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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   28301 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 23, 2023

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The more interesting question is why isn’t there a conservative Wikipedia?

For most things Wikipedia is good enough but there is obvious editing for culture war. As the first source for everyone for basic information it’s quite powerful.

Costs of running the site are negligible. Musks could personally fund it for pocket change. Or if they got even 10% market share and the same donation rate as Wikipedia it would be self sufficient.

Does the right just lack any amount of people with nothing better to do than edit Wikipedia articles. In a world this big that does almost seem impossible.

The world could use a second encyclopedia to be a check on the first.

For most things Wikipedia is good enough but there is obvious editing for culture war. As the first source for everyone for basic information it’s quite powerful.

Wikipedia is just a mirror in front of the cathedral. It doesn't do independent research or fact-checking. The cathedral leans left, so does Wikipedia. If it leant right like it did in the 50's, so would Wikipedia.

I wonder if Hebrew Wikipedia has a noticeably different lean.

There's conservapedia. Just nobody uses it.

Vox Day promoted InfoGalactic is another one.

Does the right just lack any amount of people with nothing better to do than edit Wikipedia articles. In a world this big that does almost seem impossible.

Short answer, yes.

Longer answer, the different sides have a tendency to select for different personalities and the sort of semi-nuerotic systematizer who'll spend hours doing cross-referncing and fighting edit-wars for free, skews overwhelmingly to left. At the same time, those with the temperament to be effective conservative culture warriors also tend to have other commitments. For example, there was a time from about 2013 to 2016 when i was a broke college student for whom spending hours arguing with atheists on the internet while sipping cheap bourbon was an entertaining and budget-conscious way to spend a weekend. Whereas these days the internet is something I do on the side for 10 minutes at a time between other tasks. Such is the price of having a family, job, and proper responsibilities.

why isn’t there a conservative Wikipedia

Because it would immediately be labeled as racist and then most people wouldn't touch it.

This tactic is losing strength but it's been very effective over the past 10+ years.

Conservative Wikipedia existed as conservapedia, and racism was not the main criticism- the blatant agenda pushing and poor quality of article was the main one.

What would it even take to make a wiki “conservative”?

Option one is to get editors who share conservative biases. This is a stupid idea as far as making a useful wiki. Think of all the ways in which making Wikipedia more progressive would detract from it, then remember that reversed stupidity is not intelligence.

We can maybe do a little better by vetting editors for (life) competence. Before you can edit this article, submit your last two pay stubs or a picture of a marriage certificate. Some similar poll tax evidence that you have your shit together. Unfortunately, this has the same problem as just paywalling the whole site: it’s not selective. Every barrier you add will prevent some number of useful edits. Even if those edits come from basement-dwelling channers.

What about cultural solutions? Stepping back from the ideological bent, I kind of like the idea of trying for a more deliberate institutional design. I’m not sure exactly how Wikipedia resolves conflicting edits and sources, but I’m sure you could make a process that favored existing, long-standing text over new revelations. Stare decisis. I suppose this would have conservative effects on everything from scandals to deadnames.

Consider banning secondary sources, to insulate from editorial slants and fear of missing out. Or perhaps no sources less than five years old; we don’t want hot-button issues. Hell, don’t bother making an article until a subject has been around for that five-year window. Keep your finger off the pulse of current events and avoid all that volatility. I’d suggest stopping articles at a fixed date, but I can’t decide on 2007, 1981, or 1955.

I conclude that the best option is just echoing Wikipedia, but running each page through GPT with the prompt “write this like Tucker Carlson.”

Option one is to get editors who share conservative biases. This is a stupid idea as far as making a useful wiki. Think of all the ways in which making Wikipedia more progressive would detract from it, then remember that reversed stupidity is not intelligence.

Reverse stupidity is not, superimposed stupidity is. If you get a bunch of rabid conservatives, and a bunch of rabid progressives, lock them in a room and tell them they can't get out until they agree on a common answer, you'll get a decent article. This process was working pretty well for a while on Wikipedia, and it's working pretty well on Twitter's Community Notes right now, so I see nothing stupid about the idea.

Unfortunately, this has the same problem as just paywalling the whole site: it’s not selective. Every barrier you add will prevent some number of useful edits. Even if those edits come from basement-dwelling channers.

You weren't against limiting the number of useful edits from basement-dwelling conservative channers, why worry about it now?

Ah, heck. I really should have included the word “only” in that first block. As in: only allowing editors with conservative biases.

