this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2025
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Wikipedia is resilient because it is boring (www.theverge.com)
submitted 3 days ago by Aatube@kbin.melroy.org to c/technology@lemmy.world
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The world’s largest encyclopedia became the factual foundation of the web, but now it’s under attack.

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[–] cerebralhawks@lemmy.dbzer0.com 29 points 3 days ago (5 children)

I hate to say it, but I don't think Wikipedia is as neutral or as open as it claims to be. Some of the article comments talk about there definitely being some bias against anonymous editors, even if they're correct.

I'm not sure if it was in that article or in another comment section, but someone said after Elon Musk did the Nazi salute at Trump's event, an anonymous user mentioned it and there was a big controversy. And a registered user took it down and berated them for it, and another registered user came along an added the salute info back in and it was fine. Or something like that.

I definitely still think Wikipedia is a net good. But it seems to me any time you have a centralised source of information, a small group of people will fight to control the narrative so they can spin it any which way they want. For example, on Reddit, my favorite band's unofficial subreddit is run by a guy who bans any fan cams of the events — unless they're his. So obviously he does fan cams so he can make ad money on YouTube, but he uses Reddit to block those of others to direct the traffic to his. I think Fandom (the shitty wiki site with all the ads) run a lot of gaming communities, again, to drive ad revenue. Lot of that shit going on. I mean, if they tried that on Lemmy, someone could just open a community on another instance and the users could then decide who they want to support.

Is Wikipedia susceptible to that kind of influence? Of course it is. And I worry about it being taken over by the wrong people. I don't think that has happened yet, but I've seen it happen on other sites.

To be clear, we should definitely support Wikipedia against the alt right, but we should also be cautious that they, and other bad actors, don't destroy its credibility from within. Yes, the alt right has their own Wikipedia (Conservapedia or something like that) but that's not good enough, they want ours to be theirs, too.

[–] Kissaki@feddit.org 6 points 2 days ago

I’m not sure if it was in that article or in another comment section, but someone said

a small group of people will fight to control the narrative so they can spin it any which way they want.

Your source for your broad categorization and claims seems incredibly weak. "Someone said, somewhere, I'm not sure where I read it, though."

Wikipedia tracks anonymous contributions, too. You could check the Article and Article Discussion pages histories before making these claims, and before concluding from one comment that Wikipedia has the same systematic issues like Reddit or other closed-group moderated platforms.

As far as I see it, Wikipedia has a different depth and transparency on guidelines, requirements, open discussion, and actions. It has a lot of additional safeguards compared to something like Reddit. Admins are elected, not "first-come".

What I find much more plausible than "they didn't want to accept an anonymous contribution" is that the anonymous contributor may not have adequately sourced their claims and contributions. Even if they did, I find it much more likely that it may have been removed, then a discussion was done in the page discussion, and then it was added back.

Of course, instead of theorizing what happened in that case I could have checked Wikipedia too. But I also want to make a point about my general and systematic expectation of how Wikipedia works, which other platforms do not have.

[–] Aatube@kbin.melroy.org 10 points 3 days ago

I don't see that in the comments and the article said user PickleG13 was the first person to add the salute information. You can also just go check at the Elon Musk article.

[–] jaybone@lemmy.zip 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

For your Lemmy example of just opening a community on another instance, is that really any different than on Reddit opening a new sub with a different name? You just need subscribers to migrate, or at least add your sub.

[–] cerebralhawks@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 2 days ago

Kinda, sorta, not really.

So on Reddit, the people who run the iPhone subs have iPhone 17, iPhone 18, iPhone 19, and so on registered and they're squatting on them until they become useful. Or Fallout 3, Fallout 4, Fallout 5, Fallout 6... Now what some people have done is add a word. Like you have the "Cyberpunk" sub and "Low Sodium Cyberpunk." That works. Or like you have Atheism, and you have RealAtheism. So you can put a word on it, or something like that. But you'll never be able to be the "original" because a small group of people control those.

Now with Lemmy, those same people will just make those communities on the biggest Lemmy instance, but they won't do it on all of them. I use Divisions by Zero, which leans a little further left than some of the others, it's more of a fringe instance I guess? They're probably not gonna target that. So if someone made a community and tried to divert views to their videos for profit like I said in my example, I could make a community with the exact same name on this instance. The other community probably wouldn't let me advertise it there. I could do it once and get banned and maybe get a couple people to join both, at least, but I could promote it on neutral ground, and people could decide who they want to support. Because of federation, even if you aren't on db0, you can still subscribe to a community hosted on it. Like this community is on lemmy.world and I'm subscribed to it and freely commenting on it (at least until/if lemmy.world decides to defederate the instance I'm on — they have that right and ability. But I could make an account on their instance or one that is federated with them. And that's kosher as far as I know, as long as I myself am following the rules of the instances I post on.

[–] TriflingToad@sh.itjust.works 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

did that squabble include moderators or was it just some users? anything will have issues especially on that large of a scale and the 'hand wave vs nazi salute' was debated for the first few days when it happened (though it's an utterly BS argument when looking at his history)