The Wikipedia Critics' Forum
https://wikipediocracy.com/forum/
ForbesI sat down with Everipedia, a decentralized wiki, and LBRY, a decentralized YouTube competitor, to learn more about how blockchain can democratize our online media experience.
Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.
OK, the contributor is Jonathan Chester, "Founder & President of Bitwage, the most popular payroll & invoicing solution built on top of the bitcoin blockchain." Obviously, he is a fan of blockchain.Dysklyver wrote:Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.
Just more blockchain hype.Poetlister wrote:ForbesI sat down with Everipedia, a decentralized wiki, and LBRY, a decentralized YouTube competitor, to learn more about how blockchain can democratize our online media experience.
In other words, "Imagine if Wikipedia's database worked exactly as it does now". If he's actually trying to make a case for decentralization then he's signally failed to do so.Imagine if Wikipedia’s database, a mysql in the backend, were actually open and anyone could just pull the articles and the data, instead of just linking to Wikipedia itself.
Given his job, that must just reflect his POV and indeed his COI.Eric Corbett wrote:Just more blockchain hype.
Wikipedia's database working the way it does isn't what Sam is talking about here. He's talking about the possibility for multiple front ends to be able to edit the back end, not just read from it, but to edit it. While you're all stuck with one editor, and one visual editor that's naff, Everipedia can be moving on with multiple front ends, all competing to be the best.Eric Corbett wrote:In other words, "Imagine if Wikipedia's database worked exactly as it does now". If he's actually trying to make a case for decentralization then he's signally failed to do so.Imagine if Wikipedia’s database, a mysql in the backend, were actually open and anyone could just pull the articles and the data, instead of just linking to Wikipedia itself.
What's "naff" is your understanding, or the lack thereof, of the use of APIs to do precisely what you claim it is that can't be done with the Wikipedia database; take a look at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API:Edit for instance.Paul Bedson wrote:Wikipedia's database working the way it does isn't what Sam is talking about here. He's talking about the possibility for multiple front ends to be able to edit the back end, not just read from it, but to edit it. While you're all stuck with one editor, and one visual editor that's naff, Everipedia can be moving on with multiple front ends, all competing to be the best.Eric Corbett wrote:In other words, "Imagine if Wikipedia's database worked exactly as it does now". If he's actually trying to make a case for decentralization then he's signally failed to do so.Imagine if Wikipedia’s database, a mysql in the backend, were actually open and anyone could just pull the articles and the data, instead of just linking to Wikipedia itself.
The Everipedia editor is just one that could be used and I've heard the whole thing is getting revamped by a new UX team soon. Other front ends could be used, including those that might not need users to have EOS accounts, or for instance, one that included an exchange so fiat could be used for editing and rewards. Or perhaps one that converted pages back into Wiki-code so us old timers could edit like we used to!
Now this might seem odd, but Wikipedia does actually have the capability to support multiple frontends, MediaWiki even supports the same TinyMCE editor that Everipedia uses. The reason this isn't presented as an option is because the WMF are morons and can't accept that they wasted millions building a visual editor that no one wants and is worse than easily available existing products.Eric Corbett wrote:What's "naff" is your understanding, or the lack thereof, of the use of APIs to do precisely what you claim it is that can't be done with the Wikipedia database; take a look at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API:Edit for instance.Paul Bedson wrote:Wikipedia's database working the way it does isn't what Sam is talking about here. He's talking about the possibility for multiple front ends to be able to edit the back end, not just read from it, but to edit it. While you're all stuck with one editor, and one visual editor that's naff, Everipedia can be moving on with multiple front ends, all competing to be the best.Eric Corbett wrote:In other words, "Imagine if Wikipedia's database worked exactly as it does now". If he's actually trying to make a case for decentralization then he's signally failed to do so.Imagine if Wikipedia’s database, a mysql in the backend, were actually open and anyone could just pull the articles and the data, instead of just linking to Wikipedia itself.
The Everipedia editor is just one that could be used and I've heard the whole thing is getting revamped by a new UX team soon. Other front ends could be used, including those that might not need users to have EOS accounts, or for instance, one that included an exchange so fiat could be used for editing and rewards. Or perhaps one that converted pages back into Wiki-code so us old timers could edit like we used to!
