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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   27756 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 23, 2023

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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?

  • -24

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.

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.”

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.

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