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Brexit

Posted: Wed Jan 16, 2019 2:13 pm
by CrowsNest
I don't normally comment on the startlingly obvious fact that Wikipedia is shit at being what it claims to be, namely an encyclopedia, or even more broady, as a useful source of information (the people who claim Wikipedia's true purpose is merely as a container for links and pointers for where to look for information, need to really fuck off, I have Google for that, and years of experiences shows it even sucks at that).

I like to focus on the reasons why it is shit, which invariably comes down to one thing - Wikipedians are by and large, ignorant, stupid, lazy or corrupt, and other than destroying the business model of more reliable sources and destroying the life force of gifted amateurs who do not choose to assimilate, so that the world has no choice but to improve it, nothing in the Wikipedia model exists that can correct for this resource problem.

Today is different. Today is one of those days where a perfect example of showing how monumentally shit it all is, lands in your lap. Yesterday the British government suffered the worst ever defeat a government has ever suffered in the House of Commons. Big enough news that you may even have heard about it in Trumpistan.

Related post.....

https://www.wikipediasucks.co/forum/vie ... 7977#p7977

The tortuous journey you have to go on to get any information about this important issue, if your chosen information provider is Wikipedia, is laughable. There are the usual issues, it is near impossible to find the relevant article, information is patchy, disorganised, incomplete, out of date, and this specific case, as is a historical flaw of Wikipedia, massively biased towards reflecting what Irish nationalists deem important, almost to the exclusion of everything else.

The main Brexit article, the obvious starting point for those not wanting to play the always disappointing game of Wikipedia search box lottery, is no different. Readers looking for information on this stage of the process in that giant page, are inevitably disappointed by what purports to be the relevant section, and then distracted and soon lost as they seek where to go next, or ascertain if the rest of the article answers their questions, and are eventually unable to remember even why they loaded the article in the first place. They leave, awestruck at the power of Irish nationalists to make everything be about them.

As always in these situations, the advice remains unchanged. Do not even bother to consult Wikipedia. If you ever need to know what is going on in this green and present land, both for the basic factual news and the inevitable issue of who thinks what about it, including the Irish nationalist view presented with due weight, as well as all the historical context you could need to understand it, you need only consult the good old BBC.

As a starting point and accessible overview, the BBC suffices for all consumers. As a comprehensive summary, I certainly find no issues, and even if there are, they would pale compared to Wikipedia. As a pointer to where to look for further information, directly through links or indirectly through precision, including linking to primary source documents, it is excellent. That is a good point to highlight the fact that the 585 page draft agreement isn't even presented in the Wikipedia article I am forced to presume is the relevant article explaining this issue, as an "External Link" or "Further Reading". Indeed it isn't linked at all, not even mistakenly as a reference, as often happens.

Maybe if the USA had an equivalent of the BBC, a state funded but politically independent provider of content for the purposes of informing and educating the public, with a clear remit to neutrality, then maybe Wikipedia would never have been invented? Something to think about.

As proven with this high profile example, Wikipedia is, and remains, shit. Even on issues of huge importance and where there is wide demand for information on both the historical context and the current state of play. The exact conditions where Wikipedia's model is meant to thrive. Wikipedia is not meant to be a newspaper, but it wholeheartedly embraces the idea it can and should be a rapid conveyor of significant information of lasting importance, alongside historical context and other relevant background.

Oh, and you may not have noticed, but Wikipedia is eighteen years old. Oddly enough, nobody seems to want to even try to suggest this means it has matured into adulthood. What it does signify, is that there is a generation out there who have grown up thinking Wikipedia is information. It is not. It is a pile of garbage, guaranteed only to confuse and disappoint.

It needs to get into the sea.

HTD.

Re: Brexit

Posted: Tue Jan 22, 2019 9:35 am
by ericbarbour
fwiw: the main article is just a long and unreadable hash. But then so is everything in Category:Brexit. Loads of useless stubs that would be better off collected. Or something.

Someday a historian is gonna write a paper about this pile of turds. And no one will believe it.

