Wikipedia Debates Strike Over SOPA 175
An anonymous reader writes "Jimbo Wales has suggested that English Wikipedia restrict its services for a period to protest against the anti-piracy SOPA bill in the United States. This follows a similar action by the Italian Wikipedia last month."
Reader fiannaFailMan points out another bit of Wikipedia news: they've taken the wraps off a prototype for a new visual editor. A sandbox is available to try out. The Wikimedia Foundation hopes easier, more intuitive editing will shore up waning contributor numbers.
Visual editor? About damned time (Score:2, Interesting)
I went with Drupal rather than a Wiki because I didn't want to have to write everything in wiki format. Just didn't want to learn another syntax. Have been forced to muddle with it anyway to update some articles.
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I take another wiki format anytime over the stupid WYSIWYG editors. Because WYSIWYG is usually not what you get and all the editors are still very cumbersome and error prune. Check out textile http://redcloth.org/hobix.com/textile/ [redcloth.org] It's very easy to learn (most you don't have to learn anything), have a very clean syntax and translates good to html.
Re:Visual editor? About damned time (Score:5, Funny)
Your point is well-taken.
[Notice, I'm too classy of a guy to make any kind of joke over here.]
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all the editors are still very cumbersome and error prune
[Notice, I'm too classy of a guy to make any kind of joke over here.]
I'm not: You really ought to loosen up, you'll feel a lot more comfortable.
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WYSIWTF
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No, Wikipedia is WYSIWTWR - What You See Is What They Will Revert.
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Funny, you must not have looked very hard [mediawiki.org]. There was also FCKeditor [mediawiki.org] before that.
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Oh. Just in case you want to look at what Wikipedia's doing: Extension:VisualEditor [mediawiki.org].
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Wiki format is really not that difficult. Why are some people averse to learning anything?
"I want to do x, but I'm not willing to learn anything in order to do it."
Why are you so lazy?
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I've already learned enough PHP to hack drupal and enough Perl to hack config files and enough C to get stuff I download to compile and enough HTML for most purposes and enough CSS to bash around a bit and good god what is next? Should I memorize all the BBCode tags, too? Maybe all the common :smiley: tags.
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the format cruft that visual editors inevitably leave
Citation needed. It's not difficult to detect and delete empty or redundant tags, or unnecessary containers, though many editors seem to get it wrong anyway.
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It depends how picky you are about the code. If you bold some random text in Expression Web it will create an "auto-format-01" CSS style. It looks lame from a coding point of view, but the browser doesn't car about the arbitrary name and the page will render just the same.
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never mind that the editor won't resolve the problem with dwindling contributors, because that's not the reason they're leaving.
most leave because editing war had escalated until wikipedia became a dictatorial bureaucracy, where support from internal groups overcome field expertise. that's why expert are upset, because they aren't willing nor ave the commitment to prostrate for the local page dictator benevolence.
and you're lucky to be on the en.* one, smaller wikis are even worse in that regard. Italy bure
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Wikipedia started and grew as an experiment where everyone could sonctribute. It was quite successful. Then they decided that "being taken seriously" was the new goal, and community participation wasn't - basically, the social experiment ended. This has not been so successful.
Eventually, wikipedia will spin in smaller and smaller circles until it deletes its last article and disappears up its own ass. And that will be a shame, because it was great, once.
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So which one are you talking about?
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So which one are you talking about?
Oh, don't worry, people with Wikipedia horror stories almost exclusively never actually back their stories up with concrete examples and links.
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Why would they? It's common knowledge. Anyone who hasn't seen or experienced one of these Wikiwars hasn't looked into them. Five minutes on Wikipedia or Google will tell you more than you wanted to know.
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So, posting as AC, no link to a blog or anything about this supposedly revolutionary new CMS you're working on... I smell a troll. :-p
Finally (Score:5, Interesting)
I'll support this. This will provide so much more (negative) publicity to SOPA than anything any other group has done to date. GO JIMBO!
