20230929-why_you_shouldnt_use_wikipedia.txt
I have long been a dissident when it comes to using TOW. Some of it is
personal, but I have found that TOW falls far short of any reasonable
person's expectations of a compendium of knowledge. There are just too
many corrupt people out there with agendas that will stamp out bad (or
sometimes good) press about a certain product, company, or individual.
The impetus for this writing was an RPoD news article[0] that was
discussing a voting machine company censoring criticism. I'm shocked,
I say, shocked /sarcasm! I believe I've mentioned it before, but TOW
"knowledge" should be taken with a grain of salt, but this message is
as likely to reach the modern lemmings as Gemini is to become the
dominant internet protocol. To me, trying to "fix" TOW is a lost
cause: there are far too many self-obsessed intellectual traitors and
far too few safeguards to hold these traitors in place. The closest
TOW has to stopping this is "protecting" a page.
Call me crazy, but I think all pages should be protected. Letting
anyone just edit anything is like living in a society without laws.
Yeah, it'd be great if we could live without needing a governing body
and police force to "protect" users, but it assumes the ridiculous
position that people are inherently 1) trustworthy and 2) benevolent.
Maybe it used to be that way (highly doubtful), but people are out for
themselves sadly more often than not. This whole society business
works with hiveminds like ants, not "evolved" individuals like humans.
I'm constantly reminded how stupid, inefficient, and uncaring people
are. One needs only look at the sorry state of English (and probably
other languages) syntax on the Web. Dumbasses figure it takes too long
to type special symbols like periods, commas, capital letters. Why
bother? You can figure it out! Reading is like a mystery! Who cares if
it's ambiguous? I wrote nothing of substance anyway! Here's to letting
me waste your time!
But back on topic, I've just been disillusioned with TOW since my
brief foray into being a "contributor" was cut short because I was
being viewed as some corporate shill (ha!) at best and my new article
about a "non-notable" living person was "speedily deleted." Yes, the
absolute shitshow that is TOW has speedy deletions, as if that's
something that should be a thing. Don't bother weighing the merit;
just delete it fast. Oh, and the worthless "editor" that I was miffed
at for deleting my hard work stalked me across multiple sites. Of
course when I reported this behavior to TOW PTBs, it was ignored, just
like reports to Penn State about Jerry Sandusky. This is the kind of
asshole that the robber barons in charge of TOW trust: some absolute
loser stalker who has nothing better to do with their life than
undo/delete recent changes on TOW.
Other issues include plagiarism, hypocritical "rules" that are as
reliable as the information ("Don't be a dick" is actually one of
them. "Neutral point of view" is the supposed standard. Ha! Ha!),
e-begging on one of the most popular and I imagine semi-profitable
websites that (ab)uses free labor, and just general corruption and
censorship top to bottom. And don't give me thin non-profit
organization nonsense, either. NPOs still pay salaries to their CEOs.
Don't use or trust TOW. I use Gopherpedia as a substitute most of the
time and while it's essentially identical, I've learned my lesson not
to treat anything written there as gospel or accurate. Always verify.
It's an okay aggregation of links on the subject... when they aren't
broken.
NOTE: The article[0] was published initially back in 2007
0.
gopher://1436.ninja/0/Port70News/1688182883.txt
