In a letter obtained by The Free Press, Trump appointee Ed Martin accuses the Wikimedia Foundation of violating the law. Critics say his tactics are ‘grandstanding.’
Ah, you replied while I was reading and writing my edit. It works better as a reply here.
Out of curiosity, I’ve even given you the benefit of a doubt and looked through your reddit link you provided to someone else. Some of the examples provided there I have even heard of like the resulting AARoads wiki and the “definition of recession” controversy, but it does seem overshadowed by a mountain of spurious sources and examples.
I see references to bad moderation, and examples of incidents, some verifiable. This isn’t surprising, nor would I try to dispute it.
I see claims of manipulation of the rules, that there are people who try to goad others into enforcement traps. And while there’s no solid evidence, I don’t doubt that.
What I’m not seeing is any suggestion of a solution. Wikipedia has a slew of rigorous mechanisms to allow for community moderation, resolution/stoppage of edit wars, and well documented escalation paths. It has flaws, and it is a work of volunteers with inherent biases, hence the systems to address them. Instead of curating a list of deficiencies, it may be more effective to start building a list of potential solutions to the deficiencies at hand. If you were to take the existing model of Wikipedia, it’s rules, it’s moderation… What would you change to improve it? And more importantly, how?
What I’m not seeing is any suggestion of a solution. Wikipedia has a slew of rigorous mechanisms to allow for community moderation, resolution/stoppage of edit wars, and well documented escalation paths. It has flaws, and it is a work of volunteers with inherent biases, hence the systems to address them. Instead of curating a list of deficiencies, it may be more effective to start building a list of potential solutions to the deficiencies at hand. If you were to take the existing model of Wikipedia, it’s rules, it’s moderation… What would you change to improve it? And more importantly, how?
Good question. One good approach would be to create as many Wikipedia alternatives as you can, which is actually doable through newly released ibis.wiki. There’s also Encycla, Justapedia and Namu.wiki to pick from, although because of Google is putting it high up in their search results, almost all earlier alternatives failed to get off the ground and gather enough momentum.
Cory Doctorow’s theory of enshittification can be applied to this one. According to him there are four constraints that prevent enshittification: competition, regulation, self-help and labor. Normally the first and the third one would be sufficient but as I see that Wikipedia has entered a terminal phase with those sexual scandals and so on, which would cause the Internet to turn against Wikipedia overnight, all the constraints would therefore have to be activated in this case. A likely result would entail Wikipedia liquidating and getting absorbed into more better, successor encyclopedic organizations, like how the League of Nations folded into the United Nations at the end of WWII.
Please feel free to read this Reddit page which collects or summarizes a list of scandals and issues on Wikipedia.
Ah, you replied while I was reading and writing my edit. It works better as a reply here.
Out of curiosity, I’ve even given you the benefit of a doubt and looked through your reddit link you provided to someone else. Some of the examples provided there I have even heard of like the resulting AARoads wiki and the “definition of recession” controversy, but it does seem overshadowed by a mountain of spurious sources and examples.
I see references to bad moderation, and examples of incidents, some verifiable. This isn’t surprising, nor would I try to dispute it.
I see claims of manipulation of the rules, that there are people who try to goad others into enforcement traps. And while there’s no solid evidence, I don’t doubt that.
What I’m not seeing is any suggestion of a solution. Wikipedia has a slew of rigorous mechanisms to allow for community moderation, resolution/stoppage of edit wars, and well documented escalation paths. It has flaws, and it is a work of volunteers with inherent biases, hence the systems to address them. Instead of curating a list of deficiencies, it may be more effective to start building a list of potential solutions to the deficiencies at hand. If you were to take the existing model of Wikipedia, it’s rules, it’s moderation… What would you change to improve it? And more importantly, how?
Good question. One good approach would be to create as many Wikipedia alternatives as you can, which is actually doable through newly released ibis.wiki. There’s also Encycla, Justapedia and Namu.wiki to pick from, although because of Google is putting it high up in their search results, almost all earlier alternatives failed to get off the ground and gather enough momentum.
Cory Doctorow’s theory of enshittification can be applied to this one. According to him there are four constraints that prevent enshittification: competition, regulation, self-help and labor. Normally the first and the third one would be sufficient but as I see that Wikipedia has entered a terminal phase with those sexual scandals and so on, which would cause the Internet to turn against Wikipedia overnight, all the constraints would therefore have to be activated in this case. A likely result would entail Wikipedia liquidating and getting absorbed into more better, successor encyclopedic organizations, like how the League of Nations folded into the United Nations at the end of WWII.