That the WMF has boxed itself into a corner with the editors currently on offer has more to do with their attempt to maintain compatibility with the ancient wikimarkup language than it does with the backend database. In fact it's all about that.
You seem to be consistently fooling yourself into believing that Everipedia is breaking new ground in so many areas, whereas in reality it's breaking ground in only one: linking editing to rewards paid out in a cryptocurrency of dubious future worth.
Exactly my point.Dysklyver wrote:Now this might seem odd, but Wikipedia does actually have the capability to support multiple frontends, MediaWiki even supports the same TinyMCE editor that Everipedia uses. The reason this isn't presented as an option is because the WMF are morons and can't accept that they wasted millions building a visual editor that no one wants and is worse than easily available existing products.
And not just editor frontends, did you know that all 600 or so WMF "wiki" sites share the same edge-cache decentralised database? The English, or French, or German "wikipedia's" are just managed reader frontends to the same core database.
And due to the work the WMF did over the last couple of years to build edge locations, there database is actually decentralised, not as decentralized as EOS, but close. The EOS network is hosted in 21 datacentres, the WMF sites are hosted in 6. The co-location/decentralisation rule work in a similar way.
Technology was never that different to the blockchain, and recently the gap is closing. API's, co-location, autoscaling, managed redundancy--all these things that mean a blockchain application can and does work in the exact same way as one built on tradtional infrastructure.
I'm no great fan of the WMF, but neither do I believe that they're "morons". TinyMCE is fine as far as it goes, but including compatibility with the hundreds of templates for things like citations, built in either wikimarkup or Lua, may not be worth the very considerable effort still needed to achieve it even after all the millions of dollars spent on the white elephant known as the visual editor.Dysklyver wrote:Now this might seem odd, but Wikipedia does actually have the capability to support multiple frontends, MediaWiki even supports the same TinyMCE editor that Everipedia uses. The reason this isn't presented as an option is because the WMF are morons and can't accept that they wasted millions building a visual editor that no one wants and is worse than easily available existing products.
Well, I prefer my editor anyway, and quick and easy citations that don't need templates. Probably most people will eventually. You may be right about my lack of understanding about that page full of code on MediaWiki. It all looks like DOS to me when we've moved on to Windows.Eric Corbett wrote: in reality it's breaking ground in only one: linking editing to rewards paid out in a cryptocurrency of dubious future worth.
Having a citation system that doesn't work except for online resources isn't much of a step forward.Paul Bedson wrote:Well, I prefer my editor anyway, and quick and easy citations that don't need templates. Probably most people will eventually. You may be right about my lack of understanding about that page full of code on MediaWiki. It all looks like DOS to me when we've moved on to Windows.Eric Corbett wrote: in reality it's breaking ground in only one: linking editing to rewards paid out in a cryptocurrency of dubious future worth.
I'd say that Everipedia's breaking ground in other ways :-
1. Eliminating notability requirements is a big one.
2. Merging all languages together and allowing multiple articles on a topic is another.
3. Most importantly possibly is removing the political bias, though sure to come back, we're not yet corrupted by a mass of political donors.
Also enabling ratings and voting on articles to create "Greater-Wiki" as Larry Sanger called it in a recent Cryptopotato interview. I think that it is democratizing knowledge with the voting system and abolishung all this -ocracy we spend so much time chatting about and not creating stuff and expanding the encyclopedia like we should be doing.
I found this neat trick. You can upload any file as a citation on Everipedia.Eric Corbett wrote: Having a citation system that doesn't work except for online resources isn't much of a step forward.
PB's response was, quote, "Wikipedia is banned as a source...". Since this is self-evidently false, I ask him again, Why is Everipedia not enforcing its own rules regarding sourcing? Has their policy changed? Was it ever policy to ban copy-pasting Wikipedia articles? And if not, why did he claim it was?Given that much Everipedia content is copied (legitimately, per the CC license) from Wikipedia, and that Wikipedia doesn't require everything in an article to be cited (and a heck of a lot of things that should be cited aren't), does Everipedia policy on citing consider the mere presence of an assertion in a Wikipedia article to be adequate citation for 'information'? If this is the case, the 'rule' may as well not exist, in my opinion. And if it isn't the case, shouldn't Wikipedia be banned as a source?