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5:30 posting indeed! You were just fine with the original wording, though the alternative works as well. :)
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"is not about something that is not feeding his wallet" is the opposite of what they meant. Dropping either of the negations makes it correct ;)
Fully agree ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Shut wikipedia down for 24 hours (yes, that long, it should really hurt) with some placeholder site saying that this is to protest against SOPA!
Re:Fully agree ... (Score:5, Interesting)
What about a week but with a link to proceed to the content anyway?
Re:Fully agree ... (Score:5, Funny)
I can see how it'll look:
WARNING: This is a protest against SOPA and its Nazi-style fascism. You must understand what we are protesting about to proceed.
[ ] Get me out of here!
[ ] Tell me more about SOPA
[x] Yes, I am over 18
Some good that'll do.
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How about a Personal Appeal against SOPA?
Yes, I am joking.
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yep, make the placeholder site scary, like:
this is what the Internet will be when SOPA passes
image [yourdigitalspace.com]
spread the fear! spread it now!!!! </troll>
Re:Fully agree ... (Score:5, Insightful)
That's it? Only 24 hours? I doubt most people visit wikipedia more than once a week. I probably hit up an article on it a couple times a week. One day will only reach the attention of a handful of visitors. Make it a full week. The world will survive if they have to get their wikipedia article from the google cache for a few days.
Well, folks might notice that their newspaper is about 50% thinner than usual...
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You mean that the people who read online won't notice that all of the articles are shorter?
Of course they won't. When an "article" is needlessly spaced out over 10 pages, no one reads past page 2.
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Most people probably don't read more than the headline.
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I stopped reading after "What" and realized there would be a question which I'd end up ignoring anyway.
Help us Wikipedia, you're our only hope. (Score:5, Interesting)
Excellent! This would affect me heaps as I use wikipedia many times each day. Given it affects me, I know it would affect many others, and so hopefully it would raise the profile of what's happening.
Hopefully other companies which are against it, such as Google, can do something similar.
Either way, if they start doing stuff like this, that SOPA bill will get a lot more publicity about how bad it is, and it will be dead in the water.
Re:Help us Wikipedia, you're our only hope. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Help us Wikipedia, you're our only hope. (Score:5, Insightful)
Imagine if google shut down even for 1hr in protest against SOPA ... Maybe even 10minutes would have quite a crucifying effect!
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As usual there is no clear explanation what SOPA is. This is what I found in a comment at deadline.com :
"The MPAA could go on a site, post an “illegal” video, then claim copyright infringement and have the site shut down. We already know they practice this because Viacomm did it with YouTube and were caught in court.
What these new acts would do effectively takes the sniper rifle of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act — “Somebody on your forums posted my photo without permission; rem
Re:Help us Wikipedia, you're our only hope. (Score:5, Insightful)
IANAL, but I think the fear is that if SOPA passes, Wikipedia itself could be shut down. Or worse, parts of it censored to limit information, say on methods to get around DRM, or maybe websites that search for torrents. Or whatever new and creative uses the government can come up with (recipes for creating drugs or explosives, for example, or maybe even basic chemistry information on the same grounds). This is worse because people won't notice that they're missing information; a site shutdown would be obvious. I don't know how much of that is actually possible under SOPA, but if it's allowed, it probably will be done at some point. Those in charge always push the boundaries of the law.
A quick voluntary protest now would probably get a lot more attention, especially in the main stream media, which would dearly love to ignore the entire SOPA bill, especially any criticism of it, until it becomes law.
Wiki who? (Score:5, Insightful)
Get Google to go offline for day and you might wake people up. I work in a shop with a lot of techies and it has never ceased to amaze me how many never used wikipedia nor care too. As in, they don't need it. So get someone who truly matters to people, get Google to do a day of it.
As for getting for edits, get rid of the sanctimonious editors who revert everything that doesn't fit their political leaning or doesn't fit in their universe where every song by glam bands is important and characters who appeared in some obscure anime get full page treatment.
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Get the whole Internet to go offline for a day and you might wake people up. It has never ceased to amaze me how many never used Google nor care too.
