The utter weirdness of a dude with more money than God running a "just asking questions" session about why Wikipedia needs donations blows my mind. It's not like the Wikimedia foundation budget is...
The utter weirdness of a dude with more money than God running a "just asking questions" session about why Wikipedia needs donations blows my mind. It's not like the Wikimedia foundation budget is a secret, you can easily look it up -- and people did immediately in response to his nonsense. At first, you'd think "Wow, just look at the absolutely laziness of it..." But it's actually not him being lazy, he doesn't care what the truth is. He's not actually being curious. He just wants to throw shade and distrust over the Wikimedia foundation.
There are many great criticisms of the Wikimedia Foundation growing too big, dishonestly raising money and spending wastefully and it is correct to scrutinise them. Elon, of course, isn't making...
There are many great criticisms of the Wikimedia Foundation growing too big, dishonestly raising money and spending wastefully and it is correct to scrutinise them. Elon, of course, isn't making any of them. Personally I switched my donation from Wikimedia to the Internet Archive (where I understand it is more needed).
Interesting that all 3 of your citations include the same author. The first one I found lacking context. An endowment of 300 mil overseen by a foundation was kind of framed as supposed to be...
Interesting that all 3 of your citations include the same author. The first one I found lacking context. An endowment of 300 mil overseen by a foundation was kind of framed as supposed to be suspicious? Compare that to the - what was it something like hundreds of billions that Harvard has? Or Musk?
This is starting to sound like an attack on the freedom of information. Something Musk is (IMO) taking the public face of for the Oligarchy.
I chose to cite The Signpost as it is written by editors of Wikipedia--people who support Wikipedia and want to see it succeed. The serious claims are not that Jimmy Wales is operating a slush...
I chose to cite The Signpost as it is written by editors of Wikipedia--people who support Wikipedia and want to see it succeed. The serious claims are not that Jimmy Wales is operating a slush fund but that Wikipedia is not in need of money and is not spending donations on the upkeep of Wikipedia (as they used to claim). Some more sources from outside of Wikipedia: Slate, The Washington Post, The Daily Dot
It is very valid to disagree with these opinions are believe that Wikimedia is spending appropiately but to consider scrutiny as an "attack on freedom of information" is absurd.
Wikimedia is famously open with its workings- including fiscal. At no point did I or the foundation suggest looking at their numbers as some kind of negative. That was you and the articles you’re...
Wikimedia is famously open with its workings- including fiscal. At no point did I or the foundation suggest looking at their numbers as some kind of negative.
That was you and the articles you’re citing.
I do suggest skepticism at those articles vis-a-vis the publications’ ownership, politics, and monetary need to manufacture drama/scandal/story (aka clickbait).
The part where you said Kinda did sound like you were suggesting looking at the numbers is some kind of negative. It's fine if you don't think those citations above are valid critiques and want to...
The part where you said
This is starting to sound like an attack on the freedom of information. Something Musk is (IMO) taking the public face of for the Oligarchy.
Kinda did sound like you were suggesting looking at the numbers is some kind of negative. It's fine if you don't think those citations above are valid critiques and want to counter them, but insinuating other people's underlying motivations is going beyond that.
/u/CosmicDefect nailed it. I take no issue with reviewing WF numbers. I do take issue when you’re doing so to reinforce an argument being made in support of Elon Musk- or any number of super...
/u/CosmicDefect nailed it. I take no issue with reviewing WF numbers. I do take issue when you’re doing so to reinforce an argument being made in support of Elon Musk- or any number of super sketchy known bad actors.
I don't particularly like the argument that because 3 Wikipedia blogs criticizing Wikipedia involved the same author (of which, two had multiple credited authors) that there is some suspicion of...
I don't particularly like the argument that because 3 Wikipedia blogs criticizing Wikipedia involved the same author (of which, two had multiple credited authors) that there is some suspicion of "an attack on the freedom of information". This is solved simply by looking at their profile:
I was a founding member of Wikipedia criticism site Wikipediocracy
and am a regular contributor to and former co-editor-in-chief of Wikipedia's
community newspaper, the Signpost.
So it's clearly mixed. He does have an entire site dedicated to scrutiny, but he himself was also very integral to an entire sector of Wikipedia that many may no know about (since it is "Wikipedia's community newspaper", aimed at people who dig deep into Wikipedia). This doesn't sound like the actions of someone who wants Wikipedia to burn.
And more obviously: it's not surprising for a EiC to signifigantly contribute to a newspaper website
I dunno. The first conclusion I leap to is that someone who built a whole site to scrutinize the community they used to be a part of? Totally plausible it’s someone who might have an axe to grind....
I dunno. The first conclusion I leap to is that someone who built a whole site to scrutinize the community they used to be a part of? Totally plausible it’s someone who might have an axe to grind.
My bigger point is why does this thread seem hell bent on casting stones at a famously open-modeled nonprofit with the mission of trying to be the worlds most open and largest repository of information? That seems kind of sacred to me, so instead of doing back-of-the-napkin math on their hosting costs, maybe bring the proof or at least be very clear and honest about why the scrutiny is needed, because I still don’t understand what we are doing here.
Used to? He made a signpost article today. Outside of a hiatus between 2016 and 2021 (very understandable period to take your mind off negativity), he's pretty much made bi-weekly columns for...
