[lbo-talk] But Wikipedia sucks, right?

Joseph Catron jncatron at gmail.com
Sat Jun 11 06:00:45 PDT 2011


On Sat, Jun 11, 2011 at 2:50 PM, shag carpet bomb <shag at cleandraws.com>wrote:

i didn't know there were any on the list. chuck0 gets irritated by
> rightwingers' domination of political/cultural/social issues but nearly
> everyone has remarked on how good the technical/computing articles tend to
> be. and i'm guessing chuck0 isn't opposed to the concept in general, simply
> disgusted with the fact that it's abused in the service of rightwing
> ideology.
>

There's a negative correlation between the quality of Wikipedia articles and the controversy of their topics. Those on Palestine and Zionism are execrable, and for obvious reasons:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/aug/18/wikipedia-editing-zionist-groups

The problem with open, collaborative projects like Wikipedia is that they're so easy for anyone with an agenda and the ability to mobilize people to hijack. Plus, replacing paid labor with volunteer hobbyism is generally a bad thing all around. That's an aspect of it you could certainly say I'm opposed to in general.

-- "Hige sceal þe heardra, heorte þe cenre, mod sceal þe mare, þe ure mægen lytlað."



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