- cross-posted to:
- progressivepolitics@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- progressivepolitics@lemmy.world
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.
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Reality has a liberal bias.
Leftist, even
Colbert used the term in a more traditional sense, as opposed to how it’s sometimes used now as an insult by harder leftists.
The more traditional sense is the global definition.
I knew you knew that, my comment was more for the passers-by who may not even be old enough to remember that it was a Colbert quote.
I like how we all make comments for chat now, but there’s probably only like what a thousand people who comment on lemmy regularly?
We have no idea how many lurkers, with registered accounts or not.
We are more numerous than you think
👍
It’s not an insult. It’s the widely accepted term for the ideology of the bourgeoisie. They self-describe as liberals. That’s been the usage of the term since its coining; USAmericans just decided to only use it to describe more left-leaning liberals rather than all liberals. If it’s used as an insult, it’s between communists accusing another communist of not being a communist, not because liberalism is inherently a pejorative. Like if a right-winger calls someone a communist as an insult, it’s not because communism is a pejorative, it’s because it’s a non-communist accusing another non-communist of not being not-communist enough.
Accusing a site of being left bias then turning it into a right wing shithole has, sadly, worked time and time again. Let’s hope Wikipedia can keep holding out.
So long as reliable secondary sources exist, Wikipedia will exist.
And if not, the idea of a centralised information collection is unkillable
Physicists say otherwise. Its death is in fact inevitable.
He’s not really a founder; he didn’t even have anything to do with it.
And he’s a right wrong fascist so banning him is a good thing.
To me, Larry Sanger always struck me more as an Ideas Guy. Specifically, the kind of an Ideas Guy who didn’t always have the best ideas. He keeps dissing Wikipedia, but just look at the absolute trainwrecks his supposedly better other projects turned out.
Part of Larry Sanger’s statement
“In the kangaroo court in which a mob ousted me, Wikipedia’s administrators showed that they don’t appear to value details like formal charges, a designated prosecutor, basic decorum, distinction between prosecution and judge…”
Does this guy think Wikipedia is run like a country
Faux News melts their brain and breaks who they are as people
Does this guy think Wikipedia is run like a country
He should blame the guys that found the website for the structure of the rules governing it.
Sander hasn’t been a part of the Wikipedia project since 2002.
He launched a competing project - Citizendium - which flopped. Also, the Digital Universe Encyclopedia web project, which went nowhere. And Encyclopedia of Earth which also failed to launch. WatchKnowLearn and Infobitt did a bit better, but neither became household names.
Basically, he’s been bouncing in and out of middling projects for the better part of 25 years. And I suspect this string of failures hasn’t been particularly good for his ego.
Leaves the first encyclopedia site
Wonders why a bunch of shit-tier clones with worse branding never catch on
Thinks he’s this guy:
Is actually this guy:
Sanger was laid off from Wikipedia early on, started a competitor site that failed, and then returned to Wikipedia not so much to contribute but to rail against the project, his only credentials being setting up some of the crucial rules for the site two decades ago. It was really pathetic, like an ex pestering the other one years after the breakup, unable to move on. I hope he finds a better hobby now.
Or gets swallowed by a sinkhole, eiþer would be fine.
Well, the poor sinkhole would then suffer from very bad digestion issues, and that is not something to joke about!
You almost wrote a comment without a thorn, but you just couldn’t help yourself
why is guy being bullied for writing what all can understand
The thing is Wikipedia isn’t even left-wing. User survey shows the editors holds left-wing and right-wing beliefs about equally. And Jimmy Wales, the founder, is an Ayn Rand reading “objectivist” for crying out loud.
reality has a well known left-wing bias
If you base something on facts, it will be left leaning. Right leaning has a higher value in loyalty, authority, respect, and spirituality. They will deny facts if they have to in order to prioritize their other values. Right leaning people tend to be more likely to be on time, have cleaner desks, and speak more formally to someone they deem a “superior”. Left leaning often could give a rats ass about authority, and respect is only given once it’s earned.
All that to say, facts and reality are more left leaning by nature. Given many religious folks will deny nature’s history for their spiritual beliefs.
reality has a well known left-wing bias
No, it’s just that the right-wing has become accustomed to lying it’s ass off to get what it wants.
And why do you think that is?
Because right-wingers can’t handle reality. So they have to come up with “alt-facts” to keep their worldview from collapsing.
also verifiable facts, and sciences contradicts right wing beliefs. plus having the dirty laundry of every prominent right winger as well. trump has a HORDe info about him, as did other R president.