Exemplary
someone who built a whole site to scrutinize the community they used to be a part of? Totally plausible it’s someone who might have an axe to grind.
Used to? He made a signpost article today. Outside of a hiatus between 2016 and 2021 (very understandable period to take your mind off negativity), he's pretty much made bi-weekly columns for Signpost.
Someone who still contributes to wikipedia after over a decade later doesn't quite seem like one to have a chip on his shoulder. At the same time, someone who is that deeply entrenched in Wikipedia seems to be the exact kind of person I'd expect to meticulously record every fault with the site they pour so much time into (being involved with a site who's goal is to record any and everything, after all. Wikipedia has its own entry on internal scandals, too) Scrutiny in and of itself doesn't automatically come with a goal of destruction.
My bigger point is why does this thread seem hell bent on casting stones at a famously open-modeled nonprofit with the mission of trying to be the worlds most open and largest repository of information? That seems kind of sacred to me
Because the "encyclopedia of the internet" shouldn't be sacred, perhaps? Being an open-modeled nonprofit doesn't put one above scrutiny. Given all the scandals with non-profits it puts a bigger magnifying glass on how they manage funds. The same happens with Firefox and the Linux Foundation and now especially with OpenAI these days. I feel it's a good pulse to keep on your most used tools, remind yourself that the business around them isn't perfect and never rest on your laurels.
Regardless, I think you're reading a bit too deeply into this. The whole thread comes down to
Elon musk isn't engaging in good faith
there are indeed worthy criticisms
point #1 does not negate point #2
No one is calling to defund Wikipedia nor make Wales step down. At least, no significant community that I know of
maybe bring the proof or at least be very clear and honest about why the scrutiny is needed, because I still don’t understand what we are doing here.
I gave you my train of thought. but I'm a sample of one. There are certainly those with an agenda to destroy Wikipedia (which I feel like Musk is doing for... reason? I'd love someone to explain that one), potential competitors who want that top spot in SEO that wikipedia enjoys, and those that simply want jump on any available drama for drama's sake. But there are more acedemic and pragmatic reasons to scrutinize and I argue it keeps such companies honest.
I got the impression from this thread that people here are in the latter camp.
Great rebuttal, man. I appreciate all the work you put into it. I’ll gladly admit I’m incredibly suspicious of pretty much any and all sources these days- assuming everything but the stupidest...
Great rebuttal, man. I appreciate all the work you put into it.
I’ll gladly admit I’m incredibly suspicious of pretty much any and all sources these days- assuming everything but the stupidest content comes with some kind of agenda behind it. Especially when it comes to Musk.
But you’ve done a good job of making me want to look into the criticisms. Sounds like there might be something there? Money and a household name always brings out the grifters. Maybe some course correction or better oversight or something needs to happen. I don’t claim to have done any kind of due diligence to know one way or another- I was strictly being loyal to what might be the single most important contribution us Gen Xers have made to this blue marble- and when Musk went after it my hackles went up.
I should have separated out the issues as has been mentioned elsewhere in this thread- there’s whatever Musk said, and then there’s the discussion of WF’s fiscal disclosure and responsibilities. I didn’t do that.
In any event, I’ve enjoyed the exchange. Have a good night.
Edit: aww hell, it’s getting late and I forgot I started this bit going into a little rant agreeing with you Re: nonprofits, but tuckered out. I’m going to bed, but leaving this just to make me look good:
I’ve been working with open source licenses for many years- GPL 2 & 3, BSD, and if you want to count Creative Commons (I do), those as well- there’s one more eluding me atm, and I know a person or two at some of the orgs you mentioned. And I completely agree. Being a nonprofit means nothing- in fact, that whole industry (mostly the smaller ones) is in absolute shambles and addicted to grants in most many cases.
I'm with you for the most part. WF has some legit things we should be critical of, but Musk or a thread about the man trying to tear down something good isn't the vehicle for it.
I'm with you for the most part. WF has some legit things we should be critical of, but Musk or a thread about the man trying to tear down something good isn't the vehicle for it.
yes, but we're on TIldes. I'd hope we'd have a better charitable interpretation instead of assuming that a current contributor to Wikipedia who's contributed for over a decade is a bitter...
yes, but we're on TIldes. I'd hope we'd have a better charitable interpretation instead of assuming that a current contributor to Wikipedia who's contributed for over a decade is a bitter conservative.
Likewise, the articles being "criticized" aren't your run of the mill unhinged clog rant. They lean heavily on mostly public financials and quotes from various power editors and Wikimedia staff. Statements like these make me feel like those reacting didn't even skim the articles presented but tried to find some quick reason to dismiss them outright.
This isn't reddit, and I'd hope we could do better than that when it comes to such discussion. Strawman arguments are a bad model regardless of the target.
EDIT: coments are deleted but I wanted to reply to this:
This is hardly the first time I've seen, and rolled my eyes with great force at, those links. And now Musk is pointing his finger at the same things.
I will note in the main article that Musk:
Eleven minutes later, he offered $1bn if it would change its name to Dickipedia.
I can understand being scrutinous to sources, but to compare Musk's statements to the articles above is honestly insulting.
I will definitely admit it struck me as odd that Wikipedia's budget is only 2.5 million for hosting costs, and 90~ million for salaries. I'm not a software engineer but my company services around...
