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Wikipedia Had No Idea YouTube Was Going To Use It To Fact-Check Conspiracy Theories (gizmodo.com)
Yesterday, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki announced that the company would drop a Wikipedia link beneath videos on highly contested topics. We have now learned that Wikipedia did not know about this move prior to the announcement. Gizmodo reports: In a Twitter thread asking the public to support Wikipedia as much as it relies on it, Wikimedia executive director Katherine Maher first suggested that the organization was unaware of YouTube's plans. When asked whether this new module would only apply to English Wikipedia pages, Maher responded, "I couldn't say; this was something they did independent of us." In a statement to Gizmodo, the Wikimedia Foundation confirmed that the organization first learned of the new YouTube feature on Tuesday. "We are always happy to see people, companies, and organizations recognize Wikipedia's value as a repository of free knowledge," a Wikimedia Foundation spokesperson said in a statement. "In this case, neither Wikipedia nor the Wikimedia Foundation are part of a formal partnership with YouTube. We were not given advance notice of this announcement."
This means the WIKIPEDIA articles will start to huge a huge influx of people who aren't normally wiki editors. And you know what Wikipedia is? Free for ANYONE to edit.
So what does that do? It means Wikipedia articles that get linked will 1) Have huge bandwidth costs thanks to YouTube, and 2) get edited by people who love conspiracies and end up way shittier.
Thanks, YouTube!
Ever think that Rage Against the Machine's Evil Empire album came out like... 15 yeas too early? If they had any idea how big Facebook and Google would become, they would have come up with another 5 albums worth of content.
99% of their stuff is factual. That's far better than what you get on YouTube.
There is a value in a wiki that lists citations. In many ways a link to Wikipedia is more valuable than having a link to a single verified source.
Now could the sources on your average wikipedia page be curated better? Absolutely. But complaining about it and encouraging us to ignore the value that Wikipedia provides is no solution.
Redundancy detected. If a Circle Jerk were not self referencing, then you wouldn't call it a Circle Jerk. It would be a Line Jerk. One end would be un-serviced while the other end would be capable of servicing but is under utilized.
If Conservapedia has a page about Circle Jerks, then it needs to be updated to reflect this.
At least YouTube has the good sense to not use Conservapedia to verify YouTube videos.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
..does that mean they're going away for as long as Youtube is using Wikipedia?
Cuz seriously, if I knew that donating to Wikipedia would've garnered so much email spam, I'd never have donated in the first place.
"Wiki's editorial staff" are just its general users. As a casual editor for well over a decade now (as in, I fix up little things I find while reading it, and watch pages on topics I'm interested in for updates and mostly just revert obvious vandalism that hits those pages), I've witnessed my fair share of edit wars, and for the most part I get the feeling that people who have a big problem with Wikipedia's processes are disruptive editors unhappy that they're not successfully able to push their agenda through it.
Also, no encyclopedia is a reputable source in any academic institution. But unlike most encyclopedias, Wikipedia is supposed to point you to the reputable sources that it got its information from, instead of just asking you to trust it.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
Heavy liberal bias. Please consider starting here, but finding more reputable sources for your information.
Yeah! Like the comments section of youtube. You can learn a great deal about human nature. If you really want to.
And 99% of their stuff is uncontroversial. Nobody's arguing over whether mitochondria are the powerhouse of the cell.
The controversial shit (eg, politics)? Just as shit as YouTube.
That depends. How much of YouTube is patently false? There are 1.3B videos on YouTube, 13M of them would have to be factually incorrect (right vs left politics and shit throwing doesn't qualify).
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
YouTube is part of Google, now called Alphabet. This is another example of bad management by Alphabet, in my opinion.
I don't see how it's 'better than nothing' for this very reason - it's 'fake encyclopedia' in many ways, just like 'fake news.' Now if you could link to something that was, perhaps a bit more objective, but...
Hopefully YouTube (Alphabet/Google/whatever they're called this month) will be making big donations to the Wikimedia folks to cover all the extra traffic this will generate.
