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Comment on Wikipedia Says AI Is Causing a Dangerous Decline in Human Visitors

Socialism_Everyday@reddthat.com ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

Tankies don’t think Wikipedia is the devil. You could call me a tankie from my political views, and I very much appreciate Wikipedia and use it on a daily basis. That is not to say it should be used uncritically and unaware of its biases.

Because of the way Wikipedia works, it requires sourcing claims with references, which is a good thing. The problem comes when you have an overwhelming majority of available references in one topic being heavily biased in one particular direction for whatever reason.

For example, when doing research on geopolitically charged topics, you may expect an intrinsic bias in the source availability. Say you go to China and create an open encyclopedia, Wikipedia style, and make an article about the Tiananmen Square events. You may expect that, if the encyclopedia is primarily edited by Chinese users using Chinese language sources, given the bias in the availability of said sources, the article will end up portraying the bias that the sources suffer from.

This is the criticism of tankies towards Wikipedia: in geopolitically charged topics, western sources are quick to unite. We saw it with the genocide in Palestine, where most media regardless of supposed ideological allegiance was reporting on the “both sides are bad” style at best, and outright Israeli propaganda at worst.

So, the point is not to hate on Wikipedia, Wikipedia is as good as an open encyclopedia edited by random people can get. The problem is that if you don’t specifically incorporate filters to compensate for the ideological bias present in the demographic cohort of editors (white, young males of English-speaking countries) and their sources, you will end up with a similar bias in your open encyclopedia. This is why us tankies say that Wikipedia isn’t really that reliable when it comes to, e.g., the eastern block or socialist history.

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DMCMNFIBFFF@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
One would think that leftists, socialists, communists, tankies, and/or others would come up with supplementary wikis such as Conservapedia or RationalWiki that are good.

and, FWIW:

Category:Wikidebates

en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Category:Wikidebates

e.g.

Is capitalism sustainable?

en.wikiversity.org/…/Is_capitalism_sustainable%3F

It’s sad how little news there is relatively little news in Wikinews ( en.wikinews.org/wiki/Main_Page ).

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- Socialism_Everyday@reddthat.com ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  
  supplementary wikis
  
  We have them, e.g. ProleWiki, but good luck trying to explain to the average western Wikipedia user that for certain geopolitical topics they might be worth checking out and contrasted with Wikipedia. My problem isn’t the lack of alternatives, my problem is the anticommunist and pro-western bias in Wikipedia in geopolitically charged topics.
  
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  - DMCMNFIBFFF@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Hmmm,
    
    Let’s see:
    
    pw:Wikipedia
    
    Wikipedia is an imperialist propaganda outlet and disinformation website presenting itself as an encyclopedia launched in 2001 by bourgeois libertarians Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger. Wikipedia is maintained by a predominantly white male population, of which about 1% are responsible for 80% of edits. It has also been linked to corporate and governmental manipulation and imperialist agendas, including the U.S. State Department, World Bank,[1] FBI, CIA, and New York Police Department.[2][3]
    
    Wow. 😁🙂
    
    and while I’m at it:
    
    cp:Wikipedia
    
    Wikipedia, is an online wiki-based encyclopedia hosted and owned by the non-profit organization Wikimedia Foundation and financially supported by grants from left-leaning foundations plus an aggressive annual online fundraising drive.[1] Big Pharma pushes its agenda and profits by paying anonymous editors to smear its opponents there, while others are moronic internet trolls who include teenagers and the unemployed.[2] As such, it projects a liberal—and, in some cases, even socialist, Communist, and Nazi-sympathizing—worldview, which is totally at odds with conservative reality and rationality.[3]
    
    pw:Communist Party of Peru – Shining Path
    
    The party organized its own militia, the People’s Guerrilla Army and claimed to have begun a protracted people’s war against the bourgeois government of Peru since 1980, with the intention of establishing a dictatorship of the proletariat.[1] Throughout its period of highest activity, the party frequently engaged in terrorist tactics, and has committed brutal and violent attacks on peasants, including children.[2] The class composition of the party consisted in mostly petty-bourgeois intellectuals, and the growth of the party was closely linked with student movements in universities.[3]
    
    My problem isn’t the lack of alternatives, my problem is the anticommunist and pro-western bias in Wikipedia, the most used encyclopedia, in geopolitically charged topics.
    
    and I suppose the supplements are a way, however the effectiveness/ineffectiveness.
    
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    Socialism_Everyday@reddthat.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    You may disagree with the first statement on being an imperialist propaganda outlet, but the rest of information is relevant.
    
    I don’t get your point of posting the article on the Shining Path, though
    
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