Wikipedia Had No Idea YouTube Was Going To Use It To Fact-Check Conspiracy Theories (gizmodo.com) 136
Yesterday, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki announced that the company would drop a Wikipedia link beneath videos on highly contested topics. We have now learned that Wikipedia did not know about this move prior to the announcement. Gizmodo reports: In a Twitter thread asking the public to support Wikipedia as much as it relies on it, Wikimedia executive director Katherine Maher first suggested that the organization was unaware of YouTube's plans. When asked whether this new module would only apply to English Wikipedia pages, Maher responded, "I couldn't say; this was something they did independent of us." In a statement to Gizmodo, the Wikimedia Foundation confirmed that the organization first learned of the new YouTube feature on Tuesday. "We are always happy to see people, companies, and organizations recognize Wikipedia's value as a repository of free knowledge," a Wikimedia Foundation spokesperson said in a statement. "In this case, neither Wikipedia nor the Wikimedia Foundation are part of a formal partnership with YouTube. We were not given advance notice of this announcement."
Re:Full Idiot Circle (Score:5, Informative)
If Conservapedia [conservapedia.com] has a page about Circle Jerks, then it needs to be updated to reflect this.
At least YouTube has the good sense to not use Conservapedia to verify YouTube videos.
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You can go right to Wikipedia for the definition of a circle jerk. [wikipedia.org]
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Considering that there is always a conspiracy theory about anything even mildly unknown, then the number of times they became fact would be equal to the number of actual conspiracies. (Unless it isn't, in which case I have a theory about that.)
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None of the three statements was a logical fallacy.
Perhaps you should spend some time looking at the Wikipedia page on logical fallacies so you might have a better chance of recognizing the difference between them and a stating an opinion or fact.
Wiki's editorial staff are well known to be biased, group-think, and agenda-driven - some of the wars are legendary.
Proof by Assertion.
Wiki is not accepted as a scholarly or reputable source in any reputable academic institution.
Association Fallacy/Fallacy of the Inverse.
As a basic source of information for non-scholastic arguments, I suppose its better than nothing.
Nirvana Fallacy.
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Actually, it's perfectly possible to get a permanent link to a Wikipedia page so that what you cite won't change. The reason it can't be used as a source is that it's an encyclopedia, not a primary or secondary source. Academics use it to get some background information and to f
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99% of their stuff is factual. That's far better than what you get on YouTube.
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And 99% of their stuff is uncontroversial. Nobody's arguing over whether mitochondria are the powerhouse of the cell.
The controversial shit (eg, politics)? Just as shit as YouTube.
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It depends. Anthropogenic global warming isn't controversial on Wikipedia or in most countries' politician scenes. Same thing for evolution. In the USA, however...
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wrong, hugely controversial religion nonsense being pushed as fact on wikipedia.
For example, look at the B.S. being pushed as the history of Jerusalem from the Bible, instead of the archeological facts such as at the time of the mythical king David the city was abandoned.
Similar can be shown with "history" in articles of Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, etc. in Wikipedia.
Passing off religious bullshit as fact is not what a proper encyclopedia does.
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That depends. How much of YouTube is patently false? There are 1.3B videos on YouTube, 13M of them would have to be factually incorrect (right vs left politics and shit throwing doesn't qualify).
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No, you're wrong on this (Score:1)
There is a value in a wiki that lists citations. In many ways a link to Wikipedia is more valuable than having a link to a single verified source.
Now could the sources on your average wikipedia page be curated better? Absolutely. But complaining about it and encouraging us to ignore the value that Wikipedia provides is no solution.
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Wikipedia is however biased on the sources it considers valid as citations.
When it comes to current affairs Wikipedia can not be trusted as it does not present an objective view of a subject and does not allow a broad base of citations that would present multiple perspectives.
This is exacerbated by editorial control that runs counter to the entire ethos of a wiki.
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But that's okay, because YouTube (a.k.a Google) is also biased.
You can't just throw a grenade without evidence. Provide proof that google has a reputation for delivering deliberately incorrect information.
Try starting here. http://tinyurl.com/GoogleGesta... [tinyurl.com]
Re:Doesn't Matter (Score:5, Informative)
"Wiki's editorial staff" are just its general users. As a casual editor for well over a decade now (as in, I fix up little things I find while reading it, and watch pages on topics I'm interested in for updates and mostly just revert obvious vandalism that hits those pages), I've witnessed my fair share of edit wars, and for the most part I get the feeling that people who have a big problem with Wikipedia's processes are disruptive editors unhappy that they're not successfully able to push their agenda through it.
Also, no encyclopedia is a reputable source in any academic institution. But unlike most encyclopedias, Wikipedia is supposed to point you to the reputable sources that it got its information from, instead of just asking you to trust it.
Very Wrong (Score:3, Informative)
"Wiki's editorial staff" are just its general users.
That is VERY wrong. I have through the years tried to correct some minor mistakes and omissions. Usually things are find but now and again you run into some VERY Assholios who will not accept a submission they disagree with, not matter how well sourced.