I agree that not throwing out conservatives would result in a better wiki. I didn’t think that was what sliders was looking for.

They could at least TRY, you know. Right now there are editors on wikipedia that have bloody hammers and sickles on their profile bios. And nobody bats an eye when they edit some bullshit with their political bent.

Ah, you've figured it out. Just throw all the commie editors off the helicopter, right?

I don't care if a communard decides to fly the hammer and sickle on their bio. Not any more than I care about the Gadsden flag or an actual, national flag. There are probably catgirl-avatar editors who exclusively edit Wehrmacht articles, and I still don't care.

The problem arises when, as you say, they edit some bullshit. If that were trivially detected by looking at a profile picture, I don't think we'd be having this conversation. One side would have purged the other ages ago.

Ah, you've figured it out. Just throw all the commie editors off the helicopter, right?

How about: just stop throwing the conservative ones out.

The more interesting question is why isn’t there a conservative Wikipedia?

Because if it managed to get any notable traction it would be instantly banned from payment processors, deranked/delisted from search engines, blackholed by internet routing and banished from app stores if it existed.

Look at everything that happens to kiwifarms.

Kiwi farms was regularly facilitating actual crimes, though.

Conservative normies doing conservative normie things don’t get debanked. Right wing edgelords do, but that’s not the same thing.

Kiwi farms was regularly facilitating actual crimes, though.

No it wasn't. They actually tracked down the SWATters, and several of those SWAT attacks were meant to discredit and attack the Kiwifarms (especially the MTG one). The site isn't particularly nice but they don't actually facilitate actual crimes. They also aren't responsible for anyone dying/committing suicide, either.

Conservative normies doing conservative normie things don’t get debanked. Right wing edgelords do, but that’s not the same thing.

There's been a pretty serious wave of debanking, specifically, aimed at the right wing gun culture world, well short of Defense Distributed-level weirdos. While not specifically a bank, GiveSendGo lost Discover as a payment option back in the Rittenhouse era.

Which isn't different from what you said, in some perspectives, but the line where 'edgelord' get drawn controls quite a lot. There might have once been enough institutional trust to think that this could stop at just the KF-grade assholes in the same way that I once believed 'punch a Nazi' could actually mean just punching actual nazis; in practice the leftist doxxing leagues get support from Harvard University and credit card companies get Blue Tribe calls to drop Red Tribe sales as a category.

Kiwi farms was regularly facilitating actual crimes, though.

Any expansion on or evidence for this, or is this the tired old debunked "linked to suicides" smear again?

Kiwi farms was regularly facilitating actual crimes, though.

And Twitter was used to facilitate riots that caused billions of dollars in damage and a bunch of murders in the 2 weeks that passed between approximately May and November 2020.

I didn't see pre-Elon Twitter getting debanked, delisted from app stores, or facing advertiser boycotts.

Conservative normies doing conservative normie things don’t get debanked.

Controlled opposition is controlled.

Conservative normies doing conservative normie things don’t get debanked. Right wing edgelords do, but that’s not the same thing.

So basically the left decides how conservative a conservative may be before they can be considered an "edgelord" and debanked. Meanwhile, hammer-and-sickle sporting communists have nothing to worry about.

I don’t know that kiwifarms is a good analogue. What service were they providing that didn’t fall under social media?

What service were they providing that didn’t fall under social media?

Well... exactly. See how much fury they generated, and imagine if they were doing something meaningful instead of just being a chat board.

Call me naive, but I think kiwifarms drew all that ire because it was so damn useless. It had no goal other than dunking, and it was really, really low-effort. That raises hackles more than actual hate groups. After all, it's a commitment to join the WBC and go picket funerals. It costs nothing to make an alt.

Is lolcow news a service? If there was an ongoing internet kerfuffle there would be updates there. Often from primary sources and people directly or peripherally involved.

The problem is that you have to be VERY ideologically motivated to feel that Wikipedia is too liberal. It's generally neutral/accurate enough that only people with serious axe grinding chops will notice.

As a result, conservative alternatives become skewed SO conservative that the negative impact on accuracy is immediately noticeable.

This is where Moldbug's dream of the antiversity runs aground, it needs to be MORE accurate than the liberal/neutral version not less, and that improvement needs to be immediately noticeable to all involved. Which is a really tough percentage to squeeze, actually, if you aren't reading Wikipedia articles about transgender athletes or historical controversies. Most of the time on most of the topics people read about, vanilla Wikipedia is good enough, which is exactly why the ideological bias is so insidious.

The more interesting question is why isn’t there a conservative Wikipedia?

