Eastern European Warfare

[ericbarbour]

since this thread relates to Russian government WP heeling attempts and Ukraine-related editwars:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/202 ... ropaganda/

Ohh, Vlad is soooo ANGRY.

Side note for the idiots in the Ars Technica comment section: the FSB and the Duma have already TRIED to ban or control ru-WP, repeatedly. And they have failed repeatedly. Succeeding only in minor areas like marijuana articles and content about homosexuality. And I'm not sure their changes lasted anyway. Putin and his disgusting henchmen are more interested in POWER and MONEY. And Wikipedia has neither for them.

(Well, they didn't have money. Now they do. Perhaps if the Russian embassy and the FSB wasn't such a bunch of prats, they could sue the WMF in a US court for something?)

[wexter]

since this thread relates to Russian government WP heeling attempts and Ukraine-related editwars:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/202 ... ropaganda/

Ohh, Vlad is soooo ANGRY.

Side note for the idiots in the Ars Technica comment section: the FSB and the Duma have already TRIED to ban or control ru-WP, repeatedly. And they have failed repeatedly. Succeeding only in minor areas like marijuana articles and content about homosexuality. And I'm not sure their changes lasted anyway. Putin and his disgusting henchmen are more interested in POWER and MONEY. And Wikipedia has neither for them.

(Well, they didn't have money. Now they do. Perhaps if the Russian embassy and the FSB wasn't such a bunch of prats, they could sue the WMF in a US court for something?)

The "war" articles on Wikipedia consist of selective "original research" which is against "the rules."

There is a "Wikipedia War" and endless battles to shape the narrative on this issue. Readers of the product and the press don't see (the Wikipedia war" all the indecipherable and toxic internal fighting going on between editors (pages and pages of toxic fighting far greater than the sum of all articles on the subject)

There are an "endless number" of Wikipedia articles all of which are disorganized and all over the place; each with endless discussions and fighting between editors.

An archive discussion (fight about an article name) counted as an argument over "one million" articles from "reliable sources" to choose from. Frankly, what gets picked up as support on Wikipedia is totally arbitrary. - The "news wire" puts out many articles a day which are then parroted everywhere which provides "reliable sources" which can be "verified" and thus meet Wikipedia standards. There are few primary sources feeding into the narrative; tapping real information is against the rules (and that flaw is actually enforced). Because of the rapid second hand "news flow" Wikipedia editors are actually "playing telephone" with information and that in turn can be used to frame articles. or in this case produce endless pages of nonsense through the process of toxic infighting.

There is even discussion to call it a "genocide" rather than a "war" with at least one article on the topic;

This article contains too many or overly lengthy quotations for an encyclopedic entry. Please help improve the article by presenting facts as a neutrally worded summary with appropriate citations. Consider transferring direct quotations to Wikiquote or, for entire works, to Wikisource. (May 2022)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegatio ... of_Ukraine

There is no mention of "strategic bombing" which is described as "indiscriminate"

Unable to achieve a quick victory in Kyiv, Russian forces switched their strategy to indiscriminate bombing and siege warfare.

There is no overview of "Russian history at war" - you know where there are reversals of fortune. I have yet to hear the press talk about Russian history and "reversals of fortune" with the "free press" "selling us" on Ukrainian's underdog fight and therefore assured victory.

And, the many Wikipedia articles on this "news" story are long and mostly unreadable and totally nonsensical.

[Ognistysztorm]

The best shot would be Eric Barbour's book; hope he's finally found a publisher now.

Nope, still no bites. The only thing that happened was a whispered "commission offer" by someone claiming to be a publisher, who wanted a "Wikipedia tell-all". I gave him sample chapters and he refused them. Then I found his real name and realized he wasn't after an "honest tell-all", he is a right-wing pundit who is rudely treated on Wikipedia. It's an obvious revenge ploy.

Well, that's sad. The only best shot would be Jennsaurus and Oberranks then, but even still you need to prepare for the possibility of having to release it all for free, just like Xenu.net and JWFacts. Unless if real-life billboards and major websites get hacked one day and redirected to anti-Wikipedia pages.

[wexter]

The best shot would be Eric Barbour's book; hope he's finally found a publisher now.

Nope, still no bites.

