Interesting article from a serious source. The paywall-free quota is 1 article so you should be able to read it. If not, others can post an archive link. Or else consider subscribing if you can afford it. Democracy needs independent journalism as well as independent encyclopedias.
You must log in or register to comment.
Weird how the ‘free speech™’ people seem to be very upset about speech such that they’re buying or harrassing every single media outlet in existence.
Conservatism really does have bad takes on everything.
Not everything on Wikipedia is factual, but enough of it is factual to be inconvenient to those on the right who use misinformation as a tool.
This. Facts are inconvenient to some people.
I’m keeping this post up because it’s relevant to the community, and I enjoy tear-down pieces about how Musk is a hack and everything he touches turns to shit.
(Look up how starlink ruined earth-based astronomy, if you need some additional anger today.)
It’s somewhat ironic that ancient humans had a more intimate and closer relationship with the night sky, despite how much more modern humans know about the universe.
no you look it up and post it you mentioned it fuck it do it
The problem for astronomers is two-fold: passing Starlink satellites create long lines through images taken with optical telescopes and create “noise” for radio telescopes, which rely on specific radio frequencies.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/spacex-starlinks-astronomy-1.7334803
Here’s one from five years ago:
The first Starlink satellites were already clearly visible shortly after launch last year, and some observatories found their images of the night sky ruined. On Thursday, SpaceX is set to launch its latest batch of Starlink satellites, with a set of 60 to join the fleet of 653 that have been launched since May 2019. In a several years the entire network is expected to swell to 12,000 satellites, with a possible expansion to 42,000.
Note: As of May 2025, the constellation consists of over 7,600 mass-produced small satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO)… Starlink comprises 65% of all active satellites.
So this is digital book burning?
The campaign seems almost comically inept. There are valid criticisms of wikipedia to be made, but the idea that it’s full of left-wing propaganda is just so ridiculous that it’s hard to imagine anyone taking it seriously. But then I felt the same way about a certain politician’s recent election campaign. I guess it’s the good old “big lie” tactic in action.
While I generally agree (obviously), the critics are technically correct that there is a problem of (lacking) viewpoint diversity among WP editors. Which has led to some unfortunate cases which are easy to point to. For example, the dismissal of the lab-leak hypothesis as “conspiracism” during Covid. Or, very recently, the coverage of what’s going on in Gaza, and specifically the casual use of the G-word. That coverage is blatantly written from a biased perspective, as the WP founder himself has been (very rare event) complaining about. He understands that credibility is everything. It’s not enough to be “right”, you have to be trusted. Sometimes that means phrasing things in a more neutral way so as to accommodate good-faith objections. I really worry about this because it feels like many people do not understand it, or want to understand it.
The lab leak IS a conspiracy theory and israel IS carrying out a genocide in Gaza. These are not opinions. It seems like you are trying to reach a definition of ‘neutrality’ in good faith, but you’re currently saying that the truth should be hidden/altered to accommodate people who refuse to believe the truth. Opinions go under a subheading in a wikipedia article - there is no reason to give opinions the same amount of screen space as facts. Credibility is not everything - credibility is just credibility. If the point of a website is to publish facts then it is enough to just be ‘right’.
On the lab-leak theory, the current state of opinion among experts is somewhat different from a few years ago. You seem not to be aware of that. On the Gaza issue, I can hardly be bothered to get into it, it’s impossible to have a rational discussion about this subject (which I find deeply sad). Suffice to say that a lot of people disagree with your view (including me? I dunno - who cares?). The role of Wikipedia is to describe that discussion calmly, not to bark at readers that they’re wrong and should correct their wrongthink.
Yeah the Gaza article freeze really bothered me because by all objective measures, it’s a genocide. Jimbo didn’t need to fucking freeze the article just to tell it’s authors “State this in terms of the objective measures instead of Wikipedia’s voice, and put the opinions under their own header”. His selective treatment wreaks of bias or political pressure, both very dangerous things for a credible source.
Adding to what other people said, the only way to be “unbiased” about genocide is ignorance. To quote The Canary, anyone who claims to be unbiased about what’s happening in Gaza is fucking lying.
By “g word” do you mean genocide? Like the genocide being openly conducted in Gaza?
Don’t stoop to self censorship, this isn’t instagram.
The fact is that in this case the term is not the object of consensus. It involves an aspect of intent, which is always somewhat unfalsifiable, and certainly so here. It Wikipedia’s job to describe that state of opinion, not to dictate what people must think.
How is the gaza genocide article not neutral? It reads the same as other genocide articles like the Rohingya genocide.
Stating objective facts that all of us have seen in the news isn’t biased.
If right wing dipshits get offended by objective truth, that’s their problem. Not the rest of ours.
I think now’s the time to throw some of those millions of dollars in donation money around.
Good point. But then, if the project loses credibility, no amount of money will be enough to buy it back. Or to pay the editors who have fled. Credibility is priceless for a project with a mission as ambitious as establishing the truth. It’s a dangerous situation.
I’m not sure if it really is news?
They already made a conservapedia where they give their best positions for all their arguments. Their propaganda has been in full swing for some time no?
Donald John Trump, Ph.D.[2] (b. Queens, New York, on June 14, 1946), nicknamed “The Donald,” is an American Republican patriot, statesman, and jobs-creator who, after a storied career as a businessman and media personality, served as the 45th President of the United States of America, after winning the 2016 presidential election, and now serves as the 47th President following his victory in the 2024 presidential election.
From conservapedia
I’m still not convinced conservapedia isn’t an elaborate parody site.
It’s the tragedy of the commons. However, there are solutions to the tragedy of the commons, but for the solutions to work, we need to hold each other accountable. If we don’t rein in these out of control, egomaniac billionaires, we will succumb to tragedy. No longer can we celebrate, indulge, or even tolerate the actions of people like Musk. There must be accountability.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons#Commons_in_historical_reality
Wikipedia also recently asked AI companies to start using its paid API instead of scraping it, which would be management of its own commons, but that seems unlikely that anti-Wikipedia Musk projects would spend money on the very thing that it’s trying to destroy.
Anyway, I’m just agreeing with you.
can we stop lazy posting not that many more clicks and not that much more typing needed to get sources and or supporting links posted
OK but it wasn’t lazy, it was intentional (see post text). Personally I’m not comfortable promoting free-for-all sharing in the case of professional journalism, which is needed in democracy and comes at a cost. Especially since the source in question uses a metered paywall, i.e. it should be free for drive-by readers. Anyway, off-topic debate.