This question comes up fairly often - "there's a leftist X, so why isn't there a conservative X"?

At least part of the reason is that the right is simply less interested in conservative X's than the left is in leftist X's. I personally wouldn't be interested in reading a "conservative Wikipedia". I just want Wikipedia, with as little bias and censorship as possible.

This question comes up fairly often - "there's a leftist X, so why isn't there a conservative X"?

At least part of the reason is that the right is simply less interested in conservative X's than the left is in leftist X's.

Nah... the premise of the question is simply wrong. There are rightwing alternatives to most social media platforms, and I think they're usually bigger than their explicitly left-wing counterparts.

Examples? Truthsocial has less activity than Twitter. Voat or whatever that was shutdown a while back. What's the conservative version of FB?

I did say explicitly left-wing, Twitter / FB / Youtube etc., are trying / pretending to be neutral, no? I think Locals is the closest thing to FB, but their structure is a bit whack. It's not quite Twitter, not quite Facebook, not quite Substack.

Because the world doesn't want politically motivated encyclopedias, it wants accurate, unbiaised, apolitical ones. Of course, Wikipedia isn't that, but that is current only known to the extremely online centrists and conservatives/right-wingers. The move is not to make an explicitely political one as it will be rightfully ignored, it's to continue to raise awareness that Wikipedia is not accurate, unbiaised and apolitical.

One problem, on top of what other people have already mentioned, is that an explicitly conservative version of Wikipedia would likely be more politically biased than the current officially-apolitical-but-left-leaning version of Wikipedia. Wikipedia started out fairly apolitical and certainly not obviously left-wing (the founders met on a forum for discussing Ayn Rand's philosophy!) but over time has drifted in a leftward direction. Despite this, most articles are still fairly objective and accurate. Part of this may be because lots of text on Wikipedia was just literally written years ago (before the political bias became noticeable) and part of it is due to the composition of the population of editors and the cultural norms that have developed, which both have a lot of momentum and don't go from apolitical to extreme far-left in a few years. Moreover, at least conservative people are not explicitly banned or discouraged from contributing to Wikipedia and so there are probably more conservative editors than there would be if that was not the case.

Actually we don't need to just imagine a hypothetical "Wikipedia, but conservative." We can look Conservapedia, which was founded with the goal of being a conservative version of Wikipedia. Comparing Wikipedia and Conservapedia, I think it is clear that Wikipedia is substantially better and more factual than conservapedia. Take, for example, their articles on Ronald Reagan. Conservapedia's article describes him as "one of the greatest American Presidents and part of the conservative movement since the late 1970s" whereas Wikipedia says he was "a member of the Republican Party, his presidency constituted the Reagan era, and he is considered one of the most prominent conservative figures in American history." I find the second to be much more objective than the first.

I think both description of Reagan are correct. “Greatest” doesn’t mean best or good. I’m reminded that I can’t go into a sub neoliberal without being banned shortly and Reagan was the politician who implemented neoliberalism. For 35 years (1/3 of a century) every major politician had to describe themselves as a neoliberal. I do think that qualifies as great. I hate FDR but I wouldn’t have an issue describing him as great.

I get your point on adding a superlative that you didn’t need to.

I think the bias on Wikipedia shows up in this random paragraph in Obamas Wikipedia.

“The acquittal of George Zimmerman following the killing of Trayvon Martin sparked national outrage, leading to Obama giving a speech in which he noted that "Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago."

How would we rewrite this paragraph in a neutral or conservative way. Some of it is information not included.

Here is my attempt: “The acquittal of George Zimmerman on the grounds of self defense in the death of Trayvon Martin sparked outrage in some communities. Leading the Obama administration to govern under BLM protest.”

Adding the reason for acquittal “self defense” seems more neutral to me instead of leading the reader to assume it was just racism. Took away the national part because it seemed to imply everyone agrees with that assessment. Took out the Obama quote because it implies the kid did nothing wrong (unless we should assume Obama picked fights like that). The use of the word “killing” to me implies a lot more guilt of criminal murder so I removed that.

The Wikipedia article is accurate on this point but the information you include or exclude would lead the reader to make much different conclusions.

I think most people would consider "greatest" to be a pretty subjective judgement and usually one with significant positive valence.