And in the left Lemmy communities is known as ‘nato-pedia’ for his Western pov bias
User survey shows the editors hold left-wing and right-wing beliefs about equally
all i found was that self-responses are preponderantly left/center-left: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2024-04-25/Recent_research
![Political position of Wikipedia users, based on responses to the survey question "In political matters, people talk of 'the left' and 'the right.' How would you place your views on this scale, generally speaking? [You position on the left-right scale]" [sic], with the answer hint "The scale goes from 1 (left) to 10 (right)." Visualization of data from: Cruciani, Caterina; Joubert, Léo; Jullien, Nicolas; Mell, Laurent; Piccione, Sasha; Vermeirsche, Jeanne (2023-12-01), Surveying Wikipedians: a dataset of users and contributors’ practices on Wikipedia in 8 languages doi:10.34847/nkl.4ecf4u8m, see also m:Research:Surveying readers and contributors to Wikipedia (June/July 2023 survey of Wikipedia readers and contributors in 8 languages)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f0/Political_position_of_Wikipedia_users_%282023_Wikipedia_survey%29.png/960px-Political_position_of_Wikipedia_users_%282023_Wikipedia_survey%29.png)
problem is the use has a large ultra right and centerist groups but the actual left is small but growing in recent days.
Looking at the primary victories in NYC recently is a good sign to come.
even these im not sure I would not call left of center. they are not looking to get rid of capitlism they just want to have taxes and regulation and social safety nets.
It is better than typical Democrat center right bullshit.
yeah im not complaining its just so crazy how far the overton window has went. And its true that many democrats today could have run as a rupublican in the 70’s and 80’s.
I blame Bill Clinton for moving that window. Him and Trump moved both their political parties astray into where they are today.
reagan “democrats”. Clinton just responded to what the people where telling politicians in elections.
There isn’t any difference between DSA’s vision for socialism and your’s*, it’s just NYC-DSA is building a movement on a municipal level.
A city can’t abolish capitalism on it’s own, it can however build a social democratic infrastructure that allows for a larger shift.
*Assuming you want socialism and aren’t some tankie who yerns to die in a pointless revolution so the capitalist class can be replaced with the capitalist class (ML)
If you asked 1000 randomly picked Americans “should the wealthy elite own your surplus labor value?” you’d find a lot more agreement with leftist views than you’d think. The ultra-right is a big chunk but it’s not the majority, the dedicated core is just well organized and most westerners are ignorant about what they are actually voting for so it appears more popular.
I would expect them to be confused and suspicious of the term “surplus labor value”. If not, then education has a problem.
where is that survey source you got, i seriously doubt it, almost every right winger criticizes the site as not being right wing enough.
To right-wing extremists, everything in the world seems left wing.
anything they dont like, or make them thinks uncomfortable of the contrary to thier beliefs.
editors hold left-wing and right-wing beliefs about equally
source? i’d doubt that unless you’re defining liberals as right-wing here
In the kangaroo court in which a mob ousted me, Wikipedia’s administrators showed that they don’t appear to value details like formal charges, a designated prosecutor, basic decorum, distinction between prosecution and judge, dispassionate adjudication, and so forth
These hypocrite fucks always rail off at the mouth about how abused they are… and it’s always just to get their foot in the door. Once they run the show, they rewrite history, dole out all the abuse they want and face zero repercussions. Intolerant shits that the rest of us simply must tolerate. Well go fuck yourself Larry Sanger. The world doesn’t need more right-wing bullshit.
Wikipedia’s administrators showed that they don’t appear to value details like formal charges, a designated prosecutor, basic decorum, distinction between prosecution and judge, dispassionate adjudication
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It would be deranged and far from a good thing if online moderation and dispute adjudication decided to use a criminal model of trying to prove a person’s guilt
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The real life criminal justice system is the opposite of unbiased and fair
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Karl Popper has entered the chat
“Reality has a well-known liberal bias.” --Stephen Colbert
What’s funny is that Jimmy Wales, who has described himself as an objectivist, is far from “leftist” or “liberal” himself. But unlike this asshole, he is principled.
In the end conservatism is only appealing to those in power. And people with power work every day to ensure everyone else has none.
This is fine.
But the optics are important. There’s a concerted effort to delegitimize Wikipedia as an information source, as it’s not in Big Tech’s control.
