynamics first? I am a bit reminded of Kafka - The Trial.
More and more, especially in engineering, I am in contact with people who just want everything to be easy to understand in TikTok length video clips or short posts.
Some things are hard to understand, dynamic systems especially, black or white answers do not exist.
(Sorry for the slightly off-topic/meta rant. This hit a nerve by me.)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/P...
If you don't have objective sources, it's easier to lead people around by the nose -hence the attack.
"DEAR AMERICAN FRIENDS IN THE ADMINISTRATION KEEP YOUR HANDS OFF THE WIKIPEDIA"
You also really avoided the "what's better"/"what's a better model" question.
Social consensus, consent, and political mandate aren't ideas that can be hand waived away, they matter and they effect you and they are deeply impact by what people perceive to be true.
So the question still stands, if you mention a topic like Mao's cultural revolution, where should I go to get a primer and verify that the way you're talking about it appears to be grounded in reality.
As a casual, very infrequent editor, I echo everyone else's complaints that it's intimidating to have your additions reverted by the old guard who seem to have an increasingly particular vision of the site.
How is that unique to the US?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Heritage_Foundation
Kind of explains a lot in the balancing act in Trumps rise to power while trying to look like a marionette for various interests this term. They should remember Hitler's rebellion from his masters.
I occasionally contribute to various topics, and in many cases experienced editors silently fixed formatting errors I made, allowing me to focus on contributing to Wikipedia without having to keep up with the best practices.
I also participated in a deletion discussion once, and - despite being inexperienced and in the minority position (keep) - the experienced editors considered my arguments and responded to them.
...now where's my ladder..
Wise that you omit adding other credible sources that do not agree with the main editor's views. What you're describing sounds like already preserving their work, no matter if it happens to be provide info based on multiple convergent sources or not.
And I’m sure the “government overthrowers” (lol) also used Facebook and Twitter, yet only these other ones were taken down. We later found out, of course, that the likes of FB and Twitter had embedded censorship teams working hand-in-glove with the security state and advocacy groups.
Gamergate is also not a misogynist harassment campaign. Please don't spread lies and misinformation, thanks and try to be more honest and less of an idealogue.
Why would the journalists directly involved in that campaign be allowed to just directly malign and smear their critics and then have that be taken as fact, with no comment whatsoever to their involvement or other sources that disagreed or commented on this? Because that article stands as a beacon of unfairness and misinformation.
The idea that it's impossible to solve this problem is false. Like i mentioned, just check other languages for that article, they were not as completely destroyed by bias.
The pro-gamergate editors were completely shut out of that article eventually and the article doesn't even mention any perspectives from the other side, it's an obviously biased on it's face article and i'm not sure why you can't just acknowledge that this system is flawed sometimes.
I agree with your premise that WMF has far better anti bias processes than reddit, reddit is a literal worst case scenerio for bias. I disagree with the idea that it's perfect though so i brought up a clear example of an extremely biased article that is still messed up to this day. I do suggest swapping to the japanese wiki article and just comparing the quality of information, it's really cool.
Also i vouched for your post, not sure why it was flagged, mine was as well.
It's one of those things where honest sources exist but you have to be somewhat good at seeing contradictions and lies, then being willing to discard liars as uncredible. It's not like archives of the supposed "harassment" sites don't exist anymore either, in those days it was mostly progressive leftists posting on the 8chan threads despite being maligned as a right wing center of evil or whatever. Sometimes the truth is just so absurdly and dramatically different from what yellow journalists purport but people are just too lazy and stupid to look into it themselves. After all "who cares it's just video games" (and yet this campaign of dishonesty turned a generation against the dem party in the US and likely contributed to trump's election)
Ironically an excerpt of the script/transcript would be allowed by UK copyright - but a site with only excerpts would probably but be a good source for Wikipedia's purposes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Cite_episode
It can be seen in use for instance on the Beavis and Butt-head article, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beavis_and_Butt-Head where the citation looks like this:
"Werewolves of Highland". Beavis and Butt-Head. Season 8. Episode 1. October 27, 2011. MTV.
It is not survivorship bias to point out that the survivor survived.
> Even Google's Knol project, which was intended to be a Wikipedia competitor, faltered after a few years.
Not “faltering after a few years” is part of “succesfully navigating that minefield”. If you fall out of the “race” no matter how good your policies would be otherwise you won’t be a reliable source of information. Because your can’t be if you no longer exists.
This is not a statement about what could have worked, this is a statement about what did work. And there survival is a necessary ingredient of success.
