What are /r/WikiInAction's favorite Products & Services?

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Google's rankings are determined by humans who create an algorithm to do what they want. I believe that as time has gone on Google has changed its algorithm to specifically favor Wikipedia's content, and that Google represents the 'gold standard" of web content for Google. This worked well for Google while Wikipedia's content was acceptable to most users. Now the design and quality have fallen behind Google is now in a difficult situation. They are effectively promoting old fashioned and substandard content as their top result. That's why they started the Knowledge Graph -- to strip the facts out of Wikipedia so that they could present them without having Wikipedia as the top link. But the facts aren't good enough. It's not enough to present a list of facts (or even links) to searchers, they need more "human" content. So Google is stuck with Wikipedia for a while, ultimately harming Google's image. I wrote a couple of articles about this on my blog: http://newslines.org/blog/google-and-wikipedia-best-friends-forever/ and http://newslines.org/blog/googles-black-hole/

FWIW. This "crewed" term is really not one I've heard before, and seems to be a relative neologism with very little traction. But at least this one has a meaning that makes sense.

Salvdrim, I had no idea you were running for Arbcom and came across the talk page thread only later. It was a shitty thing to do on my part and I’m sorry.

It had nothing do with Canadian data breaches. Salv’s was from the XSplit leak in November 2013. https://www.xsplit.com/blog/regarding-rumors-of-potential-leak-of-user-data and Ohana’s, from a runescape forum that is not on the breached list.

Countless usernames, emails and plain text passwords of Wikipedia accounts are listed in the data breaches, including accounts with CU/OS permissions. One that stood out was that of a former arb and WMF staff member whose same password was listed on multiple dumps. I also came across login details for multiple emails ending with @wikimedia.org, recognized some as having developer access. FWIW, they all had mostly strong passwords, although it hardly matters if they use the same password on WP. Now, I didn’t try logging into any of these to check if they work or not. The only reason I tried logging into these two accounts is because I recognized them as familiar admin accounts which had numbers as passwords and I was convinced it wouldn’t give me access. Once it did, I only had two options, either post to BN or forget about it. Had I reported it to Arbcom or privately, it would have been swept under the rug.

For all we know, people have been accessing admin accounts with impunity for years without anyone knowing. Nothing short of a forced reset for passwords on all privileged accounts is going to solve this.

I didn’t comb through the data further nor do I intend to - but that does not mean others won't.

One of his retweets is "The main cause of antisemitism is Jewish behavior" with the caption "Correlation = causation. The more you know, the more you notice. #14Words"

​

I think it's fair to dismiss this guy and not take his opinions to heart.

It depends what you mean by an "encyclopedia". Wikipedia is a number of different projects shoehorned into the same user interface and wiki software. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, a news archive, a medical directory, a movie and TV guide, a biography site and fan site. The encyclopedia part of Wikipedia is more or less complete (how much new stuff is there to write about dinosaurs) so most of the editing and page views are actually on news-based pages and biographies, a notable exception being the page on Ebola.

For an encyclopedia you could try Britannica, for a movie guide you could try imdb.com, for a news archive you can check my site Newslines, (http://newslines.org) and for medical there's the Mayo clinic, Wikia does fan site etc. You may want to read some of my blog posts on Wikipedia's weaknesses here: http://newslines.org/blog/wikipedias-13-deadly-sins/

Oooh look! I am linking to copyrighted Scientology documents!

https://wikileaks.org/wiki/Church_of_Scientology_collected_Operating_Thetan_documents

I hope Canada doesn't bust me!!!

Really though....having the government say what people can and cannot talk about (or can and cannot link to) is not something a society of free citizens should tolerate.

EDIT: Jumped the gun a bit.

I've finally managed to dig up some of these titles:

https://books.google.com/books?id=pzHi3k_wQKMC&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22class,+race,+and+gender+in+american+education%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=JYimVKGJCYb2oASyuYDQBA&ved=0CB8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22class%2C%20race%2C%20and%20ge...

something's bugged alright.

>the abuses that we list on this subreddit are a feature, not a bug.

