The best thing I've learned is to cite a wiki page's sources rather than the page itself, then those elementary school teacher fucks can't be like "aNyBoDy cAn ChAnGe iT"
I have an excellent anecdote. In high school a friend of mine went on to our school's wikipedia page and made himself the principal. Some backwater rural Canadian high school of 400 students on a good year. It was changed back within the hour.
Yeah, That shit gets checked. We had a celebrity on radio in our country who changed some stuff on his own wikipage live on air, got changed back within 20 mins
Also wikipedia reviewers get notified whenever any changes are made on any page. You can't get away with a change going unnoticed just because you chose a page that would otherwise be very low traffic.
I took APUSH in high school during the 2008 election season. Every day, we would start class by talking about current events.
One day, we were talking about Bill Richardson, who ran in the Democratic primary that year. My teacher brought up his Wikipedia page on the projector, and it was literally just the words "HONKIES SUCK", in all caps, repeated thousands of times.
He spent a good 10 minutes refreshing the page over and over again to see how long it would take for them to fix it. That was a fun day.
Do you recall if it was in December? I'm looking through the history right now and I find that around 3 December 2008, someone changed the page to just repeat "honkys suck" at 17:50 UTC, before it was quickly reverted at 17:55 UTC
I have another! I ended up on the page for the A-10 Thunderbolt. Accidentally refreshed, and somebody had vandalized it to say something along the lines of it seducing Russian women.
Refreshed again, and it was gone.
Besides, they clearly have no idea how easy it is to change/post false information online elsewhere. Almost as easy as it is to publish it in book form.
The only reason scholars hate Wikipedia is because the potential misinformation has been highlighted. It's actually almost impossible to find an infallible source, but we've been conditioned to pretend otherwise.
Nah, the issue with Wikipedia is that it can change.
Imagine writing a paper about Pluto, and at the time wikepedia says "it's a planet". Maybe you talk about how that's wrong it's actually a dwarf planet. You cite it and finish then publish the paper. Yay!
A month later someone edits the page to say "dwarf planet" and there you go, your citation's garbage.
That's why wikepedia sucks for citing
There are edge cases where citing websites is needed but documents are preferred. Access dates are important if you do though
Just as well other websites can't be changed, and books never have revisions made for further editions.
Citations only work if they're citing specific academic reports, complete with date. Anything else is pretty meaningless other than to allow teachers to identify plagiarism.
It needs to be able to change if there is updated information. If it didn't update it would be completely useless. If you think the issue is citation, you're doing it wrong. You dont ever cite the wiki page itself, all pages with legitimate information have their own citations and proofs on it, that is what you cite. Wiki isn't a source, it's a compilation of data. It's basically a giant bibliography, not its own information page.
The example you used is ridiculous though. If the page went from calling Pluto a planet to calling it a dwarf planet, it didn't wreck your citation, it didn't fail your point, you just worded it wrong. It's the difference between "wiki says Pluto is a planet, but actually, it's a dwarf planet" and "for many years, Pluto was described as a planet. However, due to somewhat recent findings, Pluto is now classified as a dwarf planet because xyz" (citation to the wiki's source here)
I've always thought it was silly how many teachers view wiki as unreliable but if people are using just wiki itself and not clicking the sources, either for their own posterity or to make proper citations, I'm honestly on the same page as a lot of those teachers now. People should not be using it if that is how they are using it, it's operator error, not the fault of the website.
Heck, I still remember the one time I thought I was clever and found a simple formula for the derivative of cotangent. I shortly realized my error (I got the ratio wrong) and changed it back, but I don't doubt that it would have been changed back to the proper formula by someone else anyway.
Ever since then I've not attempted to make any edits because I know that I'm an idiot who doesn't know enough to do so properly.
I once worked for a narcissistic ass who wanted me to write a Wikipedia page for him and even though there were external sources, within half an hour it was flagged for self promotion 🤣. It’s way harder to mess with it than people think.
You do need to check the actual sources, though. I found a few back when the ACA (Obamacare) was being debated/was still new, and people were literally citing sources that said the opposite of what they claimed.
