This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Wikipedia is so valuable as a resource that they know they’ll always be able to get funding. At worst they can get the UN or a few rich people to fund it, or even a university with a large endowment that wants the prestige. So there’s no reason to take any steps toward fiscal sustainability. It’s too big to fail.
That's an interesting point though it raises the question of why Wikipedia never tried in a serious way to become a profit-oriented enterprise. Once it got big enough it probably wouldn't have been hard to monetize. Perhaps some of what's happening here is that people in the Wikimedia Foundation are just picking up $100 million bills left on the ground by Wikipedia's failure to try to make money off of its product. People won't ignore that kind of money-making opportunity forever.
Wikipedia depends on the editor community to keep the encyclopedia current (and the Pareto distribution of editor activity means that the part of the community that matters is quite small) - the community increasingly see the WMF as a parasite using their encyclopedia to raise donations under false pretenses. The Wikimedia software and the text of the encyclopedia are open source - the only thing that the WMF actually controls is the IP and domain names (which would use value fast if they pointed to an "encyclopedia" that was full of rubbish).
The Fram ban incident was the point at which the community and the WMF became actively hostile - and the community won by getting Fram's ban overturned and an in-principle agreement from the WMF that wikis with active communities would remain primarily responsible for policing their own users. But the community now know that the self-perpetuating woke oligarchy that control the WMF think of them as unwashed white male neanderthals who are only one step removed from gamergaters, or something like that. My read was that both the WMF and the community realised that either side could destroy the social value of the encyclopedia, and neither wanted to do so.
When Jimbo (who had much more goodwill in the editor community than the current WMF leadership) launched the for-profit Wikia in 2004, the threat of an editor revolt meant that he had to keep it entirely separate from Wikipedia. If the WMF tried the same thing, there would be an editor strike.
Wait, Jimbo's the reason why Fandom exists???
This is an interesting story, but it seems hard to square the "Wikipedia's editors resent being seen as Deplorables by the WMF" with the "Wikipedia has a community of power editors who are proud Commies" thing alleged elsewhere in this thread.
I agree, but wokestupid insanity is fractal.
The background to the Fram ban was that the WMF were proposing to change their ToS to incorporate the usual vaguely worded Code of Conduct that people expect to be selectively enforced against conservatives but is actually selectively enforced against spergy men who are more focussed on improving the product than playing politics. And as part of the ToS to use the server, this would be enforced by the WMF and not the community. There were the usual complaints by the WMF that the sex ratio in the community (which is male-dominated for the obvious reasons) must be due to Deplorable behaviour chasing women away.
Most of the evidence in the case is not public, but it looks like a woman who was friends with the WMF CEO was adding articles on Spanish Paralympians that were sufficiently badly translated that the community thought they were making the encyclopedia worse. Fram tried to make her stop, and she tattled on him.
What is public is that when the MSM picked up the story, the WMF leadership briefed that Fram was banned for being mean to female contributors and that the row was about the WMF trying to crack down on endemic sexism in the editor community.
There are a lot of proud Commies who really are sexist (the sex scandals in the UK Socialist Workers' Party were hilarious), and even more who are victims of bad-faith allegations of sexism by the establishment left. The "Berniebro" meme is the canonical example.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Yes and no. You don't need to keep the WMF to keep Wikipedia - not even legally, because Wikipedia's content is CC-BY-SA and thus anyone with the money to handle the load can make a WP mirror.
It would be hard to get people to use a new, mirrored version of Wikipedia while the Wikimedia Foundation exists.
Yes, but 2rafa was saying the WMF would get bailed out if it somehow did go bankrupt.
I'm saying that in that specific highly-unlikely situation the existence of the mirrors would avoid the need for that.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link