That is an old meme that is no longer true. We've gorged ourselves on self aggrandizing and blatantly false propaganda for the last 4 years and it has resulted in the stagnation of our ability to think for ourselves.
Consider this:
Russia meddled in our election to elect someone that was politically opposite of them. Yet somehow we don't even stop to consider what else they've meddled in. The truth of the matter is that they've been causing radicalization in this country for some time. We're at the point where the left will attack anyone who is not left leaning. Centrists? Nazis. Right leaning people? nazis. Disagree with pop psychology which was probably russia funded to begin with? Nazis.
This is anecdotal, but if my own experience watching stuff on it is any indication, I would guess that the percentage of patently false videos on youtube is not less than 5%, and may be MUCH higher.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I should have said:
YouTube is part of Google, now called Alphabet. This is another example of bad management by Alphabet, in my opinion.
YouTube should not have announced a partnership that does not exist.
"Wiki's editorial staff" are just its general users.
That is VERY wrong. I have through the years tried to correct some minor mistakes and omissions. Usually things are find but now and again you run into some VERY Assholios who will not accept a submission they disagree with, not matter how well sourced.
I get the feeling that people who have a big problem with Wikipedia's processes are disruptive editors unhappy that they're not successfully able to push their agenda through it.
Wrong, it's more like there are some editors with a fixed agenda presented by a wikipedia page they will not allow anyone to mess with.
Wikipedia is supposed to point you to the reputable sources that it got its information from
Which it does - but the problem comes in what they consider to be acceptable sources, where they will selectively deny facts that you can reliably source, while letting casual assertions without any source slide because it agrees with their own agenda.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You can go right to Wikipedia for the definition of a circle jerk.
One site showing links to another site, without even asking? Good grief. Is this what the internet has come to?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Google isn't well known for acquiring consent before utilizing the resources of others. They are basically the corporate equivalent of rapists, have been for years. They found a way to monetize Wikipedia! Naturally Wikipedia won't see a dime of that profit.
> Wiki is not accepted as a scholarly or reputable source in any reputable academic institution.
You don't cite an encyclopedia for the same reason you don't cite "the library".
Encyclopedias, including Wikipedia, are secondary sources. That means they collect and summarize primary sources, such as peer-reviewed studies. (Just as libraries collect and catalog sources).
Whatever is in an encyclopedia came from somewhere else, so you cite the source. It would be dumb to cite "Encyclopedia Britannica says that a study by Harvard says that ...". Just cite the study directly rather than indirectly.
This does not mean that encyclopedias are unreliable or somehow "bad", they are just an unnecessary extra step when citing where information comes from. You wouldn't cite "my roommate, John Carter, showed me a study which he got from the Texas A&M library which states ..." You cite the source of the information, not the steps it took to get to you. Wikipedia is a conduit of information, like a library, not an original source.
None of the three statements was a logical fallacy.
Perhaps you should spend some time looking at the Wikipedia page on logical fallacies so you might have a better chance of recognizing the difference between them and a stating an opinion or fact.
Wiki's editorial staff are well known to be biased, group-think, and agenda-driven - some of the wars are legendary.
Proof by Assertion.
Wiki is not accepted as a scholarly or reputable source in any reputable academic institution.
Association Fallacy/Fallacy of the Inverse.
As a basic source of information for non-scholastic arguments, I suppose its better than nothing.
Nirvana Fallacy.
Even I know that Venezuela and the USSR are very illiberal.
Its funny, we've both been users for a long time, and you used to sound like a native English speaker.
Now you speak some sort of weird political creole.
Let this serve as a cautionary tale about what happens when you sink too deep into the echo-pit.
Which Wiki, though? There are thousands of them.
Ezekiel 23:20
Think of the nice GUI and fast browser experience.
Without outside servers pushing party political results all over the content the user wanted to find.
Browsers had to protect users from ads, pop ups, loud ad audio and unwanted video ads.
Now browsers have to consider links to other sites getting placed over content.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Have you had much luck with that? I've tried to fix a few grammar errors as well as obvious factual errors (e.g. cardinal direction between two cities). They've been reverted by overzealous editors who "own" the article.