I will definitely admit it struck me as odd that Wikipedia's budget is only 2.5 million for hosting costs, and 90~ million for salaries. I'm not a software engineer but my company services around 200m~ users with a product that's far more intensive than Wikipedia, and our engineering team probably has less than 2-3 million in salary budget, if that.
I'm guessing there are a ton of people who work at Wikimedia who don't have anything to do with keeping the website running taking in the lion's share of those salaries. This rubs me the wrong way because of how desperate their donation messaging used to be, it feels disingenuous
While I don't know the details, I do know the hardest problem for any repository of information is keeping it current and accurate. They also have about 4.8 Billion page views a day, over 500 new...
While I don't know the details, I do know the hardest problem for any repository of information is keeping it current and accurate. They also have about 4.8 Billion page views a day, over 500 new articles a day, and maintain a persistent changelog of every edit. They're hardly a small operation.
It would be shocking to me if most of those wages were for software engineering and not moderating content.
Wikimedia says it had about 700 employees as of November 2022 (the time the article above was written). I know it's far from even, but that comes down to $128k/yr per employee. High in general,...
Wikimedia says it had about 700 employees as of November 2022 (the time the article above was written). I know it's far from even, but that comes down to $128k/yr per employee. High in general, but not unheard of for a tech company.
I think this is simply another participant in the pandemic boom (for what reason, I have no idea). They hired a lot more people over the pandemic, and in 2023 they (silently) laid off a portion of them as the economy slowed down.
for some support: the exec salaries are public information (and conveniently displayed on an article with a table) and while the CEO did get a "pay raise" in 2021 (in which case, I mean "high severance package" as they left in April 2021), the final amount is still very small compared to any large tech company. There are definitely some high up Google engineers making more than any number on that article.
Again, for what reason they did this I'm unsure. I don't know enough about the different products Wikimedia works on to really question if they needed increased staff.
It’s not weird. It’s deliberate and planned. It has become pretty reflexive for me that any story that doesn’t seem to make sense and/or is chalked up as some person of consequence being “dumb” -...
It’s not weird. It’s deliberate and planned. It has become pretty reflexive for me that any story that doesn’t seem to make sense and/or is chalked up as some person of consequence being “dumb” - that the situation is just an unexplained part of something else. We are not “supposed” to know, or said media outlet isn’t able to get editorial sign off on being able to connect the dots for us. Or it’s a distraction. But there is a reason. This is all we get anymore from media because of access-based reporting. With little to no revenue (or more accurately budget) for in-depth reporting, we are left with access-based journalism.
At risk of sounding like a conspiracy nut, I absolutely believe the bulk of modern problems are the result of entrenched powers finally waking up to the existential threat to them that is access to information. It’s a generational-long war on the internet.
What Musk really wants is a stochastic terror weapon, the social media equivalent of a LOIC, like Trump has demonstrated. He wants a level of attention and followership where he can just gesture...
What Musk really wants is a stochastic terror weapon, the social media equivalent of a LOIC, like Trump has demonstrated. He wants a level of attention and followership where he can just gesture imperially at something he dislikes, and a horde of fanboys, trolls, cybercriminals, the untreated mentally ill, and authorities currying favor (or ideologically aligned) will effectively cripple the target.
Whether Musk is doing it consciously or not, this is why we can't have nice things anymore.
Opinion articles like this are barely worth the paper they are printed on. The author doesn't like Musk and is using their platform to find a new angle to attack him (which is silly because there...
Opinion articles like this are barely worth the paper they are printed on. The author doesn't like Musk and is using their platform to find a new angle to attack him (which is silly because there are lots of obvious things to be critical of him for).
The title of the article (and the "quote" in the middle of it) is coming from the author's mind completely and not Musk's mouth, and you need to get halfway through the article before anything about Musk even comes up.
What did Musk do to get this article written? He likely himself went to Wikipedia to see something and saw the giant banner that they run all the time and made an off-the-cuff comment about it (like Musk often does) and then seeing people get all serious about that off-the-cuff comment made a further joke with "dickipedia".
Just feels like someone using a famous/controversial figure's name to get clicks on an article that does nothing to further a single person on the planet's life/understanding of anything.
See I think this is the kind of thing which slides or is possibly even interesting when you are with friends at the pub. If you have a massive platform and huge resources you kind of have a...
He likely himself went to Wikipedia to see something and saw the giant banner that they run all the time and made an off-the-cuff comment about it (like Musk often does) and then seeing people get all serious about that off-the-cuff comment made a further joke with "dickipedia".
See I think this is the kind of thing which slides or is possibly even interesting when you are with friends at the pub. If you have a massive platform and huge resources you kind of have a responsibility which goes beyond just publishing the first thought on your mind to millions of people.
Opinion articles like this are barely worth the paper they are printed on. The author doesn't like Musk and is using their platform to find a new angle to attack him (which is silly because there are lots of obvious things to be critical of him for).
Isn't this a valid criticism? We can criticise someone for more than one thing simultaneously.
no, it's not a valid criticism to blatantly makeup something and fear monger that he is going to do something untoward with regards to Wikipedia for making a dumb comment. I'd argue it's MORE...
no, it's not a valid criticism to blatantly makeup something and fear monger that he is going to do something untoward with regards to Wikipedia for making a dumb comment.