Also, I tried comparing the Obama article on Wikipedia and on Conservapedia and I think it's again clear that Conservapedia is considerably more biased and subjective. Literally the second sentence in the Conservapedia article is "Elected as America's first "post-racial" president according to mainstream fake news media, Obama exacerbated racial tensions and left a dismal legacy of a divided America along Marxist class, racial, and "gender normative" lines." That seems substantially more biased to me than the Wikipedia sentence about Obama that you quoted. Just the phrase "fake news media alone" is extremely heavy-handed. The bias in Wikipedia, when it exists, is usually much more subtle (except for a handful of topics and even then I think it's much better than comparable topics in Conservapedia).

I agree the conservative ones are more blatantly biased. I quoted the Wikipedia one to show how it has implicit bias in it.

For 35 years (1/3 of a century) every major politician had to describe themselves as a neoliberal.

Hasn't neoliberal almost exclusively been used as an insult? To describe a politician as an elite in the pocket of massive international corporations?

Began after Trump. Bill Clinton was forced to take it on. It’s an insult from the left to the center left (Americans lines) and Trump is probably the first GOP post-neolib POTUS. I’d draw the line around 2015-2016 as the time it became an insult. Establishment is still mostly some form of neolib.

There's Conservapedia. Founded by Phyllis Schlafly's son.

I went there years ago and it was unintentional comedy. The Charles Darwin page's first two images were photos of Hitler. It claimed that Darwin is responsible for inspiring the Holocaust, etc. It was unhinged.

They got rid of that silly stuff and now it is boring. Edit: I take that back. They've returned to looniness. I thought they went away from that, but they must have pivoted back.

Not unintentional comedy.

What happened AIUI is that a huge number of progressive trolls went there and started intentionally turning the place into a Colbert-style parody. Schlafly's ability to tell the difference between trolls and real conservatives was negative - because the trolls were lying, they could pretend to be more conservative than the real conservatives - so the trolls wound up in effective control of the content.

They got rid of that silly stuff and now it is boring.

Are you sure? https://www.conservapedia.com/Poland#NATO_mercenaries is hilarious.

https://www.conservapedia.com/Russia-Ukraine_war also has russiabot derangement.

But the first one has high concentration of deranged claims that I have not seen so far :)

If you think that Conservapedia has got rid of the silly stuff, just check their Joe Biden article.

Country: United States

Military service: 4-F

Highest rank attained: Junta leader

Political beliefs: Socialism with Chinese characteristics, Communism, Xi Jinping Thought, Fascism, Liberalism, White Supremacy[1], Kakistocracy

I thought they purged that stuff and purposefully became boring, but I didn't check recently.

Number of deaths attributed

33-40 Marxist color revolution[2] 10 Non-combatant drone killings[3] 200 Kabul airport bombing[4][5] 1,700 illegal migrant deaths,[6][7][8] plus the horrific 51 deaths in a truck found June 2022.[9] 715,385 Covid Death Tracker[10] 48,465 CMS Medicare Tracking System;[11] 40,097 reported to VAERS[12] 478,000 from experimental mRNA Covid vaccines[13] NATO aggression in Ukraine 320,000+ (civilian, military, and foreign mercenary fighters as of 10/16/23)

Looks like they're back on brand. I'll click around a bit when I get some time.

Does the right just lack any amount of people with nothing better to do than edit Wikipedia articles. In a world this big that does almost seem impossible.

I think the distribution of ‘free time for activist projects’ between right and left wingers is functionally bimodal. Right wingers with abundant free time prioritize church and family, or legitimate actual charities, over boring culture war grunt work, and this is in large part because conservative communities largely have access to churches with actual things to do, legitimate actual charities, and families with help to give in a way that’s atypical for hardcore left wingers.

Because there can only be one definitive undefinitive source and despite the bubble effect of sites like this one the Liberal opinion on (most) factual questions is the popular opinion.

Wikipidea is undefinitive because it is a democracy; you will never get conservative wins in an open platform because there are less conservatives than liberals.

I thought that Wikipedia was not a democracy. It is a cabal of power users asserting what truth is.

Yup; if by cabal you mean a random selection of people with enough time, energy, and autism to try to be a bona-fried wiki warrior: Upper middle class Americans/western Europeans mainly white mainly kinda vaguely agnostic non practicing.

Eg, liberals; like most people.

The more interesting question is why isn’t there a conservative Wikipedia?

There is! More precisely, there are two.

Normie boomer conservative Conservapedia that began as creationist intelligent design project during the noughties and Infogalactic, alt right flagship project by Vox Day.

Why you never heard about them, you are asking? Because they are not Wikipedia. Everyone uses Wikipedia because everyone uses Wikipedia, because Wikipedia link comes first in every search. Even if Elon started heavily shilling one of these sites, I cannot see how he could singlehandedly change it.