You may be interested in my analysis of how the wiki software itself is the root of most Wikipedia problems: http://newslines.org/blog/wikipedias-13-deadly-sins/

AFAIK, it was set up as a safe haven for those forced off social media and those who had their posts deleted. I don't think I'm making stuff up when I say that most of those were close to hate-speech laws – laws that forbid speech that eggs on extremists that attack minorities. Those laws, afaik, are not limited to direct statements (example: "Hey go kill some black people"), but also include statements that justify violence, implicitly or overtly (example: "mexicans are rapists"). These laws vary from country to country of course.
I don't know why antisemitism is such a special hot-button issue, but antisemitism is the reason why we have hate-speech laws. Before the holocaust, anti-semitic speech created an atmosphere where most germans believed that jews were inherently evil. It didn't happen overnight, "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" came out in 1903 and wasn't the first antisemitic text, but back then people believed in that stuff like today's people believe in aliens, or in fact that mexicans are rapists.
So you may be right in some sort of technical sense, that anything overtly antisemitic can't be stuck to the official voices of GAB. That doesn't change the fact that it is a safe-haven for slander and innuendo against a bunch of minorities. It's not all that goes on there, but just look at this search if you're in any doubt that this is not something they actively fight against: https://gab.com/search/jews

THIS ... >This is a relatively new website, but pardon if I'm mistaking; ▀▀▀▀▀▀ is the ▀▀▀▀▀▀ (correct?) This same ▀▀▀▀▀▀ has been accused of abuse, bullying & harassment by StopTheGRBullies: ▀▀▀▀▀▀ organized a revolt to write "bad reviews" of Amazon & Goodreads books by authors ▀▀▀▀▀▀ didn't like - ▀▀▀▀▀▀ contacted Amazon directly through ▀▀▀▀▀▀ ▀▀▀▀▀▀ website to get several books (from authors ▀▀▀▀▀▀ didn't like) pulled from Amazon. It was first ▀▀▀▀▀▀ made public by ▀▀▀▀▀▀; '▀▀▀▀▀▀' author & supporter of ▀▀▀▀▀▀ ▀▀▀▀▀▀ through ▀▀▀▀▀▀ Facebook account and continued updates through ▀▀▀▀▀▀ ▀▀▀▀▀▀ Twitter account. ▀▀▀▀▀▀ rallied ▀▀▀▀▀▀ Twitter followers to publicly attack ▀▀▀▀▀▀ and write articles in gossip websites bluntly lying that ▀▀▀▀▀▀ is a harasser. I think it would be best to remove the WIKI 'Online Abuse Prevention Initiative' entry (at least) until OAPI actually establishes itself, because (1) this could be construed as advertisement, (2) we're promoting ▀▀▀▀▀▀ repeated hostilities, and (3) we're certain to see rampant vandalism in response to this WIKI.

IS CURRENTLY BEING DELETED AS A BLP VIOLATION SOURCE

Someone should probably explain that to the Tag Teams that are removing it from Bilby's TALK page https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Bilby#Talk:Online_Abuse_Prevention_Initiative

Where did it send you? I just double checked and it lead to the proper section for me.

Vandalism diff: https://www.wikidata.org/w/index.php?title=Q463668&diff=prev&oldid=43216372

>Wow, that's just awesome. So now you don't have to vandalize Wikipedia, just Wikidata. And if you want a super spammy userpage about your meme club all you need to do is create it on Meta, and it will be shown and indexed from Wikipedia! §FreeRangeFrogcroak 20:12, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

>The worst part is that this material was added in May 2013 and existed for over 2 years before being changed today. Liz Read! Talk! 21:54, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

sarahfromscotland repeating the same lies (deceptive fact can be a lie) with a throwaway account. This is classic socking, attempting to create apparent agreement from multiple people when, in fact, so far, none of the real accounts (with a history) in this thread have agreed with what "sarah" writes above.

Oliver, on RatWiki, as Tobias, is claiming that all this is created by me or Mikemikev to "make him look bad." In those claims, Oliver lied about the content of my comments, and he lied about the history, as I have explained in hypothes.is annocations. It would make no sense for either Mike (for whom I am not responsible), or I, or any of his other targets, to attempt to confuse these discussions and use them to spam Oliver's long-stated position, with many socks. But Oliver is literally insane. His brother is higher-functioning but vicious. Oliver might be right that the socks are not him, because they could be his brother. I will know more later when I study the data.

Arlandon clearly is aware that the claims were false, he expressed belief that the newspapers knew this and lied. He was responding to my comment that they were deceived. So the question was trolling. These are trollsocks.

