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923 points coloneltcb | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0.002s | source
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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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PeterStuer ◴[] No.43802473[source]
Keri Smith, a former hardcore SJW activist, has documented how she and others daily targeted people through Wikipedia edits for preparing a cancel. It's quite fascinating the extend of organization and process they used.

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.

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maigret ◴[] No.43802526[source]
What is SJW? Please avoid using unclear acronyms.
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albumen ◴[] No.43802587[source]
Social Justice Warrior. The acronym has been around for a long time.
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hnlmorg ◴[] No.43802756[source]
That doesn’t mean what everyone is familiar with it. For example I’ve been around since internet slang first developed a life of its own. And yet I wasn’t immediately familiar with SJW either.
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firesteelrain ◴[] No.43803129[source]
By the time you commented you could have at least searched for the acronym or asked AI.
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hnlmorg ◴[] No.43805604[source]
I wasn’t the one who asked.

But even if I were, you’re not accounting for the cumulative benefit saving others from having to research the same acronym.

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firesteelrain ◴[] No.43805866[source]
Let’s get real, they can search. HN doesn’t have a repo of acronyms and this isn’t a technical document where you need to spell out the acronym on first use
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1. hnlmorg ◴[] No.43813493[source]
It doesn’t matter if it’s a technical acronym or not.

You’re making a lot of effort here to claim that people should already know this when the evidence here (of people asking what it means) demonstrates that it’s not universal.

For the record, I don’t actually mind people not spelling it out on first use if the acronym is guessable from the context of the comment (which, ironically, a lot of technical acronyms are). But in the case of the OP, you wouldn’t know what SJW was u less you already knew what a SJW was. So it’s not an unreasonable request from the GP. And frankly, the comments criticising them for asking is really unfair. They have just as much right to ask as you do to say “it’s common” and the OP had to use that acronym in the first place. Let’s all just be nice rather than moaning that someone didn’t memorise some specific piece of tribalism before coming to HN.

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2. firesteelrain ◴[] No.43814283[source]
I’ve barely spent 1 min typing. Effort is very low. Much lower than it could have taken to look up the acronym originally.