Behind the X owner’s trolling is a years long obsession with the internet’s favorite encyclopedia, says Depths of Wiki creator Annie Rauwerda.
    • CantaloupeAss [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      22·
      8 months ago

      ok I have probably learned more about the world from Wikipedia than any other source, yeah it’s not good for political issues but let’s not pretend like Wikipedia is not the internet’s single greatest accomplishment: fully decentralized, free information sharing and education on an unlimited scale.

      Also the scientific, mathematical, biological, etc. articles are usually like textbook-level.

      • Philosoraptor [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
        26·
        8 months ago

        As long as you remember that it is an encyclopedia then I think it’s actually pretty good. Yes, lots of the pages about contemporary political issues are full of CIA-posting, but you really shouldn’t be trying to get your political news (or understanding of theory) from an encyclopedia in the first place. That’s not what they’re for. Similarly, I think it’s fine that most of the articles aren’t written at much more than an undergraduate textbook level of sophistication. Again, if you want expert-level specialized knowledge about a complex topic, an encyclopedia shouldn’t be your go-to in the first place.

        I think Wikipedia is fine, and I agree that it’s one of the few good things that remains on the internet: it is advertiser free, not paywalled, not run for profit, and freely accessible. It certainly has a strong liberalism bias, and the fact that people on reddit-logo will take it as the gospel truth about literally everything is incredibly stupid, but if you treat it as the very general tertiary source that encyclopedias are intended to be, it’s fine. This is one of my haram views that’s out of step with what seems to be the Hexbear consensus.

      • BelieveRevolt [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
        37·
        8 months ago

        It considers CIA propaganda fronts legitimate sources and in general questionable sources, like random articles from businessinsider dot com, are accepted as citations when the article is about something international-community-1international-community-2 considers ”bad”. It’s also known that the US government is involved in heavy astroturfing. We don’t call it NATOpedia for nothing.

      • Flyberius [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
        32·
        8 months ago

        When it comes to heated political topics it is not very impartial, due to the opinions of the powerusers.

        I agree that for a lot of stuff it is very useful, but still.

  • GarbageShoot [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    33·
    8 months ago

    If this manages to gut wikipedia’s credibility on politics and history without harming its good information in other fields, it would actually be an excellent turn of events.

  • privatized_sun [none/use name]@hexbear.net
    English
    29·
    8 months ago

    “Just looked at my wiki for 1st time in years. It’s insane! Btw, can someone please delete ‘investor’. I do basically zero investing,”

    finance imperialists are afraid porky-scared

    • axont [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      17·
      8 months ago

      How can he even say that? If he has any sort of financial managers, he’s doing investments. Knowing Musk I doubt he’s paying close attention to his finances but if he’s anywhere close to the wealth he claims to be, then a lot of that is probably tied up in things like securities, bonds, partial ownership over various companies.

      He might be saying he doesn’t devote any of his personal time to deciding what to invest in. Ok, so like most billionaire parasites.

        • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
          6·
          8 months ago

          He also invented everything he owns, and if pressed on that, his unspecified genius kicked in after it was invented in a way that makes him the effective inventor of it. If he buys Wikipedia, I mean Le Epic X, he will make Wikipedia, I mean Le Epic X, say so as well.

  • YourFavoriteFed [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
    16·
    8 months ago

    There’s already Conservapedia, what more does he want?

    Hell, why does he care about Wikipedia when most people WANT to believe what conservapedia says so badly?

  • traxen@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    2·
    8 months ago

    Elon, stay the fuck away.

    You have gotten involved in a few things now and some are good, some are questionable …

    But if you put your hands on Wikipedia… with the same goals as Twitter… you will have a really hard time turning your legacy to something we will have fond memories of.