Activity tagged "Wikipedia"

Posted:

Excellent Stephen Harrison piece about Wikipedia, breaking news, and the right wing outrage machine that's kicked into high gear around articles about Charlie Kirk and the killing of Iryna Zarutska.

And yet, you won’t find a Free Press article about that. Just as you won’t find one about how, in the first 24 hours after his death, Wikipedia’s volunteers quickly and quietly protected the Charlie Kirk biographical article from a wave of trollish edits suggesting he “deserved it.” Nothing reported about how Wikipedia’s volunteers deleted this bile within a few minutes or seconds of it being posted.

What should be clear by now is that right-wing media coverage of Wikipedia isn’t actually interested in explaining how the site works. The goal is to undermine Wikipedia’s function as a volunteer-driven project that can produce an independent repository of facts that has (at least historically) been insulated from political interference.
Posted:

Something I wish journalists understood better: anyone can nominate an article for deletion on Wikipedia, which kicks off a week-long discussion — even if the article is perfectly acceptable and will ultimately be kept. This does not mean "Wikipedia is trying to delete X!!"

Half the time I see news articles about "Wikipedia is trying to delete X!", I go look at the discussion and it's

Long column of "Keep" votes in a Wikipedia deletion discussion
Posted:

This long read in The Verge does a remarkable job of describing how Wikipedia's editing community works, the project's strengths and weaknesses, and the threats it faces.

In a time of misinformation, in a time of suppression, having this place where people can come and bring knowledge and share knowledge, that is a statement.
“Wikipedia is under attack — and how it can survive”.
Josh Dzieza in The Verge.
The site's volunteers face threats from Trump, billionaires, and AI.
Posted:

I’ve spent the better part of two decades dealing with people trying to dox and harass the volunteers who make Wikipedia the incredible resource it is today.

I liked it better when they weren’t in Congress.

Letter from House Oversight Committee Chairs James Comer and Nancy Mace

I also spent six years on the same (volunteer!) Arbitration Committee from which Oversight is now demanding private communications. Even just threats like this one, regardless of followthrough, will it so much harder for them to do their thankless work.