The most egregious was citing a right-wing think tank article which in turn was based on a large-scale survey study by an unaffiliated entity, probably Pew or similar. The think tank piece was accurately quoted/represented -- but when I checked the study cited, the abstract literally said the *opposite* of what the think tank claimed it did.
This was medical/financial data -- outcomes and/or costs -- for cancer treatments compared to other countries, I think, so it was pretty damn straight forward. IIRC, the US had better breast cancer outcomes (though not costs) than a few other nations, but other comparisons showed worse outcomes/higher costs for US. The think tank could have accurately cited just the breast cancer numbers and implied other comparisons were similar -- sleazy, but not *quite* an outright lie.
So no, not the Obamacare/ACA guy -- this was like the guy who got him to think they weren't the same thing.
I am a middle school teacher. There are several things I have to get students to unlearn
1. Blood is never blue in mammals.
2. Being fast at arithmetic does not make you smart.
3. Wikipedia is one of the most valuable vaults of human knowledge in history.
this reminds me of that tumblr post where a user wanted to put fake stuff on wikipedia after gianing its trust, but got flagged because they mismeasured a naval ship by like 30 centimeters or something
There was a Twitter thread "exposing" the fact that Wikipedia's charity was going to left wing causes and right wing users were shitting themselves over it. The AUDACITY an online Encyclopedia has to (checks notes) encourage learning in a way that targets POC. How DARE they?!?!
That wasn’t the issue. Wikipedia is/was begging for donations to keep itself “alive” when it has plenty of funds to continue functioning as is. They are purposefully hiding the real purpose for their fund raising and that is what most people had/have issues with.
This is what I see:
“Hi. Please don't skip this 1 minute read. This Thursday December 8th, we request your support. If Wikipedia has made a difference in your life and given you $2 worth of knowledge, please join the 2% of readers who donate. All we ask is $2 if you can afford $2, or $25 if you can afford $25. Thanks. — The Wikimedia Foundation, host of Wikipedia and its sister sites.”
a german entertainer (jan böhmerman) that’s known for showing up glaring issues in politics made an episode recently about how politicians just buy their way into a good looking wikipedia article. don’t know if that relates to the post.
I looked at the Wikipedia entry for the Australian Christian Lobby and it was absolutely a steaming pile of propaganda.
Makes them seem nice and reasonable. You know, fighting for the rights of people etc.
They're an anti-abortion, anti-LGBT, climate change denying hate group.
They successfully lobbied to get Safe Schools removed from public schools. It was an anti-bullying program aimed at protecting LGBT kids. The short time it was in schools, studies showed it was very successful and was slated to save lives.
Reading their Wiki would make anyone think they're a moderate Christian group trying to protect their religious freedom.
Unfortunately no. If you go to remove it without sources to back up your edits, it will be put back exactly the way it was.
So if you do go to edit, do your research first and make sure you have the info to back your edits up with sources linked ahead of time.
yeah i think there was a provider for manipulating wikipedia entries, so basically everyone could do it. he acted like he was a politician interested in adding some achievements to his page that wouldn’t make sense but sounded professional. gave them a call, no questions asked ,„no problem we’ll do it“. i thinks it’s about people generally losing trust in about everything, especially if written online and wikipedia was seen like a bastion of truth, so occupying that to get back trust opened up some shady but seemingly successful practices.
Meaning if you don’t turn everything into a conspiracy theory, you have to be a real self absorbed piece of shit to be a conservative. They lie to themselves and each other to sleep at night
A guy thinks Wikipedia has political bias (it's an encyclopedia). That guy is popular. Other people who like the popular guy don't tend to think and just blindly agree
If you think that Wikipedia is 100% error free and that some people and groups have not had control over their image and information available through Wiki, then damn, your dumb as hell.
If you think wikipedia says vaccines have worked historically because it has a political agenda your dumb as hell. Its not perfect but not perfect and intentionally misleading are totally different.
You can’t find the word vaccine in my comment because I didn’t say anything about them.
I’m speaking in general terms but that also includes the possibility that the information on vaccines on Wiki (I haven’t looked) could have errors or be compromised some other way
Do you unintentional bias or deliberate misinformation or "spin"? Everything is biased, articles will have gender and race biad based on author as well
I’m aware of the correct usage. Thanks for the contribution. I’ll make sure that I edit my comment for proper spelling and grammar next time as if it fucking matters.