But now that I think about it, I know many people who don't really use the Internet that much. My mom certainly wouldn't care much. So...
Get supermarkets to close for a day and you might wake people up!
But I know some other people who ...
Re:Wiki who? (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is, Google is a business. Right now congresscritters really don't understand the kind of power that Google wields, and if Google uses that power for protest, the panic button will get smashed, repeatedly. Regulation would follow as fast as they could ram it though the wheels of congress.
Re:Wiki who? (Score:5, Insightful)
Having a private company like Google directly influencing the outcome of the legislative process is even more dangerous than this proposed law.
It would mean corporations no longer have to hide behind lobbyists (and some semblance of democracy), and can simply demand any changes they want to a law they do not agree with.
Re:Wiki who? (Score:5, Insightful)
I prefer a company do something out in the open that is clearly visible, instead of money changing hands behind closed doors.
Imagine an issue where you could get both Bing (and Yahoo) and Google search to shut down during office hours in whatever country the protest targets.
I think it would be front page news around the world, affect the stock market and shock people.
It's not such a basic utility as electricity, but many people would be affected and nearly anyone would be aware.
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Just stop deleting stuff. There is no reason not to have pages dedicated to obscure anime characters if there is enough info and references for them. Wikipedia is not paper, as they used to say, and if people have trouble finding stuff it is because the search engine is deficient.
Wikipedia used to be great for articles on obscure subjects that served as a jumping off point. Now much of the good stuff has been deleted, and people won't participate because their efforts end up being wasted. Might as well post
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If the United States' 6th most popular website according to the TOP500 list isn't good enough for you, what is? Yes, Google is about ten times bigger but it's bigger than eBay, Twitter, Craigslist, MSN and Bing. People will notice...
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My favorite search engine, DuckDuckGo, did that. It was classy and it got my attention. Google, not so much.
Increased burecracy (Score:5, Insightful)
I know this comes up every time regarding Wikipedia, but Wikipedia simply gotten more hostile towards new contributors with it's bureaucracy and "territorial editors" (seen way too many revert-happy editors who rather revert than fix minor errors), to the point that I simple start to wonder if Wikipedia is taking itself way too seriously. Making it simpler to edit is not the only answer (though might make it simpler for the few layman who can handle bureaucracy but not the markup).
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Of course, I am still a fan of reading Wikipedia and I do support Jimmy's idea of taking down Wikipedia for a day. And hoping for other services to follow suit as not everyone use Wikipedia.
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You need look no further than the "notability" requirement to prove that.
I appreciate Wiki as a convenient replacement for the encyclopedia, but Jimbo can take his army of Undead Nazi Editors (tm) and stuff them straight up his [citation needed].
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Eh, it's a tricky issue, because there is also considerable complaining in the other direction: a well-respected group of experts in a field will expend considerable effort improving an article collaboratively, sometimes in response to specific attempts to recruit them to help (this happens in medicine and physics), and then if nobody is vigilant, the article just sort of rots over the next few months, as a bunch of minor changes are made that collectively decrease the quality of the article, sometimes even
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I don't think it is a conspiracy or anything like that. I think that the level of pain required to get anything done has reached a point where contribution is impossible unless:
1. You're willing to pay astroturfers to navigate the process. If you're willing to pay me $100/hr for a few weeks I don't mind moderating 37 debates/votes and escalating 12 points to the arbitration committee, and backing up every three word change up with 12 pages on the discussion tab with WP:ALPHABETSOUP being every 5th word.
2
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You could just edit in less controversial areas. Over the last few months, I've created a bunch of articles about Greek archaeological cites, 1980s music groups, and 19th-century physicians, and have run into zero problems. I do include good citations though (mostly to offline history books), which helps.
The editor was never a problem (Score:5, Insightful)
I've never struggled with markup and the editor wasn't a problem. Lowering the barrier to entry just means there'll be more vandalised entries and badly formatted text.
But the real reason nobody contributes is because of the perceived hierarchy and complete lack of human input at times. If I upload a photo, I get 10 or 20 robots written by random people crawl all over it demanding copyright tags etc. and spamming my personal page with their demands.
