The crying “History” button at the top right sends its regards. Yes, the World Jewish Congress has published a report that demands Wikipedia add a feature to view the history of articles, see what actions were performed by whom, and “host forums and discussions within the Wikipedia community to address concerns about neutrality and gather feedback for policy improvements”. It also wants to force all admins and above to reveal their real names.

  • Kairos@lemmy.today
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    8 months ago

    Can you not literally see the edit history of Wikipedia articles?

          • Kairos@lemmy.today
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            8 months ago

            Yes I understand it now. Just didn’t read your comment correctly. Thank you.

          • Legendsofanus@lemmy.world
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            8 months ago

            I have been curious about this since the subreddit on reddit, is The Onion the magazine from Harry Potter universe that wrote ridiculous things or is it a real magazine? I always think of someone from HP deliberately writing dumb articles (perhaps Rita Skeeter named someone?) So i’m not sure.

            • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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              8 months ago

              The Onion is a real paper (or at least while it was in print, it’s all digital now) and has existed since the late ‘80s, well before Harry Potter came along.

            • EdibleFriend@lemmy.world
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              8 months ago

              That was The Quibbler. Skeeter wrote for the normal paper. She was normal level bullshit. Quibbler was ‘frogs on the moon’ level bullshit.

            • Aatube@kbin.socialOP
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              8 months ago

              The Onion writes dumb soot on purpose to amuse people while including a disclaimer of “none of this is real”.

          • Kairos@lemmy.today
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            8 months ago

            It doesn’t seem like a satire site.

            Edit: Oh I see the emphasis on seems now.

    • 【J】【u】【s】【t】【Z】@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      The report actually suggests a new bias and neutrality editing framework with its own edit history, unrelated to existing content editing tools.

      In other words, the argument is that the current editing framework does not do enough to specifically address bias and neutrality. That seems pretty clear to me regardless of current events.

      I know edits to add and correct bias do happen. I agree it would be nice if power editors, at least, were not anonymous. I wish there was a Wikipedia that could only be edited be verified, trusted experts. The potential is there with the fediverse. And in fact I thought Wikipedia was working on this. I requested an invite but never got one.

      Such edits for neutrality (as well as to insert bias) are made. There is a history. It is talked about and recorded. It is searchable. It is distributed. Man, you should hear these Wikipedia editors talk to each other if you haven’t, it’s like a different language.

      Anyway: the source article suggests an extra layer to that system, with public standards and criteria supported by research, which it also proposed, and suggests that editors could be monitored for bias based on such standards.

      I see the potential for draconian abuse but this is one website. As I said, I hoped there would be a fediverse instance to consolidate legitimate expert, factual information. Someone shared a website with me the other day that included such technical analysis for current events. I will link it when I get another minute.

      E: here’s that link https://www.sciencemediacentre.org

      • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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        8 months ago

        Wikipedia do lock articles so that only editors with good standing can change them. But obviously that’s not necessary for every article because 99% of articles are not political and are in fact about a type of moss that grows in the Canary Islands.

      • strawberrysocial@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        A wikipedia written by only verified trusted experts is called an encyclopedia, we have those online now. I think there was once a wikipedia-like online encyclopedia way back when in the late 90s or early 2000s that would only allow verified experts in whichever subject to participate to edit and create articles. I can’t find what I’m talking about atm but it basically died from lack of participation and only had a hundred or so entries.

      • monk@lemmy.unboiled.info
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        8 months ago

        The current platform does enough to address bias and neutrality. If you are doing so bad you want a lopsided view of what you did, you’re supposed to fork it and let it die like other free speech oppressors do, not compile PDF with stupid suggestions to mainline.

      • HelixDab2@lemm.ee
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        8 months ago

        I agree it would be nice if power editors, at least, were not anonymous.

        Everything has to be sourced from a reputable source. So I don’t see why this is a huge problem. As long as they’re sourcing their edits, and using reputable, verifiable sources, why should it matter if they’re anonymous or not?

      • Aatube@kbin.socialOP
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        8 months ago

        Also, reading the 3 pages of recommendations again, I don’t think that’s what it said:

        Transparent Editing History: Ensure that all changes to articles are transparent and traceable.
        This helps in identifying editors who may consistently introduce bias into articles.

        That sounds like normal editing history for everything to me.

      • Aatube@kbin.socialOP
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        8 months ago

        A 'pedia written by invite only was Nupedia, which has been dead for a very long time. So basically you meant that the article suggests to add a forked history for a more neutral version? Not sure if that makes it dumber or smarter.