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

(www.washingtonpost.com)

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sedev ◴[26 Apr 25 03:04 UTC] No.43800538[source]▶

I am going to say a thing I say a lot: please edit Wikipedia. It is easier to do than you probably think! Wikipedia's biggest constraint is no longer money or server space, it's editor time (especially since LLM-based garbage is a force multiplier on disruptive editing that does not have a corresponding improvement to good-faith editing). Any topic area you know about and/or care about can benefit from your attention. Fixing typos is valuable. Adding photos is valuable. Flagging vandalism is valuable. Please edit Wikipedia.

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flask_manager ◴[26 Apr 25 03:18 UTC] No.43800627[source]▶

>>43800538 #

I have in the past, but three things put me off doing so now;

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.

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1. 20after4 ◴[26 Apr 25 11:27 UTC] No.43802662[source]▶

>>43800627 #

I think the "deletionist" tendency is one of the biggest problems with Wikipedia. At least it's the main thing that prevents me from making significant contributions. I say tendency, but maybe it really is more of a crusade. Deletion and rejection definitely seem to be the default "predisposition." I've seen a lot of examples of apparently well meaning contributors being pushed away by the need to establish "notability" for a subject and the expectation that all information must be referenced to a fairly limited number of approved reliable sources. These are norms which have been built over a long period of time so it would be incredibly difficult to change them now.

replies(2): >>43803043 #>>43806435 #

2. potato3732842 ◴[26 Apr 25 12:34 UTC] No.43803043[source]▶

>>43802662 (TP) #

Exactly. It makes it basically impossible to get niche industry/trade information and history onto wikipedia unless it was so newsworthy it's covered everywhere.

replies(1): >>43804925 #

3. kurtreed2 ◴[26 Apr 25 16:18 UTC] No.43804925[source]▶

>>43803043 #

Yet when I (or others) are trying to raise the issue on certain Reddit communities in addition to Lemmy people there still prefer to bury their heads in the sand. Often they'll simply resort to personal attacks and so on just to avoid facing the fact that Wikipedia is not as infalliable as they think at all.

Example:

https://lemmy.world/comment/14158030

4. Animats ◴[26 Apr 25 19:34 UTC] No.43806435[source]▶

>>43802662 (TP) #

That's a feature. Each article requires future attention and adds load.

Most of the important articles were in the first 100,000.

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5. johnnyanmac ◴[26 Apr 25 21:50 UTC] No.43807514[source]▶

>>43806435 #

If that's the intention, fine. But don't be surprised when no one but the most committed politicians want to bother trying to contribute to the project.

6. 20after4 ◴[28 Apr 25 05:56 UTC] No.43818063[source]▶

>>43806435 #

I think the ongoing hosting cost of any given article is incredibly close to zero with the exception of a very tiny fraction of popular articles. The popular ones obviously deserve to be there as evidenced by their popularity alone. Maybe there is something I'm not taking into account but I have a hard time seeing the meaningful cost of some obscure wiki page merely existing.

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7. sedev ◴[28 Apr 25 17:18 UTC] No.43823762{3}[source]▶

>>43818063 #

> Maybe there is something I'm not taking into account but I have a hard time seeing the meaningful cost of some obscure wiki page merely existing.

The thing you're not taking into account is that every article that exists takes up some amount of editor time, which is why it's good when more people participate in Wikipedia. You are correct that the server/bandwidth cost of almost all articles rounds off to zero. That leaves just the cost in "an actual human looked at this and okayed it," which has different scaling characteristics.

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