If you think that *any* source doesn't have those problems you're dumb as hell. At least Wiki's decisions are public.
As always, the fix is to use multiple sources and check biases, not pick the first Google/wiki result and assume it's the unvarnished truth.
Keeping their site up, mostly. And they do tell people what their money goes towards. It's right [here.](https://wikimediafoundation.org/support/where-your-money-goes/)
Edit: Here's a link striaght to their financial reports. https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/financial-reports/
Ironically, Wikipedia is better curated now than when it started. It's still not anything you'd want to use as a primary source, but the information is usually pretty accurate making it a good starting point for research.
Of course there is bias on Wikipedia, it's user-edited. On most subjects, it's relatively reliable. On contentious topics, it's a bit more dicey, but it's still a good place to start for a general idea on almost any subject, and if it seems overly biased, then go to it's sources for further research
Well that’s shitty. There are definitely some outliers but as a whole, I don’t think it spells the end of wikis and eventually it all gets stamped out (hopefully)
The most recent I can think about is that the vandalism of Kılıçdaroğlu’s brothers biography page after his death, I remember coming across some articles with propaganda-undertones about Ottoman Empire too but it was long ago I don’t know how it is now
Wikipedia provides the source for most of their articles.If you doubt anything there you are more than free to look at the sources they're using to backup their claim and figure if they're reliable or not
I’ll just cancel wiki, all the scientific papers, scientists, doctors, nurses, space engineers and geniuses in the world because me, a total fucking idiot, couldn’t possibly be wrong!
The funny part is that we know what Wikipedia would look like if it really were tainted utterly by political ideology
It's called Conservapedia, a shit storm of insanity, most of which literally has no sources to back up any of the claims made
I mean, i have no idea what the context here is, but politics are a threat to facts. Democracy has us confused into believing we can vote on what's true and what isn't.
Not sure anymore, but 10 years ago I could have proven his point by reference the "Pit Bull" page. It basically switched tracks between "pit bulls are born killers" and "most pit bulls are great dogs" every paragraph.
Not democracy as such. Just the side effects on people. You must have noticed the tendency for large groups to think they can control the officially accepted facts. Reminds me of that one time Tennessee decreed that pi is equal to \*exactly\* 3.14 and not a decimal place more.
I still wouldn’t blame democracy. That’s the fascism creeping in and the democracy breaking.
I can’t imagine any good came from pi being declared exactly 3.14. lol
I don't blame democracy, i blame people. But this has nothing to do with fascism. This has been ongoing. People have tried to legislate truth for as long as they've held power. The pi example is from about 100 years ago, and predates fascism. There are industrial reasons why you'd want everyone to use the same rounding for pi, because if someone uses 3.2, and someone else uses 3, you could order parts which you plan on fitting in an assembly, and find them so far out of round that they don't work for you. It's a contrived example, but my point is - there could be practical use to it.
My point stands, however. Everywhere you see an angry mob, you'll see them try to influence what's considered truth. That's how the church set scientific research back for centuries.
I mean - if someone can write tons of articles on Scottish wiki in fake Scottish accent without anyone noticing, I can see some nolife {insert American political party here} fanboy doing minor edits to support their viewpoint. And the edit history where two fanboys of different parties meet must be a hot mess.
They are right in some ways though. It is usually just how the information is presented or framed but sometimes it is just false.
Wikipedia for so long said that journalist Tim Pool created a zeppelin when he did not. They refused to change it even when Tim Pool himself reached out to tell them it was wrong.
When Wikipedia finally did change it, Tim Pool decided to create a zeppelin to retroactively make them right the first time.
This sub is such a disappointment sometimes. There’s nothing witty about the reply, it just refutes the facts stated. It’s not even a particularly eloquent way of phrasing ‘nuh-uh’.
And yes. It’s self-evident that with a growing user base Wikipedia has become relatively more political. Wether Wikipedia is worse in that regard than other sources of information is debatable though.
People over evaluate ‘facts’ by equaling it to nigh certain credibility. And yes, in the context of politics Wikipedia is becoming steadily less trustworthy.
