Thank you for linking! (And if anyone else finds this list super useful, maybe think about donating; Wikipedia is massive and run exclusively off donations :)
Wikipedia is financially pretty stable, afaik. Not saying you shouldn’t donate, but you might want to look into what happens with it. It won’t necessarily be used to cover costs of running the website.
What I learned is that Wikipedia is not financially in dire straights, as sometimes might be inferred from their donation requests, that their funding approach is very similar to other comparable non-profits, but that because of their nature people have very different expectations of them, which one might reasonably see as either reasonable or unreasonable depending on perspective. I think I fall somewhere in the middle
Theodore Robert Beale (born August 21, 1968), commonly known as Vox Day, is an American activist and writer. He has been described as a far-right white supremacist,[2][3] a misogynist,[4] and part of the alt-right.[5][6][7] The Wall Street Journal described him as “the most despised man in science fiction”.[8]
Infogalactic:
In 2017, Beale launched Infogalactic, an English-language wiki encyclopedia.[30] The site was a fork of the contents of English Wikipedia which could be gradually edited to remove the influence of what Beale described as “the left-wing thought police who administer [Wikipedia]”.[6][31] It has been described by Wired and The Washington Post as a version of Wikipedia targeted to alt-right readers.[6][32]
Uhhhh, not sure this is the kind of resource I’m looking for 😅 though it might sometimes be helpful to cross reference to compare things. But my impression from online discussion is that infogalactic is generally much less updated than Wikipedia, which makes sense, it feels kinda hard for another similar platform to compete, especially given the volunteer nature of things and infogalactics more specific political bent that will limit its appeal
Thouh this isn’t the fist time I’ve come across suggesions that Wikipedia has bias issues; perhaps that’d be a good thing for me to look into at some point as well, and see if it feels like there’s substance behind that claim
As cool as federation is, I think in the case of a single source of information seeking to be as reputable and neutral as possible, it kinda just seems like federation and allowing bunches of different versions of the same articles would undermine the project’s ability to organize effectively and present itself in a useful way to the public…
I do like the idea of multiple separate community wikis existing with their own different culture, but I expect it’d be difficult for multiple to really exist at scale simultaneously, just cause there isn’t that big a pool of people dedicated to editing community articles and splitting them seems like a challenge. But the Wikipedia article on bias on Wikipedia suggests that articles with more contributors of differing viewpoints reduce the bias, so like there’s also an argument to be made for more conservative folks just contributing to Wikipedia
And unfortunately in the case of infogalactic specifically, I think explicitly stating that you aim your resource to align with certain ideology, or avoid a specific bias on one of the spectrum means I’ll never really see it as a reputable source. They went in the the intention of creating something with a bias or ideological slant; I respect Wikipedia because of how hard they work to minimize bias, even though it’s ultimately impossible to remove
Man, Wikipedia is fucking cool.
Thank you for linking! (And if anyone else finds this list super useful, maybe think about donating; Wikipedia is massive and run exclusively off donations :)
Wikipedia is financially pretty stable, afaik. Not saying you shouldn’t donate, but you might want to look into what happens with it. It won’t necessarily be used to cover costs of running the website.
I didn’t actually know that. I’m happy to donate anyway when I’m able to, but thank you for making me a little more informed!
I found this article on the subject that did a really good job of exploring the nuances of Wikipedia’s funding, community critisims, and whether it’s much different from other non-profits. Highly reccomend for anyone else interested in the subject
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/12/02/wikipedia-has-a-ton-of-money-so-why-is-it-begging-you-to-donate-yours/
What I learned is that Wikipedia is not financially in dire straights, as sometimes might be inferred from their donation requests, that their funding approach is very similar to other comparable non-profits, but that because of their nature people have very different expectations of them, which one might reasonably see as either reasonable or unreasonable depending on perspective. I think I fall somewhere in the middle
Look up InfoGalactic as well
Uhhhh, not sure this is the kind of resource I’m looking for 😅 though it might sometimes be helpful to cross reference to compare things. But my impression from online discussion is that infogalactic is generally much less updated than Wikipedia, which makes sense, it feels kinda hard for another similar platform to compete, especially given the volunteer nature of things and infogalactics more specific political bent that will limit its appeal
Thouh this isn’t the fist time I’ve come across suggesions that Wikipedia has bias issues; perhaps that’d be a good thing for me to look into at some point as well, and see if it feels like there’s substance behind that claim
Edit: entirely expectdly there’s a Wikipedia page about it that actually seems pretty helpful. I’ve not read much yet and I’ll need to take a look at other sources, but I figured I’d share for others :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideological_bias_on_Wikipedia?wprov=sfla1
I wish there was a Federated Wikipedia with integrated Version-Control
As cool as federation is, I think in the case of a single source of information seeking to be as reputable and neutral as possible, it kinda just seems like federation and allowing bunches of different versions of the same articles would undermine the project’s ability to organize effectively and present itself in a useful way to the public…
I do like the idea of multiple separate community wikis existing with their own different culture, but I expect it’d be difficult for multiple to really exist at scale simultaneously, just cause there isn’t that big a pool of people dedicated to editing community articles and splitting them seems like a challenge. But the Wikipedia article on bias on Wikipedia suggests that articles with more contributors of differing viewpoints reduce the bias, so like there’s also an argument to be made for more conservative folks just contributing to Wikipedia
And unfortunately in the case of infogalactic specifically, I think explicitly stating that you aim your resource to align with certain ideology, or avoid a specific bias on one of the spectrum means I’ll never really see it as a reputable source. They went in the the intention of creating something with a bias or ideological slant; I respect Wikipedia because of how hard they work to minimize bias, even though it’s ultimately impossible to remove