Okay, that looked a bit ridiculous in the pre-AI era (who needs to download the whole Wikipedia?), but now I can see the sense in it.
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2025/04/ai-bo...
Because people are people. And will always prioritize egotism over respect for the common good.
Of course, the problem then is getting all these scrapers and bots to actually use the alternative, but Wikimedia could potentially redirect suspected clients in that direction..
maybe a view full website link loaded on js so bots dont see it idk
me too tbh
someone pointed out you can enable by default reader mode on safar under settings but even then not all website’s pages are seeved as reader mode enabled pages
Websites as gemtext would be even better than as markdown, but less likely to be fed to bots.
> who needs to download the whole Wikipedia
Replicating that knowledge helps build data resilience and protect it against all sorts of disasters. I used to seed their monthly data dump torrent for a while.
This is essentially the modern version of having a library of encyclopedias.
https://internet-in-a-box.org/
They provide offline access to Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, Project Gutenberg, and many other resources.
It would be nice to have something like this more decentralized.
I kid you not; through a process of attrition they've attacked the very reliability and reputation of every source, including Fox News and the like, and they've told editors sitewide that they simply can't be cited as a "Reliable Secondary Source", like at all.
I am not sure if that is an accurate assessment of the situation on the ground for mainstream media, but it certainly exposes some real systemic bias.
And this is the highest-order and most enduring method of ingraining systemic bias in the project: by weeding out sources with unfavorable viewpoints and perspectives, saying they publish lies and untruth, and being able to prohibit them globally from any use.
And I was pondering this state of affairs and just thinking about Karoline Leavitt's press room, and wondering what will the landscape be, if there is precious little intersection between press outlets who may be favorable or deferent to the present administration, and those which are allowed to be cited on Wikipedia? Ouch!
And you know, I wouldn't be surprised if people hurling those accusations somehow believe that the lies and misinformation are one-sided and partisan. As if leftism has some sort of monopoly on Truth and Goodness bestowed from above.
It's really been sickening to see the media outlets just lay down thick trails of bullshit that is designed to distract us, to instill fear, uncertainty, and doubt, to make us hate one another, to keep us hanging on that channel or that subscription for the next tidbit. It's disgusting and manipulative, and the Right has absolutely no monopoly on those tactics.
Wikipedia is simply a microcosm of the prevailing zeitgeist, so they are as likely to cure systemic bias as a leopard can change its spots.
[1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00222429241264...
Just because one side happens to produce more misinformation doesn't mean these facts should be omitted. Consider this analogy: Stalin killed millions and was undeniably a tyrant, and even though the current Russian establishment might push a different narrative, it doesn't erase historical reality. Similarly, accurately documenting Musk's misleading statements isn't bias—it's factual reporting.
Anyone who wants to have access while off-line, for whatever reason. This can be as simple as saving costs via more complicated as accessing content from regions with spotty and/or expensive connectivity (you're on a ship out of reach of shore-based mobile networks, you do not have access to Starlink or something similar, you're deep in the jungle, deep underground, etc) to some prepper scenario where connectivity ends at the cave entry because the 'net has ceased to exist.
I would like to have a less politically biased online encyclopedia for the latter scenario, it would be a shame to start a new society based on the same bad ideas which brought down the previous one. If ever a politically neutral LLM becomes available that'd be one of the first tasks I'd put it to: point out bias - any bias - in articles, encyclopedias and other 'sources' (yes, I know, WP is not an original source but for this purpose it is) of knowledge.
The problem is: even if you report only facts, there is an editorial function in choosing which facts to report, because it is physically impossible to report all facts. So someone can always point to some sort of bias on choosing which facts to report.
I don’t think that’s fair. Not that Wikipedia is without bias, but that their ivory tower biases are worlds apart from the lying brutal animalistic Hollywood signals herding the masses in “our democracy”.
Here's a few, from https://www.allsides.com/blog/wikipedia-biased
Six studies, including two from Harvard researchers, have found a left-wing bias at Wikipedia:
A 2024 analysis [1] by researcher David Rozado that used AllSides Media Bias Ratings [2] found Wikipedia associates right-of-center public figures with more negative sentiment than left-wing figures, and tends to associate left-leaning news organizations with more positive sentiment than right-leaning ones.
A Harvard study [3] found Wikipedia articles are more left-wing than Encyclopedia Britannica.
Another paper [4] from the same Harvard researchers found left-wing editors are more active and partisan on the site.
A 2018 analysis [5] found top-cited news outlets on Wikipedia are mainly left-wing.
Another analysis [6] using AllSides Media Bias Ratings found that pages on American politicians cite mostly left-wing news outlets.
American academics found [7] conservative editors are 6 times more likely to be sanctioned in Wikipedia policy enforcement.
There are far more sources out there.
If I show examples of biased pages - the one on Antifa is a good example - this will just devolve into a quibble about this or that sentence.
[1] https://davidrozado.substack.com/p/is-wikipedia-politically-...
[2] https://www.allsides.com/media-bias/ratings
[3] https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Do-Experts-or-Collecti...
[4] https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/17-028_e7788...
[7] https://thecritic.co.uk/the-left-wing-bias-of-wikipedia/
I figured that since you had a strong opinion on the subject you probably had strong evidence and could steer us to more directed reading to understand your viewpoint. Certainly we all should investigate things for ourselves, but sometimes it helps to have a place to start. You've certainly given us plenty to read through and consider. I'll read it with an open mind - some prereading thoughts that come to mind, is the citation bias proportional to factual accuracy (some outlets are more factually accurate than others, so one would expect to see them cited more often)? What's the distribution of the population of potentially citable sources (I.e. Is the bias a reflection of the population, or selection bias)? Is editor sanctions selective in enforcement or are conservative editors more likely to engage in behavior that warrants sanctions?
In other words, are we confusing correlations with causation? I don't know, I'll have to dig into the sources you provided and do my own research. I posit the questions now because it's the only thoughts I can contribute to the discussion at present.
This is not kindergarten so let's no go down this path. Asking for a politically neutral (see my explanation elsewhere in this thread if you don't understand what that means) source of information is not 'bad politics' but intended to avoid bad politics. I suspect that you 'identify' as either 'liberal' or 'progressive' so I assume you'd be less than thrilled if Wikipedia had a conservative bias. The same goes for conservatives and (traditional) capital-L Liberals who are less than thrilled to see Wikipedia having a 'left-wing' or 'progressive' bias. It just makes WP end up being lumped together with the legacy media, known to be untrustworthy where it counts and that is a shame for a site which in many ways still is a valuable resource as long as you avoid any and all subjects which have been pulled into the polarised political discourse.