from Hacker News

How the Regime Captured Wikipedia

by rand0mx1 on 8/6/24, 4:56 AM with 6 comments

• by x-complexity on 8/6/24, 6:43 AM

  It is no secret that high-value items/systems/services/etc. will inevitably find itself in the crosshairs of those that want to control it for their own ends. As shown by the Foundation, they have given themselves a wide berth to focus on narratives that they see fit, with no one being able to oppose such control without being labelled as The Enemy.

  The fact that they can use funds of the Foundation for projects that:

  - (a) aren't about keeping the servers/site up, and

  - (b) are often times politically biased

  shows the grown parasitism that now exists within the Foundation.

  Backup however many copies you can. *When* the Foundation collapses in on itself, it'll be because the parasites have drained it of all of its resources, and they'll scurry off to their next host to begin the cycle anew. All that will be left for us is a hollow husk of biased writings & rose-tinted lenses, funded with our tax dollars & well-meaning donations.

• by assmanreturns on 8/6/24, 3:48 PM

  Although I would normally agree with an article like this because I'm not a left-tarded liberal that typically infects the world, I don't think they really made their case.

  No doubt the wikipedia is left-tarded as are most institutions but it doesn't appear to me that wikimedia has captured it yet. The two appear to be operating quite independently for the most part. The article talks a lot about wikimedia funding and its pretty clear that its fully left-tarded. But there is no indication other than one editor firing that wikipedia itself is being affected directly.

  Its similar to Nature. The editorial pages and blogs are filled with social justice nonsense. But the actual journals are filled with just regular nonsense..they have yet to reach peak nonsense.

• by roenxi on 8/6/24, 5:39 AM

  I can't help but think back to the Mozilla foundation too. With high profile projects like Wikipedia, there is an unavoidable question of what the cultural background of the project leadership is. It has to have some perspective on the world and there are too many knotty issues where everyone appears to be as wrong as each other but the subject is too important to ignore. At some point (vague handwave) it'll be corrupted and the project will fail, and this article is an interesting view on how that might happen.

  Wikipedia is an interesting one because I suspect the culture that drives Wikipedia is a mystery to ousiders. It is to me. It didn't seem to be partisan, it didn't claim to be technocratic, it officially wasn't interested in divining the truth from research. Didn't seem to be religious, didn't seem to be geographically centred. Given the incredible public good the editors are responsible for it'd be impolite to observe many of them are unhinged but the thought does occur.

  Anyway; whatever culture it is the retrospective process of watching its successes or failures will be a marvel. The political activists are brutally competitive and I'd expect them to win except I don't understand who the Wikipedia people actually are and whether they will be able to reform around a new project after Wikipedia itself, inevitably, falls to barbarians.

• by josefritzishere on 8/6/24, 7:55 PM

  This reads like a highly biased hit peice. There may be some valid criticism here but in a mire of political bias you'd never know.