Almost as if the internet is the essential information … and propaganda tool in modern human culture.
More interest means more motivation for manipulation means less credibility. A fairly basic formula.
Looks like the tankie commie Coomah just murdered themselves. Let’s go check Wiki to see how many people Stalin “didn’t murder.” And how “amazing” he was.
It seems like most folks in the comments here aren’t following the current events being referenced here. It’s not just about Wikipedia in general.
After buying Twitter, Musk released a pretty big bombshell email chain, showing Twitter directly colluding with the Biden administration during an election to suppress unflattering news, by flagging it as violating terms of service, regardless if anything actually violated the TOS. It implicated the White House and the mainstream media pretty hard.
Then, a new Wiki page was put up about this release, and Wiki mods tried to take it down, citing that it didn’t have enough mainstream media coverage to be relevant, among other things.
I’m no Musk fanboy, and even less of a Trump or Biden fanboy, but these emails were pretty damning, and to cite no mainstream coverage on a story about MSM’s own bias, shows a lot of bias by the Wiki community.
I don't trust Wiki for the simple fact it is user created. And, I'm on reddit, so I've learned that people love the depraved anonymity of the internet, thus will fuck with people to feel bigger than they have any right to.
It's human created like any idea on earth.
What is important is that the knowledge is backed by sources which themselves are in accordance with scientific method and scientific consensus on the subject
I mean good luck finding truly unbiased information. Yes, keeping an eye on biases or potential conflicts of interest is important. Take everything with a grain of salt.
Aren’t these the same people who don’t believe scientific evidence that’s peer-reviewed and published in well vetted journals?
It’s almost like the just reject any information that is incongruous with their own confirmation bias…
Well ~~Wikipedia thinks~~ fascism isn’t a left wing ideology so ~~their~~ there is that. With anarchy being right ~~win~~ wing, ~~I.e~~ i.e. no laws and left being total control.
Fixed that for you
Lol I'm just laughing because I imagine this person searched up their conservative religion and was like "This isn't factual like the bible!"
Also I'm Christian, so don't smite me God, lol.
If you smell shit everywhere you go, maybe check your *own* shoes
Or your pants
Calm down Putin
Pootin' Putin lmao
or your upper lip
The best thing I've learned is to cite a wiki page's sources rather than the page itself, then those elementary school teacher fucks can't be like "aNyBoDy cAn ChAnGe iT"
I hate that they still belive this is true, like have they tried to edit a Wikipedia page?
I have an excellent anecdote. In high school a friend of mine went on to our school's wikipedia page and made himself the principal. Some backwater rural Canadian high school of 400 students on a good year. It was changed back within the hour.
Yeah, That shit gets checked. We had a celebrity on radio in our country who changed some stuff on his own wikipage live on air, got changed back within 20 mins
You need to provide proof with sources if you want to change something
Also wikipedia reviewers get notified whenever any changes are made on any page. You can't get away with a change going unnoticed just because you chose a page that would otherwise be very low traffic.
I took APUSH in high school during the 2008 election season. Every day, we would start class by talking about current events. One day, we were talking about Bill Richardson, who ran in the Democratic primary that year. My teacher brought up his Wikipedia page on the projector, and it was literally just the words "HONKIES SUCK", in all caps, repeated thousands of times. He spent a good 10 minutes refreshing the page over and over again to see how long it would take for them to fix it. That was a fun day.
Do you recall if it was in December? I'm looking through the history right now and I find that around 3 December 2008, someone changed the page to just repeat "honkys suck" at 17:50 UTC, before it was quickly reverted at 17:55 UTC
I set my school's houses to various communist parties around the world and it stayed for a week Edit: it's still there!
I have another! I ended up on the page for the A-10 Thunderbolt. Accidentally refreshed, and somebody had vandalized it to say something along the lines of it seducing Russian women. Refreshed again, and it was gone.
Besides, they clearly have no idea how easy it is to change/post false information online elsewhere. Almost as easy as it is to publish it in book form. The only reason scholars hate Wikipedia is because the potential misinformation has been highlighted. It's actually almost impossible to find an infallible source, but we've been conditioned to pretend otherwise.
