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I agree that Wikipedia is one of the great success stories of the open Internet. Therefore, it is somewhat sad that Wales is being attacked from all sides in this thread.



If you put yourself on a pedestal don't be surprised if you get knocked off of it.

The response from @GSR6669 resonates with me:

> Wikipedia suspended edits & changed the definition of recession at request of the US Government. Everyone likes to poke holes in Elon’s Twitter yet no choice is infallible.

> Throwing rocks in a glass house is what makes you a real hypocrite though.


> The response from @GSR6669 resonates with me:

Was also corrected by people replying pointing out that this didn't actually happen.


The point that is (probably) wrong is "at request". The remaining part however is true. You can see it in the edits and discussions. In Germany the Wikipedia has a bunch of people with almost universal power in the Wikipedia - inofficially called "Politburo" (by Wikipedians that had the pleasure of editing one of their entries). These are (to our knowledge at least) not directly controlled by gov, but they however do what is in their interest.

Wikipedia is being corrupted and you should be aware of it. Having a (single) source of truth* has to end like this.

edit: *: More precisely institutions and people treating it like a single source of truth.


Wikipedia locks edits at the most mundane of topics to avoid/end edit wars. HN also has anti-flamewar features for similar reasons - no conspiracy theory needed. "Recession" seems like ripe target for edit wars by political activists due to topicality (and I'm guessing "King Charles" too)


Having a (single) source of truth* has to end like this.

Why?


Among the reasons is that it comes with great power and authority and therefore attracts the wrong people. It is really effective to slander people for example. Another reason is that an established source of truth is inflexible and hard to change from the outside even if it is wrong, because it is used as reference for the truth (circular logic).

Using Wikipedia as an example: Everyone can edit Wikipedia, however if your edit survives is determined by a hierarchical structure that involves people (with an opinion). It doesn't need a big conspiracy, but only a few people that select which people may act on their behalf. A concrete example would be the Wikipedian Feliks in German Wikipedia who is by now convicted of defamation (via Wikipedia) and still remains part of the "Politburo" of Wikipedia altho obviously violating the official ethos.

In regards to changing Wikipedia, try removing opinions (or just circular citation) from an entry of Feliks or Kopilot (or anyone of the Politburo) and look what happens. Most likely your account is gone, but if you're lucky your edit is just reverted.

Much of it is how Wikipedia is being treated. It is/was an excellent reference book for quickly looking up information about a topic - well, just like an encyclopedia, however it's bad as a source of truth.


What's a good source of truth?

Does the topic matter? Is it binary? Why is it a good or bad source of truth, not some level of trust?

Nitpicks

You talk about circular references, I assume you mean someone cites wikipeida which then cites...something else? Either way Wikipeidia isn't a primary source and if someone uses it as one they are wrong and that's the fault of the person.

How would someone defame someone on Wikipedia without providing false sources or no source at all. If they did it could be discovered and changed. This could happen on social media, news organizations, books, or in person. What source of information is immune to this ? (If none are then I don't believe it's a valid criticism)

You say that people who want to corrupt will be attracted to it. Aren't there protections against that? Does it happen often? Is it so frequent that you have zero trust or you think it's "bad source of truth"


> What's a good source of truth?

In my opinion none.

> You say that people who want to corrupt will be attracted to it. Aren't there protections against that? Does it happen often? Is it so frequent that you have zero trust or you think it's "bad source of truth"

Why are people so obsessed with a source of truth? We never had that and we still don't disregard how much we pretend that we have or wish we had one. It's not the first time in history we pretended that one exists either, but it usually ends bad.


He replied emphatically that this didn’t happen. Is there any proof for this?


It's maybe not quite a dramatic coverup but there most definitely was a concerted effort to suppress a specific definition of the term "recession" in preference for the "politically correct" version. See for yourself in the edit history of the article: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Recession&action=...


This rumor about US gov intervention seems to be unsubstantiated. Where is the proof?


Government intervention? No probably not. Politically motivated wiki editors with the power to lock pages and revert edits? Absolutely! The edit history is right there and it's plain to see for yourself:

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Recession&action=...


I went through the first page of edits presented on mobile, there is some editing contention amongst multiple editors about whether the2quarter definition needs to be in the first paragraph of the summary or not (In all versions it is mentioned in the body of the page). TBH, having edited Wikipedia in the past, I've seen worse for less.

The thing is, everybody is politically motivated, whether your actions directly affect an organized political party or not. Labeling these specific edits as such is not really saying anything. If there is clearer evidence of a pattern then sure, let's have at it. Until then I remain unconvinced that there is any sort of conspiracy involved here.


Probably no conspiracy - like you say, everyone is at least a little bit politically motivated. Without invoking a conspiracy, however, it's plainly obvious that Wikipedia is a high value target for manipulation and every political party, 3 letter agency and PR firm has some incentive to obtain and maintain influence over certain Wikipedia articles. Much of the influence is actually exercised indirectly by influencing virtually every media publication that Wikipedia will accept as a valid source.


[Citation needed]


Bear in mind that Twitter reply threads are now dominated by Elon musk fans, because people who pay for Twitter have their replies shown first. People who aren't willing to do that don't really bother engaging with stuff like this any more, or if they do they get buried.

So Wales being under attack on Twitter is sad but doesn't necessarily represent "public opinion".

I think we are in the last days of major figures like Jimmy Wales still treating Twitter as a respectable arena for public engagement.


> So Wales being under attack on Twitter is sad but doesn't necessarily represent "public opinion".

Even before Musk took over twitter was a very specific, very tiny, slice of the English speaking world.

