On Thursday I was looking at the Gulf of Tonkin incident article, which if you don't know went like this:
August 2: US ships open fire on Vietnamese ships, US reports the US ships were attacked
August 4: Nothing happens, US reports that US ships were attacked, the US goes to war with Vietnam.
This was leaked by a former NSA staffer in the early 2000s. In response the NSA eventually released a heavily redacted and manipulated report a few years later (the US ships really were attacked on August 2, but after the US fired 'warning shots'). After an apparently long wikipedia edit war, the government propaganda can be cited, hurray, but not the original report, of course. Reading through the talk page was full of 'war history experts' (cough nazis cough cough) calling people conspiracy theorists and saying "the men who served on the Maddox knew they were attacked".
Jesus, at least the Nazis bothered to set up a proper false flag op.
Yep, Wikipedia is propaganda, very subtle propaganda, and it masks itself as 'the world's encyclopedia', it also intelligently drew all traffic to it (so that now sources barely matter and all you look up you look up there because Google too).
Not really in practice no, the culture is very insular with a small number of admins and editors controlling the majority of articles (the ability to lock articles was made expressly for this purpose). That's before getting into some of the more notorious editor accounts like Philip_Cross, an account that never sleeps and consistently edits articles relating to western foreign policy targets, players in the military industrial complex, human rights industry and independent journalists critical of establishment narratives. Wikipedias founder is also a randian ideologue, who seems to offer his site up to the security state and has board members who served on the atlantic council. Finally wikipedia regularly breaks its own rules about transparency, using them to silence alternative media voices on the left, while never critiquing establisment media and often citing straight up propaganda as fact.
I have completely dropped them as sources for any political conflicts to the point where I can't even use them as background information.
Yes, but there are Mods who ultimately have the last say. The articles, especially controversial ones, usually end up edited and redacted by these guys who base off their stuff on USA propaganda and shitty sources (they are on the imperial core, after all), and you can get banned or stop being able to edit if you push on. Of course, not all articles are like that and it's an ongoing battle. I think there was a good documentary on this but I can't seem to find it. There's also the fact that—and here I can only speak for Spanish wikipedia—English sources and the English articles end up translated (and badly) to other languages, and they also carry the Western-English point of view with them.
You technically can and you would probably have no issues if it was a really obscure topic, but even a minor change to an article about some semi-relevant topic can cause a shitstorm and drama.
I think Chapo brigades would be better suited again Wikipedia than Reddit. Just drown them in edits.
Nope, that's a terrible terrible idea. Wikipedia mods / powerusers are way more online than even reddit mods / powerusers. And they actually have more power. If you try to brigade with a specific agenda (even if that agenda is literally just "i want this page to reflect reality") everything you do will be pretty much immediately undone, the page will be locked so no one can edit it, and everyone involved will get ip banned from the site
Definitely doesn't sound like a system that could be absused. (As in, on the mod side)
No, there were pogroms during the USSR's regime. It was the communists that made the pogroms in Russia. Poor Nicholas was just an innocent baby boy.
A prominent wikipedia contributor was recently revealed to be a ICE agent. It 100% sucks and should only be use for a cursory glance and maybe looked at as a resource launching off point
This will be fun for you then: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:MobileDiff/967480645
revealed to be a ICE agent
do you have a link by chance? searched and didn't find anything
Reminds me of when I was reading a Wikipedia article on State Owned Enterprises, and a citation for the statement that SOEs underperform compared to privately owned enterprises linked to a study that said the opposite. Wikipedia is 100% an op, only good for introductory background information
Sounds about right.
Fuck wikipedia, all my homies hate wikipedia
I will once again answer with the following:
Death to America, of course.
I got banned for getting into an edit war on rod dreher’s page. I meticulously cited every line and used an academic tone. Fuck Wikipedia Mods.
Obviously wikipedia is censored by folks with a political motivation. I don't necessarily see having a leftist-pedia being particularly effective at reaching people.
I feel like we should organize left history nerds to partake in the wikipedia edit wars to at least attempt to over power the propagandists.
My favorite wikipedia drama is that the Stanley Kubrick article is obsessively controlled by one editor who views it as his pet project and blocks any attempt to add an infobox (which is standard for almost every famous person on the site) because it would mean people read less of his glorious article. Also he refuses to allow people to change the lead picture to a more recognizable one, because reasons
One of my favorites:
As Washington subordinated his desire for emancipation to his efforts to secure financial independence, he took care to retain his slaves.[263] From 1791, he arranged for those who served in his personal retinue in Philadelphia while he was President to be rotated out of the state before they became eligible for emancipation after six months residence per Pennsylvanian law. Not only would Washington have been deprived of their services if they were freed, most of the slaves he took with him to Philadelphia were dower slaves, which meant that he would have had to compensate the Custis estate for the loss. Because of his concerns for his public image and that the prospect of emancipation would generate discontent among the slaves before they became eligible for emancipation, he instructed that they be shuffled back to Mount Vernon "under pretext that may deceive both them and the Public".[264]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington_and_slavery#As_Virginia_farmer
If that isn't a government agent then there are no agents online.
