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Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney

(www.washingtonpost.com)
754 points coloneltcb | 1 comments | 25 Apr 25 23:03 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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hayst4ck ◴[26 Apr 25 00:08 UTC] No.43799701[source]▶
Reason and truth are the enemy of authoritarian regimes. They want you to believe that truth is subjective. Truth and reason provide alternative legitimacy to authority. If nothing is true, there is no basis on which to judge those in power.

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?

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txcwg002 ◴[26 Apr 25 04:14 UTC] No.43800888[source]▶
According to its cofounder, Wikipedia abandoned truth long ago.

https://larrysanger.org/2020/05/wikipedia-is-badly-biased/

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laughingcurve ◴[26 Apr 25 04:30 UTC] No.43800948[source]▶
It’s pretty clear from this blogpost that Larry Sanger has abandoned a pursuit of truth and neutral point of view and instead does not like how reality fails to conform to his personal biases and preferences about the way the world is.
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1. ruszki ◴[26 Apr 25 07:11 UTC] No.43801547{3}[source]▶
If nothing else, the rambling about global warming and MMR vaccines makes it obvious. It’s not neutral to spread many times disproven lies. Especially how he wants to spread it, without saying that it’s not true, because that’s not neutral. He just forgot that saying that something is true is also not neutral.

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.