That's not a citation, and it's still online anyway.Paul Bedson wrote:I found this neat trick. You can upload any file as a citation on Everipedia.Eric Corbett wrote: Having a citation system that doesn't work except for online resources isn't much of a step forward.
I uploaded some funeral notes my Mom wrote in a Word doc for my Great Aunt Sylvia's page as a source and that was fine. Everipedia considers my Mom a reliable source about her family. Strange but true!
It's much easier to use, and I don't think Everipedia is focusing on anything that would be mentioned in an offline source like a book.Eric Corbett wrote:That's not a citation, and it's still online anyway.Paul Bedson wrote:I found this neat trick. You can upload any file as a citation on Everipedia.Eric Corbett wrote: Having a citation system that doesn't work except for online resources isn't much of a step forward.
I uploaded some funeral notes my Mom wrote in a Word doc for my Great Aunt Sylvia's page as a source and that was fine. Everipedia considers my Mom a reliable source about her family. Strange but true!
That can't possibly be true.Dysklyver wrote:It's much easier to use, and I don't think Everipedia is focusing on anything that would be mentioned in an offline source like a book.Eric Corbett wrote:That's not a citation, and it's still online anyway.Paul Bedson wrote:I found this neat trick. You can upload any file as a citation on Everipedia.Eric Corbett wrote: Having a citation system that doesn't work except for online resources isn't much of a step forward.
I uploaded some funeral notes my Mom wrote in a Word doc for my Great Aunt Sylvia's page as a source and that was fine. Everipedia considers my Mom a reliable source about her family. Strange but true!
Maybe, but think about it, the whole point of Everipedia is to allow any subject regardless of notability. And notability is the existence of citations. Ergo no citations, so no need for a citation system that actually allows anything other than links to twitter where you just tweeted the name of a book you are reading (a highly preferred citation style).Eric Corbett wrote:That can't possibly be true.Dysklyver wrote:It's much easier to use, and I don't think Everipedia is focusing on anything that would be mentioned in an offline source like a book.Eric Corbett wrote:That's not a citation, and it's still online anyway.Paul Bedson wrote:I found this neat trick. You can upload any file as a citation on Everipedia.Eric Corbett wrote: Having a citation system that doesn't work except for online resources isn't much of a step forward.
I uploaded some funeral notes my Mom wrote in a Word doc for my Great Aunt Sylvia's page as a source and that was fine. Everipedia considers my Mom a reliable source about her family. Strange but true!
And of course it's much easier to use, as it's not actually doing anything very much.
Now this is a good question Andy, and one I think I have half figured out. I think users are prohibited from citing English Wikipedia because directly copying Wikipedia pages needs to carry terms and conditions contained in this lengthy document that's linked in every bot-copied Wikipedia page. I'm not a lawyer but suspect these legal terms contain some things that allow copying from Wikipedia without citing revision history.AndyTheGrump wrote:A question I asked Paul Bedson a month ago, citing Everipeia policy on sourcing (see https://everipedia.org/wiki/everipedia- ... everipedia):
PB's response was, quote, "Wikipedia is banned as a source...". Since this is self-evidently false, I ask him again, Why is Everipedia not enforcing its own rules regarding sourcing? Has their policy changed? Was it ever policy to ban copy-pasting Wikipedia articles? And if not, why did he claim it was?Given that much Everipedia content is copied (legitimately, per the CC license) from Wikipedia, and that Wikipedia doesn't require everything in an article to be cited (and a heck of a lot of things that should be cited aren't), does Everipedia policy on citing consider the mere presence of an assertion in a Wikipedia article to be adequate citation for 'information'? If this is the case, the 'rule' may as well not exist, in my opinion. And if it isn't the case, shouldn't Wikipedia be banned as a source?