"each new type of media seems to generate this type of cognitive dissonance. Whether it is the printing press, the telegraph, the telephone, the radio, television, the internet, or social media, people don't seem to be able to handle these new forms of communication - at least at first. And at first, it seems people are willing to believe almost anything that comes from this newfangled form of media" https://livingstingy.blogspot.com/2023/ ... n.html?m=1

I think we are at an "inflection point" where new media will make Wikipedia less relevant. I think this particular instance (eastern European warfare) opens the floodgates of much deserved (but avoided) criticism of the platform. The criticism will hatch out because a replacement is now in the wings;

Wikipedia's replacement will provide;
-short explanations
-simple to understand
-drubbed down
-no sourcing
-well written
-centrally generated
-computer authored
-authoritarian controlled
-contention free
-more accurate on balance
-contain subtle bias (select minority of articles)
-be tailored to each person
-contain marketing
-replace Wikipedia, blogs, news, and "the press'

This transition will occur on over a zero to ten year time period. The examples are everywhere.

Wikipedia is obsolete - the methods used to in assembling a big database for consumers to use does not work anymore- it is toxic, verbose, unreadable, mostly wrong, and generally outdated. Most importantly the format is wrong.

[Cla68]

I read the Grabowski paper today. I think some of its observations and conclusions are valid, but some seem to be dubious and influenced by a political agenda. An ad hominem argument is pervasive throughout the essay, implying that the Wikipedia Poland history editors are far-right fanatics but the only evidence it presents for that is that their agenda supposedly matches that of far-right political parties in Poland. That is a very subjective opinion and is using kind of a guilt by association. Did the WMF order the En:WP Arbcom to open this case after being asked for a comment by the authors of that essay? If so, that means this case could end up getting some media attention, which might influence the result.

One interesting thing I learned is that Volunteer Marek outed himself on Wikipedia a few years ago. Apparently, he is this guy:

https://www.lyon.edu/radekszulga

I'm not sure how long he has been employed by Lyon College, but I wonder if his Wikipedia addiction is part of the reason he's still only an associate professor. It appears that he gets an essay published in academic journals about every two years, which likely meets the minimum standard set by his department.

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Radek-Szulga-2

His Wikipedia edits appear to show that most of his editing is in the morning and evening: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... &limit=500 so maybe he does actually get some work done during the day.

I looked him up on Rate My Professor. He doesn't have many reviews, which is kind of strange: https://www.ratemyprofessors.com/professor?tid=916143

Notice that two reviewers say he is "disorganized" and two others indicate that he teaches straight from the book. That is what I would predict of someone trying to balance full-time work with full-time Wikipedia editing. Wikipedia addiction really does affect a person's work performance if they have a full-time job. I wonder why he hasn't received a review since 2015? Maybe because Lyon is a small school.

The thing that really struck me was his statement to ArbCom: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... teer_Marek . He takes care to paint himself as a victim. Really Dr. Szulga, you're a victim? You do know you don't have to edit Wikipedia for so many hours every day? If you walked away, you would probably notice an immediate improvement in your work performance and work-related reputation.

By the way, if it becomes publicized that he was misusing or misrepresenting sources on Wikipedia, and/or that he supposedly supports "far-right" antisemitic, Holocaust denial, it could end his career.

[wexter]

He takes care to paint himself as a victim.

By the way, if it becomes publicized that he was misusing or misrepresenting sources on Wikipedia, and/or that he supposedly supports "far-right" antisemitic, Holocaust denial, it could end his career.

1) None of those mentioned are taking responsibility - even something as minor as taking a step back seems to be out of the question

2) The blog talks about the fact that power editors eventually find out they have "little upside" and "huge downsides."

3) The "cabal" frequently complains or brings charges on "notice boards" as these boards and the process provide leverage against other editors. For example, Issue framing is clear below (as the overview is lost in favor of selective details)
------https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... _Holocaust

4) If you notice I have been trying to "strip" the discussion away from the topic of contention in favor of looking at the conduct and performance of Wikipedia. The topic is just an illustrative example;

--Wikipedia allows (though its failure and personalized process) to allow a large variety of narratives (and special interest editing) to take hold.