Every time someone writes a bot that believes my previous tags to be inadequate, I get spammed again and I get my images forcibly removed. There's no human control over it, and the bots are basically allowed to run riot, so even if it was perfectly acceptable when it was first uploaded, and you commented on the exact origins / rights assignment in order to prevent future problems, the next bot that doesn't spot newly-introduced-tag-X on it will just spam you and delete it.
Every time you edit an article, someone who thinks they own the article will just stomp all over it, even if your changes are minor and cosmetic and doing things like removing broken links, changing incorrect spelling, etc. God forbid you add to an article that was all but void of content with some personal knowledge and don't back it up. Surely *something* without citations in an article that's already been created and allowed to remain and even linked to is better than a page that has zero information at all, the citations can come later when people flesh out the article.
And, just occasionally, you'll write an article that will be wiped out as "non-notable", even if it's about a TV program, or a book that's selling millions of copies, or a computer game from the 80's where all its peers are already have their own articles (and the publishing house was famous and their article still sits with a broken link because it mentions that game and there's no article for it).
The problem of Wikipedia is *not* the interface. You *want* people to actually have a deal of experience with editing before they start changing prominent articles. The problem with Wikipedia is that people are allowed to discourage other contributors FAR TOO EASILY, even if their "corrections" are rolled back later.
What's needed is the same kind of system as the Project Gutenberg proofreading site has. Everyone has a login. You have to proofread the text. As you are doing so, your changes are also double-proofread by someone else in another round (there's usually 3-4 rounds). As you gain experience and your edits are "confirmed" (or at least not changed) by other people, you rise through the ranks and it's HARD to get to the point where you have prominent control over the article in question. There are no bots. There are no humans with zero experience of the wiki changing your perfectly-spelled text to junk in the process. There are no vandals that go unpunished. And it works on the same mass scale.
Wikipedia was a brilliant idea and I put a lot of work into contributing. A year later, every careful change I had made was deleted or removed, and that information never found its way back on - those articles are just empty shells now and some were deleted for not having any content after some rogue editor's culling! I haven't contributed since. Show me that the system works and people's hard work is wiped out by a bot written by a schoolkid, and I'll come back. Until then, fancy text editors mean nothing.
Re:The editor was never a problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Even better would to have meta moderation like slashdot. When you revert an edit, at least two other unrelated parties vote if the edit was unfair. To many negative meta mods and you loose the right to revert.
Re:The editor was never a problem (Score:5, Insightful)
That's exactly why I stopped editing and adding to Wikipedia.
The problem is definitely not that the interface is hostile to people changing and adding things, it's that the entire environment has become hostile against changes and additions.
They will never bring in new people when 90% of the contributions get thrown out again anyway. If they only want a select circle of a few people contributing, then why not limit the ability to add new things to that select circle in the first place?
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I've never had a contribution I made be reverted or removed. What kind of articles are people writing on Wikipedia that this happens to? (I write both on the Dutch and English Wikipedia, although not a lot).
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Here's another way to handle the problem: When you write an original entry for Wikipedia, also put it up somewhere else, like Everything2. That way, even if some jackhole assbastard deletes your article, the work isn't wasted. As a bonus, you can cite the wikipedia article in the E2 article, and vice versa. I wrote a couple e2nodes and cited Wikipedia and then later came to find that my e2node was cited BACK in the wikipedia article! Uhhhh fail.
Re:The editor was never a problem (Score:4, Informative)
I think Randall Munroe wrote something about that. :P
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Thing that made me annoyed is when I found a very good picture that was being voted for deletion because it didn't meet commons.wikimedia.org criteria since it was in breech of France's panorama copyright laws. However it was not in breech of en.wikipedia.org where it was originally uploaded and this would never have been an issue if some moronic bot (or person) had not "helpfully" moved it.
My last authored article was for a large scale computer game with millions of player that was tagged with "not notable
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Amen brother. I was about to write practically the same thing.
The editor never was the problem. The culture at WP is. I used to contribute, I've not done so for a long time now. I spend my time writing for audiences that actually care about it.