Well, you think about it. While some subjects, such as Bedson's various aunties, may have no citations that would satisfy the rather minimal Wikipedia GNG, an awful lot do. Such as the Pendle witches rip off I looked at on Everipedia yesterday. And who exactly are you thinking of who "highly prefer" simply the name of a book that may or may not be being misrepresented, or may not even exist? Even on Twitter I'd like to be told who the author of any book tweated about was.Dysklyver wrote:Maybe, but think about it, the whole point of Everipedia is to allow any subject regardless of notability. And notability is the existence of citations. Ergo no citations, so no need for a citation system that actually allows anything other than links to twitter where you just tweeted the name of a book you are reading (a highly preferred citation style).
It must have taken you hours to do that!Paul Bedson wrote:An example is one I made last night for Alice Weidel, leader of the AfD that we hadn't imported, so I did a filler page manually.
So in plain English it is ok to copy-paste from Wikipedia, as long as you lie about the source. I can't say I'm surprised that it is going on (it has been going on elsewhere for years), but I can't recall anyone being quite so open about it.Paul Bedson wrote:Now this is a good question Andy, and one I think I have half figured out. I think users are prohibited from citing English Wikipedia because directly copying Wikipedia pages needs to carry terms and conditions contained in this lengthy document that's linked in every bot-copied Wikipedia page. I'm not a lawyer but suspect these legal terms contain some things that allow copying from Wikipedia without citing revision history.AndyTheGrump wrote:A question I asked Paul Bedson a month ago, citing Everipeia policy on sourcing (see https://everipedia.org/wiki/everipedia- ... everipedia):
PB's response was, quote, "Wikipedia is banned as a source...". Since this is self-evidently false, I ask him again, Why is Everipedia not enforcing its own rules regarding sourcing? Has their policy changed? Was it ever policy to ban copy-pasting Wikipedia articles? And if not, why did he claim it was?Given that much Everipedia content is copied (legitimately, per the CC license) from Wikipedia, and that Wikipedia doesn't require everything in an article to be cited (and a heck of a lot of things that should be cited aren't), does Everipedia policy on citing consider the mere presence of an assertion in a Wikipedia article to be adequate citation for 'information'? If this is the case, the 'rule' may as well not exist, in my opinion. And if it isn't the case, shouldn't Wikipedia be banned as a source?
You can copy paste Wikipedia articles onto Everipedia. I call it manual importing. Considering the above, I tend to paraphrase, normally just import the lede shuffle the text a bit, add a bit and then actually copy the sources, not source to Wikipedia. An example is one I made last night for Alice Weidel, leader of the AfD that we hadn't imported, so I did a filler page manually.
The Koreans are trying to copy-paste their entire government's public data onto Everipedia and seem to be getting away with it. They have no laws there to stop them. I don't think the Chinese do either.
That is the point! To dictate who is notable enough to have the stream of consciousness we all follow is to dictate! And the world's had enough of dictators and wants to hear everyone's voices now.Eric Corbett wrote:Everipedia isn't really anything more than a vehicle for the storage of streams of consciousness that may or may not be of interest to anyone other than the author at the point in time when they were vomited into existence.
As long as you paraphrase it and move the text around, add a bit of original, Google won't pick it up as an exact copy and penalize SEO either.AndyTheGrump wrote:So in plain English it is ok to copy-paste from Wikipedia, as long as you lie about the source. I can't say I'm surprised that it is going on (it has been going on elsewhere for years), but I can't recall anyone being quite so open about it.Paul Bedson wrote:Now this is a good question Andy, and one I think I have half figured out. I think users are prohibited from citing English Wikipedia because directly copying Wikipedia pages needs to carry terms and conditions contained in this lengthy document that's linked in every bot-copied Wikipedia page. I'm not a lawyer but suspect these legal terms contain some things that allow copying from Wikipedia without citing revision history.AndyTheGrump wrote:A question I asked Paul Bedson a month ago, citing Everipeia policy on sourcing (see https://everipedia.org/wiki/everipedia- ... everipedia):
PB's response was, quote, "Wikipedia is banned as a source...". Since this is self-evidently false, I ask him again, Why is Everipedia not enforcing its own rules regarding sourcing? Has their policy changed? Was it ever policy to ban copy-pasting Wikipedia articles? And if not, why did he claim it was?Given that much Everipedia content is copied (legitimately, per the CC license) from Wikipedia, and that Wikipedia doesn't require everything in an article to be cited (and a heck of a lot of things that should be cited aren't), does Everipedia policy on citing consider the mere presence of an assertion in a Wikipedia article to be adequate citation for 'information'? If this is the case, the 'rule' may as well not exist, in my opinion. And if it isn't the case, shouldn't Wikipedia be banned as a source?
