Pretty good piece. Much easier to read and post than take concrete action.

Didn’t things look worse when Nazi Germany was at its height? Didn’t things look worse when slavery was at its height?

The state of the world has been much worse before, and things still got better.

We have to acknowledge that a lot of people died, and a lot more were hurt, before things got better. And it may come to that in our times as well. But barring nuclear disaster, things can improve. And one prerequisite is not agreeing to lay down and die.

Like I said, I get it. Seems like anyone with any real power doesn’t recognize the severity of the situation. Seems like there’s no justice. Are you going to say “no point in trying”? I don’t think so because you wouldn’t be so mad about it if you didn’t care. I don’t have the answer. But believing change is possible is a crucial ingredient in change happening.

I get it, he’s doing all kinds of shit that’s illegal now. And I get it, people need to stand up to him.

At the same time, let’s not do his work for him by treating it like a forgone conclusion he will do whatever he wants.

Sometimes politicians, law enforcement and just rank & file workers need assurance and official blessing to not comply.

I don’t like how things are going at all, and want to be clear eyed about the situation. Still, lets not assume it’s all over, cause it’s not.

The first link is paywalled, I read the other two. Seems like those posts are evidence that there are assholes editing twitter, which I’d agree is true even without links. What I disagreed with is the idea it’s “captured” by bad actors.

I do think it’s legitimate to have a concern about people paid to edit wikipedia by malicious organizations. I don’t think Elon Musk is legitimately concerned about that; he doesn’t want an information source to exist that he can’t control.

But giving these specific examples is different than giving evidence that Wikipedia on some larger scale is no longer useful or reliable. And keep in mind here “reliable” doesn’t mean “never wrong.” I remember in school being taught that Wikipedia (like the encyclopedias that came before it) is just your first stop when learning about a subject. It’s a general overview, but to become an expert a person needs to look at additional materials.

In the faq section it asks who the leadership is and they say they’re decentralized. It asks who they’re partnered with and says “if you’re interested in partnering reach out”. It asks what are your demands and essentially says “we’ll figure out specifics once we have more people onboard”.

This website presents itself as a movement, but I would guess is the work of one person or a handful of people, who don’t have experience in this area.

Which isn’t to say people have to have experience to get involved. And it isn’t to say we don’t have a bunch of valid reasons to be mad and ready to take action. Just that from a strategic standpoint, if you’re asking people to put their livelihoods at risk you need to be able to earn their trust, and you need a clear explanation of what benefit participants can expect to get.

I don’t doubt there are examples of volunteers reverting changes made by other volunteers. Saying it’s captured is ridiculous. Wikipedia is an immense source of shared value. I’d need much more specific evidence before dismissing it, and frankly I don’t expect anyone has such evidence.

Interesting thoughts, thanks for sharing.

On the subject of drift from “ideal” belief systems to corrupt ones, I would argue that what we’re seeing is actually evolutionary pressure.

If we think of ideas as living things, and we place them in an ecosystem of other ideas, they inevitably have to adapt to keep reproducing. (Spreading to another person’s mind)

So generally they have to be the sort of idea one would feel compelled to transmit, and then be transmittable. They have to be understood, received.

I think many people have received a transmission of ideas that is very different from the one that was sent. And then the various pressures of life transform those ideas more.

That can be bad as we’ve seen in cases of Christianity, Marxism and more. It can also be good, because then the belief system becomes sustainable. I’m thinking of certain religions which were batshit when they started, but in order to live on they moderated. Not that they’re entirely reasonable now, but they’re able to live on and wouldn’t have in their original form.