WP failed when they snuffed the experts and thought that references could replace knowledge. Nope, it doesn't. References back up knowledge, they are never a substitute. There's a reason scientific papers go through peer-review and not just reference-checking.
And ther
Re:The editor was never a problem (Score:5, Insightful)
No, you don't understand the stance of Wikipedia.
References are the one and only - because Wikipedia articles stay alife even if no active editor takes care of them anymore. If the knowledge condensed in the Wikipedia article can't be supported by any references, no one will be able to acquire the knowledge to take care of the article again.
As an ideal, Wikipedia articles should contain all the references necessary to check every sentence of it - so someone new to the topic can work through them until he's able to maintain the article. That's what "no original research" means in the end: keeping Wikipedia articles maintainable.
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If the knowledge condensed in the Wikipedia article can't be supported by any references, no one will be able to acquire the knowledge to take care of the article again.
Are you suggesting that if I post an article on glycolysis on Wikipedia and don't include references, that there is a risk that human kind might lose the knowledge of glycolysis and we might have to re-discover it to edit the article?
Nothing wrong with references and discussing anything that is controversial and not referenced. However, suggesting that the ONLY way people can edit articles is by reading the already-cited references seems a bit extreme.
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If the topic is popular enough, then the danger of falling into obscurity is low, indeed. But you don't know which topics will stay popular, and which will fall into obscurity. And why should a lower level of quality be required for articles about popular topics anyway? If there are so many people with a profound knowledge about the topic, then finding enough references to help those not familiar with the topic should be the easier.
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Sure, but my point is that simply not having references shouldn't be grounds to remove material. The reason for removing material should be that it is wrong. Now, references are a good way to settle any debates.
However, I see no harm in letting an article start out light on references and gain them over time, rather than squashing contributions because they're not at publication quality from the beginning.
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Look, I didn't write that there should be no references.
But references alone do not make a good article, and references do not equal knowledge. I can easily write a WP-style article about UFOs, the conspiracy that murdered JFK and was really behind 9/11, the secret hiding place of Hitler who is, of course, still alive and a hundred other total-bullshit topics and have enough references in them to satisfy every WP bot and editor.
And yet we know that all this is bullshit because of all the other evidence that
References often disappear (Score:2)
References to URLs often rot. Your national newspaper article or local TV station article will likely not be accessible at the same URL in 2-3 years because of the constant CMS churn.
Then what? It gets deleted for no references? Unverifiable information? Or does the valid-but-no-longer-referenced data get cut?
Wikipedia is a farce. Sometimes it's a handy farce, but I'll never donate a nickel nor a minute of my own until they fix their fundamental problems (which requires top-down change; IOW it will nev
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I was going to give this another +1, but instead I'll comment.
Firstly I'm a windows user and will never be a mac or linux user. I know my way around computers but when it comes to wikipedia's markup - I'm sure I could learn those obscure symbols if I really wanted to, but really I just can't be fucked. I bet I'm not the only one.
+5 agree on everything else - bots are cause more damage than good, deletionism is a problem, and YES - some form of community (not appointed experts) peer review is needed.
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doing things like removing broken links
You shouldn't be removing broken links. You should be noting them, or correcting them. You should also briefly describe the changes you have made in the "edit summary" box when submitting a change. I do this all of the time and never had an edit reverted when doing so.
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So I should just leave all that spam on the page, redirecting the user to god-knows-what via those domain-hunters that grab expired domains, exposing every Wikipedia user who views the link to any sort of monstrosity until someone can recreate that external site, or find equivalent content?
Rather than a one line, commented, edit that can be reverted in a second if I'm wrong?
What about the nothing-but-spam links?
It's "article management" like that that's making WP the mess it is.
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Note that I'm not criticizing anything other than your desire to "remove broken links". Although I didn't make it explicit, I was referring to links as cited references, not to a list of external links (though it is preferred, but not always possible to fix or replace dead external links).