You can copy paste Wikipedia articles onto Everipedia. I call it manual importing. Considering the above, I tend to paraphrase, normally just import the lede shuffle the text a bit, add a bit and then actually copy the sources, not source to Wikipedia. An example is one I made last night for Alice Weidel, leader of the AfD that we hadn't imported, so I did a filler page manually.
The Koreans are trying to copy-paste their entire government's public data onto Everipedia and seem to be getting away with it. They have no laws there to stop them. I don't think the Chinese do either.
Paul Bedson wrote:As long as you paraphrase it and move the text around, add a bit of original, Google won't pick it up as an exact copy and penalize SEO either.AndyTheGrump wrote:So in plain English it is ok to copy-paste from Wikipedia, as long as you lie about the source. I can't say I'm surprised that it is going on (it has been going on elsewhere for years), but I can't recall anyone being quite so open about it.Paul Bedson wrote:Now this is a good question Andy, and one I think I have half figured out. I think users are prohibited from citing English Wikipedia because directly copying Wikipedia pages needs to carry terms and conditions contained in this lengthy document that's linked in every bot-copied Wikipedia page. I'm not a lawyer but suspect these legal terms contain some things that allow copying from Wikipedia without citing revision history.AndyTheGrump wrote:A question I asked Paul Bedson a month ago, citing Everipeia policy on sourcing (see https://everipedia.org/wiki/everipedia- ... everipedia):PB's response was, quote, "Wikipedia is banned as a source...". Since this is self-evidently false, I ask him again, Why is Everipedia not enforcing its own rules regarding sourcing? Has their policy changed? Was it ever policy to ban copy-pasting Wikipedia articles? And if not, why did he claim it was?Given that much Everipedia content is copied (legitimately, per the CC license) from Wikipedia, and that Wikipedia doesn't require everything in an article to be cited (and a heck of a lot of things that should be cited aren't), does Everipedia policy on citing consider the mere presence of an assertion in a Wikipedia article to be adequate citation for 'information'? If this is the case, the 'rule' may as well not exist, in my opinion. And if it isn't the case, shouldn't Wikipedia be banned as a source?
You can copy paste Wikipedia articles onto Everipedia. I call it manual importing. Considering the above, I tend to paraphrase, normally just import the lede shuffle the text a bit, add a bit and then actually copy the sources, not source to Wikipedia. An example is one I made last night for Alice Weidel, leader of the AfD that we hadn't imported, so I did a filler page manually.
The Koreans are trying to copy-paste their entire government's public data onto Everipedia and seem to be getting away with it. They have no laws there to stop them. I don't think the Chinese do either.
Yes I think this is the "Everipedia is more like Facebook" aspect of it. Which is great I guess, only I hate Facebook and don't have an account there.Eric Corbett wrote:Which, to extrapolate, means that Everipedia isn't really anything more than a vehicle for the storage of streams of consciousness that may or may not be of interest to anyone other than the author at the point in time when they were vomited into existence.
The fact that I wrote that and it changed is very scary.Paul Bedson wrote:George Soros' Meat Puppets (T-H-L).
You're right, it's definitely scary that you're promoting ludicrous right-wing conspiracy theories, especially since it's not supposed to be a right-wing conspiracy website. I thought we'd discussed this. Have you considered going to see a psychiatrist?Paul Bedson wrote:The fact that I wrote that and it changed is very scary.Paul Bedson wrote:George Soros' Meat Puppets (T-H-L).
No, he wouldn't be a fan. They're not kosher.Midsize Jake wrote:Moreover, I doubt that Soros is even a fan of the Meat Puppets, much less the actual bandleader.