Oliver then claimed on RatWiki that there was no evidence he had contacted media and pretended ignorance. So I presented the evidence (which I had seen when it was fresh, it was from SkepticDave, which was Oliver, whereas any impersonations would have been quickly whacked at that time.)

The structure of lies and deception is falling apart, and they are getting desperate. Oliver's current account on RatWiki is now widely known -- there! -- to be him. Oliver is facing a lawsuit, and obviously does not know how to shut up. (I am not claiming he is the sockmaster here, he might well not be. But he is responsible for what he has written and continues to write on RationalWiki.)

Much of the time solutions to Wikipedia's problems miss the target because the diagnosis is wrong. Admins having too much power on Wikipedia is a symptom, not the cause: the cause is software design and policy that allows the abuses to happen.

The solution to admins who have too much power is not to disclose their real names, but to fix the system that gives them too much power in the first place. Similarly, paying admins does nothing to fix the system that gives them too much power.

There are many ways to fix these problems, some of which we use at Newslines. For example, assigning random editors to approve other editors' edits, and making sure that editors and admins don't have 'ownership' over pages. We added over 30,000 posts without a single edit war or any harassment because we designed our system to avoid those things.

We are restarting our crowdsourcing efforts over the next few weeks, and hope to attract people who are interested in creating a "Wikipedia For News," without the harassment.

You're blatantly trolling and know you are.

https://gab.com/Mikemikev

Michael Coombs' social media is filled with Nazi content. Why is he re-posting 1488, pro-Hitler and anti-Semitic content? As well as posting Holocaust denial etc if he's not a Nazi?

It's all a big joke and not serious?

Whenever Lomax falsely claims "Oliver sock" its Mikemikev. The real lousy game is trying to pin Mikemikev's socks on Smith.

We get it - Lomax doesn't like Smith, so to troll him, is now claiming all Mikemikev's accounts are Smith (despite none are).

Are you also claiming the Mikemikev gab is an impersonation owned by Smith?

https://gab.com/Mikemikev

Wait, does Mikemikev even exist?

Lomax clearly suffers from psychosis.

> white nationalist, racist, and the like, are probably justified.
>
>Mikemikev is rational

hahaahaaa. lol? This shows why Lomax is literally insane.

Lomax has been lying and smearing Smith across the internet as an anti-Semite, Nazi, fascist etc when he's never been any of those things, but then when there is *blatant evidence* Mikemikev is all these things, says he's not 100% sure.

Here's comments from Mikemikev's gab from less than 24 hours ago:

https://gab.com/Mikemikev

" Anti-white Bolsheviks. Jews are the main security threat." - Mikemikev 6 hours ago

" Why do we let these scum print this anti-white pseudoscience bullshit? They all belong on the end of ropes for inciting white genocide." - Mikemikev 23 hours ago

" We need to start executing people for saying "racist". Their civilisation destroying racial-Marxism should not be tolerated any longer." - Mikemikev 23 hours ago

-- Remember according to senile Abd, Mikemikev is "rational". when he's literally someone who daily posts death threats and virulent anti-Semitism online.

> Everything I have written on this case has been based in evidence. The evidence about Darryl Smith and John66 is complex, and not all of it has been published. However, I'd quite clear on it myself. For a year and a half, Oliver and his twin have been claiming that what I write is "lies," but asked for specifics, they don't provide them. Every page on the blog is open for comment, and it would be easy to cite a specific claim. If one wants to be even more specific, hypothes.is could be used and then a page comment pointing to it.

LMAO. Virtually everything you write about Oliver Smith is malicious lies and smears. He's pointed out specifics, but you don't remove or retract your lies. He's provided many examples:

1. Outright malicious lies Oliver is or was an anti-Semite (he never has been).
2. Sexual defamation Oliver is a "sexual deviant", "could be a pedophile" and an "asexual" (he's none of these things.)
3. Outright misrepresentation of Oliver's views concerning group differences in intelligence. You lied and claimed Smith was a former hereditarian based on horribly distorting a comment, when he never was. He's always opposed the hereditarian hypothesis.
4. Outright misrepresentation of Oliver's writing on race.
5. Defamation that Oliver supports child murder (he doesn't) based on totally misrepresenting what anti-natalists stand for.

The list can go on and on.