So I should just leave all that spam on the page, redirecting the user to god-knows-what via those domain-hunters that grab expired domains, exposing every Wikipedia user who views the link to any sort of monstrosity until someone can recreate that external site, or find equivalent content?
This isn't what I'm suggesting at all. If you note a dead link properly this is not a problem.
a one line, commented, edit that can be reverted in a second if I'm wrong
This is exactly what works in my experience.
Some future news broadcast (Score:5, Funny)
News anchor 1: "...The 24 hour shut down is in protest against the Stop Online Piracy Act."
News anchor 2: "And in other news, thousands of students across the world have delayed handing in their homework by 24 hours, claiming that they need the extra time to make finishing touches to their work."
SOPA will break the internet as we know it (Score:2)
That's not a debate... (Score:2)
A debate is where you have a reasonable number of people on opposing sides. That was more like "Oh yes, we have got to do this" times about 500. Even the "Debate" should make obvoius what the literate world thinks of this idea.
Now, how do we get some legislation proposed that would cut copyright back to reasonable levels, like a flat 14 year monopoly on commercial distribution?
Difference between this & paywalls? (Score:2)
How come when the NY Times puts up a paywall, Slash think converges on "ha ha information wants to be free, this will never work" but when Wikipedia proposes trying to limit access in the US to make a political statement, it's a great idea?
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This has nothing to do with whether the motives of the various groups are good or bad or right or wrong (although I do disagree with the idea that newspapers are dead). But that's irrelevant. The issue is that we have two organizations, each of which creates a "product" that is an aggregation of information. Each organization, for its own reasons, wants to restrict the product. Why does slashdotters think one organization will fail and the other will succeed?
Ignoranti don't care now and won't care then (Score:2)
Wikipedia's Management Sucks (Score:2)
The thought of shutting down access to Wikipedia for 24 hours to make a political statement really spits in the face of contributors that have provided either money or content.
You want more editors, just remove reversion. (Score:2)
If I type a load of well researched, well cited information, and some plank can just blow it away with one click, whose view is going to prevail?
Wikipedia is premised on most editors being honest. If that's the case, it doesn't matter if it takes more than 10 seconds to remove vandalism, right?
No thanks (Score:2)
I recognize what the idea behind having Wikipedia protest is.
However, the last thing I want is MORE politics from Wikipedia. They are supposed to be an unbiased source of information, thats the claim. Protesting SOPA is in no way unbiased and just goes to show that you can't really use them as an unbiased reference for anything.
No chance. (Score:2)
Forget it. The battle's already lost. The big media companies are actually running pro-SOPA commercials on TV. "Tell your representatives to protect our information!" Where "our" is cleverly used to imply that the viewer is part of the same "us" that's running the commercials.
Wikipedia already begs for money just to keep the site running. A strike will have as much effect on decision makers as all those "occupy" people sleeping in the park.
And a Merry Christmas to you all.
jeopardize tax free status (Score:2)
Strongly favor (Score:2)
Most folks are ignorant that this is even an issue; might get the point across to a far wider audience.
What if (Score:2)
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The endpoint of that line of thought is "know your sources", which has been sound advice for as long as communication has existed. Wikipedia isn't perfect, but that doesn't keep it from being an amazing resource -- perhaps even revolutionary.
Re:Wikipedia desperate for press (Score:5, Insightful)
Put another way, if you can't trust a bunch of old guys in suits not to become corrupt, why can you trust a bunch of stoned basement dwellers to avoid corruption? It becomes important when you realize that Wikipedia has a greater cultural influence than even government does.
The difference is that Wikipedia is just one on many outlets of information, while SOPA tries to control the flow of information in itself.
If you feel that you cannot trust Wikipedia you can always chose another place to voice your opinion or obtain information from. If SOPA becomes reality then that might not even be an option.
Re:Wikipedia desperate for press (Score:4, Insightful)
If SOPA reminds us not to trust governments and its manipulations, we should probably ask ourselves: what really is the difference between a democratic government and a democratic group blog like Wikipedia?