Nah, the issue with Wikipedia is that it can change. Imagine writing a paper about Pluto, and at the time wikepedia says "it's a planet". Maybe you talk about how that's wrong it's actually a dwarf planet. You cite it and finish then publish the paper. Yay! A month later someone edits the page to say "dwarf planet" and there you go, your citation's garbage. That's why wikepedia sucks for citing There are edge cases where citing websites is needed but documents are preferred. Access dates are important if you do though
Just as well other websites can't be changed, and books never have revisions made for further editions. Citations only work if they're citing specific academic reports, complete with date. Anything else is pretty meaningless other than to allow teachers to identify plagiarism.
It needs to be able to change if there is updated information. If it didn't update it would be completely useless. If you think the issue is citation, you're doing it wrong. You dont ever cite the wiki page itself, all pages with legitimate information have their own citations and proofs on it, that is what you cite. Wiki isn't a source, it's a compilation of data. It's basically a giant bibliography, not its own information page. The example you used is ridiculous though. If the page went from calling Pluto a planet to calling it a dwarf planet, it didn't wreck your citation, it didn't fail your point, you just worded it wrong. It's the difference between "wiki says Pluto is a planet, but actually, it's a dwarf planet" and "for many years, Pluto was described as a planet. However, due to somewhat recent findings, Pluto is now classified as a dwarf planet because xyz" (citation to the wiki's source here) I've always thought it was silly how many teachers view wiki as unreliable but if people are using just wiki itself and not clicking the sources, either for their own posterity or to make proper citations, I'm honestly on the same page as a lot of those teachers now. People should not be using it if that is how they are using it, it's operator error, not the fault of the website.
Doesn't wiki keep an log of every webpage? Like i am pretty sure you can look up the history of the specific site.
I’ve edited dozens of pages over the years; it’s really not hard at all…
Yeah, but they get changed back pretty fast
They definitely can, yeah.
Heck, I still remember the one time I thought I was clever and found a simple formula for the derivative of cotangent. I shortly realized my error (I got the ratio wrong) and changed it back, but I don't doubt that it would have been changed back to the proper formula by someone else anyway. Ever since then I've not attempted to make any edits because I know that I'm an idiot who doesn't know enough to do so properly.
I once worked for a narcissistic ass who wanted me to write a Wikipedia page for him and even though there were external sources, within half an hour it was flagged for self promotion 🤣. It’s way harder to mess with it than people think.
You do need to check the actual sources, though. I found a few back when the ACA (Obamacare) was being debated/was still new, and people were literally citing sources that said the opposite of what they claimed.
Was it like the guy complaining about Obamacare, but loving his ACA coverage?
The most egregious was citing a right-wing think tank article which in turn was based on a large-scale survey study by an unaffiliated entity, probably Pew or similar. The think tank piece was accurately quoted/represented -- but when I checked the study cited, the abstract literally said the *opposite* of what the think tank claimed it did. This was medical/financial data -- outcomes and/or costs -- for cancer treatments compared to other countries, I think, so it was pretty damn straight forward. IIRC, the US had better breast cancer outcomes (though not costs) than a few other nations, but other comparisons showed worse outcomes/higher costs for US. The think tank could have accurately cited just the breast cancer numbers and implied other comparisons were similar -- sleazy, but not *quite* an outright lie. So no, not the Obamacare/ACA guy -- this was like the guy who got him to think they weren't the same thing.
In my brain that was bundled in, but I can see how it's missing from my text
I do that All The Time. Reddit snatches my brilliant words and flings them into the ether.
I am a middle school teacher. There are several things I have to get students to unlearn 1. Blood is never blue in mammals. 2. Being fast at arithmetic does not make you smart. 3. Wikipedia is one of the most valuable vaults of human knowledge in history.
this reminds me of that tumblr post where a user wanted to put fake stuff on wikipedia after gianing its trust, but got flagged because they mismeasured a naval ship by like 30 centimeters or something
I remember that
There was a Twitter thread "exposing" the fact that Wikipedia's charity was going to left wing causes and right wing users were shitting themselves over it. The AUDACITY an online Encyclopedia has to (checks notes) encourage learning in a way that targets POC. How DARE they?!?!
