Thank you for sharing the wikipedia article. I hadn’t read it. A lot of people find Wikipedia controversial for various reasons. But it is one of the most precise encyclopedias on the planet. And you can check out editing history etc. What I am most interested in, is the use here ofcourse. Because it seems to me people use it as a vaguely defined slur to slander people they deem to leftist.
Yeah, there’s all sorts of crazy political purity tests on Lemmy, and associated misuse of slurs.
And on Wikipedia:
On one side, my MAGA-adjacent family is starting to question it as “liberal biased”… as they leave Fox News blasting in the background.
On the other, tankies and some different leftist extremist leftists dismiss it as propaganda.
That’s a good sign, to me. Its never been perfect and has problems, but extremists trying to tear its credibility down is a sign of just how valuable it is.
how about one of the original creators of wikipedia no longer using his own software and encouraging everyone to also not use it? he claims that the cia have been using it as a tool of information warfare since 2007
I will admit that for shallow questions like ‘did this thing happen in this year’? wikipedia can sometimes be more useful than a plain search engine, also sometimes from wikipedia you can find links to real sources which can also be useful.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie
And if one points out Wikipedia (while very imperfect, yes) is just Western Propaganda, well, that’s a pretty good indicator, too.
Thank you for sharing the wikipedia article. I hadn’t read it. A lot of people find Wikipedia controversial for various reasons. But it is one of the most precise encyclopedias on the planet. And you can check out editing history etc. What I am most interested in, is the use here ofcourse. Because it seems to me people use it as a vaguely defined slur to slander people they deem to leftist.
Yeah, there’s all sorts of crazy political purity tests on Lemmy, and associated misuse of slurs.
And on Wikipedia:
On one side, my MAGA-adjacent family is starting to question it as “liberal biased”… as they leave Fox News blasting in the background.
On the other, tankies and some different leftist extremist leftists dismiss it as propaganda.
That’s a good sign, to me. Its never been perfect and has problems, but extremists trying to tear its credibility down is a sign of just how valuable it is.
how about one of the original creators of wikipedia no longer using his own software and encouraging everyone to also not use it? he claims that the cia have been using it as a tool of information warfare since 2007
I will admit that for shallow questions like ‘did this thing happen in this year’? wikipedia can sometimes be more useful than a plain search engine, also sometimes from wikipedia you can find links to real sources which can also be useful.