If you have a massive platform and huge resources you kind of have a responsibility which goes beyond just publishing the first thought on your mind to millions of people.
I'd argue it's MORE irresponsible for a journalist from a newspaper to be putting this out than someone posting on a social media site their thoughts ... the journalist is at least supposed to be representing a source of truth.
Physicists sticking their noses into topics they know nothing about and speaking authoritatively anyway is practically a meme. There are certainly people who have great intelligence in many areas,...
"yeah he was smart with physics and all that, but outside of that he's an idiot with bad takes"
Physicists sticking their noses into topics they know nothing about and speaking authoritatively anyway is practically a meme. There are certainly people who have great intelligence in many areas, but lots of folks have very fragmented expertise or smarts where they can switch from being incredibly insightful to being an utter fool in under 30 seconds. Part of wisdom I guess is being able to recognize those gaps and someone like Musk doesn't strike me as wise.
Feels like some anthropological concept at this point. You have singers like Taylor Swift that can engage her audience more than any local political campaign. You can have hate enabled more by a...
Feels like some anthropological concept at this point. You have singers like Taylor Swift that can engage her audience more than any local political campaign. You can have hate enabled more by a children's book author from 20 years ago than Jordan Peterson himself. I don't know why people want to seek out advice from subject matter experts for views outside of their subject matter, but it's such a common phenomenon these days
I recently read an interview with Walter Isaacson, the guy who wrote Musk's (and several others very famous person's) biography, and he said that Musk considers the acquisition of Twitter to be...
I recently read an interview with Walter Isaacson, the guy who wrote Musk's (and several others very famous person's) biography, and he said that Musk considers the acquisition of Twitter to be his biggest mistake, which also puts this into a slightly different light, and imo makes him look more sane.
I think it's more complicated than that. For a discussion of what we know about how smart Musk is, see: Book Review: Musk Smart people can also do dumb things, depending on circumstances.
I think it's more complicated than that. For a discussion of what we know about how smart Musk is, see:
From outside observation, in Musk’s case it seems that for some reason Twitter rooted itself deep in his psyche, and its disproportionate importance in his mind is directly responsible for his...
From outside observation, in Musk’s case it seems that for some reason Twitter rooted itself deep in his psyche, and its disproportionate importance in his mind is directly responsible for his apparent about-face in the past several years. Prior to using Twitter heavily he came off as a good deal more well adjusted if a bit eccentric.
It’d be interesting to see how different things would be today if social media turned out to be a fad, with Twitter, Facebook, etc having shut down around 2012 or 2013.
I think Musk's intelligence is largely orthogonal to his myriad of flaws, which principally revolve around his moral, ethical, and sociopolitical views. That said, I don't think it's controversial...
I think Musk's intelligence is largely orthogonal to his myriad of flaws, which principally revolve around his moral, ethical, and sociopolitical views. That said, I don't think it's controversial to say that his fanboys certainly have an overly inflated view of his intelligence, no matter how intelligent he actually is in practice, because that devoted subset treats him like he's god incarnate on that front.
The "fanboys" are in turn reacting to people who claim Musk is stupid because they don't like the many bad things he did. And so the cycle continues. I think it's better to opt out. There's an...
The "fanboys" are in turn reacting to people who claim Musk is stupid because they don't like the many bad things he did. And so the cycle continues.
I think it's better to opt out. There's an unending supply of people saying dumb things on the Internet and we don't need to care about it.
Unfortunately it's difficult to opt out when one of these people isn't just "someone saying dumb things on the Internet", but someone with significant financial (and thus political) power whose...
Unfortunately it's difficult to opt out when one of these people isn't just "someone saying dumb things on the Internet", but someone with significant financial (and thus political) power whose dumn takes can actually end up having hugely negative effects on others' lives.
But then again he did get me to quit Twitter, so he's improved at least one person's life.
How to cover what the chief trolls say is indeed tricky, but I think a first step is to recognize that it's trolling. Sometimes trolling can do real harm. Often there's not much to it. In this...
How to cover what the chief trolls say is indeed tricky, but I think a first step is to recognize that it's trolling.
Sometimes trolling can do real harm. Often there's not much to it. In this case, I think Wikipedia will be fine?
In this particular case, probably, assuming people who are willing to donate out of spite balance out the people who would have otherwise donated but won't (which is probably true). But I think...
In this particular case, probably, assuming people who are willing to donate out of spite balance out the people who would have otherwise donated but won't (which is probably true). But I think the article it right in pointing out the way this particular target emblemizes a certain trend in how Musk views the world.
Either way: Studies show that if you enjoy trolling, it makes you a bit of a jerk elsewhere in life. I find it preferrable to look down on jerks instead of glorify them. I say this with some...
Either way: Studies show that if you enjoy trolling, it makes you a bit of a jerk elsewhere in life.
I find it preferrable to look down on jerks instead of glorify them. I say this with some degree of self-awareness of my own jerk tendencies.
Musk is intelligent. What he seems to lack is EQ, which will eventually make any smart person do stupid things. I suspect also that years of sleep deprivation had an effect. Reduced forebrain...
Musk is intelligent. What he seems to lack is EQ, which will eventually make any smart person do stupid things.
I suspect also that years of sleep deprivation had an effect. Reduced forebrain moderation of amygdala responses combined with obsessive social media binging is not a great combination.