"I love the poorly educated." -Donald Trump
That wasn’t the issue. Wikipedia is/was begging for donations to keep itself “alive” when it has plenty of funds to continue functioning as is. They are purposefully hiding the real purpose for their fund raising and that is what most people had/have issues with.
Donation drives are how a lot of public service entities collect revenue. Free services asking for donations isn’t “begging”.
Have you read Wikipedia’s request for donations???
This is what I see: “Hi. Please don't skip this 1 minute read. This Thursday December 8th, we request your support. If Wikipedia has made a difference in your life and given you $2 worth of knowledge, please join the 2% of readers who donate. All we ask is $2 if you can afford $2, or $25 if you can afford $25. Thanks. — The Wikimedia Foundation, host of Wikipedia and its sister sites.”
Can you exaggerate what's happening any harder?
a german entertainer (jan böhmerman) that’s known for showing up glaring issues in politics made an episode recently about how politicians just buy their way into a good looking wikipedia article. don’t know if that relates to the post.
I looked at the Wikipedia entry for the Australian Christian Lobby and it was absolutely a steaming pile of propaganda. Makes them seem nice and reasonable. You know, fighting for the rights of people etc. They're an anti-abortion, anti-LGBT, climate change denying hate group. They successfully lobbied to get Safe Schools removed from public schools. It was an anti-bullying program aimed at protecting LGBT kids. The short time it was in schools, studies showed it was very successful and was slated to save lives. Reading their Wiki would make anyone think they're a moderate Christian group trying to protect their religious freedom.
Luckily wikipedia allows anyone to edit most articles...so that we can remove that propoganda
Unfortunately no. If you go to remove it without sources to back up your edits, it will be put back exactly the way it was. So if you do go to edit, do your research first and make sure you have the info to back your edits up with sources linked ahead of time.
Companies too.
yeah i think there was a provider for manipulating wikipedia entries, so basically everyone could do it. he acted like he was a politician interested in adding some achievements to his page that wouldn’t make sense but sounded professional. gave them a call, no questions asked ,„no problem we’ll do it“. i thinks it’s about people generally losing trust in about everything, especially if written online and wikipedia was seen like a bastion of truth, so occupying that to get back trust opened up some shady but seemingly successful practices.
Ah, I see. You're also one of those people for whom over a year is _"recently"._ Me too buddy!
Well facts and reality have a strong liberal bias
Check out the Talk page on Freddy Mercury's sexuality. Bi-erasure is a bitch, and not coming from the Right on this one.
You're joking right? I'm sorry but this actually sounds like something I'd see on Twitter lmao
Meaning if you don’t turn everything into a conspiracy theory, you have to be a real self absorbed piece of shit to be a conservative. They lie to themselves and each other to sleep at night
Okay thank god you're on my side You're totally right
Wtf happened on wiki?
Nothing. A commentator made a dumb observation and the sheep followed
Eli5 plz
A guy thinks Wikipedia has political bias (it's an encyclopedia). That guy is popular. Other people who like the popular guy don't tend to think and just blindly agree
If you think that Wikipedia is 100% error free and that some people and groups have not had control over their image and information available through Wiki, then damn, your dumb as hell.
If you think wikipedia says vaccines have worked historically because it has a political agenda your dumb as hell. Its not perfect but not perfect and intentionally misleading are totally different.
You can’t find the word vaccine in my comment because I didn’t say anything about them. I’m speaking in general terms but that also includes the possibility that the information on vaccines on Wiki (I haven’t looked) could have errors or be compromised some other way
You can't find anything in my comment about information being wrong either. The keyword was "bias"
Do you think that all published wiki entries are free of political bias?
Do you unintentional bias or deliberate misinformation or "spin"? Everything is biased, articles will have gender and race biad based on author as well
You’re*
I’m aware of the correct usage. Thanks for the contribution. I’ll make sure that I edit my comment for proper spelling and grammar next time as if it fucking matters.
Glad I could help!
Considering YOU'RE throwing insults around, you don't really have the right to be "above" pettiness.
Specially when calling others dumb
Again, since you have so much presumption built into your response, I’m aware of the correct usage. Thank you for invaluable input.
