duskwuff 2 days ago

Despite anything he may say about himself, Larry Sanger is not, by any stretch of the imagination, "the founder of Wikipedia". He was a paid employee of the project in 2001; his involvement with the site ended in early 2002 when funding for the position ran out. His experience with the site nearly 25 years ago does not make him an authority on how it is run today.

  • SanjayMehta 2 days ago

    Wikipedia’s article on Sanger calls him cofounder and credits him with its name:

    “ Lawrence Mark Sanger (/ˈsæŋər/ ⓘ;[1] born July 16, 1968) is an American Internet project developer and philosopher who co-founded Wikipedia along with Jimmy Wales. Sanger coined Wikipedia's name, and provided initial drafts for many of its early guidelines, including the "Neutral point of view" and "Ignore all rules" policies.”

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Sanger

    • duskwuff 2 days ago

      "Co-founder" is debatable, but he certainly wasn't "the founder" of the site.

      Regardless - whether you choose to describe Sanger's early involvement with Wikipedia as a "founder" or not, 2002 was a long time ago, especially online. The site which he was involved with was very different from the one which exists today.

      • SanjayMehta 2 days ago

        I agree. Wikipedia used to be a useful starting point for almost any research.

        Today, not so much. I can’t remember where I read it, but there was an analysis of just one topic where it was shown that circular referencing was used to establish a narrative.

        Coming back to the point at hand: the US attorney targeting Wikipedia is merely restating allegations which have been made by many others on Wikipedia’s biases for and against certain topics and individuals.

Loughla 2 days ago

His argument is that Trump is being criticized more for being controversial than Obama.

Honestly. Is Trump not more controversial than Obama?

  • hagbard_c 2 days ago

    No, that depends on your viewpoint. Those who come from a "democrat" background will certainly consider Trump to be more controversial than Obama while those from a Republican background will see Obama - especially second-term Obama - as far more controversial than Trump. Independents will vary on their interpretation but Obama is not likely to end up in the history books as the 'Change agent' he promised to be and will mostly likely be seen as partly responsible for the deterioration of race relations in the USA due to his use of and support for identity politics in a (successful) attempt to win a second period by cobbling together the 'coalition of the oppressed'.

    How Trump will end up in the history books wholly depends on whether he succeeds in his attempts to curtail globalism and save the USA from becoming insolvent due to the rising debt. If the economy fails his presidency will as well and with that he'll be remembered for all the controversy around his political career. If he succeeds he'll be seen as a 'realpolitiker' who pulled the USA out of the downward spiral it had been in since ... the late 90's? The end of the cold war?

    Of course there is also the chance of a large-scale conflict breaking out during his watch in which case his place in the history books also depends on how that ends.

    Time will tell.

    • Supermancho 2 days ago

      > Obama is not likely to end up in the history books as the 'Change agent' he promised to be and will mostly likely be seen as partly responsible for the deterioration of race relations in the USA

      That's a fantasy. His mere existence in the position, contradicts the premise. Hillary hoped to be in a similar position...history would have also been kind to her, despite her vicious nature by the obvious virtuous implications (a woman can become POTUS).

    • habinero 2 days ago

      > partly responsible for the deterioration of race relations in the USA

      This is just a euphemism for "he was black in public and lesser white people didn't like it".

      • hagbard_c a day ago

        Yes, everything I don't agree with is racist. It is time to drop that tired old trope, if you don't want to accept it from me accept it from Thomas Sowell:

        “Racism is not dead, but it is on life support – kept alive by politicians, race hustlers and people who get a sense of superiority by denouncing others as ‘racists”

        https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/11151740-racism-is-not-dead...

      • SpicyLemonZest 2 days ago

        No, that's not accurate. When people talk about the "deterioration of race relations", they're referring to a well-documented phenomenon (https://news.gallup.com/poll/1687/race-relations.aspx) where poll respondents say race relations are bad (and trending downwards) since 2015 while they were good from 2001 to 2013. I'm skeptical that Obama bears any responsibility for this, given that the trend didn't start until his second term, but it's a real trend and not a euphemism.

