More garbage propaganda from the SLATE

[Bbb23sucks]

https://slate.com/technology/2023/10/wi ... spute.html

[ChaosMeRee]

I don't know how he gets away with it.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Wikipedia is a better place to learn about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict than X, TikTok, and other social media platforms are

So why did you write an entire article predicated on this apparent surprise then? Who paid you for this advertorial?

Have you and your pay masters given up on proving Wikipedia is better than an ACTUAL NEWS SERVICE? Or dare I say it, a traditional encyclopedia. Will it ever be better than those things? The theory of Wikipedia says it should be.

For current events, Wikipedia has become a news aggregator of mainstream media sources, which can be very useful for readers around the world who are looking for a summary based on a breadth of sources.

Are you sure about that? Here you are writing about how social media spreads misinformation, yet presumably this claim that Wikipedia is "useful" is based on the traditional model of encyclopedias. You read it and you trust it.

That is of course contrary to the Wikipedia disclaimer, which says a reader MUST check every word on Wikipedia against a given source.

Even a moron like you can probably figure out then, certainly for current events articles sourced exclusively to newspapers, that Wikipedia is unlikely to be much more useful than a half decent search engine. Or indeed living in a country where public broadcasters and news media have a legal obligation to adhere to a neutral point of view.

So I will ask again, who paid you to write this advertorial? An honest journalist would know this stuff.

The articles in the Israeli-Palestinian topic area differ from ordinary Wikipedia pages in that the site’s volunteer administrators have tagged them with what’s known as extended confirmed protection, which means that only editors with more than 30 days of experience and 500-plus edits can change them. This might look like “censorship” to the self-proclaimed free speech absolutists on X, but it’s really designed to prevent vandalism by anonymous new accounts. Those who have yet to hit the 500 mark can still suggest changes to experienced users—and many have.

Seriously, who paid you?

As I have outlined elsewhere, the 500/30 rule is a pretty weird way to "prevent vandalism by anonymous new accounts", excluding as it does 99.25% of all editors on Wikipedia by edit count. The routine means by which Wikipedia prevents vandalism by new users, is either by blocking the accounts or putting the page being targeted under "semi-protection", which locks out editors who are merely unconfirmed (10 edits, 4 days). This model should work to prevent vandalism even for high traffic controversies, unless of course, the whole theory of Wikipedia is a lie (see above), or you aren't talking about vandalism at all (see below).

The INSANELY higher bar that is 500/30 surely exists to make sure that the only people who can edit those pages directly, have demonstrated a commitment to Wikipedia that apparently only 0.75% of all Wikipedia editors have ever done. A very tiny number of an already very tiny number of people.

They on!y introduced that level because they were getting significant pushback when using "full protection" allowing editing only by the few thousand Administrators. A number of people that is so small relative to the total number of editors, that there are usually significant delays between making a request and having it approved.

The less editors in a decision making group, the easier it is to control. It took only a handful of Wikipedia editors to succeed in declaring the Daily Mail to be "generally unreliable". To this day, Wikipedia's own article on the Daily Mail doesn't say it is "generally unreliable" or anything close to that . You know why? Because they cannot source it to a reliable source. And BELIEVE ME, they are FUCKNG DESPERATE TO FIND ONE. Just one would do.

This is the truth of Wikipedia. An honest journalist would know this stuff.

It is no surprise therefore the It has been proven in academic studies that yes, unsurprisingly, the Wikipedia model of back and forth editing does see articles trend toward a more neutral view. But they do not reach it. They settle in a place that subtly but measurably reflects the internal biases of the Wikipedians.

The Daily Mail hating Wikipedians.

Some fucking news aggregator that.

An honest journalist would know how and why the Daily Mail ban means Wikipedia cannot lay claim to the description, news aggregator. If you listened to the Wikipedians, you would think the Mail was eminently ignorable. And they do indeed ignore it.

Sadly for them, their bubble of reality, is not reality. In the real world, the Daily Mail is considered reliable enough to carry all manner of newsworthy content, such as columns written by no less than current and former Prime Ministers. People who might know a thing or two about the Middle East.

These columns are exclusives (the power of being popular and influential). So no, when the Wikipedia editors claim that anything important found in the Mail will be sourced to reliable sources, no it won't, because that is not how exclusivity works. Other newspapers can and will print extracts and summarise their contents. But rather obviously, certainly for matters of opinion, other newspapers cannot "verify" this information. It is, for Wikipedia's purposes, unreliable, since it is the fruit of the poison tree.