Re: Brexit

Posted: Tue Jan 22, 2019 9:54 am
by Graaf Statler
You are right, Eric. The problem is Europe has such a long and difficult history and past, that matters like the Brexit are a symptom, and not a event. And if people who are missing every historical background start to write a article about such a complex matter it ends up in a desaster. They miss the context.
We have seen in the first place Wikipedians have not even a clou about what Europe/the EU is with there copyright activism, that is the start. They don't understand everything in the EU is related to the many European wars and the formal communism in East Europe. Because there it is about. It is about money, power, immigration, The EU, not being a country but a partnership, national interests, the refugee crisis, the European citizens who want his country back and not a European superstate.
And now to make it complete now there start a kind of CO2 war, who is going to pay for all that green measures in combination with the Yellow vests movement. It is all close connect. I don't give the EU much change at the long run in this form, the Brexit is just the start off a long and difficult proces and a new part in the European history.

In Holland the government is now in danger about the who is gone pay all that green stuff the EU wants, who for the hell wants a electric car and a unpractical, expensive heating in his house. In France, Belgium and Holland are the Yellow vest coming up. Who want to pay all that green taxes, and who want that unpractical green stuff. That is the question. The Diesel Mercedes and BMW is a part of the family in Germany, it is a part of the German identity.
A new EU iceberg is in sight....and there are already so many in the EU ice sea. The EU is sinds the Euro crisis in danger, but how knows we can Romaine with his Brussel chapter ask to solve all this problems because he and his friends know there way there in the Europarlement. Just like WMF is solving every gender problem now in Holland, every man transgender to a woman. A simpel and solide solution. And for sure WMF will give some grands for that, money enough.

Re: Brexit

Posted: Mon Feb 04, 2019 11:37 pm
by Qwerty
I fear Britain is a tad too late to recover its sense of national purpose. It has been almost completely ingested by one of those multi-national cohorts that suck the life out of diversity and democracy. If Britain were a wild environment, one of those natural systems we trip over a few miles outside the city limits, the 'progressives' would campaign for Brexit as a great step towards preserving biodiversity. Instead it has to be stomped on or strangled as a threat to their jet-setting careers. Wikipedia hosts some redneck conservatives, I suppose, but I'm guessing it is basically another 'progressive' stronghold.

Re: Brexit

Posted: Tue Feb 05, 2019 8:17 am
by ericbarbour
CrowsNest wrote:The tortuous journey you have to go on to get any information about this important issue, if your chosen information provider is Wikipedia, is laughable. There are the usual issues, it is near impossible to find the relevant article, information is patchy, disorganised, incomplete, out of date, and this specific case, as is a historical flaw of Wikipedia, massively biased towards reflecting what Irish nationalists deem important, almost to the exclusion of everything else.

Ask Alison Cassidy about how that happened. It relates to all that epically-stupid "British Isles" nonsense and editwarring. A confluence of shitbirds resulted, some of them bigoted Tories and some of them maniac Irish assholes, and some of them "why is this freak involved" sort of thing. One was a literal IRA member with a criminal record. (Shhh, it never happened!) Many of those very same shitbirds monkeyed with the Scotland secession materials and are now squabbling over the Brexit content. Along with a few "Wiki-Libertarians". Even that incredible comedy show FT2 has edited it recently....

For example. Yes he's still a bloody administrator. I haven't seen him on the Brexit area but would not be surprised if he was sockpuppeting. He is alleged to have "hundreds" of sock accounts. One of those "is he a leftist?" extreme-republican cranks who wants to "rewrite history" to make himself happy. So far he's gotten away with it, more or less. Do NOT bother looking at his contribution history--large chunks are missing. Christ what an asshole. If people learned what he was really doing on Wikipedia, the result might be front-page news in Dublin.
https://twitter.com/oliver_moran
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:T%C3%B3ra%C3%AD

Re: Brexit

Posted: Fri Feb 08, 2019 11:38 am
by Graaf Statler
This is in Dutch, but I post this for the picture. I is really a great picture!

Algemeen Dagblad (Dutch)

And the rest of the story, typical EU. A bunch of mediaeval European states with kings and Euro warlords and much to much history and a dammed good memory. At it's best a bad marriage, at it worst a divorce. But thank god we have Dimi, Gelach, Romaine=>wikimedia and the rest of the bunch of inbred pudding heads to conquer the European parlement. And that is a reassurance.