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.
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.
To this day Wikipedia is the only source of information that keeps an equal distance to every major power in the world. Everyone else usually has a soft spot because they have some major donor that is affiliated to someone that is affiliated to an organisation that commits atrocities. That in itself is unique and hence why I am annual donor and anyone who has the economic means should be too. Unfortunately that is the only way we can have a shackle free source of information in this fucked up world.
Of all organizations out there, I dare say hat wikipedia has one the best tools in place to try and be as factual as possible while at the same time being open.
Because of that, there are very few sources left that i trust as much as wikipedia
I agree. The community of editors take factual information very seriously and it creates an environment where misinformation is shunned and won’t last very long before being taken down or replaced. It’s a very good system and makes it very trustworthy.
not everything
…but nearly everything. It’s pretty rare not to be, and you should fix it if you see it.
This. Facts are inconvenient to some people.
They have a left wing bias
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.
Reality tends to make them upset. Information and knowledge are their enemies
Well, for starters, it’s not the Right kind of freeze peach.
They only know the phrase “free speech” but not how the first amendment actually defines it.
…hey it’s just like the bible
They only care about hate speech and the ability to spread misinformation promoted by oligarchs/think tanks
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.
Conservatism really does have bad takes on everything.
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. It’s blatantly written from a biased perspective, the WP founder himself has been (very rare event) complaining about.
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’.
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.
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.
“If we prove that the sky is blue, but I say it’s red, Wikipedia should say the sky is purple”
What is currently happening in Gaza is a genocide, by exact definition of the word. Nobody contests that, and even the UN has called it genocide.
The Covid lab leak is also a conspiracy theory, and no reputable scientist doubts it. The latest reports about it have come from the Trump administration taking control of government websites to post misinformation. They also said climate change doesn’t exist and vaccines and tylenol cause autism, which is another conspiracy that has been proven to be false. One should not give credibility to such articles.
Yes, yes. The very founder of Wikipedia agrees with me on these issues (specifically, what I wrote, not the extraneous anecdotes you added), not with you (plural). It never ceases to amaze me how out of touch with mainstream opinion, how extremist basically, the user base of Lemmy is.
When you say founder of Wikipedia do you mean the one who still actively involved or the one guy who was involved for a little while 20 years ago and is now a giant right-wing fuck nut.
But… Literally the Gaza thing follows the definition of genocide, and has been called genocide by international governing bodies. What else do you want? I’m sure if there are other opinions, they can be added under a “controversy” tab, but the accepted definition of the Gaza issue was a genocide. Genocides don’t need to succeed in exterminating all members of a group to be considered such, they need to destroy the social fabric of a community either via forced displacement, mass murder or widespread violence. This is what happened in Gaza.
But I agree, debating Gaza in depth is not worth it here. I also agree many people were jumping the gun prematurely in pushing for a “genocide” tag before there was any official source claiming it, but after two years, the genocide tag was the most substantial and officially supported position, which means it’s the responsible way to frame the situation. You can add all nuance and opposing views later. For the record, if there had been no major international consensus reached on the use of the word “genocide”, I wouldn’t agree with including it as the main descriptor for this conflict.
Facts are difficult to measure, but the responsible thing is leaving the definitions to actual experts on the matter, even if experts can get it wrong. Because non-experts are prone to manipulating and misunderstanding key facts that then snowball into entire myths and belief systems.
You say the COVID lab leak theory is no longer a conspiracy theory, but I haven’t found a single reputable journal that supports that claim, so… What are your sources?
genocide /jĕn′ə-sīd″/
noun
The systematic and widespread extermination or attempted extermination of a national, racial, religious, or ethnic group.
The systematic killing of a racial or cultural group.
The systematic killing of substantial numbers of people on the basis of ethnicity, religion, political opinion, social status, or other particularity.
- The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language
This is the definition of genocide. What is happening in Gaza is that the IDF is systematically killing palestinians on the basis of their ethnicity, which is genocide. Nobody can dispute that at this point, and there is no middle ground.