Personally, I'd say that's a good example of how turning on "Pending Changes" by default makes it safer to lower BLP inclusion standards. Despite his having a fairly extensive discography, there's almost no general biographical information about him on the interwebs (like full name, DoB, birthplace kinds-of-stuff), as is reflected in the German WP article. But on the English WP they have to be so much more careful and wary of "subtle" or clever vandalism edits, they just end up rejecting (or never even trying to start) minimally-sourced articles that are missing that kind of information.Poetlister wrote:Incidentally, why does Ron Stabinsky get an article on the German WP but not the English one?
Aw, Jake, it's just the latest right-wing twitter hashtag and meme. Like this one, entitled, "Which Wikipedia editor are you?"Midsize Jake wrote:You're right, it's definitely scary that you're promoting ludicrous right-wing conspiracy theories, especially since it's not supposed to be a right-wing conspiracy website. I thought we'd discussed this. Have you considered going to see a psychiatrist?Paul Bedson wrote:The fact that I wrote that and it changed is very scary.Paul Bedson wrote:George Soros' Meat Puppets (T-H-L).
Moreover, I doubt that Soros is even a fan of the Meat Puppets, much less the actual bandleader.
Hadn't we established in an earlier thread that this is exactly what it is? I'm confused.Midsize Jake wrote: especially since it's not supposed to be a right-wing conspiracy website
It isn't supposed to be, that's the point.iii wrote:Hadn't we established in an earlier thread that this is exactly what it is? I'm confused.
You're a very blocked editor, so I don't suppose they do...Dysklyver wrote:None of them look like me...
Soros has a bit of a different meaning in the UK, and I am of the generation that has seen him widely despised since breaking the Bank of England and due to his endearing support for all things involving remaining in the EU, which most of us Brits don't like, if you hadn't noticed with that democracy thingy we had a couple of years back. He is a highly political figure however and for Wikipedia to accept money from him is an outright disgrace.Midsize Jake wrote:It isn't supposed to be, that's the point.iii wrote:Hadn't we established in an earlier thread that this is exactly what it is? I'm confused.
The thing is, Mr. Bedson is English, so he shouldn't really have any excuse for not knowing that the phrase "George Soros" is right-wing codespeak for "International Jewish Banking Conspiracy" - at least in the United States. So it's not just a conspiracist codeword, it's an anti-semitic one, which is why we can't allow it to be used outside of its own context. In other words, if he wanted to post something to the effect of, say, "There are independent media reports now that George Soros is trying to directly influence Wikipedia for some reason and here are actual working links to those reports and somehow it doesn't even appear to be a right-wing anti-semitic hoax," then that would probably be okay. I just don't think he'll ever be able to do that, because of a pesky little problem called "reality." And if what we get instead is a bunch of casually-tossed-in "OMG GEORGE SOROS" mentions every time someone in the world expresses mild indignation over something Trump just did, then that's completely unacceptable and Mr. Bedson will just have to go at that point.
In the meantime, this is a publicly-visible thread, and the other instances of Mr. Bedson posting wingnutty things have been in private threads. So I felt that I was actually doing him a favor, because any casual reader (i.e., non-member) seeing the original Soros reference would have thought, "If this is the sort of thing I'm going to see if I visit Everipedia, then why would I ever visit Everipedia?" It may be that Mr. Bedson simply lacks impulse control, but on a forum like this one, that's something that can be covered for by helpful moderators.
Has the Wikimedia Foundation ever refused a donation, from anybody? Serious question - I don't remember that ever happening.Paul Bedson wrote:He is a highly political figure however and for Wikipedia to accept money from him is an outright disgrace.
If that's going to be your attitude, Conservapedia is that-a-way. The only people who actually believe any of that "Soros is evil" crap are far-right extremists, and even most of them understand that it's bullshit. You're doomed to abject failure if you make no effort to appeal to these mostly-lefty free-culture/democratize-the-media folks, and what's more, you're actually going to make Wikipedia harder to bring down because they'll just unite more strongly in its defense.I don't particularly mind not appealling to the radically liberal left that monopolizes academia and Wikipedia because Everipedia isn't entirely for them...