And they don’t have to kill it. They just have to make it less popular than, say, Grokipedia, and every headline like this is a step in that direction.
Hence I have very scientifically minded family who are already saying some strange things about Wikipedia.
I notice Grokipedia is getting put up more on search results even on duckduckgo.
Yep.
That’s because DDG is Bing. To be blunt, it’s search is kinda terrible.
This headline isn’t a bad headline. The article seems to be pretty well balanced, and leaves plenty siding with Wikipedia. It even mentions another news article that DOES have a bad headline:
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.”
deleted by creator
Wikipedia is not a source but an information aggregate. You don’t even understand what you are criticizing so confidently - how sad is that?
Will he start working for conervapedia now?
Good work by wikipedia. Always good to get the trash out.These reactionaries will never be happy until literally everything is a fascist propaganda outlet. Not content with all mainstream media and social media, wikipedia and other community information hubs must fall next
exactly. there may be genuine improvements Wikipedia could make, but as long as there’s a rabid pack of chuds making demands that change happen, I’ll support Wiki taking it slowly and deliberately. Anything that pisses off those fuckwits has to be good for humanity.
I read his “contributions” to the Gaza genocide article’s talk page, along with the equally mealy-mouthed hand-wringing of Jimmy Wales. Total bellends both, although for different reasons. Jimmy is pressured into being an annoying grandstanding dickhead by Israeli interests, whereas Larry’s pressured into being an annoying grandstanding dickhead by his childhood.
Hmm I wonder if Sanger knew better. I wonder if there was any smoking gun posted online that would prove this.
“Wikipedians are now debating whether my proposed WikiProject Intellectual Diversity should be permitted to become an official WikiProject (club/group of editors),” Sanger said on X on Friday and linked to the Wikipedia talk page about the issue. “Lots opposed. Also lots in favor.”
“Can I still join the movement?” one person replied to Sanger on X.
“Let’s just say that if I answer that question one way or another, the playground moms who rule Wikipedia might block me,” Sanger responded.
shocked_pikachu
It’s a little sad that he’s still messing with that site. It’s been years since I’ve used it for anything. It’s incomplete and heavily biased.
Wikipedia is a great start point. You read the wiki, then check the references. Just like reading the news, you should never take one source at face value! Engage your ✨ CRITICAL THINKING ✨
Wikipedia is pointless. You can ask any AI your question and ask for sources. It’s more reliable than wikipedia.
Not sure if troll or…
…ok, I’ll bite. This is maybe the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen. You know that Wikipedia comprises one of the largest publicly-accessible sets of meticulously-curated natural-language data on the planet, right? And so when you’re training up a new model, you’re naturally going to start with that massive, freely-available repository?
Every major AI model has been trained, at least partially, on Wikipedia. This insane viewpoint is essentially saying that you don’t think Wikipedia is reliable, but if some linear algebra chews it up for a few minutes, then it’s ok. You’re turning up your nose at tap water, but drinking your inside dog’s urine.
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–
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Wikipedia’s intense scrutiny of sources and requirements for reliable citations are actually one of the reasons that Sanger started his malformed crusade.
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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.
If there’s actual, provable lies about a notable person in the encyclopedia, then there should be actual, provable truths to combat it
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.
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.
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I thought you were joking at first… AI said our company owned and operated a competitor. We had to waste time and effort telling them AI is full of shit, and arguing with people that AI was wrong.
And, on a regular basis, I have to tell people that what AI told them for support, is also bullshit. I actually had a case where I was logged into a users machine, and he literally took the logs I was copying (right in front of me), and threw it straight into claude.
The problem with AI, is that it doesn’t necessarily have a good idea of what a reliable source is
Then contribute to it. Bring receipts and evidence. Those are the table stakes. Without that, you’ll get laughed out like the clown you are. You don’t bring hearsay and prejudice to an evidence fight.
Wikipedia has its problems, but ‘balance’ is not near the top of the list.
Biased how?
Reality has a well known liberal bias
How is it biased? Biased towards truth? If you have proof of it lying or misrepresenting something, then you just have to prove it and I am sure they or you will be able to change it.
They will not let you change it. They gate keep who gets to edit things intensely.
For good reason, there is a lot of interest in implementing actual bias.
Israel/Palestine/Gaza is examples of this.
Do you have any examples of bias? Or wrong information?
where are the biases? opinons are biases, facts are not
It is clear you haven’t used it for years if you think it is incomplete or heavily biased.