If lacking a certain quality makes you do stupid things, repeatedly, can you actually claim to be intelligent? If sleep deprivation caused otherwise intelligent to be stupid, then basically no...
If lacking a certain quality makes you do stupid things, repeatedly, can you actually claim to be intelligent?
If sleep deprivation caused otherwise intelligent to be stupid, then basically no parents would have ever been considered intelligent ...
not really true, lots of parents aren't sleep deprived anymore. But talk to any parent that currently has young children and they clearly are not firing on all cylinders. That's just what chronic...
If sleep deprivation caused otherwise intelligent to be stupid, then basically no parents would have ever been considered intelligent ...
not really true, lots of parents aren't sleep deprived anymore. But talk to any parent that currently has young children and they clearly are not firing on all cylinders. That's just what chronic sleep deprivation does.
Well, yeah, that was my point. There's been plenty of "intelligent" people that are also chronically sleep deprived. The person to whom I initially responded insinuated that some of Musk's...
But talk to any parent that currently has young children and they clearly are not firing on all cylinders.
Well, yeah, that was my point. There's been plenty of "intelligent" people that are also chronically sleep deprived. The person to whom I initially responded insinuated that some of Musk's "stupid" behavior could be chalked up, in part, to sleep deprivation.
I do not believe that to be the case. I do not believe Elon Musk to be "intelligent" in the same way we view folks like Stephen Hawking, Einstein, Nikola Tesla, and others as "intelligent".
I believe Musk is a talented con man, born into money and with a knack for convincing people that he is more than he is.
Oh OK, that makes a lot more sense! Yeah I agree. The reason Musk might come off as sleep deprived isn't because he knows a lot and isn't able to recall things well due to sleep deprivation, it's...
Oh OK, that makes a lot more sense! Yeah I agree. The reason Musk might come off as sleep deprived isn't because he knows a lot and isn't able to recall things well due to sleep deprivation, it's because he knows very little and sometimes runs out of bullshit is my read.
That is your post in its entirety. I'm curious, what implication did I miss? If I can sum up what I'm reading: Musk lacks EQ ("Emotional Intelligence"). Lacking EQ makes a "smart person" do stupid...
Musk is intelligent. What he seems to lack is EQ, which will eventually make any smart person do stupid things.
I suspect also that years of sleep deprivation had an effect. Reduced forebrain moderation of amygdala responses combined with obsessive social media binging is not a great combination.
That is your post in its entirety. I'm curious, what implication did I miss?
If I can sum up what I'm reading:
Musk lacks EQ ("Emotional Intelligence").
Lacking EQ makes a "smart person" do stupid things.
Years of sleep deprivation could also make a person do stupid things.
Science jargon I won't try to parse, about the brain combined with obsessing over social media isn't good for one's health.
Please point out what nuance I missed - present, implied, or otherwise.
I respectfully disagree. Deliberate obtuseness is a smokescreen tactic. Everyone keeps calling all these bad actors dumb because nobody is willing, brave enough, or able to call them out for this...
I respectfully disagree. Deliberate obtuseness is a smokescreen tactic. Everyone keeps calling all these bad actors dumb because nobody is willing, brave enough, or able to call them out for this continued slide into fascism… and it’s through chaos they’re best able to operate.
It's certainly the case with his lawyers, but that has more to do with his having a tendency to neither listen to his laywers nor to pay them on time. The latter especially tends to hinder you...
It's certainly the case with his lawyers, but that has more to do with his having a tendency to neither listen to his laywers nor to pay them on time. The latter especially tends to hinder you from hiring competent people.
The utter weirdness of a dude with more money than God running a "just asking questions" session about why Wikipedia needs donations blows my mind. It's not like the Wikimedia foundation budget is a secret, you can easily look it up -- and people did immediately in response to his nonsense. At first, you'd think "Wow, just look at the absolutely laziness of it..." But it's actually not him being lazy, he doesn't care what the truth is. He's not actually being curious. He just wants to throw shade and distrust over the Wikimedia foundation.
There are many great criticisms of the Wikimedia Foundation growing too big, dishonestly raising money and spending wastefully and it is correct to scrutinise them. Elon, of course, isn't making any of them. Personally I switched my donation from Wikimedia to the Internet Archive (where I understand it is more needed).
Interesting that all 3 of your citations include the same author. The first one I found lacking context. An endowment of 300 mil overseen by a foundation was kind of framed as supposed to be suspicious? Compare that to the - what was it something like hundreds of billions that Harvard has? Or Musk?
This is starting to sound like an attack on the freedom of information. Something Musk is (IMO) taking the public face of for the Oligarchy.
I chose to cite The Signpost as it is written by editors of Wikipedia--people who support Wikipedia and want to see it succeed. The serious claims are not that Jimmy Wales is operating a slush fund but that Wikipedia is not in need of money and is not spending donations on the upkeep of Wikipedia (as they used to claim). Some more sources from outside of Wikipedia: Slate, The Washington Post, The Daily Dot
It is very valid to disagree with these opinions are believe that Wikimedia is spending appropiately but to consider scrutiny as an "attack on freedom of information" is absurd.
Wikimedia is famously open with its workings- including fiscal. At no point did I or the foundation suggest looking at their numbers as some kind of negative.
That was you and the articles you’re citing.