However,
(“US doctors report IDF snipers are intentionally targeting children in Gaza”)
(Archived version) https://archive.is/ZMHTE
https://www.thecanary.co/global/world-analysis/2025/11/03/israel-bombs-toys/
(“Israel has been caught disguising bombs as toys to kill Palestinian children”)
(Archived version) https://archive.is/nCn3n
(“‘It’s a Killing Field’: IDF Soldiers Ordered to Shoot Deliberately at Unarmed Gazans Waiting for Humanitarian Aid”)
(Archived version) https://archive.is/EhYJy
(“Occupied West Bank: Increased Israeli violence against Palestinians must stop”)
(Archived version) https://archive.is/cdlCG
(“Israel using water as weapon of war as Gaza supply plummets by 94%, creating deadly health catastrophe: Oxfam”)
(Archived version) https://archive.is/3vNtF
(“UN experts appalled by relentless Israeli attacks on Gaza’s healthcare system”)
(Archived version) https://archive.is/UtkBh
(“Israeli attacks on educational, religious and cultural sites in the Occupied Palestinian Territory amount to war crimes and the crime against humanity of extermination, UN Commission says”)
(Archived version) https://archive.is/iq6ca
Israel has been caught ordering the IDF to target innocent and unnarmed civilians in search for aid, it has relentlessly (and purposefully) targeted children, it has destroyed all water, health and education infrastructure and deliberately poisoned the land to make it unlivable. It’s impossible to argue there is no intent, because Israel’s actions have been very deliberate.
I should also add that IDF soldiers are loving this genocide:
https://theintercept.com/2024/08/09/israel-prison-sde-teiman-palestinian-abuse-torture/
(“Video of Sexual Abuse at Israeli Prison Is Just Latest Evidence Sde Teiman Is a Torture Site”)
(Archived version) https://archive.is/1kjbp
(“The first livestreamed genocide”)
(Archived version) https://archive.is/4Zli4
IDF soldiers have been caught multiple times abusing and torturing palestinians in israeli prisons, many times for fun. They also like to upload videos of themselves killing palestinians and laughing at it to social media.
Lastly, the UN report I linked on a previous comment (and every other genocide report) have already analysed the facts, and if you had read them, you’d know they already come to the conclusion that there is intent, and a lot of it.
After years of a continued genocide, that has been televised and broadcast to the whole world, and after seeing all the war crimes Israel keeps committing against the palestinian people, it is inexcusable to still defend the position that it is not a genocide.
So fuck off, and stop defending a bunch of nazi, genocidal war criminals.
The definition of “genocide” contains an element of intent, which is all but impossible to prove. A lot of reputable sources (now) say the Gaza situation it is a genocide, a few say it is not. This is not physics or maths, it’s not a question with a “correct” answer. Moreover, it’s now politicized, which means large numbers of readers are watching eagle-eyed for signs of bias. It would have been simple to entitle the article “Gaza anti-insurgency” or whatever and then note in the first sentence that there is “growing consensus” around the word genocide. That would have been irreproachably correct and it would have maintained trust about Wikipedia’s NPOV. Instead of treading carefully like that, Wikipedia is stomping around and telling people what to think by including the trigger word in the title (telling people what to think never, ever works, incidentally). Jimmy Wales is right. This episode has sapped the whole project’s credibility. People here need to decide what’s more important: feeling good about their own righteousness, or Wikipedia’s survival as a credible information source. Not just credible for them, but credible for everyone, including the vast number of people whose values they may not share.
On the Covid issue, replace “genocide” with “conspiracy” as the unfalsifiable emotion-laden word and it’s roughly comparable. Beyond that I find it just too boring to get into a debate about right now, sorry.
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.
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.
Are you talking about Jimmy Wales or Larry Sanger?
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 mission as ambitious as establishing the truth. It’s a dangerous situation.
So this is digital book burning?
Yes.
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 not about them being able to tell their truth, It’s really about them being mad that we can tell ours. (Ie you know the actual truth)
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.
didnt the owner out himself as a fascist recently? more specifically a zionist, i think?
No
Succinct.
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.