There was a film theory a few months ago which looked at movies and trending on twitter, and dug a little deeper. Twitter for exmaple completely ignored major cultural phenomenon like Yellowstone, but really bigged up stuff the vast majority of the world doesn't care about ("the Snyder cut")

Presumably this applies to pretty much any subject.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMTazviRabg

https://www.summarize.tech/www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMTazviRa...


Yeah that's definitely also true, it just became a different and (to my tastes) more objectionable slice!


"because people who pay for Twitter have their replies shown first"

I don't really go to Twitter, so I don't know, but am curious: Is this an established fact? A quick search did not show anything official confirming this.


https://help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/twitter-blue

> Prioritized rankings in conversations and search: Tweets that you interact with will receive a small boost in their ranking. Additionally, your replies will receive a boost that ranks them closer to the top. Twitter Blue subscribers will appear in the Verified tab within other users’ notifications tab which highlights replies, mentions, and engagement from Blue subscribers.

The rationale was that paying $8/month is the best way to filter out bots, but...


Oh, so it officially is "pay to win" now. Nice. Free speech to everyone, but if you actually want to be heard, you have to pay up.

At least it is somewhat honest and not, oh, we didn't meant to do this, in our effort to convince more people into paying.


It actually kind of has the opposite effect. Turns out the people that want to pay to have their opinions heard probably don't have great things to say, so it creates an easy demarcation in the replies. You can just ignore all the posts at the top with a blue check, and then go down to the higher quality organic posts at the bottom.


Thanks for the advice, but I think I will just continue to ignore Twitter.

Important things will still probably reach me in embedded shape or quote on other sites, but currently I cannot remember a single tweet at all, that not reading it, would have changed my life for the worse.

So no doubt good content is hidden underneath, but all this drama makes it not worth it for me.


I’ve been considering adding this bot to my account just for a chuckle: https://twitter.com/jules_su/status/1656005035631820804?s=46

But if this is what is happening to the prioritisation of replies it might actually be a useful change.


Does it only hide them for yourself? Because I can still see all those tweets that are meant to be hidden.


Ironically, this kept the overall bluecheck quality fairly stable. People used to be gifted bluechecks for knowing the right people or being some variety of celebrity or influencer, rather than because they were good or thoughtful writers.


Blocking blue ticks also works well for this


Actually Elon gifted thousands of blue ticks to any accounts that had over 1M followers and other notable accounts in order to obfuscate who paid for their tick and who did not.


Thousands? Thought it was hust three. Where did you find that out?


Most of the people I know of paying for it are paying for the other features like long posts.


Honestly, I don't know of a good solution to the coming LLM spam apocalypse other than something like this (paid verification of ID) or gov issued private keys.

Any ideas?


State-backed troll farms have million dollar budgets though, they could surely spend 8k/month on 1k accounts:

>A notorious Russian "troll factory" had a $1.25 million [monthly] budget in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election to interfere in the US political system, according to charges filed by the Department of Justice.

https://www.businessinsider.com/russian-troll-farm-spent-mil...


Wait,doesn't twitter blue require ID verification?


I thought it famously doesn't, because Musk said it is too expensive?

And the official site also mostly just says, that mainly you have to pay and have a phone number. No sentence that they actually verify you are a living human being.

"Only accounts actively subscribed to Twitter Blue are eligible to receive the blue checkmark.

Our team uses an eligibility criteria on when the checkmark is given to ensure we maintain the integrity of the platform. Your account must meet the following criteria to receive or retain the blue checkmark:

    Complete: Your account must have a display name and profile photo

    Active use: Your account must be active in the past 30 days to subscribe to Twitter Blue

    Security: Your account must be older than 30 days upon subscription and have a confirmed phone number

    Non-Deceptive:

        Your account must have no recent changes to your profile photo, display name, or username (@handle)

        Your account must have no signs of being misleading or deceptive

        Your account must have no signs of engaging in platform manipulation and spam
"

https://help.twitter.com/en/managing-your-account/about-twit...


So why do we still post Twitter conversations here? Shouldn't we be posting links to conversations on Mastodon instead? Or are we still somewhat addicted to Elon Musk's influence?


Out of all the questionable changes made it’s by far the worst. It has uniquely changed the tone of Twitter from a place where the discussion would be in some way shaped by the followers of the OP. I.e. You had some idea whether or not the replies would be interesting to you based on who was being replied to or maybe how controversial or informative the post was. It was complex but interesting dynamic. Now… it’s just a predictable hoard of of internet howler monkeys below any post that isn’t just some quiet odd corner of Twitter. It’s what is reducing my engagement and anecdotally that of anyone I know too. Even friends who decided to pay are tired of being “lumped in” with these people.


So who gets the megaphone, those who support the platform, or the ideological moderators behind the scenes?


It’s being passed around amongst the crypto spammers and each of the 10,000 or so “people” vying for the title of hottest 18 year old on OnlyFans.


I’m just saying it was better before, not perfect before.


It's so obvious when you use Twitter as to not really need confirmation.

It's not like a fuzzy statistical boost, it's literally just all Blue replies come above all non-Blue replies. The only exception is that a non-Blue reply can sometimes get boosted in order to be able to show a blue 2nd-level reply.

If you scroll through replies you'll often find a bunch of zero-like replies like "lol" and "me too" from Blue users, then below that a handful of insightful replies with dozens of likes, from non-Blue users. You can see why the latter are not gonna keep posting those replies much longer.


Right, we are now in the days of public figures like Jimmy Wales promoting Erdogan's courts and judges as a respectable arena for freedom of speech justice.


The bigger reason this reply thread will be dominated by elon musk fans is that its about elon musk and elon musk fans vs elon musk haters is the divide that gets you the biggest blue vs non-blue ratio.


"This thread" on HN or on Twitter? Because I don't see him being attacked much here, but Twitter is turning into an Elon Musk echo chamber, so it's only to be expected there.




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