I do suggest skepticism at those articles vis-a-vis the publications’ ownership, politics, and monetary need to manufacture drama/scandal/story (aka clickbait).
The part where you said
Kinda did sound like you were suggesting looking at the numbers is some kind of negative. It's fine if you don't think those citations above are valid critiques and want to counter them, but insinuating other people's underlying motivations is going beyond that.
/u/CosmicDefect nailed it. I take no issue with reviewing WF numbers. I do take issue when you’re doing so to reinforce an argument being made in support of Elon Musk- or any number of super sketchy known bad actors.
I don't particularly like the argument that because 3 Wikipedia blogs criticizing Wikipedia involved the same author (of which, two had multiple credited authors) that there is some suspicion of "an attack on the freedom of information". This is solved simply by looking at their profile:
So it's clearly mixed. He does have an entire site dedicated to scrutiny, but he himself was also very integral to an entire sector of Wikipedia that many may no know about (since it is "Wikipedia's community newspaper", aimed at people who dig deep into Wikipedia). This doesn't sound like the actions of someone who wants Wikipedia to burn.
And more obviously: it's not surprising for a EiC to signifigantly contribute to a newspaper website
I dunno. The first conclusion I leap to is that someone who built a whole site to scrutinize the community they used to be a part of? Totally plausible it’s someone who might have an axe to grind.
My bigger point is why does this thread seem hell bent on casting stones at a famously open-modeled nonprofit with the mission of trying to be the worlds most open and largest repository of information? That seems kind of sacred to me, so instead of doing back-of-the-napkin math on their hosting costs, maybe bring the proof or at least be very clear and honest about why the scrutiny is needed, because I still don’t understand what we are doing here.
Used to? He made a signpost article today. Outside of a hiatus between 2016 and 2021 (very understandable period to take your mind off negativity), he's pretty much made bi-weekly columns for Signpost.
Someone who still contributes to wikipedia after over a decade later doesn't quite seem like one to have a chip on his shoulder. At the same time, someone who is that deeply entrenched in Wikipedia seems to be the exact kind of person I'd expect to meticulously record every fault with the site they pour so much time into (being involved with a site who's goal is to record any and everything, after all. Wikipedia has its own entry on internal scandals, too) Scrutiny in and of itself doesn't automatically come with a goal of destruction.
Because the "encyclopedia of the internet" shouldn't be sacred, perhaps? Being an open-modeled nonprofit doesn't put one above scrutiny. Given all the scandals with non-profits it puts a bigger magnifying glass on how they manage funds. The same happens with Firefox and the Linux Foundation and now especially with OpenAI these days. I feel it's a good pulse to keep on your most used tools, remind yourself that the business around them isn't perfect and never rest on your laurels.
Regardless, I think you're reading a bit too deeply into this. The whole thread comes down to
No one is calling to defund Wikipedia nor make Wales step down. At least, no significant community that I know of
I gave you my train of thought. but I'm a sample of one. There are certainly those with an agenda to destroy Wikipedia (which I feel like Musk is doing for... reason? I'd love someone to explain that one), potential competitors who want that top spot in SEO that wikipedia enjoys, and those that simply want jump on any available drama for drama's sake. But there are more acedemic and pragmatic reasons to scrutinize and I argue it keeps such companies honest.
I got the impression from this thread that people here are in the latter camp.
Great rebuttal, man. I appreciate all the work you put into it.
I’ll gladly admit I’m incredibly suspicious of pretty much any and all sources these days- assuming everything but the stupidest content comes with some kind of agenda behind it. Especially when it comes to Musk.
But you’ve done a good job of making me want to look into the criticisms. Sounds like there might be something there? Money and a household name always brings out the grifters. Maybe some course correction or better oversight or something needs to happen. I don’t claim to have done any kind of due diligence to know one way or another- I was strictly being loyal to what might be the single most important contribution us Gen Xers have made to this blue marble- and when Musk went after it my hackles went up.
I should have separated out the issues as has been mentioned elsewhere in this thread- there’s whatever Musk said, and then there’s the discussion of WF’s fiscal disclosure and responsibilities. I didn’t do that.
In any event, I’ve enjoyed the exchange. Have a good night.
Edit: aww hell, it’s getting late and I forgot I started this bit going into a little rant agreeing with you Re: nonprofits, but tuckered out. I’m going to bed, but leaving this just to make me look good:
I’ve been working with open source licenses for many years- GPL 2 & 3, BSD, and if you want to count Creative Commons (I do), those as well- there’s one more eluding me atm, and I know a person or two at some of the orgs you mentioned. And I completely agree. Being a nonprofit means nothing- in fact, that whole industry (mostly the smaller ones) is in absolute shambles and addicted to grants in
mostmany cases.I'm with you for the most part. WF has some legit things we should be critical of, but Musk or a thread about the man trying to tear down something good isn't the vehicle for it.
Thank you. Very good point. Those two things should be separated out.
yes, but we're on TIldes. I'd hope we'd have a better charitable interpretation instead of assuming that a current contributor to Wikipedia who's contributed for over a decade is a bitter conservative.
Likewise, the articles being "criticized" aren't your run of the mill unhinged clog rant. They lean heavily on mostly public financials and quotes from various power editors and Wikimedia staff. Statements like these make me feel like those reacting didn't even skim the articles presented but tried to find some quick reason to dismiss them outright.
