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754 points coloneltcb | 20 comments | | HN request time: 0.001s | source | bottom
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jjmarr ◴[] No.43799721[source]
The English Wikipedia is a massive target for influence campaigns. I don't think there are any other communities as resilient as it. Just an example:

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.

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1. LightHugger ◴[] No.43799807[source]
There are counterexamples where this has failed/continues to fail, the gamergate article is famously non-neutral, only accepting primary sources from journalists directly involved in the controversy. This is rather than true secondary sources with less extreme and biased views, like is supposed to be the rules there. You can switch from the english one to other languages and get completely different content with very balanced point of views because the other languages weren't controlled by the influence campaign.

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.

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2. acdha ◴[] No.43799838[source]
Do you have any specific examples? You mentioned the Gamergate article but your assertion that it doesn’t reference non-primary sources needs some citations that all of the academic and media sources were directly involved. Since it was a harassment campaign involving journalists, there’s a big question about what a policy would need to look like to prevent someone from attacking a journalist and then saying Wikipedia can’t use their work because they’re involuntarily involved.
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3. freen ◴[] No.43799947[source]
Anecdote != evidence.

Also, your anecdote is specifically about a social media article about an attempt to use social media spaces to harass people.

Seems extra “special case” to me.

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4. moshegramovsky ◴[] No.43800072[source]
> You'll get a bunch of leftist (because they don't have jobs) volunteer moderators with an agenda.

What do you consider a leftist? Why do you think they don't have jobs?

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5. ◴[] No.43800361{3}[source]
6. sedev ◴[] No.43800519[source]
> only accepting primary sources from journalists directly involved in the controversy

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.

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7. LightHugger ◴[] No.43802021[source]
This is a lie. Wikipedia directly excluded reliable sources that countered and only cites sources that are as biased as possible for that article. Like i said, literally just switch the language to japanese, translate back to english and you will get a completely different set of information that is far less biased.

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.

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8. LightHugger ◴[] No.43802037[source]
The entire story of gamergate was a campaign where the ethical problems of the gaming journalism were exposed.

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.

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9. LightHugger ◴[] No.43802067[source]
I am not a right ring perspective, i'm left, but because i'm an honest person i'm simply able to point out an article that is composed solely of extremist lies and misinformation. Wikipedia is not the only source and if you fully research the topic you will quickly realize how bad that article is.

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.

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10. santoshalper ◴[] No.43802186{3}[source]
I think your view of gamergate is absolutely fucking delusional. I watched it all go down in real time like many of us did. Saying Gamergate was about ethics in games journalism is roughly as accurate as saying the US Civil War was about "states rights". In that it is kinda sorta technically true if you ignore 99% of what was actually happening.
11. santoshalper ◴[] No.43802191{3}[source]
We can't acknowledge it because we think you are 100% dead wrong and you're trying to retroactively gaslight us into believing Gamergate wasn't primarily toxic far right-wing trolling, which it was. I don't need to base my opinion on what Wikipedia says because I was there and you are delusional.
12. 20after4 ◴[] No.43802518{3}[source]
Perhaps it is your perspective which is biased and that leads you to project that accusation towards the wiki (and the gp commenter here)
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13. intended ◴[] No.43802598{3}[source]
> Q1: Can I use a particular article as a source? > A1: What sources can be used in Wikipedia is governed by our reliable sources guideline, which requires "published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy". If you have a question about whether or not a particular source meets this policy, a good place to ask is the Reliable sources noticeboard.
14. eGP9jDq_nw ◴[] No.43802694[source]
for those doubting this claim, the secret mailing list "GameJournoPros" used by journalists to collude is not even mentioned once, and is akin to scrubbing the holocaust article of the word "jew"
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15. scarab92 ◴[] No.43803108{4}[source]
I think their comment is fair.

Wikipedias policies to promote neutrality are often counter productive.

Because neutrality is hard to define, what these policies actually do is progressively raise the effort required to keep or remove a particular point of view. Unfortunately, requiring more effort also means substituting the point of view of knowledgeable but time poor and inexperienced contributors, with the point of view of time rich chronic contributors and admins. The result is that instead of neutrality, you actually select for the strongest held points of view of a small ingroup of chronic users. The viewpoint diversity of such users is extremely low, which is why you’ll notice all controversial topics tend to lean a certain way.

16. rafram ◴[] No.43803160{3}[source]
Wikipedia presents consensus as a proxy for the truth. Pretty sure the consensus on GamerGate is that it was a misogynistic harassment campaign.
17. rafram ◴[] No.43803177[source]
You’re telling me there was a secret… listserv?! Truly, this conspiracy goes all the way to the top.
18. nulld3v ◴[] No.43804134{3}[source]
"Gamergate was actually 8chan communists fighting sensasionalist journalism but their message was then twisted and used against them to push people into far-right MAGA."

Amazing... I can't tell if you are trolling or seriously think this.

19. immibis ◴[] No.43804772[source]
Is that like a secret Signal chat for the defense secretary's family?
20. ryandrake ◴[] No.43805037{3}[source]
Can you point out any factual errors in the article, with sources that demonstrate the error?

> 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

The "pro-gamergate" perspective is described in the very first sentence under "Purpose and goals":

    The most active Gamergate supporters or "Gamergaters" said that Gamergate was a movement for ethics in games journalism, for protecting the "gamer" identity, and for opposing "political correctness" in video games and that any harassment of women was done by others not affiliated with Gamergate.