So after applying just a small amount of genuine knowledge about Wikipedia to your garbage article, we quickly land at a place where Wikipedia is a news aggregator that doesn't think the opinions of current and former UK Prime Ministers are not relevant to an encyclopedia, merely because they dislike the platform chosen by said people. How curious.

The logic of the Mail ban can be demolished in several other ways, exposing just how much that is known about the world, is not and never will be present on Wikipedia, precisely because the debate was framed and controlled by a handful of biased insiders.

So fuck them, and fuck you.

You will never get what you want, due to your inherent dishonesty. Wikipedia will never be trusted by enough people on enough topics to serve some kind of public good.

It will be ubuiqitous, but then again, so is sewage. Developed countries regulate their sewage flows. America should try it some day.

[ericbarbour]

So I will ask again, who paid you to write this advertorial? An honest journalist would know this stuff.

I wish you could track the esteemed Mr. Harrison down and actually get a straight answer from him, about who actually DOES pay him to generate this guff. And while you've got him, ask how Jimbo's nutsack tastes....meaty, savory or sweet?

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Wikipedia is a better place to learn about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict than X, TikTok, and other social media platforms are.

And it actually used to be WORSE, before 2011-2012 when the pro-Israel maniacs lost control of the narrative. Few areas on WP have been editwarred and arbitrated more heavily. No one "curates" any of it. There damn well BETTER be "good unbiased content" on WP about Israel-Palestine, but if there is today, it's purely accidental.

But there are a few important caveats: Given its audience, Slate has focused its reporting on the English-language version of Wikipedia, yet Hebrew Wikipedia and Arabic Wikipedia each has its own version of these articles, and there can be striking dissonances between them. Moreover, there are numerous English Wikipedia articles about the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict that vary in quality, partly because they have not received as much attention as the current violence has.

No shit, asshole. Hebrew and Arabic WP are biased in exactly the way anyone would expect--anyone other than an ass-kissing journalist.

[Bbb23sucks]

And it actually used to be WORSE, before 2011-2012 when the pro-Israel maniacs lost control of the narrative.

Why did Israel's power on Wikipedia diminish? Basically everywhere else (and especially on the internet), Israeli propaganda has become even more pervasive.

[ericbarbour]

Why did Israel's power on Wikipedia diminish? Basically everywhere else (and especially on the internet), Israeli propaganda has become even more pervasive.

The whole story is so LONG and brutal, it deserves its own 200,000-word book. A book no one would buy or read because it will consist entirely of samples of asswipes and lunatics rage-typing at each other. All I'm going to do right now is post links to the relevant mediations and arbitrations and let you try to figure out what the hell happened there.

Mediations (the mediation system is defunct but these contain some shreds of the battle):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia: ... -20_Israel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia: ... n_conflict
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia: ... hotographs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia: ... n_conflict
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia: ... -Palestine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia: ... _Apartheid
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia: ... _Palestine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia: ... n_conflict
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia: ... n_conflict
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia: ... n_conflict
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia: ... ce_Process
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia: ... n_conflict
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia: ... ah_userbox
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia: ... id_analogy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia: ... _and_Judah
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia: ... ettlements
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia: ... id_Analogy

Arbitrations that I know of (warning, some of them are very long and unreadable, and they tend to show how useless Arbcom is)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia: ... Lance6wins
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia: ... _and_Jayjg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia: ... _apartheid
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia: ... el-Lebanon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia: ... _apartheid
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia: ... q-Zero0000
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?tit ... =184064239
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia: ... l_articles
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia: ... A_lobbying
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia: ... nd_Samaria
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... articles_3
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... articles_4

And I did not mention the Mohammed editwars.

[Bbb23sucks]

Here's another awful article from them: https://slate.com/technology/2023/11/na ... -page.html

The subject has nothing to do with Wikipedia. They had to try HARD to make it be about Wikipedia.

[ericbarbour]

Here's another awful article from them: https://slate.com/technology/2023/11/na ... -page.html

The subject has nothing to do with Wikipedia. They had to try HARD to make it be about Wikipedia.

It was written by Annie Rauwerda, the operator of Depths of Wikipedia. OF COURSE she had to pump WP--it's basically her only job by now. Certainly no "journalist". She turned this "gig" into a career as a "stand up comedy" thing who pumps the Magical Wiki every chance she gets.

Maybe this forum should have a section dedicated to posting Annie's absurd babblings? Not that criticizing her will have any effect. Anyone with 840,000 followers on not-Twtter is bulletproof.