    • anigbrowl 2 days ago

      It's hard to take you seriously when you employ 'democrat' background and Republican as contrasting terms. Referring to the Democratic party and its supporters is more easily effected by saying [the] Democrats. This sort of baity rhetoric undermines any aspirations to objectivity.

      • hagbard_c 2 days ago

        You can look through (and may already have done so) my comment history for my explanation for putting "democratic" between quotes. In short it is because the party is not democratic and thus should not be called such. Had they been democratic they'd have run Bernie Sanders instead of Clinton, they'd have had primaries where there were none, they'd have allowed people like RFK and Tulsi Gabbard to have a shot at the candidacy (and might have won the presidency that way, more fool them). The "democratic" party is run by the DNC, not by its constituents. It does not listen to those constituents, the people or 'δημος' ('dèmos', Greek for 'municipality' or 'city', i.e. the people) in 'δημοκρατία'. If and when the party becomes true to its moniker I'll call them by their chosen name, until such a time they're the "democratic" party. Truth in advertising is a good thing after all.

techpineapple 2 days ago

Yes, as described in the blog post, I would imagine the median Fox News viewer to find Wikipedia biased. But the median Fox News viewer is not the median American, much less median world citizen.

But no seriously, having finished reading it, this article is incredibly Christian-centric and Americentric.

  • nailer 2 days ago

    Regarding the missing topics mentioned in the article (updated to quote them for convenience):

        The Barack Obama article completely fails to mention many well-known scandals: Benghazi, the IRS scandal, the AP phone records scandal, and Fast and Furious, to say nothing of Solyndra or the Hillary Clinton email server scandal—or, of course, the developing “Obamagate” story in which Obama was personally involved in surveilling Donald Trump.
    
    For example, the September 11 attacks on the US Embassy in Benghazi objectively happened - few people on the left or right would pretend they did not happen or that were not notable events of Barack Obama’s presidency (as the article discusses).

    This is not a matter of whether you watch Fox News or not.

    • clipsy 2 days ago

      Have you bothered to do any sort of comparison as to how similar attacks are reported? At a quick glance, I see nothing on George W Bush's wiki page[0] about the 2002 consulate attack in Kolkata[1], for example.

      [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W._Bush

      [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_attack_on_American_cultur...

      • duskwuff 2 days ago

        Not that it's necessarily wrong for it to not be listed there, though. The article on GWB is about him and what he did as president - it isn't meant to be a complete history of the United States between 2001 and 2009.

        • clipsy 2 days ago

          I agree -- which is also why the absence of Benghazi on Obama's wiki page is not, in my view, a sign of bias.

      • nailer 2 days ago

        How is that remotely similar? There was not a scandal implicating George Bush regarding the Kolkhata attack.

    • techpineapple 2 days ago

      Oh look!

      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Benghazi_attack

      They creatively censored it under the title “2012 Banghazi Attack”

      • _DeadFred_ 2 days ago

        The article is nonsense. It links to Obama's Wikipedia page and complains Obama's page doesn't talk about Benghazi. But Obama's Wikipedia page links to a huge article about.... Benghazi. So his complaint is what, the article about Benghazi isn't summarized on Obama's Wikipedia page? Weak sauce.

      • nailer 2 days ago

        The article above that we are discussing discusses the omission of the Benghazi attack as an aspect of Barack Obama‘s presidency.

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cogogo 2 days ago

I actually clicked this link in good faith. Glad to see the downvote I can’t make arrived.

  • hagbard_c 2 days ago

    Why are you glad for a downvote? Just because you don't agree with Sanger's point of view does not make it less worthwhile to read about it. Censorship is not something to be glad about and yes, downvoting opinions outside of your desired narrative until they are greyed out into oblivion or killed is a form of censorship.

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aingling 2 days ago

Exactly, he sees the problem clearly. And this article was five years ago. It's become even more entrenched now. There's basically no way of fixing this.

We can see similar problems with other sites that rely on volunteer labor, like Reddit.