Post
This long read in The Verge does a remarkable job of describing how Wikipedia's editing community works, the project's strengths and weaknesses, and the threats it faces.
https://www.theverge.com/cs/features/717322/wikipedia-attacks-neutrality-history-jimmy-wales
"In a time of misinformation, in a time of suppression, having this place where people can come and bring knowledge and share knowledge, that is a statement."
I've always argued that the tools we build at the WMF sometimes are too focused on "encyclopedic content" and neglect the fact that the MediaWiki platform is used 5x more often for the meta-work of administering the project. Collaborative tools are important for organizing the work, even if they are not used directly to write the encyclopedic content.
What an outstanding article, and what a beautiful and inspiring story.
Thanks for sharing!
This passage stood out to me:
"If the social platforms and language models that increasingly shape our understanding of the world are inscrutable black boxes, Wikipedia is the opposite, maybe the most legible, endlessly explainable information management system ever made. For any sentence, there is a source, and a reason that that source was used, and a reason for that reason."
It took me a long time to warm up to it, and 90% of that was his personality.
I'm so glad that it got away from him, and that it has become one of the best things on the internet.
... He's probably still wondering how it happened...
The internet is not breaking down.
It is the profit-oriented social media of billionaires that are breaking something on their platforms in order to exploit their users even better for their customers and increase their wealth.
The Fediverse – whose spirit also lives on in Wikipedia – is the best proof that there are other communities in the virtual world that operate on a bottom-up principle.
There are also self-operated blogs, homepages, and forums run by committed people on the internet.
The internet is OK but the platforms of billionaires are not OK.
Good line& good point.
@molly0xfff I usually immediately dismiss The Verge's content on prior past misdeeds, but for once, they did actual journalism.
A space for Bonfire maintainers and contributors to communicate
