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This week, two prominent Republicans, Rep. James Comer (R-Kentucky) and Nancy Mace (R-South Carolina), both of whom play influential roles in the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, announced plans to probe into everybody’s favorite digital encyclopedia. In a letter that Comer and Mace sent to the Wikimedia Foundation (which helps run the site), they asked for internal documents that might show evidence of bad actors who had commandeered Wikipedia for their own ends. The letter, dated Aug. 27th, states that the committee is
investigating the efforts of foreign operations and individuals at academic institutions subsidized by U.S. taxpayer dollars to influence U.S. public opinion. We seek your assistance in obtaining documents and communications regarding individuals (or specific accounts) serving as Wikipedia volunteer editors who violated Wikipedia platform policies as well as your own efforts to thwart intentional, organized efforts to inject bias into important and sensitive topics.
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Disinformation is important to fascists
We must protect Wikipedia.
To be clear, these are not the entirety of Wikipedia.
Wikipedia is a living document. Reducing it to a static download sqirreled away in an archive somewhere is just a subtler way of killing it.
Nah, these database dumps happen relatively often (almost once a month). I’m seeding many different snapshots. You’ve reminded me to check for the latest one, which was taken august 1st. Thanks
You miss my point, and I suspect most people did given the torrent of downvotes on my comment.
Wikipedia is not just the big blob of data, it’s the editors who are constantly updating and curating it. It’s the site where those editors do their work. If Trump manages to “shut down” Wikipedia, then it doesn’t matter if that blob of data is safely stashed away on some peoples’ hard drives - it’s no longer a living document. The editors can’t edit, the readers can’t read. It becomes a clay tablet buried in a pit somewhere.
That’s why “protecting Wikipedia” can’t simply involve downloading a database dump. That’s like “protecting” someone by embalming them and sealing their corpse in a vault.
FaceDeer, you keep having these takes that people hate because it is a truth. Maybe it’s the percieved pessimism, idk. Wikipedia absolutely would not be the same if it wasn’t organic and changing.
Yeah.
They they don’t need to kill Wikipedia, they just need to make it inaccessible enough to not matter. This is the Fascism 2.0 playbook.
Archiving it is good, but it also won’t matter if the site can’t stay up, and it is backed up thousands of times over, probably.
right, exactly what all data backup engineers say. why bother, its out of date!
/s
A backup is useless if it can’t be made “live” again. If you talk to an actual backup engineer they’ll tell you that ensuring a backup is kept is only half the battle, you can’t be confident of that backup until you try restoring it to ensure it can actually come back online.
If I made a backup of the Fediverse’s data and stored that safely away, but the Fediverse itself was no longer capable of being posted to, would I have “protected” the Fediverse? Not really.
A backup isn’t until it’s been proven it can be restored.
Schrödingers backup
depends on your context. and your context sucks.
could wikipedia be rebuilt with one of those backups? yes, it fucking can. it would be a bitch, but the data is there… the important bits are there.
the fediverse is a series of servers, so your attempt at some kind of analog falls pretty fucking flat.
my instance has a backup of almost all the kbin.social data for example… could it be restored if i happen to get the domain? yes, i absolutely could take my data and rebuild it. would it be perfect? no. but its far better than tossing my hands up in there air like yourself and saying “nope, youre fucked”… or as you put it ‘useless’
Sure, Wikipedia could be rebuilt from one of those backups. But it won’t be. If it needs to be rebuilt it’ll be built from the latest database image, not some random months-old dump that someone downloaded and stashed on their home computer.
The point I’m trying to make here is that downloading a backup copy is not “doing something.” One shouldn’t breathe a sigh of relief and rest easy in the knowledge that Wikipedia is “protected” because you’ve done that. That action is an irrelevant microscopic speck compared to what is actually needed to be done to protect Wikipedia.
unless you 100% know the future of humanity you dont get to say what will be valuable.
ive downloaded copies of dr who that only exist because some random guy in some random australian back woods made a backup of the video. it wasnt the studio that had that backup, it was a rando.
‘dont do that because it might not be useful’ is kind of callous considering the whole point of wikipedia is as a storage for humanities knowledge base specifically not knowing what the future holds. why the fuck do you think they made it so portable?
i feel kind of bad for you, and i have to assume youre young as you lack context into the big picture
Hi! Something something I might be able answer people’s questions something something.
they asked for internal documents that might show evidence of bad actors who had commandeered Wikipedia for their own ends
Any such evidence is going to point squarely at republicans… and will be completely ignored.
Sounds like a good time for Wikipedia to leave the US altogether. They can’t touch them if they’re outside US jurisdiction. The worst that can happen, is they’ll try and ban the site inside the US…but the core operations will still be available, and out of reach.
I just doubled my monthly Wikipedia donation amount because of this
It was only a matter of time before they tried to tackle Wikipedia. Fascism relies on misinformation—that’s why knowledge is its enemy.
Elon tried that months ago questionimg wikimedia’s spending on equity, safety and inclusion initiatives to try and dissuade people from donating.
Yea, that guy in particular seems exactly like the kind of unscrupulous moron who would do just that.
Okay. So they can kill the power on a few nodes and still be okay until they light a few new ones.
Time for Wikipedia to leave America. May the sanest among us follow.
Witch hunt. They will never release the results of this investigation because it will not support their narrative.
How dare Wikipedia give their content away for free and function on donations rather than advertising
Fascists always attack education.
Pretty obvious.
Anyone can help preserve wikipedia - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Database_download
Needs decentralisation
6 geo-diverse locations.
The real issue is page edits and coordinated attacks and false Wikipedias. You can and should download your own copy before this keeps too crazy. For the important pages maybe try to grab digital copies of the cited materials too.
For the important pages maybe try to grab digital copies of the cited materials too.
This does not seem feasible.
Control the information.
We have a Committee on Oversight and Government Reform?!?!
I think the majority is in charge, so, ya know…
Interesting, I think I know whom and I didn’t need a committee! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t52LB2fYhoY