I looked up the page for "evolution" on both of these sites, then looked up "Gamergate", "Gaza," and "Trump" on Infogalactic vs. Wikipedia.

Conservapedia goes ad hominem in the second paragraph of "Evolution", stating that the majority of the vocal proponents are atheists and agnostics, and proceeds to go into 12 paragraphs of skepticism, including in there the whopper that "The fossil record does not support the theory of evolution and is one of the flaws in the theory of evolution." (Sources: "creation.com" and "annointed-one.net"). Combined with the failure to properly explain what evolution is, this bias makes it useless as an information source.

Infogalactic, in contrast, takes the text for the "Evolution" and "Gaza" articles straight from Wikipedia. Gamergate, as one may imagine given the Vox Day connection, is a completely different article from that of Wikipedia: the Wikipedia article emphasizes the "harrassment campaign". The Infogalactic article emphasizes the revealed corruption in journalism, but does touch on harrassment allegations.

Finally, the "Donald Trump" article: Infogalactic auto-redirects from "Trump" to "Donald Trump". Wikipedia redirects to "Trump (disambiguation)". The intro to the Wikipedia article injects POV in where it doesn't seem appropriate (differences with Infogalactic emphasized):

Trump won the 2016 presidential election as the Republican nominee against Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton while losing the popular vote.[a] During the campaign, his political positions were described as populist, protectionist, isolationist, and nationalist. His election and policies sparked numerous protests. He was the first U.S. president with no prior military or government experience. The 2017–2019 special counsel investigation established that Russia had interfered in the 2016 election to favor Trump's campaign. Trump promoted conspiracy theories and made many false and misleading statements during his campaigns and presidency, to a degree unprecedented in American politics. Many of his comments and actions have been characterized as racially charged or racist and many as misogynistic.

The corresponding infogalactic paragraphs:

Trump won the general election on November 8, 2016, in a surprise victory against Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton, and commenced his presidency on January 20, 2017. He became the oldest person to assume the presidency (surpassing Ronald Reagan), until Joe Biden in 2021, the wealthiest person ever to assume the presidency, and the fifth to have won election while losing the popular vote, though his supporters claimed there were irregularities.[1] His political positions have been described by scholars and commentators as populist, protectionist, and nationalist. In the first year of Trump's presidency, the economy improved significantly[2], but progressive opponents strongly criticized his direct and plain-spoken personal style. With no significant scandals or international events to report, the democrat media focused on unsubstantiated allegations that Trump's election campaign team had colluded with Russian intelligence agencies to influence public opinion[3][4]. The official investigation was eventually closed, with no evidence of the conspiracy theory[5].

Infogalactic definitely has a bias, but it isn't leaving as many details out selectively. I might start preferring Infogalactic now. However, from the change log it looks like there is only one active contributor?!

Yeah infogalactic started as a straight fork of Wikipedia with the planned killer app of replacing edit wars with something showing multiple views. I think it died from lack of use.

Most people using wikipedia are not looking for high-profile political topics. As Encyclopedia Dramatica famously put it when launching a vandalism campaign, you can't have a free-to-edit encyclopedia without editors who are willing to periodically check in on the article on fourth-order Runge-Kutta numerical integration to make sure it hasn't succumbed to vandalism, linkrot, or onward progress in computer languages used to implement the algorithm. What ED learned was that Wikipedia does, in fact, have editors willing to do that.

Vox Day thought that gamergaters and puppies would give him the basis of editors he needed to do this on Infogalactic. It didn't. It didn't help that he was dividing his time between too many projects at the time.

It makes you realize what an incredible coup flipping Twitter from far-left to neutral was.

Once networks become entrenched they become almost impossible to dislodge. Despite the truly epic level of whining after losing their playground, progressives journalists and celebrities can't break their Twitter addiction and still use it. Even a new product with the backing of a trillion dollar corporation couldn't dislodge Twitter.

If progressives can't create a left-wing Twitter alternative, then creating a conservative Wikipedia is a doomed project from the start. The only hope is that Wikipedia is disrupted by new technology or there is a slow march through the institution.

editing for culture war.

Any particular examples?

Does the right just lack any amount of people with nothing better to do than edit Wikipedia articles. In a world this big that does almost seem impossible.

I was under the impression that any right wingers who try to edit Wikipedia have their changes reverted almost instantly, and lose their edit privileges to boot.

Was that not the intention behind Conservapedia?

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