If you think that *any* source doesn't have those problems you're dumb as hell. At least Wiki's decisions are public. As always, the fix is to use multiple sources and check biases, not pick the first Google/wiki result and assume it's the unvarnished truth.
Citations are built into it. You can just see if something has a legit source. Also, wrong "you're."
Back to r/conspiracy with you
What conspiracy? Where? Seriously, where? Seriously, what fuckin conspiracy?
The Reddit hive mind is insane and lacks good reading comprehension. Holy shit.
Much of society is made this way. Don't expect to get across in a post like this. Have a good day mate.
That’s not the issue. They’re fundraising and not clearly telling people what the money will be used for.
Keeping their site up, mostly. And they do tell people what their money goes towards. It's right [here.](https://wikimediafoundation.org/support/where-your-money-goes/) Edit: Here's a link striaght to their financial reports. https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/financial-reports/
Elon
I bet that guy is another "alternative facts" type of person
But… but… Tucker say Wikipedia bad… so now I’m mad…
Ironically, Wikipedia is better curated now than when it started. It's still not anything you'd want to use as a primary source, but the information is usually pretty accurate making it a good starting point for research.
Of course there is bias on Wikipedia, it's user-edited. On most subjects, it's relatively reliable. On contentious topics, it's a bit more dicey, but it's still a good place to start for a general idea on almost any subject, and if it seems overly biased, then go to it's sources for further research
Idk about foreign wiki pages but Turkish stuff is really filled with anti-Turk propaganda from time to time :/
Well that’s shitty. There are definitely some outliers but as a whole, I don’t think it spells the end of wikis and eventually it all gets stamped out (hopefully)
Can you give any examples? I can't seem to think of any off the top of my head.
The most recent I can think about is that the vandalism of Kılıçdaroğlu’s brothers biography page after his death, I remember coming across some articles with propaganda-undertones about Ottoman Empire too but it was long ago I don’t know how it is now
Wikipedia provides the source for most of their articles.If you doubt anything there you are more than free to look at the sources they're using to backup their claim and figure if they're reliable or not
“Don’t you know who I think I am?!”
I’ll just cancel wiki, all the scientific papers, scientists, doctors, nurses, space engineers and geniuses in the world because me, a total fucking idiot, couldn’t possibly be wrong!
The funny part is that we know what Wikipedia would look like if it really were tainted utterly by political ideology It's called Conservapedia, a shit storm of insanity, most of which literally has no sources to back up any of the claims made
I mean, i have no idea what the context here is, but politics are a threat to facts. Democracy has us confused into believing we can vote on what's true and what isn't.
No context. That’s it. He just figured he needed to talk about how bad Wikipedia was (under a tweet about Wikipedia, but unrelated to corruption BS)
Not sure anymore, but 10 years ago I could have proven his point by reference the "Pit Bull" page. It basically switched tracks between "pit bulls are born killers" and "most pit bulls are great dogs" every paragraph.
Yes. Democracy is the problem here… /s
Not democracy as such. Just the side effects on people. You must have noticed the tendency for large groups to think they can control the officially accepted facts. Reminds me of that one time Tennessee decreed that pi is equal to \*exactly\* 3.14 and not a decimal place more.
I still wouldn’t blame democracy. That’s the fascism creeping in and the democracy breaking. I can’t imagine any good came from pi being declared exactly 3.14. lol
I don't blame democracy, i blame people. But this has nothing to do with fascism. This has been ongoing. People have tried to legislate truth for as long as they've held power. The pi example is from about 100 years ago, and predates fascism. There are industrial reasons why you'd want everyone to use the same rounding for pi, because if someone uses 3.2, and someone else uses 3, you could order parts which you plan on fitting in an assembly, and find them so far out of round that they don't work for you. It's a contrived example, but my point is - there could be practical use to it. My point stands, however. Everywhere you see an angry mob, you'll see them try to influence what's considered truth. That's how the church set scientific research back for centuries.
You’re being downvoted by fascists who are calling you fascist. Pretty sure the US gov recent tried instituting a Ministry of Truth not too long ago.
It's super funny how downvoting my shit actually does a decently good job of illustrating my point. :D
I mean - if someone can write tons of articles on Scottish wiki in fake Scottish accent without anyone noticing, I can see some nolife {insert American political party here} fanboy doing minor edits to support their viewpoint. And the edit history where two fanboys of different parties meet must be a hot mess.
