Wikipedia are just like any other news source: change my mind
Posted: Sun Aug 02, 2020 4:01 pm
I spent a long time believing that Wikipedia was the encyclopaedia anyone could edit and a much longer time leading a doomed campaign to try to get it to stick to the principals it says it has. This culminated in an eventually banning for actual (though oddly predictive) vandalism: replacing a random article on Radiohead with the lyrics to a song by 60s protest singer Michelle Shocked the murder of a young black graffiti artist in front of witnesses (the post and the timing are a matter of public record...).
Upon my return and a few anonymous, minor, fairly innocuous fixes I noticed that the reason I'd become angry was because I'd believed their bullshit, which they themselves may or may not have believed, for varying reasons. I thought they *should* be better than other people just because they tell people they are. What I then realised, was that in all their flawed sourcing, begging letters and insider decisions about who is and isn't allowed to write and edit articles in any meaningful way, they are no different than, say, The Guardian, or Breitbart. All of whom make similarly ridiculously unfounded claims about their worth when cupping their hands for the shekels.
Once you realise that Wikipedia are not better, or really worse, than any other news organisation, you're free to go about your day, safe in the knowledge that you actually get paid well for the stuff you do well, and that if assholes want to contribute to a circus for free, anyone with intellect will treat them as only one of many points of data, and make up their own mind from there.
Upon my return and a few anonymous, minor, fairly innocuous fixes I noticed that the reason I'd become angry was because I'd believed their bullshit, which they themselves may or may not have believed, for varying reasons. I thought they *should* be better than other people just because they tell people they are. What I then realised, was that in all their flawed sourcing, begging letters and insider decisions about who is and isn't allowed to write and edit articles in any meaningful way, they are no different than, say, The Guardian, or Breitbart. All of whom make similarly ridiculously unfounded claims about their worth when cupping their hands for the shekels.
Once you realise that Wikipedia are not better, or really worse, than any other news organisation, you're free to go about your day, safe in the knowledge that you actually get paid well for the stuff you do well, and that if assholes want to contribute to a circus for free, anyone with intellect will treat them as only one of many points of data, and make up their own mind from there.