I'm frankly amazed that enough people have the time to track this nonsense and stamp it out that it ends up being self-correcting. It's not just about time, either; chasing bad edits and prosecuting bad users must be a huge chore in terms of the sheer amount of work needed. I always find it amazing how horrible the tools are (like how almost anything, including having discussions, is done by editing pages; how can anyone have a discussion in such a disorganized way?), which surely must be a hindrance to productivity or to the ability to detect and deal with constant abuse. But seemingly it works. Maybe there are better tools that pro-level admins know about?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Long-term_abuse/Anan...
> Jewish communties have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them.
> I'm deeply disinterested in giving the tiniest shit now about western Jewish populations coming to the disturbing realization that those hordes of minorities that support flooding their country don't exactly like them too much.
> You want truth said to your face, there it is.
Then a bit later Musk gives the heil Hitler salute twice in a row, once facing the crowd, then turned around and gave it facing Trump.
The stuff the ADL put out after the salutes was only after he added on jokes involving Nazi party members, right? Or was the one later that day before that?
I hesitated while reading this part, because I wholly agreed with the first 2 sentences. Do you mean physically difficult in terms of barriers to voting or making a less direct comment about the usefulness of that vote? If the former, I think I disagree compared to other countries ( and the levels of paperwork needed ). If the latter, I would be interested to hear some specifics.
Recently I edited a page or two, then tried to edit more, but everything is so complex now. All the special markup and stuff to consider is really off-putting. Took me forever to figure out how to properly fix the year of death of a person and some other data I just ignored because it was too much red tape. Wish it was more simple plain text. Makes quick drive-by edits too much work.
The non-profit public benefit service they provide is the openly editable encyclopaedia wiki, not its contents or its editors. The same safe harbour provisions as with other content hosters should (and need to) apply as with YouTube hosting questionable videos.
A few years of work (10k edits) and a few years of dwindling participation on my side someone noticed that quite a few of those early admins never faced a vote at all. The process had re-elections when 25 wikipedians asked for a vote, took them almost three weeks, I got that treatment as well in 2009. Indeed someone had enough time to dig through and find a discussion where I wasn't the nicest person (at the same time writing and discussing on Wikipedia help me a lot to develop a healthy social skill). Well, I didn't use the admin rights anymore so I rather resigned before someone dug even deeper ;)
For security reasons those admin rights should be time limited anyways.
Thats not really true either. There is a lot to unpack to understand court cases. Just the hearsay rule and its exception would fill a book. Jurisdiction, double jeopardy, means rea, “reasonable man”, Brady disclosure, fruit of poisonous tree, presumption of regularity, habeas corpus, SLAP, reasonable doubt, writ of mandamus, motion to dismiss, motion to supress, motion for change of venue, motion in limine, amicus curiae, consideration. Just to unpack the latin terms makes your head spin, and then you will be caught out by some term with some seamingly easy to understand common meaning used in surprising ways.
One can almost say it is a whole profession to understand what is going on in court. We could call them lawyers or something if we want to be fancy about it. And then turns out even those specialist further specialise in narrower areas.
This coincidences nicely with all of this.
It is not the role of Wikipedia to authoritative say if the war in Gaza is an genocide. Their role is to say what reliable source has reported, which in this case has so much reliable sources talking about it that there is a dedicated article about just it.
There more reliable sources are talking about a subject, and the more the subject gain notability, the more likely it will be included in Wikipedia. Editors can apply some common sense, but they are not the arbiters of truth, nor should they ever be seen as such. If a readers want simple and single truths that they can believe in then they are better served by whichever news papers that can cater to their particular world views.
For instance, they would not directly edit the target's page, but start working 2 links removed from it, compromise the "friend of a friend of a friend", and then work towards the actual target and finally try to cancel the target through "association with " accusations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification
I am going to increase my monthly contribution.
Humans are by default not influenced by logic, but rather respond on beliefs and emotions. This is one of the hardest thing to swallow for us people, we do see ourself as independent rational thinkers. We are sometimes able to, with effort.
To understand it better, you should know that Russian propaganda is not designed to instill a certain belief, but rather to make you not belief the truth. The Kremlin is happy to push different, conflicting stories. You end up with a society of nihilists.
There must be some admin-level expectations of how things should be done but the editor flow gives you zero warning or indication. This was a while back so maybe they changed the flow
If it isn't pushing a British viewpoint, wouldn't it be incumbent on the British government to shut it down? Why would they be funding something that was pushing viewpoints that undermined Britain? This is simple incentive analysis stuff, this organisation isn't being funded for billions of dollars because the Brits happen to just be uniquely dedicated to the cause of the truth even if it hurts their interests. They're British! They're one step removed from the people who invented espionage, there is a long history of information warfare here.
RT & the BBC are both state backed media organisations. It is quite difficult to come up with a reason for those except propaganda. The US has been running this experiment for centuries now, it has been well established that the government-sponsored perspective isn't any more legitimate than anyone else's.
