Saturday, 13 September 2025

How Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

quote [ In 2009, law professors David A. Hoffman and Salil K. Mehra published a paper analyzing conflicts like these on Wikipedia and noted something unusual. Wikipedia’s dispute resolution system does not actually resolve disputes. In fact, it seems to facilitate them continuing forever.

These disputes may be crucial to Wikipedia’s success ]

On political/totalitarian pressure exerted over Wiki editors, usurptation attempts and efforts in moderation – exciting and boring at the same time.

Extended: older critique on Wikipedia itself, that seems a bit dated by now but points out the impossibility of measuring importance by comittee.

Note also: you can help the Archive Team by scraping Typepad.

Here's the more controversial piece from 2015 by game dev turned internet philosphy advisor Chris Bateman, whose own bio was taken down shortly after publishing his take:

The Wikipedia Knows Nothing


Can someone who looks up a topic on the Wikipedia be said to have access to knowledge on that subject? Questions about what constitutes knowledge are the purview of a field of philosophy known as ‘epistemology’, and the most general...



(web.archive.org of Typepad, which is due to die)

and an even older talk from Jason Scrott on the impossibility of neutrality:

The Great Failure of Wikipedia : Jason Scott : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive


The Great Failure of Wikipedia: Presentation by Jason Scott at Notacon 3 in Cleveland, Ohio, on Saturday, April 8, 2006. Covers the universally-editable...



I know there was more from him on the topic, but I can't find it.
[SFW] [do it yourSElf] [+1 Informative]
[by Paracetamol@7:14pmGMT]

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