Like, Wikipedia doesn't seize domains of other sites? Seriously, your point is that Wikipedia, like politicians, can also lie? Got some news for you: any webpage or other information source can. Don't believe anything just because you have read it on the Internet. The advantage of Wikipedia is, however, that it links to its sources thus you can easily check everything you read there.
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Don't believe anything just because you have read it.
FTFY. You should almost never completely believe a single source on anything. And if it really matters, you should check what each of your sources based their statement on, to try to mitigate the "Wikipedia says something without attribution, news article copies Wikipedia without attribution, Wikipedia edited to cite news article" problem.
Re:Wikipedia desperate for press (Score:5, Insightful)
if you can't trust a bunch of old guys in suits not to become corrupt, why can you trust a bunch of stoned basement dwellers to avoid corruption?
While it may not apply in this specific context, there is a substantive reason.
The old guys in suits you are referring to are US legislators, the RIAA, and the MPAA. There are two significant reasons why you can trust average stoned basement dwellers to be less corruptible (assuming they are average people):
1. There have been a number of instances of members of the suspect set of old guys in suits demonstrating that they are significantly more susceptible to corruption than average people. This provides a measure which can be used to estimate the probability of a randomly selected member of the set being corruptible.
2. The process of becoming a member of the legislature or a senior executive of the **AA includes an iterative filter which (perhaps unintentionally) preferentially selects for those who are willing and capable of playing dirty. This implies that from a set of individuals who begin the process of ascending, the individuals who reach the top of the systems in question will show a biased distribution -- they will have a higher probability of being corruptible than the overall set of people who began the selection process.
Pretty straightforward, I think. Average people are less prone to corruption than average legislators or average executives of the **AA -- both according to observed results and by analyzing the selection process.
Although, I guess, it could be the case that stoned basement dwellers are also a biased set with respect to corruptibility, so I could be wrong.
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Put another way, if you can't trust a bunch of old guys in suits not to become corrupt, why can you trust a bunch of stoned basement dwellers to avoid corruption?
In addition to the counter-arguments above, I'd like to add:
Because there are a lot more wikipedia contributors then old guys in suits. The power is more distributed. It's harder to abuse power when you have to share it with everyone.
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what really is the difference between a democratic government and a democratic group blog like Wikipedia?
The difference is neither one is a democracy. Your vote is meaningless; the corporates get politicians elected. Your wikipedia edit will be undone. No democracy in either place.
Put another way, if you can't trust a bunch of old guys in suits not to become corrupt, why can you trust a bunch of stoned basement dwellers to avoid corruption?
That suit and tie should clue you in to the fact that the people wea
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I haven't seen Dr. Bob online for quite a while. I'm actually getting kind of concerned at this point.
Oh? Didn't you know? Dr. Bob accidentally revealed his true identity. I think he stopped trolling after that. Kinda sad too, he had a pretty good run.
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Re:Someone call me a doctor! (Score:5, Informative)
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I knew there was a reason I'm a grub fan. Epic troll.
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OK, doctor, whatever you say. Now for an actual on-topic comment (why do you guys do that, anyway?)
It's too little, too late, for me anyway. After my eye operation in 2006 I tried for WEEKS to get the CrystaLens I'd had implanted (that was FDA-approved in 2003) included in the articles about cataracts and cataract surgery. They were always immediately excised. Why in the hell should I even bother? You wikipedia guys might want to actually have a glance at edits (maybe even with a quick googling) before you
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OK, doctor, whatever you say. Now for an actual on-topic comment (why do you guys do that, anyway?)
It's too little, too late, for me anyway. After my eye operation in 2006 I tried for WEEKS to get the CrystaLens I'd had implanted (that was FDA-approved in 2003) included in the articles about cataracts and cataract surgery. They were always immediately excised. Why in the hell should I even bother? You wikipedia guys might want to actually have a glance at edits (maybe even with a quick googling) before you remove stuff.
But again, my wiki editing days were few and are over.
Wikipedia is run by a small cabal of self-important asses who get off on controlling information.
They routinely remove anything they disagree with. Beyond that, they rip out shit at random if they feel like swaggering their e-peen around.