I was going to start listing examples but that's not the point now. And even if something specific is undone weeks after because of outcry it's still a steady two steps forward, one step back, progression in a nasty direction.
I've read some books, seen some documentaries, learned some history. What's happening is very obvious and anyone who doesn't also see it is either ignorant or in denial.
and seeing some of the people she proudly mentions - it seems like she's just switched cults.
So, for a "let people speak their mind - don't control information" the Trump side quickly goes to universities must teach only what 'WE' want, Wikipedia must mention only what 'WE' like. Hilarious if not pathetic and dangerous (very-very 1984-ish...)
Side-note: it has since amused me but apparently it's not often told/at all.. the absolute propaganda tool for Russia/Soviet was "Pravda" (the "Truth"). Imagine my amusement when Trump created "Truth Social". You can't make that shit up....
Now, as I've said before, I live in the EU and don't vote in the US, so you folks decide, and then we all get to 'share' the experience (since I do have some/plenty of SP500 and similar instruments).
But if you haven’t realized that yet it’s obvious you never will till it’s too late and sure, maybe that’s harsh to say but as trump himself said 'I Could ... Shoot Somebody, And I Wouldn't Lose Any Voters' because that’s precisely how much y’all care what he does. Gimme your downvotes but don’t pretend you’re standing on moral high ground, you’d justify anything he does.
The whole anti-DEI sweep across the government where people who don’t remove “let’s treat people nice” posters risk getting fired and attacking people using the office of the president is so obviously deplatforming and censorship that your criticism of democrats is laughable. When’s the last time Biden threatened to revoke Fox News license? Republicans even a tiny bit critical of Trump get exiled for daring to step out of line. You don’t hate censorship and deplatforming, you love it, can’t get enough of it, you just hate it when it happens to people you like.
A good place to start for information about how user blocking is done would be the following links:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Policies_and_guideli... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Blocking_policy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sockpuppetry
In this case I think that a sock puppet account can be trivially blocked without much process as long as it can be proved that it is operated by someone who is already blocked for some violation. The sock puppet is an attempt at evading the block that was placed on that user's other account.
Incidentally, various British governments have tried quite hard to shut down (or at least neuter) the BBC and failed. You're failing to take into account the fact that the BBC is a popular institution and that there would be domestic political consequences for a government that attacked it too strongly. If you think that your average British government minister goes around thinking "thank goodness for the BBC's news coverage!" then you may be a little out of touch with British politics.
- For female researchers, a single book is enough,
- For male researchers, they are never enough and get deleted.
Wikipedia is on a crusade to delete male researchers, and that’s why I don’t trust Wikipedia.
I’m one of those people you complain about. When I did deep research about DEI, I presented evidence and sources to people like you, including judges that I knew in my private life.
It seems you didn’t care, to a point that I had in my hand a document printed from a department of justice’s own website (about mothers’ own violence on their children, which is as high as men’s given the scope you decide to choose) and the person who in his public life is a judge, didn’t even bother discussing the thesis and just told me: “This document is false. You changed the figures before printing the document”.
You may say that Trump is bad for dismantling your administration, but you guys don’t care an inch about truth, evidence, sources, honesty, bad faith, or even for the number of children who are beaten to death by their mothers.
and i'm saying everyone should expend this effort, because otherwise, people and democracy gets taken over. It's one's civic duty to ensure that you are not making choices based on lies or manipulations.
I'm impressed by Wikipedia's efforts to root out "abuse" but in the end it's all a contest over truth, and Wikipedia fails in precisely the dynamic, high-interest, high-consequence topics that users seek out on the site.
A lot of media groups are pretty transparently in existence for propaganda purposes, but the logic doesn't imply that. It could be a media organisation exists to make their owners money while meeting an under-served need in the community. That is why most businesses exist. It obviously isn't why the BBC exists because there are a whole bunch of laws and public funding propping it up and it isn't independently profitable.
> ...absurd comparisons like your comparison between the BBC and RT.
The BBC had a policy for 60 years [0] of vetting applicants through MI5 based on their politics. And realistically it took 60 years to find that out we'll probably find out what the current vetting arrangements are in the 2040s. Any media organisation with that sort of historic tie to intelligence can be safely compared to RT.
> Incidentally, various British governments have tried quite hard to shut down (or at least neuter) the BBC and failed. You're failing to take into account the fact that the BBC is a popular institution and that there would be domestic political consequences for a government that attacked it too strongly.
That seems to be largely irrelevant. I'm sure there are factions in the Russian government that see RT as a waste of money on any given day and I'm happy to accept that British propaganda is popular in Britain.