[colechristensen]

One very interesting thing I wish would be studied in depth are the virtual economies of mature trackers. Limiting access to resources and granting increasing access for contributing and correcting quality has in places been extremely successful. It is interesting to see the varying quality and associated economic mechanics.

Some environments, based just on prestige, have big problems with toxicity (StackOverflow, Wikipedia) which I didn't see at all in some music trackers.

[ryacko]

Wikipedia does cover that issue. Competing views are difficult to reconcile.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Systemi...

(using a version of the article from ten years ago because everything is unnecessarily verbose on wikipedia now)

[ailideex]

I'm not sure what the point of quoting that is really. I guess if you subscribe to the idea that reality is somehow modified by your age, sex, race, education or whatever the heck then it has some relevance but then the whole idea behind an encyclopedia seems pointless and we should just each maintain our own unique knowledge bases as they will have no relevance to someone other than us.

That an article like that exists is patently absurd in my view and kind of makes me a bit ill. Things like that is what led to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9SiRNibD14

I really firmly believe that if you think there is a European (?) science and an African science and they are distinct and equally valid then either me or you do not belong on Wikipedia and I would actually like Wikipedia to clarify their mission in this light.

[lordlic]

I don't see the point of linking that either, but your "reality is neutral" argument is severely flawed. Wikipedia doesn't cover merely technical topics. Obviously there's not going to be a problem with systemic bias in an article on merge sort, but you don't think there's a potential issue with mainly wealthier, whiter, younger people writing articles on topics, for example, related to the history of colonialism? Think about how drastically perspectives on figures like Christopher Columbus have changed over just the last generation from bringing more diverse viewpoints into the conversation. Hell, we demonstrably see this today on the Japanese language Wikipedia with topics like the Nanking Massacre.

[ailideex]

> Think about how drastically perspectives on figures like Christopher Columbus have changed over just the last generation from bringing more diverse viewpoints into the conversation.

In my view Wikipedia should not be a repository of value judgements or specific values that one should adopt - perspectives on Christopher Columbus is important and should be included but in no manner should those perspectives be made out to be incontrovertible or something other than value judgements and perspectives from specific points of view. I think it is valuable to understand the European perspective and native american perspectives at the time and throughout the following centuries for events.

But I don't think Wikipedia should be telling me I must think what Columbus did was good or bad - Wikipedia should not be trying to teach me morality - and as long as it does not do that I don't see how there is any problem with what topics Wikipedia covers and who writes it.

I think the only problem comes in when you attempt to do something which is impossible - like incorporate something which is fundamentally specific to specific people (morality) into something which purports to be valid for everyone.

[lordlic]

Those judgments appear organically through mechanisms as simple as how much coverage a topic gets. The worst case is that a bunch of circa 1900 Europeans write this article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_history_of_indigeno... and the impact of colonialism is mentioned in half a footnote rather than taking up the bulk of the article. If systemic bias were completely unchecked, entire articles might not exist.

You might also be interested in reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Wikipedia#Self-censors...

[chrisdirkis]

I honestly struggle to reconcile what I read in the linked wiki article with what your comment mentions. "Systemic Bias"[1] doesn't seem to match with "reality is modified by your age, your...".

One can understand a possible path that goes "xyz information source is biased", "xyz info source isn't suitable for abc group", and "xyz info source is specific to xyz people, we need our own abc source". However, that seems to require a few assumptions? And still isn't as negative as that youtube video linked.

Would appreciate if you could elucidate on your views.

[1] (please forgive the scare quotes)

[ailideex]

Quote from the article:

> The average Wikipedian on the English Wikipedia is ... (some characteristics)

This builds to conclusion:

> The systemic bias of the English Wikipedia is permanent. As long as the demographic of English speaking Wikipedians is not identical to the world's demographic composition, the version of the world presented in the English Wikipedia will always be the Anglophone Wikipedian's version of the world.

I don't see how you get to that conclusion form the premise other than by thinking that reality is modified by personal characteristics.

If there is an Anglophone Wikipedian's version of the world which includes things like gravity and science - then it is not valid for Africa (as the woman in the video is expressing) as Africa is not the Anglophone world ... not sure what about this is not clear.

And it absolutely is as bad as that youtube video I linked - you think that poor unfortunate woman came up with that drivel on her own? She is not nearly dumb enough - no single person can be that stupid.

You need years of academic circle jerking and hand picking of the dumbest arguments from the dumbest people to come up with something that stupid.

[krick]

That definitely is an interesting issue that could be studied. From the practical perspective, speaking of this particular torrent tracker, I wouldn't speculate much and would just (more or less) copy the organizational structure of some tracker I know and see if it works (I assume some adjustments would need to be made, because people are different, content is different, whatever else I don't keep in mind will turn out to be different).

But if I were to speculate, I guess it always propagates from the top. The point is, that the visible community you can speak of is not entirely randomly chosen from the user base, and the user base are people who just want to use the product, not to play corporate mechanics. If in the end the goals of the general public are somewhat aligned with the internal community of ladder-climbers, it works out fine. Otherwise it doesn't.

(And, by the way, ladder-climbers in most of these communities tend not to be the nicest people by default... Let's just say, they are Dwight. So if you let them do stuff that is not desirable for the general community, they will.)

I think StackOverflow philosophy is flawed by design, the main point of user frustration always was the fact that questions that they very much need to get answered are closed as "too broad", "opinion-based" or something of the sorts. Dwights love to exercise their power by noticing that something can be close "as not good fit for this site", and users who want that stuff to be discussed obviously hate that. That is something that could be fixed from the top, but the top specifically wanted it this way.

Wikipedia is similar to that, but users and Dwights stand even further apart, since general user doesn't even make an account to make an edit, doesn't look who makes the edits and doesn't know the internal playground. The main point of frustration here is a user, who knows his stuff well and wants to share the knowledge, but is being shut down by a Dwight, because the subject is "of low importance" to him. This infuriates the user even more, considering that there are thousands of articles about some fucking Harry Potter-universe pokemon or whatever, which, naturally, doesn't raise an issue with Dwights, because they are Dwights and they love this stuff. This is also something to be solved organizationally from the very top.

Music trackers are way more meritocratic. People, who eventually get to be moderators can be formalistic or not — it varies — but they generally just want a lot of music on the tracker in a well-organised manner — and this is exactly what general public wants! It's another question how they get motivated by the platform to contribute so much — and involvement sometimes seems to be much more hard work than on Wikipedia — but the point is that they really do contribute useful stuff.

Also, music trackers tend to be way more liberal (in a sense to allow freedom, not to be left-wing politically, ironically, quite the opposite is true nowadays). Nobody cares is somebody is rude, racist or whatever, if off-topic flamewar goes over the top — the whole thread goes down. Otherwise, you can post whatever you want and nobody gives a shit and isn't pressured by the media to do something about it. After all, unlike twitter, reddit or stackoverflow, they aren't traded on the stock market.