I think Wikipedia lost the way around 10 years ago.
I think I agree, though I currently believe it continues to be strongly net positive for the world. My current guess is that it will lose its value to LLMs before it starts to be sufficiently politically captured to be net negative. I am interested to know if you think it is already net negative.
I am interested to know if you think it is already net negative.
It is always very hard to tell what the counterfactual of something would be, but my guess is yes, it’s quite good.
(But IDK, I think Wikipedia has been pretty bad for LessWrong in-particular, and I don’t actually have access to all the other communities similarly effected, and possibly there has been large collateral damage that I am blind to)
Could you explain why you believe that it is Wikipedia which was politically captured? I think that the history of the Russian Branch provides some evidence to the contrary (which, alas, is accessible only to Russian-speaking users like @Mikhail Samin). The attempt of pro-Russian and anti-LGBTQ users to politically capture the branch caused lots of conflicts and eventually caused these users to defect to various clones like Runiversalis.
Alas, Wikipedia’s principles require it to rely on external analysts of news, and if someone politically captured the highest-quality media like the BBC, then Wikipedia’s rules would require it to reflect the media’s position.
Returning to LW and its mission, I don’t understand how a change in culture could undermine it except for causing an onslaught of mechinterp-like slop by new users. But this seems to be more like Hitler’s invasions into many countries than actual corruption.
Part of the difficulty in pointing specifically to how and when Wikipedia was politically captured is that this sort of ideological takeover happens in a pretty abstract and diffuse way without much of a paper trail, which is part of what makes it so hard to defend against.
A good recent example I encountered was the Olympics Boxing scandal around Imane Khelif where having an SRY gene was a very salient point that was reported on and later confirmed, but there was a huge effort to conceal that info from the page, and then later downplay it heavily.
That said, I still think Wikipedia is a pretty substantial net good for providing information.
I am not immediately pulling to mind the reasons. I think I recall seeing a graph of Wikipedia edits going down over time (and serious editors leaving on-net) which is a bad sign for the health. It is also not uncommon for me to hear instances of politically motivated edits.
As one example, this week I was told that Maria Montessori—originator of the Montessori school of education—was an avowed and extreme racist, but that people who are involved in Montessor education reliably edit it out of her Wikipedia page (as can be evidenced by its absence on the page, but repeated presence on the talk page).
(I also heard accusation she was a eugenicist, but I failed to find corroboration of that fact while writing this comment.)
Almost everyone that considered themselves scientifically minded and rational at the dawn of the 20th century was an eugenicist, bad genetics was considered a real concern and danger to address. Doesn’t mean they all were straight up Nazis but it was one of the big fashionable positivist beliefs.
To the extent that the effect is as big as you’re making it out to be (surely it’s “big”, IDK the exact magnitude though), this seems to be mostly explainable by people trying to apply their new great toy to everything around them. A man with a hammer sees everything as a nail etc.
Wikipedia is a race condition in a simulationist context guys, Jesus Christ. Do not talk harshly about far branches of the tree until you have settled earlier branches. Not unless you have forensics.
I think I agree, though I currently believe it continues to be strongly net positive for the world. My current guess is that it will lose its value to LLMs before it starts to be sufficiently politically captured to be net negative. I am interested to know if you think it is already net negative.
It is always very hard to tell what the counterfactual of something would be, but my guess is yes, it’s quite good.
(But IDK, I think Wikipedia has been pretty bad for LessWrong in-particular, and I don’t actually have access to all the other communities similarly effected, and possibly there has been large collateral damage that I am blind to)
Could you explain why you believe that it is Wikipedia which was politically captured? I think that the history of the Russian Branch provides some evidence to the contrary (which, alas, is accessible only to Russian-speaking users like @Mikhail Samin). The attempt of pro-Russian and anti-LGBTQ users to politically capture the branch caused lots of conflicts and eventually caused these users to defect to various clones like Runiversalis.
Alas, Wikipedia’s principles require it to rely on external analysts of news, and if someone politically captured the highest-quality media like the BBC, then Wikipedia’s rules would require it to reflect the media’s position.
Returning to LW and its mission, I don’t understand how a change in culture could undermine it except for causing an onslaught of mechinterp-like slop by new users. But this seems to be more like Hitler’s invasions into many countries than actual corruption.
This seems like a nice example of Wikipedia preventing itself from conquering what it cannot defend.
Part of the difficulty in pointing specifically to how and when Wikipedia was politically captured is that this sort of ideological takeover happens in a pretty abstract and diffuse way without much of a paper trail, which is part of what makes it so hard to defend against.
Tracing Woodgrains documents some interesting cases like a major admin/user that consistently edits in bad faith and generally gets away with it or how figures like Mao get treated rather differently from other big dictators.
A good recent example I encountered was the Olympics Boxing scandal around Imane Khelif where having an SRY gene was a very salient point that was reported on and later confirmed, but there was a huge effort to conceal that info from the page, and then later downplay it heavily.
That said, I still think Wikipedia is a pretty substantial net good for providing information.
I am not immediately pulling to mind the reasons. I think I recall seeing a graph of Wikipedia edits going down over time (and serious editors leaving on-net) which is a bad sign for the health. It is also not uncommon for me to hear instances of politically motivated edits.
As one example, this week I was told that Maria Montessori—originator of the Montessori school of education—was an avowed and extreme racist, but that people who are involved in Montessor education reliably edit it out of her Wikipedia page (as can be evidenced by its absence on the page, but repeated presence on the talk page).
(I also heard accusation she was a eugenicist, but I failed to find corroboration of that fact while writing this comment.)
Almost everyone that considered themselves scientifically minded and rational at the dawn of the 20th century was an eugenicist, bad genetics was considered a real concern and danger to address. Doesn’t mean they all were straight up Nazis but it was one of the big fashionable positivist beliefs.
To the extent that the effect is as big as you’re making it out to be (surely it’s “big”, IDK the exact magnitude though), this seems to be mostly explainable by people trying to apply their new great toy to everything around them. A man with a hammer sees everything as a nail etc.
Sure, my main point was “it doesn’t say much about someone of the time other than they were buying into a fad”.
Wikipedia is a race condition in a simulationist context guys, Jesus Christ. Do not talk harshly about far branches of the tree until you have settled earlier branches. Not unless you have forensics.