I get the feeling that people who have a big problem with Wikipedia's processes are disruptive editors unhappy that they're not successfully able to push their agenda through it.
Wrong, it's more like ther
Re:Very Wrong (Score:5, Interesting)
Can you link us to one of your edits that was reverted that you feel is a good example?
That way we could judge for ourselves, instead of just reading your insistence that you are Virtuous and that others are not.
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Yet no collection of governments or universities are able to do better, they are the shite groups. Wikipedia is doing the best it can and that's not that bad and far better than the zero effort of the planets governments and universities, what a shit show they are, where the fuck are those lazy greedy cunts globally accessible free encyclopaedia, lost in the greed of for profit publishing extremely expensive compulsory text books because greed first fuck educating the public.
So in reality who is the worse
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That is an idiotic rant.
Governments and universities aren't paid to fact check Youtube videos. You want to pay taxes for that? Didn't think so.
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Have you had much luck with that? I've tried to fix a few grammar errors as well as obvious factual errors (e.g. cardinal direction between two cities). They've been reverted by overzealous editors who "own" the article.
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Yeah, my little edits usually stick. Even the occasional bigger one. Only explanation I can think of for your reported experience is that your edits somehow superficially look likely to be vandalism to, as you say, overzealous editors who probably see tons of actual vandalism and are too quick on the trigger. Do you have an account or are you an anonymous IP editor? (Some people are more suspicious of anons, even though that's actually against policy). Have you had any big fights that might make other users
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In the History tab of an article, you can grab links to diffs of every edit. In your own user contributions page (which even anon ips have) you can find diffs of all your own edits to any pages. I wanted to see a diff of someone reverting your edits, to see what they reverted and why they said they did so. (If your not aware of article histories, you might have missed an edit summary politely telling you why you were reverted).
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I can print a book that says Donald Trump is a small lizard controlling a badly made humanoid robot. That doesn't make it reliable.
Since 2005 I think wikipedia has lost reliability. It was great, it's become politicised.
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Encyclopedias are secondary sources, which cite (Score:5, Informative)
> Wiki is not accepted as a scholarly or reputable source in any reputable academic institution.
You don't cite an encyclopedia for the same reason you don't cite "the library".
Encyclopedias, including Wikipedia, are secondary sources. That means they collect and summarize primary sources, such as peer-reviewed studies. (Just as libraries collect and catalog sources).
Whatever is in an encyclopedia came from somewhere else, so you cite the source. It would be dumb to cite "Encyclopedia Britannica says that a study by Harvard says that ...". Just cite the study directly rather than indirectly.
This does not mean that encyclopedias are unreliable or somehow "bad", they are just an unnecessary extra step when citing where information comes from. You wouldn't cite "my roommate, John Carter, showed me a study which he got from the Texas A&M library which states ..." You cite the source of the information, not the steps it took to get to you. Wikipedia is a conduit of information, like a library, not an original source.
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Not that it undermines your main point, but encyclopedias are not even secondary sources, they are tertiary sources. Journals that comment on the importance and significance of primary sources (the original research) are the secondary sources. Wikipedia policy prefers that its own sources be secondary rather than primary, because Wikipedia is not supposed to be a secondary source, it's supposed to be a tertiary source, and relying too much on primary sources is frowned upon as it verges into the territory o
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With the comedy that journalists quote wikipedia, which means that the tertiary source cites a secondary source which uses the tertiary source as its primary source.
It's a repeated issue that's seriously compromising the usability of wikipedia.
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Do you know what this will actually do? (Score:5, Insightful)
This means the WIKIPEDIA articles will start to huge a huge influx of people who aren't normally wiki editors. And you know what Wikipedia is? Free for ANYONE to edit.
So what does that do? It means Wikipedia articles that get linked will 1) Have huge bandwidth costs thanks to YouTube, and 2) get edited by people who love conspiracies and end up way shittier.
Thanks, YouTube!
Ever think that Rage Against the Machine's Evil Empire album came out like... 15 yeas too early? If they had any idea how big Facebook and Google would become, they would have come up with another 5 albums worth of content.
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Fuckin' typos + Slashdot no edits. >:(
> will start to huge a huge influx
Will start to HAVE a huge influx
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Let's hope that Youtube will donate some money to Wikipedia for the extra traffic.
The linked articles will probably be locked fast.
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No it won't. Most of these "highly contested" topics aren't contested at all by people who make reasoned decisions based only on measurement and not feelings or "instincts". The people who are viewing them are not generally the type who will follow a link to a site that isn't speaking in an inflammatory fashion. They are drama seekers who "know" everything better than the people who spend a lifetime studying it because they have what they term "common sense" which seems to correspond way too much to selfish
Poor management by Alphabet, formerly Google. (Score:2)
Don't announce a partnership that does not exist. (Score:2)
YouTube is part of Google, now called Alphabet. This is another example of bad management by Alphabet, in my opinion.
