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Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

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598 points leotravis10 | 2 comments | 04 Sep 25 15:30 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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bawolff ◴[04 Sep 25 16:49 UTC] No.45129304[source]▶
There has been this trend recently of calling Wikipedia the last good thing on the internet.

And i agree its great, i spend an inordinate amount of my time on Wikimedia related things.

But i think there is a danger here with all these articles putting Wikipedia too much on a pedestal. It isn't perfect. It isn't perfectly neutral or perfectly reliable. It has flaws.

The true best part of Wikipedia is that its a work in progress and people are working to make it a little better everyday. We shouldn't lose sight of the fact we aren't there yet. We'll never be "there". But hopefully we'll continue to be a little bit closer every day. And that is what makes Wikipedia great.

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citizenpaul ◴[05 Sep 25 03:44 UTC] No.45134802[source]▶
I'm not so sure I go there less and less. Wikipedia is very biased and turf guarded against negative factually true information even when it meets all requirements it will often be taken down automatically with no recourse. Many pages are functionally not editable because of turf guarding.

Anything vaguely sociopolitical is functionally censored on it and wikipedia does nothing about it even if they don't support it.

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ragazzina ◴[05 Sep 25 10:30 UTC] No.45137037[source]▶
>factually true information [...] meets all requirements [...] it will be taken down

Can you make such an example?

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1. citizenpaul ◴[05 Sep 25 21:46 UTC] No.45144025[source]▶
No. I've found this is one of those things that people simply have to see for themselves. I'd encourage you to try to make some edits and see what happens.

Its simply impossible to edit a public figures page at this point if you want an easy fail case to try.

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2. wiether ◴[06 Sep 25 08:38 UTC] No.45147633[source]▶
> Its simply impossible to edit a public figures page at this point if you want an easy fail case to try.

Why should a complete random be allowed to edit a public figure's page without some overview? What could they possibly edit that is relevant to this figure's page?

If a public figure dies, their page will be updated in less than one hour of the announcement, so the edit is not the issue.

It seems healthy to have people gatekeeping those pages, since they are not a public forum, but a common source of knowledge.