based

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The first language I tried to learn as a kid was Batch scripting…

(edit: and then some VBScript along the way! Eventually worked my way to C++ though)

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So you’re saying it would rely on each person to stay objective and use good critical thinking, instead of accepting the first thing they read and fall down an echo-chamber rabbit hole?

This is such a rich statement to make from a social media site of all places. My guy have you even looked at what some of the instances on Lemmy believe in? How is a federated wiki site any different?

but it does try to use a form of institutionalized objectivity.

By all means use wikipedia if you wish. As I’ve already pointed out in another comment, Wikipedia is often edited by bad or nationalist actors that do go undetected for a while.

We’re talking about the fediverse here. It’s such a niche place and there are already wildly opposing views and information existing on Lemmy itself.

And that’s not even mentioning the situation on bigger social media platforms and the broader web!

Wikipedia also releases all content for free download under a permissive license, so I don’t think it’s fair to say that the US government is a meaningful threat to its quality of information

What? How are these two points related at all?

Each instance would ideally have their own standards for neutrality or bias that they see fit. It’s no different from self-hosted wikis except with the federation concept appllied on top of it. I’m sure someone will create an instance that is a straight up clone of wikipedia, another person will create an instance for everything pro-communism / pro-china, someone will create a strictly anti-theism wikipedia, etc.

I don’t see anything wrong or weird about this, the skepticism this project is receiving is stupid. It’s nothing new under the sun.

Post-truth as a service.

If you read through this page you might even conclude that Wikipedia itself is “post-truth”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedia_controversies

At any point in time you could be reading a defaced or propagandized version of an article.

Good thing Wikipedia articles are always the best researched and sourced!

In 2023, Jan Grabowski and Shira Klein published an article in the Journal of Holocaust Research in which they said they had discovered a “systematic, intentional distortion of Holocaust history” on the English-language Wikipedia.[367] Analysing 25 Wikipedia articles and almost 300 back pages (including talk pages, noticeboards and arbitration cases), Grabowski and Klein stated they have shown how a small group of editors managed to impose a fringe narrative on Polish-Jewish relations, informed by Polish nationalist propaganda and far removed from evidence-driven historical research. In addition to the article on the Warsaw concentration camp, the authors conclude that the activities of the editors’ group had an effect on several articles, such as History of the Jews in Poland, Rescue of Jews by Poles during the Holocaust and Jew with a coin. Nationalist editing on these and other articles allegedly included content ranging “from minor errors to subtle manipulations and outright lies”, examples of which the authors offer.[367]

• 367: Grabowski, Jan; Klein, Shira (February 9, 2023). “Wikipedia’s Intentional Distortion of the History of the Holocaust”. The Journal of Holocaust Research. 37 (2): 133–190. doi:10.1080/25785648.2023.2168939. ISSN 2578-5648. S2CID 257188267.

No shit! So it’s not exactly a counter-point to the concept of a “Wikipedia alternative”

Any self-styled Wikipedia alternative ended up dead, thematic, or biased by design

Wikipedia is biased by design though…

No I think it would actually be great. You could peek at two opposing views on the same article, for example. I’m sure some “instances” would be ripe with disinformation but what’s it to you? Idiots are already lapping up disinformation like candy. It’s not like wikipedia isn’t filled with it already…

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