This isn't reddit, and I'd hope we could do better than that when it comes to such discussion. Strawman arguments are a bad model regardless of the target.
EDIT: coments are deleted but I wanted to reply to this:
I will note in the main article that Musk:
I can understand being scrutinous to sources, but to compare Musk's statements to the articles above is honestly insulting.
{breaks out his best, but still absolutely terrible and problematic Sam Jackson imitation}
GodDamn Right!
{/end bad imitation}
I will definitely admit it struck me as odd that Wikipedia's budget is only 2.5 million for hosting costs, and 90~ million for salaries. I'm not a software engineer but my company services around 200m~ users with a product that's far more intensive than Wikipedia, and our engineering team probably has less than 2-3 million in salary budget, if that.
I'm guessing there are a ton of people who work at Wikimedia who don't have anything to do with keeping the website running taking in the lion's share of those salaries. This rubs me the wrong way because of how desperate their donation messaging used to be, it feels disingenuous
While I don't know the details, I do know the hardest problem for any repository of information is keeping it current and accurate. They also have about 4.8 Billion page views a day, over 500 new articles a day, and maintain a persistent changelog of every edit. They're hardly a small operation.
It would be shocking to me if most of those wages were for software engineering and not moderating content.
Edit: Some transparancy
I thought Wikipedia was mostly run on volunteer moderators? Similar system to reddit
Wikimedia says it had about 700 employees as of November 2022 (the time the article above was written). I know it's far from even, but that comes down to $128k/yr per employee. High in general, but not unheard of for a tech company.
I think this is simply another participant in the pandemic boom (for what reason, I have no idea). They hired a lot more people over the pandemic, and in 2023 they (silently) laid off a portion of them as the economy slowed down.
for some support: the exec salaries are public information (and conveniently displayed on an article with a table) and while the CEO did get a "pay raise" in 2021 (in which case, I mean "high severance package" as they left in April 2021), the final amount is still very small compared to any large tech company. There are definitely some high up Google engineers making more than any number on that article.
Again, for what reason they did this I'm unsure. I don't know enough about the different products Wikimedia works on to really question if they needed increased staff.
Here's also a rabbit hole of Wikipedians discussing the WF's donation drive tactics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:PermanentLink/1123763881#RfC_on_the_banners_for_the_December_2022_fundraising_campaign
It's incredibly lengthy, but a lot of reasonable responses in here.
It’s not weird. It’s deliberate and planned. It has become pretty reflexive for me that any story that doesn’t seem to make sense and/or is chalked up as some person of consequence being “dumb” - that the situation is just an unexplained part of something else. We are not “supposed” to know, or said media outlet isn’t able to get editorial sign off on being able to connect the dots for us. Or it’s a distraction. But there is a reason. This is all we get anymore from media because of access-based reporting. With little to no revenue (or more accurately budget) for in-depth reporting, we are left with access-based journalism.
At risk of sounding like a conspiracy nut, I absolutely believe the bulk of modern problems are the result of entrenched powers finally waking up to the existential threat to them that is access to information. It’s a generational-long war on the internet.
I firmly believe that Musk bought Twitter and is dismantling it for one simple reason- to stop Color Revolutions. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colour_revolution?wprov=sfti1# )
Side note- there used to be a very long table of all the different color revolutions on Wikipedia, but I can’t seem to find it or it’s gone.
So- watch for more ugly attacks and sabotaging of Wikimedia. I bet $5 more are coming.
I donated to wikipedia because of this!
Seconded!
What Musk really wants is a stochastic terror weapon, the social media equivalent of a LOIC, like Trump has demonstrated. He wants a level of attention and followership where he can just gesture imperially at something he dislikes, and a horde of fanboys, trolls, cybercriminals, the untreated mentally ill, and authorities currying favor (or ideologically aligned) will effectively cripple the target.
Whether Musk is doing it consciously or not, this is why we can't have nice things anymore.
Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?
I understood that reference!
News of the day, everday: Elon remains a man child in a billionaires body.
He's been shattering the idea that "Rich people are rich because they are smart".
Opinion articles like this are barely worth the paper they are printed on. The author doesn't like Musk and is using their platform to find a new angle to attack him (which is silly because there are lots of obvious things to be critical of him for).
The title of the article (and the "quote" in the middle of it) is coming from the author's mind completely and not Musk's mouth, and you need to get halfway through the article before anything about Musk even comes up.
What did Musk do to get this article written? He likely himself went to Wikipedia to see something and saw the giant banner that they run all the time and made an off-the-cuff comment about it (like Musk often does) and then seeing people get all serious about that off-the-cuff comment made a further joke with "dickipedia".
Just feels like someone using a famous/controversial figure's name to get clicks on an article that does nothing to further a single person on the planet's life/understanding of anything.
See I think this is the kind of thing which slides or is possibly even interesting when you are with friends at the pub. If you have a massive platform and huge resources you kind of have a responsibility which goes beyond just publishing the first thought on your mind to millions of people.
Isn't this a valid criticism? We can criticise someone for more than one thing simultaneously.
no, it's not a valid criticism to blatantly makeup something and fear monger that he is going to do something untoward with regards to Wikipedia for making a dumb comment.
