Larry Sanger, one of Wikipedia’s cofounders, was banned from editing the site indefinitely after other editors determined he was canvassing, or in other words, calling on his followers off platform in order to influence Wikipedia’s content.
Sanger has spent more than a decade criticizing Wikipedia for what he claims is an ideological, left-wing bias on a variety of topics, and on X has framed this recent ban as further proof of everything that’s wrong with Wikipedia. The New York Post took that bait and last night published an article with the headline “Left-leaning Wikipedia blocked founder from editing site—after he campaigned to make it more balanced.”
Wikipedia editors obviously reject that framing and say that Sanger was banned for wielding his followers to sway discussion and decision making on Wikipedia. The discussion that led to the decision to ban Sanger concluded with what an editor called a “clear consensus” to ban Sanger.
Do you know how many living people are unable to get probable lies about themselves removed from wikipedia? Wikipedia is barely better than just taking random reddit comments as truth.
Gonna need a source for that, boss–
Wikipedia’s intense scrutiny of sources and requirements for reliable citations are actually one of the reasons that Sanger started his malformed crusade.
If there’s actual, provable lies about a notable person in the encyclopedia, then there should be actual, provable truths to combat it; and any Wikipedia editor can update the article in question to correct the record. If an edit war emerges, a community discussion can take place wherein the person in question can have their say. Wikipedia isn’t the wild west, and any reasonable argument that it is died twenty years ago.
–but even if those two things weren’t true–it’s literally impossible to remove misinformation from AI models. I’m not saying that to be dramatic or overstate the problem. When a model is trained with misinformation, the misinformation becomes a part of the model; the entire corpus of everything it was trained on is baked into the neural network on a fundamental level, and humans can’t manipulate it manually. Which means you can’t remove any datapoint from the model without excising it from the training data and then retraining a whole new model.
So now not only are you drinking your dog’s urine, you’re claiming that the tap water is too yellow. Even if your assertion’s true, your alternative is demonstrably worse.
No, not necessarily. Lots of false info spreads around, including serious academic publications. People who publish books and articles don’t always do additional verification of the stuff they read elsewhere. And if nobody publishes something containing the correct version of the story, you as a WP editor don’t really have a reliable source that you can use against the existing ones. I’ve seen this happen multiple times. Wikipedia is nominally meant just to convey what the sources say, not do active research or provide you with the capital T Truth.
Where have you seen this happen? I think the last time I saw any type of significant misinformation last on Wikipedia for longer than a few days at most, particularly without a disclaimer being added, George W. Bush was still the President of the United States.
Last year I had to fight tooth and nail to delete some bullshit article based on Cold War era propaganda that nobody bothered to directly scrutinise and criticise (there was thankfully enough related information out there that undermined the article indirectly). These days I checked a dozen books to confirm a term regularly used on WP is made up by whoever created the page two decades ago, so I’ll have to try and dispute it. A friend of mine has spent years looking for historical documents confirming some statement that’s been repeated by historians in passing since mid-20th century with no proper corrobating info, obviously repeated on WP as well. Sometime last year there was a reddit thread by a relative of some minor desceased celebrity from 90s who said the celebrity’s WP article is entirely based on one journalist’s sensationalist book that even got their year of birth wrong; the relative was advised to contact WP’s legal team to see if they can solve that somehow.
No, these are not major bits of misinformation, but in specific areas and for specific people they are important. Not claiming GWB is still the president of the US is a very low bar that Wikipedia has already passed like 15 years ago, rather I’m talking about the limits of their sourcing policy. Many sources will say who’s the current president of a country, but what do you do when there’s one source that got something wrong, two other ones that just repeated what the first said (a very common thing, obviously), and nothing else?
So, going through your claims: two cases in which the system worked as intended, one case in which the outcome is uncertain because the facts are uncertain, and one secondhand case about a minor celebrity in which the facts may or may not be certain (if there was actually a legal case here, it would be pretty easy to prove and get it taken down). Not only are these not major, it seems like everything is working correctly!
Edit: also, you clearly misunderstood what I said about the former president. I was saying it was a long time ago.
My source is a random internet post that says it’s a verified source and nobody else is allowed to edit it. Same as wikipedia.
AI isnt a SOURCE buddy.
Sounds like you need to read up on what Wikipedia actually allows as a reliable source before you complain about what Wikipedia actually allows as a reliable source.
Why do I need to read up on how a defunct project worked?
Because it isn’t defunct. It is the biggest source of knowledge that is the modern equivalent of the Library of Alexandria. So it is clear you need to read up on it.
“defunct” 😂
If Wikipedia was truly defunct, the idiot right wouldn’t be trying to destroy or commandeer it.
The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English. Edited by H. W. Fowler and F. G. Fowler, based on The Oxford Dictionary. Fifth edition (1964). Revised by E. McIntosh. Reprint 1972.