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Everything wrong with the Wikipedia is something that is just generally wrong with working with humans.
My experience with the Wikipedia included being harassed white nationalists because I edited their creepy "Race and IQ" article. A very ugly experience. I did not feel supported or protected by "the wikipedia community" --
Despite this, I STILL think it's one of the best resources on the internet. That Mr. Musk wants to destroy it only makes me more confident this is correct.
In fact, there is a lot of systemic bias in the Wikipedia. This is a reflection of systemic bias in society.
For example if you look at biographies notable men outnumber women, it's white and western dominated. The "Race and IQ" topic is still a big mess. But, you can tell from the boatload of citations and the 1GB talk page that it's a contested topic. I expect if the Wiki can endure the talk pages will be a huge resource for historians.
If we still have historians in the future.
The "marketplace of ideas" is an imperfect concept that inherently magnifies oppressions. Who has the time to edit articles? What sources are reliable? Bias must exist in any attempt to describe the world. And yet, the idea that we should attempt the task together is inherently radical.
And, the idea that "everyone who can be bothered" should just hash out the definition of everything turns out to be too woke for most fascists. Even with all the built in advantages conservatives can't compete.
It's also why they don't like democracy. And democracy is flawed too.
But, if we can start from "everyone can edit" and "everyone should have a say" we at least have a slim chance of hearing all voices. We at least have a chance at arriving at a self-aware stance that recognizes its own shortcomings and tries to be better.
God will not come down from heaven and write a perfect encyclopedia for us. Short of that, (if you care to think such a thing is possible) this is the best we will get.
You're looking at the tip of the iceberg.
bsky.app/profile/merr...
RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:4gmo2j5wbdgv54tqgvmfzwzm/post/3kz7vtxh3gs2g
Good point. The marketplace of ideas is often dominated by - marketing, which has nothing to do with ideas.
on the “who” part, whatif… classrooms? (it’s insomnia time for me and only a partially cooked notion)
maybe we build the support you didn’t have?
materials/support for students and educators to participate in a topic like i.q. ?
@melioristicmarie @futurebird Having spoken to several people who did "edit Wikipedia" classroom exercises as students... not sure that's getting us where we need to go. Mostly they laugh about adding nonsense to an article and seeing how long it stayed up.
Wikipedia has several outreach throughout issues. Things like: women having article-a-thons, seeing their articles flagged for deletion before the session is even over. It's not just privilege, there are bad actors who are regular editors.
@eyrea @futurebird @melioristicmarie Just to emphasize that, there are not just individual bad actors, but organizations of bad actors. Religious cults and spy agencies and digital militias who have people embedded in Wikipedia editing full time.
@eyrea @melioristicmarie @futurebird My daughter just had one of those in a college history class. I warned her that the Wikipedia community HATES when teachers assign those. But she ended up adding some citations for something or other and said it was a valuable experience.
@mattmcirvin @melioristicmarie @futurebird It was probably smart to stick with citations, as opposed to trying to create a new article.
@eyrea @melioristicmarie @futurebird The French Wikipedia is known for its misogynistic, racist and transphobic "guidelines".
Which is not surprising as it reflects France's treatment of its minorities.
@aSweetGentleman @eyrea @melioristicmarie
I don't care if they are "torn."
To be fair this could be the work of like six stubborn people. Get six more on the other side and they will lose. If I spoke French I'd jump in the fray. What BS.
@eyrea @melioristicmarie @futurebird in my own experience, everybody toyed with the notion of making funny edits on Wikipedia, or at least appreciating those of the past. The school's IP was quickly banned. Those edits also reflected the biases of society (like the verbose description of the Warren G - Regulate music video, or the collaborative effort to cite all the sources in Girl Talk's Feed The Animals) but everyone loved the encyclopedia, and I contribute to articles sometimes.
@futurebird In other words, it functions *exactly* like a marketplace.
Sources, please? /genq
Will never understand why they don't archive their source links.
I stumbled upon Wikipedia pages about cannibalism that described a lot of horrors in Africa, way worse than the little bit I knew about it.
The sources seemed to be old colonial or precolonial Europeans accounts, accepted at face value.
I don't know enough about the topic to edit anything, but it would be nice if someone could improve these pages...
It's not clear if it's overt racism or just sensationalism that drive them, but spreading falsities isn't good in either cases.
@futurebird I wonder if Wikipedia should become more honest about bias and stop hiding disagreement in the discussion pages. I don't think there is such a thing as "no point of view", claiming that is just not being honest. If there are multiple camps on an issue, why not have forks of the page and have a prominent banner on the top of the page that shows there are competing versions. With different versions of the page being decided by different moderator teams.
@futurebird many countries will still have historians even if the US fails as a free nation
@futurebird Am appreciative of this OP and following the topic of the worth and biases of Wikipedia. You are right that the discussion, edits and talk pages are a wealth of information to present and future historians. I wonder if people outside the US see their country represented better or at least more fairly than USians. Maybe @lavaeolus abd @juergen_hubert have some observations. All the comments to these posts are excellent to read.
Btw I donate to Wikipedia now several times a year. It’s horrifying to think of how such a universal resource could be taken over by capitalists with an extreme right wing agenda who also desire to obliterate much history.
@cobalt123 @futurebird @lavaeolus
I'm afraid I'm not the best person to ask - I mostly edit a few select pages on Wikisource, none of which have any great political issues attached to them. Still, I gather that similar issues exist in the German Wikipedia as well, though they have some different cultural context.
@futurebird
Yes, and the fact that it limits citations to published sources (a very sensible and necessary limitation on the whole) amplifies this, because not all knowledge is published. Especially when addressing topics pertaining to marginalized communities, published info is often downright wrong, while really accurate info is vernacular, held by culture-keepers within the communities in question.
@futurebird
Who gets a voice within the structures of official publication? Separately, how can false published narratives get corrected when the true information is not only unpublished, but culturally sensitive and not offered to the general audience? These questions must be understood (if not answered or even possible to answer) in order to engage with sensitive topics on Wikipedia in an educated, responsible way.