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I've seen people expressing bafflement that the average midwit on Reddit might think they could run Musk's assets better than Musk if they had the same luck/unscrupulousness to have the same resources. I ask, after seeing Musk apparently fail to understand Wikipedia costs money to provide, who wouldn't?
The most charitable read here is that Musk thinks Wikipedia deserves less money, not no money, and, like, ok Elon, I think you deserve less money and if you don't care about that opinion, why should they?
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.
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.
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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.
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