Communities are made up of people who have subjective experiences. It’s nothing that you can’t prevent.
Wikipedia is a place where that happens because of the high-quality level that Wikipedia has.
Wikipedia is also pretty much the only place where human history can be written and edited which affects the knowledge of future generations. That alone had given it so much strategic value and incentives for all sorts of actors to control or game it, however there’s as if the higher echelons are trapped in office politics and doesn’t really seem to realise what sort of implications are going to occur if they let themselves be gamed by malicious actors, which is exactly what happened during the Holocaust distortion scandal which was uncovered by Shira Klein and Jan Grabowski.
Think about this, if people decide to stop using Facebook for any reason because they hate Mark Zuckerberg and his policies, there are off-ramps like Reddit and Twitter to switch to. Not the case for Wikipedia, where no meaningful redresses had existed for a very long time are possible if they fall out with Wikipedia for some reason. Practically almost all of general-level knowledges we learn on the Internet comes in whole or in part from Wikipedia. The analogy about the restaurant in the food desert by OP sounds about right.
After all, despite backbreaking efforts by Jess Wade, Wikipedia still has systemic biases against female figures, such as usage of citations.
however there’s as if the higher echelons are trapped in office politics and doesn’t really seem to realise what sort of implications are going to occur if they let themselves be gamed by malicious actors
It’s quite ironic that you say that at the same time as speaking against actions that are about making it harder to game Wikipedia by malicious actors.
Wikipedia isn’t perfect but all decisions have their tradeoffs and when you don’t think about those, that’s not really the basis for improving anything.
It’s amplified in a large magnitude on Wikipedia which acts like a monopoly on the knowledge market.
There are plenty of different ways knowledge is published on the web and Wikipedia does not have a monopoly on knowledge. What it has is a community that in all its flaws has a decent process that produces valuable outcomes.
Nobody found a way to set up the way a community around the topic works better than Wikipedia.
It’s quite ironic that you say that at the same time as speaking against actions that are about making it harder to game Wikipedia by malicious actors.
Wikipedia isn’t perfect but all decisions have their tradeoffs and when you don’t think about those, that’s not really the basis for improving anything.
The Arbitration Committee (Arbcom) of Wikipedia was given a fair chance to actually stop the Holocaust distortion problem by banning all the ultranationalist distortionists from the topic area. The actually doled out measures were far lenient than expected with Piotrus, the ringleader of the distortionists, walking off scots-free, although with all fairness some such as Volunteer Marek received bans from the topic area.
There are plenty of different ways knowledge is published on the web and Wikipedia does not have a monopoly on knowledge.
This Telegraph feature article begs to differ. Wikipedia has been used as contents for eternal disks in space missions, court judgements and even is part of a trope in Andy Weir’s Hail Mary where it’s implicitly touted as the sum and representative of human civilization when the astronaut gives a copy of it to the fictional aliens from the Epsilon Eridani system. No other encyclopedia, not even the Britannica which has far less entries yet are higher in quality, enjoys that kind of treatment. With that I stand by the OP and other’s belief that Wikipedia acts like a monopoly on knowledge, at least on the Internet.
Nobody found a way to set up the way a community around the topic works better than Wikipedia.
It doesn’t mean that it’s not worth a try though. In fact this could be one of the best candidates for cause prioritization. After all the community issues have boiled over weeks ago, when a WikiConference event in Toronto Reference Library was hit by a phony bomb threat, reportedly by disgruntled user(s) who were treated badly there.
There’s also an unpublished book detailing Wikipedia problems and scandals by Eric Barbour, which was reviewed by Larry Sanger and Andreas Kolbe (yes, that one!) and which summaries can be viewed here. It’s not just an imperfect institution; it’s a corrupt one. WMF is unexpectedly litigation happy against anyone, especially investigative journalists who dared to lift their veils and hence the book and the general idea that “Wikipedia has a bad side too” remains largely absent in mainstream discourse so far.
Wikipedia is also pretty much the only place where human history can be written and edited which affects the knowledge of future generations. That alone had given it so much strategic value and incentives for all sorts of actors to control or game it, however there’s as if the higher echelons are trapped in office politics and doesn’t really seem to realise what sort of implications are going to occur if they let themselves be gamed by malicious actors, which is exactly what happened during the Holocaust distortion scandal which was uncovered by Shira Klein and Jan Grabowski.
Think about this, if people decide to stop using Facebook for any reason because they hate Mark Zuckerberg and his policies, there are off-ramps like Reddit and Twitter to switch to. Not the case for Wikipedia, where no meaningful redresses had existed for a very long time are possible if they fall out with Wikipedia for some reason. Practically almost all of general-level knowledges we learn on the Internet comes in whole or in part from Wikipedia. The analogy about the restaurant in the food desert by OP sounds about right.
After all, despite backbreaking efforts by Jess Wade, Wikipedia still has systemic biases against female figures, such as usage of citations.
Power is a strong source for corruption, no exceptions. It’s amplified in a large magnitude on Wikipedia which acts like a monopoly on the knowledge market. The other day a journalist has uncovered two dozen Weinstein type scandals on Wikipedia perpertrated by admins and users which could do far larger reputational damage against Wikipedia movement itself if published in the media.
In terms of off-ramps and alternatives there exist two platforms now—Encycla and Justapedia.
Edit: Since Gwern has commented here as well here is their essay expressing concerns about the dominance of deletionism at Wikipedia.
It’s quite ironic that you say that at the same time as speaking against actions that are about making it harder to game Wikipedia by malicious actors.
Wikipedia isn’t perfect but all decisions have their tradeoffs and when you don’t think about those, that’s not really the basis for improving anything.
There are plenty of different ways knowledge is published on the web and Wikipedia does not have a monopoly on knowledge. What it has is a community that in all its flaws has a decent process that produces valuable outcomes.
Nobody found a way to set up the way a community around the topic works better than Wikipedia.
The Arbitration Committee (Arbcom) of Wikipedia was given a fair chance to actually stop the Holocaust distortion problem by banning all the ultranationalist distortionists from the topic area. The actually doled out measures were far lenient than expected with Piotrus, the ringleader of the distortionists, walking off scots-free, although with all fairness some such as Volunteer Marek received bans from the topic area.
This Telegraph feature article begs to differ. Wikipedia has been used as contents for eternal disks in space missions, court judgements and even is part of a trope in Andy Weir’s Hail Mary where it’s implicitly touted as the sum and representative of human civilization when the astronaut gives a copy of it to the fictional aliens from the Epsilon Eridani system. No other encyclopedia, not even the Britannica which has far less entries yet are higher in quality, enjoys that kind of treatment. With that I stand by the OP and other’s belief that Wikipedia acts like a monopoly on knowledge, at least on the Internet.
It doesn’t mean that it’s not worth a try though. In fact this could be one of the best candidates for cause prioritization. After all the community issues have boiled over weeks ago, when a WikiConference event in Toronto Reference Library was hit by a phony bomb threat, reportedly by disgruntled user(s) who were treated badly there.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/bomb-threat-toronto-reference-library-1.7026287
https://twitter.com/AustinReporting/status/1723351006975582613
There’s also an unpublished book detailing Wikipedia problems and scandals by Eric Barbour, which was reviewed by Larry Sanger and Andreas Kolbe (yes, that one!) and which summaries can be viewed here. It’s not just an imperfect institution; it’s a corrupt one. WMF is unexpectedly litigation happy against anyone, especially investigative journalists who dared to lift their veils and hence the book and the general idea that “Wikipedia has a bad side too” remains largely absent in mainstream discourse so far.