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How can we fix Wikipedia? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 4 years ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I LOVE Wikipedia, I think it's one of the best websites of the internet.

But the fact is that Wikipedia has many flaws:

Editing became very hard on Wikipedia based on the amount of rules to respect
Wikipedia is biased, many cultures and minorities are not well represented among editors and pages.
Wikipedia is a dependence, I can't imagine Wikipedia disappear, I think it already changed the way people see knowledge, not as something fixed anymore, but as something dynamic that changes and evolve.
Wikipedia 'sources admission' are also very... Weird. Because you can be a professional in a special field, it doesn't mean your contribution will be accepted, just because your source is not coming from a 'reliable source', even if YOU are this reliable source.

There are other problems as well, but I think those are the most important ones.

What do you think about it? If you could change anything or everything to Wikipedia, what would you do?

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 years ago (4 children)

I would say the main problem with Wikipedia is the fact that it is all controlled by a single organisation in the United States. So no matter where someone lives or which language of Wikipedia they want to contribute to, in the end that organisation in the United States can decide whether or not it is acceptable. That might not be so bad for things like math or science, where an objective truth exists. But when it comes to topics like politics, there are many groups who hold different opinions, and it is impossible to give an objective truth.

The best way to solve this problem is likely with completely separate wiki instances run by different countries, organisations or political groups. These could use ActivityPub to federate with each other, and share some of the articles. For example, articles about math could be shared across most instances, while each instance might have its own version of an article for a controversial political topic.

Implementing something like that seems very hard though, and so far I dont think anyone has tried to implement a federated wiki.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 years ago (2 children)

Ward Cunningham the original wiki inventor has also invented a federated wiki. Seems to be quite dead though.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 years ago (1 children)

The layout/ux is really complicated, most people would probably not use it for that reason alone.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 years ago

Yes, but there's worse: to edit a page, you need to host an instance of the wiki yourself.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 years ago (1 children)

I wonder how that would handle article conflicts.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 years ago

I think it works using forks, which means several versions can coexist. You can accept or decline a fork of another user on your instance.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 years ago

Maybe: https://github.com/xwiki-contrib/application-activitypub

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 years ago

To be honest Wikipedia has done a pretty good job of keeping most things civil and respectful without going into US propaganda. Also, it should be noted that differences do de facto exists between languages.