Yeah, my little edits usually stick. Even the occasional bigger one. Only explanation I can think of for your reported experience is that your edits somehow superficially look likely to be vandalism to, as you say, overzealous editors who probably see tons of actual vandalism and are too quick on the trigger. Do you have an account or are you an anonymous IP editor? (Some people are more suspicious of anons, even though that's actually against policy). Have you had any big fights that might make other users assume bad faith on your part (even though that is also against policy?) Other than that I can't imagine why you have such troubles and I don't.
Can you link to some examples of this happening?
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
It depends. Anthropogenic global warming isn't controversial on Wikipedia or in most countries' politician scenes. Same thing for evolution. In the USA, however...
Yeah. Dude. That's not even English.
Some sort of unnamed Creole.
The metric system is definitely a russian plot.
And, who cares? Does Youtube need permission? The is a huge "who fucking cares?" moment.
Maybe 5% of the political stuff, but the vast majority of videos on YouTube do not contain falsifiable information at all. Look at all the music videos, video game playthroughs, funny cat videos and people doing stupid things.
AC remember how bad ads got? With the sound and the video. The malware?
Want a political message on a video site to go the same way?
What if the message changes from one party to another?
Still good with a political message AC?
What if the brand finds faith?
Like a quote from their religious text? A nice big font to spread the faith? Something from a cult leader with every search result?
A site that just offers video clips would be great. No need for extra messages, text, thoughts, comments, politics appearing.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
But that's okay, because YouTube (a.k.a Google) is also biased.
You can't just throw a grenade without evidence. Provide proof that google has a reputation for delivering deliberately incorrect information.
Try starting here. http://tinyurl.com/GoogleGesta...
Wikipedia is a fine tool for verifying information. Assuming 1) the Wiki article is correctly sourced and 2) you actually go check and verify THOSE SOURCES. Just using it by itself.
?
Considering that there is always a conspiracy theory about anything even mildly unknown, then the number of times they became fact would be equal to the number of actual conspiracies. (Unless it isn't, in which case I have a theory about that.)
I can print a book that says Donald Trump is a small lizard controlling a badly made humanoid robot. That doesn't make it reliable.
Since 2005 I think wikipedia has lost reliability. It was great, it's become politicised.
As is Bernie Sanders and every other American claiming to be a "Liberal" while in reality seeing no problems with using the government's power to compel fellow citizens into doing, what they wouldn't have done voluntarily.
The term has been perverted so much, the actual adherents of Liberty have to call themselves "Libertarians".
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Every time YouTube links to Wikipedia. They should a) include a donation link as well b) share a portion of the ad revenues to support Wikipedia.
Then it becomes a win-win scenario.
In the History tab of an article, you can grab links to diffs of every edit. In your own user contributions page (which even anon ips have) you can find diffs of all your own edits to any pages. I wanted to see a diff of someone reverting your edits, to see what they reverted and why they said they did so. (If your not aware of article histories, you might have missed an edit summary politely telling you why you were reverted).
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
wrong, hugely controversial religion nonsense being pushed as fact on wikipedia.
For example, look at the B.S. being pushed as the history of Jerusalem from the Bible, instead of the archeological facts such as at the time of the mythical king David the city was abandoned.
Similar can be shown with "history" in articles of Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, etc. in Wikipedia.
Passing off religious bullshit as fact is not what a proper encyclopedia does.
Perhaps. Most of the videos that I watch on youtube are for informational or educational purposes, so the recommended videos I get tend to all be along those lines. As I'm already pretty good at filtering out garbage, I don't get that much bad stuff, but I notice whenever I click on one bogus facts video that I didn't happen to recognize as such before I clicked on it, I will find myself getting lots of other equally stupid ones in my recommended videos section before my other preferences seem to overwhelm them and things go back to normal.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Actually, it's perfectly possible to get a permanent link to a Wikipedia page so that what you cite won't change. The reason it can't be used as a source is that it's an encyclopedia, not a primary or secondary source. Academics use it to get some background information and to find its sources.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes