I do the research and script writing for a documentary company. In 2023, I noticed that the pages of serial killers I'd been researching, started mentioning political affiliation in the top paragraph... but they all said Democrat (or socialst, communist sympathizer, anti-fascist, etc). Then, one of the murderers I was researching, who was literally a Republican politician who killed his wife , said Democrat and I had a team investigate. It got corrected, but we have no idea if it was one person or a group that changed the pages. Someone out there wants murderers to be associated with democrats.
this post was submitted on 25 Dec 2024
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I don't trust Wikipedia, but I do think they're a good STARTING POINT for research, the problem comes when it's used as the end-all be-all
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Can you be specific about this misinformation so I don't just point fingers at anyone who doesn't worship the ground Wikipedia walks on. Like what are they saying and why isn't it true?
Quoting myself from elsewhere:
This is how modern social media propaganda works. One person says wikipedia is kowtowing to fascist governments and doxxing its members. That turns out to be bullshit, but during the discussion someone else says that $300 million “excess” went missing and no one knows where it went, implying that someone is skimming off money and we shouldn’t be donating because the whole thing is corrupt. That turns out to be bullshit, but during the discussion someone else says that wikipedia is slanting all its coverage to a pro-Western, pro-Israel slant and covering up the truth through a narrative enforcing task force. That turns out to be bullshit, but during the discussion, someone else combs through their financials and finds out that the CEO is making some money, and uses phrases like “bleeding the foundation dry” or “all while content is created by volunteers.”
You can look through my profile to see the exchanges where people say all of those things and then I respond, if you want to see in depth where and how people are saying it, and my arguments for why it isn’t true.
I had heard a long time ago that Wikipedia donations are largely useless and haven't actually gone to anything but profits in awhile. That second part however is demonstrably false with Wikipedia one of the few information outlets that CORRECTLY label Israel's actions as genoicde.
Their financial statements are public: https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/financial-reports/
There's no profit, since they are a nonprofit. They have a couple of years' operating expenses saved up, which is nice. They've been giving away a lot of it to various research projects, and they pay everyone a comfortable salary, which is also nice. People in the comments have been assuring me that this is a sign that they're incredibly corrupt, for example describing the research project thing as a bad thing (sponsoring "weird" research) or saying it's a problem that they paid the CEO around $700k in one year.
Actually, they started out with the earlier claims like that they were friendly with fascists or that $300M went missing every year, and then only switched over to "their financials are good and they pay salaries, and that's a problem, all they should need to pay is hosting" once all the earlier stuff failed to hit. It doesn't sound like they're hurting for money, but maybe being aggressive about soliciting donations is the reason they're not hurting for money. They don't get substantial income from anything other than donations, it looks like. But yes, if you wanted to support a project that really needs it, maybe the Internet Archive is a better place to start.
As long as people keep in mind what Wikipedia is, there should be no issue. There's a reason teachers never allow it as a source, but it is great as an introduction to any topic, from which point you can further your own research.
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