[wexter]

The following link talks about all kinds of narrative framing...

https://wikipediasucks.co/forum/viewtop ... 440#p22313

13,929 words of bullying
Post by LudvikMeursault » Sat Apr 09, 2022 11:20 am

The little coteries of WP cliques grouped around their partisan, parochial special interests - whether it be Palestine or Transgenderism or Cuba or Turkish Supremacism (don't laugh) - sure know how to come together to try to bully a dissenting voice into submission when their perceived interests collide.
...

GizzyCatBella is one of your many run-of-the-mill Polish nationalist editors who do their thing as they do, with the intriguing complication that her years of editing demonstrate a viciously anti-Ukrainian prejudice. Her primary raison e'tre for being on Wiki seems to be emphasizing Ukrainian collaboration with the Nazis during WWII, in order to minimize Polish collaboration with the Nazis during WWII. She's not much interested in Russia (again, sets her apart from most of Wiki's SuperPoles). She also spends a lot of time on the Incident/Administrators boards, and contributes very little actual content (she doesn't like to read).

Mhorg is an obvious Russian troll. Dedicated to spreading disinfo that comes straight from the Kremlin. Anti- Alexey Navalny edits are his no. 1 pastime.

Eric B.
Since 2013, Russia/Ukraine conflict has been a near-constant generator of Wiki-Argument. Combine it with other eastern-Europe fights like EEML or Digwuren (because many of the same names keep popping up), and it's massive. Perhaps it will exceed Israel/Palestine, Gamergate, climate change, and quack science/medicine to become the worst collective editwar in WP history.

Keep going, you little bastards! Keep embarrassing yourselves! Thanks for the lulz!

[wexter]

And here we go; a book published a few days ago that suggests "the Encyclopedia" is in the process of becoming obsolete;

"In the next few years, a new generation of AI search engines will probably reshape the way information is served up to us. How Wikipedia will weather this disruption remains to be seen"

As Wikipedia dominates, an homage to the encyclopedia
Simon Garfield’s book ‘All the Knowledge in the World’ is a fascinating history of the encyclopedia and what we have lost as it becomes obsolete

All the Knowledge in the World: The Extraordinary History of the Encyclopedia Hardcover – February 28, 2023

https://www.amazon.com/All-Knowledge-Wo ... 0063292270

https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/20 ... e-history/

[ericbarbour]

And here we go; a book published a few days ago that suggests "the Encyclopedia" is in the process of becoming obsolete;

Because WaPo's still got a hard-ass paywall, here's an archive.

https://archive.is/mx5q3

He can suggest whatever he wants, stupid people will continue to want "fast facts presented for short attention spans". And people can make all the claims they want for AI. Bet a hundred dollars any public AI search system will swallow Wikipedia content and reuse it anyway. Might as well, it's there and no one gives a damn if they scrape it.

Before this asinine current fad for AI-generated content, there was IBM's "Watson" AI system. It was horribly expensive to develop (being a typical IBM giant project). It failed in the market place, because no one was willing to pay them billions of dollars for its services. Why bother when Google is "free", sorta? And now that IBM itself is declining, Watson is almost forgotten.

Yes Watson scraped natural-language data from Wikipedia. And yes, a Watson project employee drilled her slimy way into the WP inside crowd. And when she realized Watson was a flop, she got a job with the WMF. Even married another WP administrator.

I hope Garfield's book is at least amusing. Yes it has a chapter about WP. Yes, I offered him a copy of the book wiki, a couple of years ago when I was told he was working on this--we never heard back.

Garfield’s long chapter on Wikipedia is perhaps the book’s highlight, taking us through the site’s history, its biases and the social etiquette of being one of its 40-plus-million editors. Garfield concludes that, unlike the vinyl LP, the old way of doing things will not be making a comeback.

[wexter]

I agree that AI will be mostly a "sales pitch" but it is going to provide cover for "consumer products" on the internet that have "few words" and feed into "short attention spans."

If "google" points to "Wikipedia" less often then Wikipedia will become a legacy platform (see AOL). Up to now there was no viable replacement for Wikipedia. It is a fight between new products Gaining Traction vs Momentum and Inertia of a legacy product.

I think the replacement (call it AI or not) could be very profitable and far more controllable.

Does anyone want to read poorly organized and written articles that never end?

PS - the "Radicalized" Poles (in Canada) are now making threats to users across Wikipedia. As usual Wikipedia is reverting those edits/efforts instead of actually doing something.