this post was submitted on 23 Apr 2025

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Wikipedia adds the temporary accounts feature in response to the Heritage Foundation’s threats to dox their editors (lemmy.ca)

submitted 3 days ago by Sunshine@lemmy.ca to c/privacy@lemmy.dbzer0.com

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[–] Zorsith@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 points 3 days ago

I imagine this has been underway since whenever that legal kerfluffle in India happened

[–] cyrano@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 3 days ago (2 children)

What is the reason?

[–] technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Wikipedia has dox'd "anonymous" editors by default for its entire existence.

[–] cyrano@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 2 days ago

So temporary means anon?

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[+] Demdaru@lemmy.world -12 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (3 children)

Wikipedia is too liberal.

Web encyclopedia is too free in sourcing actual information.

Can we rewind to 2010? I know these weren't really that great either, but world didn't burn and I was a lot more ignorant.

Edit: As one person below me noticed, I drawn fun at the level of idiotism that these sentences bear. Sadly, it was a subtle humor.

[–] skye@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago (3 children)

what's the problem with free actual information on the world?

Also Wikipedia is a s politically unbiased as it can be. Every artivle presents just facts and no opinions or emotions.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Every artivle presents just facts and no opinions or emotions.

Propaganda is the dissemination of information—facts, arguments, rumours, half-truths, or lies—to influence public opinion.

A biased release of information (for instance, a local news channel that reports exclusively on black criminals and white victims) is presenting exclusively facts and can be fully devoid of an opinion section or an editorial appeal to emotion, and still have a powerful impact on how its audience perceives their world. More banally, if you have a sports section that exclusively covers baseball games, baseball scores, and baseball players' life events, you're going to incline your audience towards baseball as a topic of conversation and as a cultural touchstone.

Wikipedia biases itself towards western media, particularly larger and more corporately owned and operated media conglomerates. It's editors are primarily English-speaking and source data from English-language academic sources. It's founder and the original team of editors are whiter more professional class GenXers, and are biased towards researching and recording a body of historical and cultural touchstones most relevant to this cohort. The moderation team has standards that were implemented by these founders and original team members and are biased in turn.

Deliberately or not, if you click the "Random" button on the website, you're going to end up on a page with a decidedly white, english-speaking college-degreed GenX bias.

I love Wikipedia, and I treasure it as a project dedicated to accruing and curating enormous amounts of information. But it is absolutely a biased source.

[–] mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works 0 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

The issue with your take is that literally everything has a bias. But Wikipedia does what it can to correct for that bias. Any good media outlet will attempt to reduce their bias when possible.

Unfortunately, all too often people on the internet will see someone complaining "this outlet is biased, you can't trust it". Then those people get pushed towards some other source that does nothing to correct for bias with those sources sometimes being just outright propaganda.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 0 points 2 days ago

The issue with your take is that literally "everything has a bias*.

Absolutely.

But Wikipedia does what it can to correct for that bias.

Absolutely not.

Any good media outlet will attempt to reduce their bias

Corporate media attempts to reduce the appearance of bias in order to maximize its customer base. But that is because the call to action of corporate media is to indulge in the consumer economy.

Activist media attempts to deliberately agitate its audience in order to affect political change. That is because the call to action of activist media is to achieve political reform/revolution.

Social Media attempts to maximize the number of interactions with the online material. That is because the call to action of social media is repeat engagement and continuous contribution (which the site's administers consider valuable free labor). Wikipedia is a form of social media whose business model revolves around power-users continuously contributing volunteer time and money. And since the root of the organization is liberal-libertarian, and the goals of the organization are similarly skewed, the incentives to participate flow towards like-minded people.

Unfortunately, all too often people on the internet will see someone complaining “this outlet is biased, you can’t trust it”.

They're virtually never wrong. But the impulse to call out bias is rooted in one's prior understanding of the world. It's this friction that causes schism, not the degree of bias within the media.

Then those people get pushed towards some other source

Sure. But what you're neglecting is the people who remain. People who are also biased, but whose biases segway with the existing material.

[–] IndustryStandard@lemmy.world 0 points 2 days ago

Wikipedia is hyper biased on any nonscientific topic.

[–] technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com -5 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Also Wikipedia is a s politically unbiased as it can be. Every artivle presents just facts and no opinions or emotions.

lmao. Half of the articles are corporate propaganda and the rest are CIA.

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[–] technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com -3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Wikipedia is too liberal.

Yes, wikipedia is right-wing. It reproduces hegemonic narratives that serve the status quo. That's the point of them doxing anonymous editors by default for the past couple decades.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 0 points 2 days ago

Wikipedia is too liberal.

So, I agree with this on its face. Wikipedia is absolutely a source of information that's couched in liberal rhetoric, biased towards liberal media sources, and heavily pruned to conform to a liberal reading of history and modernity.

The initial response conservatives made to address "liberal bias" was to introduce "Conservapedia" and other conservative-branded alternative publications. And that did work in the sense that it gave them a (more biased, less enthusiastically edited) alternative source of information. The problem was nobody taking it seriously.

Just like Twitter (which was also overwhelmingly biased towards liberal users, content, and advertising) the problem wasn't that conservatives couldn't compete. It was that Twitter was broadly considered a source of truth even by other conservatives. Elon's buyout was necessary to capture and eliminate an alternative popular narrative. And that has largely been successful.

Web encyclopedia is too free in sourcing actual information.

That's not really the critique, though. Conservatives regularly complained that their news media and their editors were being silenced. They couldn't post long-form articles about Black Crime or fill up the Criticism section of liberal politicians with right-wing critiques and allegations. They couldn't simply throw an army of their own editors into an open sandbox. The existing editors had administrative control over what is still a privately owned and operated environment.

Wikipedia wasn't something they could control purely by weight of financial resources. And that's unforgivable.

Can we rewind to 2010?

Bring. Back. Blogging!

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