You must live in a different UK from the one I'm in. Over here, he didn't break the Bank of England although he (along with a few others) made a lot of money by shorting Sterling before it crashed out of the EERM. But people blamed the incompetence of Norman Lamont more than anyone else. And of course Soros is admired for his support of freedom and democracy, especially standing up to the government of Hungary. Or do you support the actions of that government?Paul Bedson wrote:Soros has a bit of a different meaning in the UK, and I am of the generation that has seen him widely despised since breaking the Bank of England
Being smarter than Norman Lamont is no crime.Poetlister wrote:You must live in a different UK from the one I'm in. Over here, he didn't break the Bank of England although he (along with a few others) made a lot of money by shorting Sterling before it crashed out of the EERM. But people blamed the incompetence of Norman Lamont more than anyone else. And of course Soros is admired for his support of freedom and democracy, especially standing up to the government of Hungary. Or do you support the actions of that government?Paul Bedson wrote:Soros has a bit of a different meaning in the UK, and I am of the generation that has seen him widely despised since breaking the Bank of England
Isn't if funny that the more things change the more things stay the same?Midsize Jake wrote:If that's going to be your attitude, Conservapedia is that-a-way.
This is the common attitude among elites. Label all 'em 52% or all the majority that voted for Trump as extremists when it's becoming obvious that they're the extremists.Midsize Jake wrote:Has the Wikimedia Foundation ever refused a donation, from anybody? Serious question - I don't remember that ever happening.Paul Bedson wrote:He is a highly political figure however and for Wikipedia to accept money from him is an outright disgrace.
And as for Soros, he isn't a "highly political figure" except in wingnut imaginations. What he is is a "stalking horse" for anti-semitic conspiracy theorists, so once again, we would prefer you show some self-restraint here - something like "I believe ArbCom has become too left-leaning for its own good" would be the appropriate thing to say instead of what you originally posted. Is that really so hard to do?
If that's going to be your attitude, Conservapedia is that-a-way. The only people who actually believe any of that "Soros is evil" crap are far-right extremists, and even most of them understand that it's bullshit. You're doomed to abject failure if you make no effort to appeal to these mostly-lefty free-culture/democratize-the-media folks, and what's more, you're actually going to make Wikipedia harder to bring down because they'll just unite more strongly in its defense.I don't particularly mind not appealling to the radically liberal left that monopolizes academia and Wikipedia because Everipedia isn't entirely for them...
Pro tip: Don't say things like that if you want to retain any shred of credibility. More people voted for Clinton than for Trump. Do you believe Trump's absurd claim that this was because millions of illegal immigrants were somehow able to vote?Paul Bedson wrote:all the majority that voted for Trump
...retain?Poetlister wrote:Pro tip: Don't say things like that if you want to retain any shred of credibility.
...or did you intend to say credulity?AndyTheGrump wrote:Regarding Bedson's 'credibility', I note that he claims on his Everipedia autobiography that when standing in a 2011 local election for Plymouth City Council, as a UKIP candidate, he came third, "beating the Liberal Democrat candidate". There was no Liberal Democrat candidate for that ward: https://www.plymouth.gov.uk/votingandel ... ionresults
It looks like he beat them into non-existence. That's actually quite impressive.plymouth.gov.uk wrote:St Budeaux: turnout 34 per cent
- George William Wheeler, Labour Party: 1,901 votes
- Stuart Bernard Charles, Conservative Party: 844 votes
- Paul Bedson, UK Independence Party: 579 votes
It's also the common attitude among non-elites. I'm sorry you can't see that; it's probably due to information siloing, which (as I suggested earlier) will unfortunately work against you as an encyclopedist, at least for sociopolitical topics.Paul Bedson wrote:This is the common attitude among elites.
Is that what we're calling him these days?Midsize Jake wrote:encyclopedist
The majority in the states that counted voted for Trump and collectively we beat the Liberal Democrat candidate(s) Thanks, corrected my bio. I literally did beat the candidate into dust that year didn't I? I don't recall where they went. Probably too scared to stand against me and my fearsome gang of septi- and octagenarians that are probably mostly gone now.Poetlister wrote:Pro tip: Don't say things like that if you want to retain any shred of credibility. More people voted for Clinton than for Trump. Do you believe Trump's absurd claim that this was because millions of illegal immigrants were somehow able to vote?Paul Bedson wrote:all the majority that voted for Trump