YouTube should not have announced a partnership that does not exist.
Re:Do you know what this will actually do? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Somewhere a Netflix engineer is laughing his ragged ass off.
A sober assessment is that there will soon be a far larger number of articles semi-protected.
If we can somehow figure out how to mass produce the Jordan Peterson mind-meld, Wikipedia might even be able to make constructive use of this influx of outrage and youthful energy.
(That last paragraph wasn't part of the sober assessment, just in case your mental parser is invisibly fond of scope creep.)
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Wikipedia can deal with this. They have measures like temporary protection, which can be anything from only allowing editors with accounts to make changes to freezing the article completely until the storm blows over.
Anyway, most of the viewers of the video won't actually go to Wikipedia. They will read the snippet and leave it at that. I expect the conspiracy videos will start featuring carefully cherry-picked parts of the Wikipedia articles in them, so that viewers are mislead and don't bother check the a
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So what does that do? It means Wikipedia articles that get linked will 1) Have huge bandwidth costs thanks to YouTube,
Wikipedia has plenty of money. They have so much that they waste it on all kinds of bullshit rich media presentations that statistically nobody consumes. They can spend it on bandwidth.
and 2) get edited by people who love conspiracies and end up way shittier.
Most people will not edit Wikipedia. They will be scared off long before they even get to the edit page, and if they actually do submit an edit, they will be scared off when it's reverted.
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So, you're saying that the site that bills itself as 'the encyclopedia that anybody can edit' will be made worse by having more people edit it?
I mean, don't get me wrong, I've known that for years, but I'm glad more people are coming to the realization that Wikipedia's basic concept is flawed on it's face.
So about those Wikipedia Donation messages.. (Score:1)
Cuz seriously, if I knew that donating to Wikipedia would've garnered so much email spam, I'd never have donated in the first place.
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Donation.... (Score:1)
Time for a FF extension (Score:1, Troll)
Now political activist US brands want to push their side of US party politics onto your browser?
Time for a script that blocks US party political big brand alterations of your search results.
The ads go blocked.
The party political propaganda as results can be blocked too.
Just say no to big brand activists pushing their partisan political results all over your browser.
It is time to take back our browsers- and make the Internet great again.
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Its funny, we've both been users for a long time, and you used to sound like a native English speaker.
Now you speak some sort of weird political creole.
Let this serve as a cautionary tale about what happens when you sink too deep into the echo-pit.
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Without outside servers pushing party political results all over the content the user wanted to find.
Browsers had to protect users from ads, pop ups, loud ad audio and unwanted video ads.
Now browsers have to consider links to other sites getting placed over content.
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Yeah. Dude. That's not even English.
Some sort of unnamed Creole.
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Want a political message on a video site to go the same way?
What if the message changes from one party to another?
Still good with a political message AC?
What if the brand finds faith?
Like a quote from their religious text? A nice big font to spread the faith? Something from a cult leader with every search result?
A site that just offers video clips would be great. No need for extra messages, text, thoughts, comments, politics a
Good Lord! (Score:5, Funny)
One site showing links to another site, without even asking? Good grief. Is this what the internet has come to?
Asking permission (Score:1)
Google isn't well known for acquiring consent before utilizing the resources of others. They are basically the corporate equivalent of rapists, have been for years. They found a way to monetize Wikipedia! Naturally Wikipedia won't see a dime of that profit.
And... (Score:2)
And, who cares? Does Youtube need permission? The is a huge "who fucking cares?" moment.
Wikipeida is fine for this.. (Score:2)
Simple Solution (Score:2)
Every time YouTube links to Wikipedia. They should a) include a donation link as well b) share a portion of the ad revenues to support Wikipedia.
Then it becomes a win-win scenario.
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Heavy liberal bias.
But only because reality has a liberal bias.
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That is an old meme that is no longer true. We've gorged ourselves on self aggrandizing and blatantly false propaganda for the last 4 years and it has resulted in the stagnation of our ability to think for ourselves.
Consider this:
Russia meddled in our election to elect someone that was politically opposite of them. Yet somehow we don't even stop to consider what else they've meddled in. The truth of the matter is that they've been causing radicalization in this country for some time. We're at the point wher
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Even I know that Venezuela and the USSR are very illiberal.
Liberals are illiberal (Score:1)
As is Bernie Sanders and every other American claiming to be a "Liberal" while in reality seeing no problems with using the government's power to compel fellow citizens into doing, what they wouldn't have done voluntarily.
The term has been perverted so much, the actual adherents of Liberty have to call themselves "Libertarians".
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Okay, what was Sanders proposing to do with government power that isn't out of line with other uses of government power? He was mostly proposing to tax and spend in a way Republicans have some disagreements with.
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Too bad the people that call themselves liberals are not actually liberals, hence able to take advantage of the liberal bias of reality.
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Heavy liberal bias. Please consider starting here, but finding more reputable sources for your information.
Yeah! Like the comments section of youtube. You can learn a great deal about human nature. If you really want to.