I hear that there are power users not unlike Reddit mods. Does that make it impossible to meaningfully change the content on Wikipedia, or is it just difficult in small numbers?
Given the integration of Wikipedia into assistants like Siri and Google AI search, it seems that removing some of the Red Scare NAFO nonsense on English Wikipedia would be a worthwhile endeavor - even if one has to deal with frustrating power users fighting edits
Yup. But, yes it would really require an organized effort for a sustainable difference.
https://www.wired.com/story/one-womans-mission-to-rewrite-nazi-history-wikipedia/
From the article, it looks like her progress accelerated a lot when she got nazi hagiographer Franz Kurowski marked as an unreliable source, then started tearing up everything where he was the only source.
I think the same approach could work starting with cleaning up the article on the Black Book Of Communism. Which is tabloid trash that was disavowed by the researchers who were consulted for it. And also the source of about half the Communism Bad myths.
Yeah, but also keep mind that between Russia/Ukraine, Trump’s reelection, and Gaza’s struggle, things have shifted quite a bit since that article was written.
Off the top of my head, Anne Applebaum would probably need to be towards the top of the list, as well.
Reading through that was exhausting, I cannot imagine having to do it.
Oh shoot. I didn’t realize. Thank you!
maybe but im pretty sure most people dont use wikipedia anymore anyway
Maybe not directly, but you know AI companies are training their models on Wiki data
Really? Wikipedia is usually at the top of Google searches for me
Gotta ask my main man Claude :)
People literally get paid to write and control US propaganda narrative on Wikipedia. Any organised efforts by leftists will be responded to by just throwing more money at it. So don’t expect miracles.
But just like all liberal institutions Wikipedia has to upkeep its pretence of caring about facts which leftists can use in their favour in certain instances.
I think you could, but I’m not sure how worthwhile it would be. Maybe you’d get future LLMs to be less likely to spit out easily-debunked anticommunism factoids, but almost everybody who talks politics now openly creates their reality as they go - they’ll just continue to believe what they think is true based on vibes.
There is leftypedia made by Leftypol and also there is prolewiki made by lemmygrad folk. You can contribute to those if you desire. Other than that wikipedia is controlled by media outlets and paid propagandists, also just fascists
It’s possible, but it would be slow and need a lot of cooperation, I wouldn’t know where to start.