I'd argue it's MORE irresponsible for a journalist from a newspaper to be putting this out than someone posting on a social media site their thoughts ... the journalist is at least supposed to be representing a source of truth.
Physicists sticking their noses into topics they know nothing about and speaking authoritatively anyway is practically a meme. There are certainly people who have great intelligence in many areas, but lots of folks have very fragmented expertise or smarts where they can switch from being incredibly insightful to being an utter fool in under 30 seconds. Part of wisdom I guess is being able to recognize those gaps and someone like Musk doesn't strike me as wise.
This has been well documented amongst Nobel Prize winners.
Feels like some anthropological concept at this point. You have singers like Taylor Swift that can engage her audience more than any local political campaign. You can have hate enabled more by a children's book author from 20 years ago than Jordan Peterson himself. I don't know why people want to seek out advice from subject matter experts for views outside of their subject matter, but it's such a common phenomenon these days
I recently read an interview with Walter Isaacson, the guy who wrote Musk's (and several others very famous person's) biography, and he said that Musk considers the acquisition of Twitter to be his biggest mistake, which also puts this into a slightly different light, and imo makes him look more sane.
If he truly believes that then why doesn't he just cut his losses and offload it?
I think it's more complicated than that. For a discussion of what we know about how smart Musk is, see:
Book Review: Musk
Smart people can also do dumb things, depending on circumstances.
From outside observation, in Musk’s case it seems that for some reason Twitter rooted itself deep in his psyche, and its disproportionate importance in his mind is directly responsible for his apparent about-face in the past several years. Prior to using Twitter heavily he came off as a good deal more well adjusted if a bit eccentric.
It’d be interesting to see how different things would be today if social media turned out to be a fad, with Twitter, Facebook, etc having shut down around 2012 or 2013.
I think Musk's intelligence is largely orthogonal to his myriad of flaws, which principally revolve around his moral, ethical, and sociopolitical views. That said, I don't think it's controversial to say that his fanboys certainly have an overly inflated view of his intelligence, no matter how intelligent he actually is in practice, because that devoted subset treats him like he's god incarnate on that front.
The "fanboys" are in turn reacting to people who claim Musk is stupid because they don't like the many bad things he did. And so the cycle continues.
I think it's better to opt out. There's an unending supply of people saying dumb things on the Internet and we don't need to care about it.
Unfortunately it's difficult to opt out when one of these people isn't just "someone saying dumb things on the Internet", but someone with significant financial (and thus political) power whose dumn takes can actually end up having hugely negative effects on others' lives.
But then again he did get me to quit Twitter, so he's improved at least one person's life.
How to cover what the chief trolls say is indeed tricky, but I think a first step is to recognize that it's trolling.
Sometimes trolling can do real harm. Often there's not much to it. In this case, I think Wikipedia will be fine?
In this particular case, probably, assuming people who are willing to donate out of spite balance out the people who would have otherwise donated but won't (which is probably true). But I think the article it right in pointing out the way this particular target emblemizes a certain trend in how Musk views the world.
Either way: Studies show that if you enjoy trolling, it makes you a bit of a jerk elsewhere in life.
I find it preferrable to look down on jerks instead of glorify them. I say this with some degree of self-awareness of my own jerk tendencies.
Musk is intelligent. What he seems to lack is EQ, which will eventually make any smart person do stupid things.
I suspect also that years of sleep deprivation had an effect. Reduced forebrain moderation of amygdala responses combined with obsessive social media binging is not a great combination.
If lacking a certain quality makes you do stupid things, repeatedly, can you actually claim to be intelligent?
If sleep deprivation caused otherwise intelligent to be stupid, then basically no parents would have ever been considered intelligent ...
not really true, lots of parents aren't sleep deprived anymore. But talk to any parent that currently has young children and they clearly are not firing on all cylinders. That's just what chronic sleep deprivation does.
Well, yeah, that was my point. There's been plenty of "intelligent" people that are also chronically sleep deprived. The person to whom I initially responded insinuated that some of Musk's "stupid" behavior could be chalked up, in part, to sleep deprivation.
I do not believe that to be the case. I do not believe Elon Musk to be "intelligent" in the same way we view folks like Stephen Hawking, Einstein, Nikola Tesla, and others as "intelligent".
I believe Musk is a talented con man, born into money and with a knack for convincing people that he is more than he is.
Oh OK, that makes a lot more sense! Yeah I agree. The reason Musk might come off as sleep deprived isn't because he knows a lot and isn't able to recall things well due to sleep deprivation, it's because he knows very little and sometimes runs out of bullshit is my read.
I'm reasonably sure there was more nuance than that present and implied in my post
That is your post in its entirety. I'm curious, what implication did I miss?
If I can sum up what I'm reading:
Please point out what nuance I missed - present, implied, or otherwise.
I respectfully disagree. Deliberate obtuseness is a smokescreen tactic. Everyone keeps calling all these bad actors dumb because nobody is willing, brave enough, or able to call them out for this continued slide into fascism… and it’s through chaos they’re best able to operate.
I feel like Trump surrounds himself with morons and clowns. They're the ones we tend to see anyways.
It's certainly the case with his lawyers, but that has more to do with his having a tendency to neither listen to his laywers nor to pay them on time. The latter especially tends to hinder you from hiring competent people.
And his PR and other front facing people. Kellyanne Conway and Sean Spicer come to mind.