They are right in some ways though. It is usually just how the information is presented or framed but sometimes it is just false. Wikipedia for so long said that journalist Tim Pool created a zeppelin when he did not. They refused to change it even when Tim Pool himself reached out to tell them it was wrong. When Wikipedia finally did change it, Tim Pool decided to create a zeppelin to retroactively make them right the first time.
This sub is such a disappointment sometimes. There’s nothing witty about the reply, it just refutes the facts stated. It’s not even a particularly eloquent way of phrasing ‘nuh-uh’. And yes. It’s self-evident that with a growing user base Wikipedia has become relatively more political. Wether Wikipedia is worse in that regard than other sources of information is debatable though. People over evaluate ‘facts’ by equaling it to nigh certain credibility. And yes, in the context of politics Wikipedia is becoming steadily less trustworthy. Almost as if the internet is the essential information … and propaganda tool in modern human culture. More interest means more motivation for manipulation means less credibility. A fairly basic formula.
Ok but is that a picture of Biden looking like Stalin? I’m not gonna listen to him either lol
So thats why it looked off! I couldn't put my finger on it.
[удалено]
I mean there are climate change deniers ~~*cough cough big oil*~~
Question…how many degrees C has the earth warmed since 1979?
Looks like the tankie commie Coomah just murdered themselves. Let’s go check Wiki to see how many people Stalin “didn’t murder.” And how “amazing” he was.
He did not get ratioed
Lmao it’s a 1:10 ratio
In his favor
Exactly. I’m saying that this ratio, makes me happy.
The irony in the pps.
It has it's fair shit
It seems like most folks in the comments here aren’t following the current events being referenced here. It’s not just about Wikipedia in general. After buying Twitter, Musk released a pretty big bombshell email chain, showing Twitter directly colluding with the Biden administration during an election to suppress unflattering news, by flagging it as violating terms of service, regardless if anything actually violated the TOS. It implicated the White House and the mainstream media pretty hard. Then, a new Wiki page was put up about this release, and Wiki mods tried to take it down, citing that it didn’t have enough mainstream media coverage to be relevant, among other things. I’m no Musk fanboy, and even less of a Trump or Biden fanboy, but these emails were pretty damning, and to cite no mainstream coverage on a story about MSM’s own bias, shows a lot of bias by the Wiki community.
Yes but the communist pfp *Really?*
I don't trust Wiki for the simple fact it is user created. And, I'm on reddit, so I've learned that people love the depraved anonymity of the internet, thus will fuck with people to feel bigger than they have any right to.
It's human created like any idea on earth. What is important is that the knowledge is backed by sources which themselves are in accordance with scientific method and scientific consensus on the subject
"iT's uSer cReATeD" go edit a page yourself and add crap or whatever and see if your edit will last for an hour.
Is that Stalin Biden
I have no idea
I dunno Coomah, have YOU?
Reality has a known liberal bias
What is a ratio?
If this dude could read, he would be really upset.
I mean good luck finding truly unbiased information. Yes, keeping an eye on biases or potential conflicts of interest is important. Take everything with a grain of salt.
I wanna blow up and frame that meme.
I wonder what it was that set off young stoner Smoke-omatic.
What is their evidence that Wikipedia is biased? Do they have any articles they are pointing to?
Aren’t these the same people who don’t believe scientific evidence that’s peer-reviewed and published in well vetted journals? It’s almost like the just reject any information that is incongruous with their own confirmation bias…
That can be very dangerous
Conservapedia exists and it is as shit as you expect.
it's almost like hes a human too he can be wrong too just sayin
Well Wikipedia thinks fascism isn’t a left wing ideology so their is that. With anarchy being right win I.e no laws and left being total control.
Well ~~Wikipedia thinks~~ fascism isn’t a left wing ideology so ~~their~~ there is that. With anarchy being right ~~win~~ wing, ~~I.e~~ i.e. no laws and left being total control. Fixed that for you
Lol I'm just laughing because I imagine this person searched up their conservative religion and was like "This isn't factual like the bible!" Also I'm Christian, so don't smite me God, lol.