Re: Larry Sanger harshly criticizes Wikipedia
Posted: Fri Jul 23, 2021 11:12 pm
Any such "commons" would have to be run by monks or someone who is unlikely to fight over political biases. The current administration is hopeless.
Personally i think Carlson is a toxic-yet-smooth liar. But Larry has to take whatever public attention he can get. Imagine if the angry American right decides to go on a serious, well-funded crusade to purge Wikipedia of its "leftist bias" or whatever gets their base moving. If they spent 1% of the effort expended to venerate Trump this year they could ruin Wikipedia. Very doubtful it will happen but one never knows.
Enough DDOS attacks will pull English Wikipedia down for weeks at a time. Other languages, Commons, Wiktionary etc. will probably go with it. And since it's all run on a shoestring with assorted free software, it is probably vulnerable to serious hacker assaults. All that $$$ in the bank, and all those thoughtless stans, might or might not help it to survive. I seriously doubt they realize how vulnerable they really are.
This happened 2 years ago, which was barely reported in the "mainstream". And it was apparently just a botnet operator showing off to "impress people". I fully expect the WMF tried to hush this up.
https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2019/0 ... os-attack/
Personally i think Carlson is a toxic-yet-smooth liar. But Larry has to take whatever public attention he can get. Imagine if the angry American right decides to go on a serious, well-funded crusade to purge Wikipedia of its "leftist bias" or whatever gets their base moving. If they spent 1% of the effort expended to venerate Trump this year they could ruin Wikipedia. Very doubtful it will happen but one never knows.
Enough DDOS attacks will pull English Wikipedia down for weeks at a time. Other languages, Commons, Wiktionary etc. will probably go with it. And since it's all run on a shoestring with assorted free software, it is probably vulnerable to serious hacker assaults. All that $$$ in the bank, and all those thoughtless stans, might or might not help it to survive. I seriously doubt they realize how vulnerable they really are.
This happened 2 years ago, which was barely reported in the "mainstream". And it was apparently just a botnet operator showing off to "impress people". I fully expect the WMF tried to hush this up.
https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2019/0 ... os-attack/