Dumb Shit on Wikipedia

[Zbk3VmLfujjzjxBd43tL]

It was actually exacerbated by the Reconstructionist policy of deliberately installing black officials not on merit, but literally just to humiliate the defeated South even further.

A lot of those black politicians were democratically voted in. Yes, there was fraud and machine politics involved, but that was the case everywhere in the country back then and it's blatantly obvious majority black areas were going to vote for the Republican Party guy and in a lot of places in the South the only Republican politicians were blacks. Those elections probably weren't much less democratic than the post-Reconstruction ones where armed militias and then eventually the police suppressed the black vote except in cases where local elites/party bosses pulled strings to let the blacks vote (for their guys of course).

 

[Popoto]

Imagine being a wokeass wikipedophile painstakingly rearranging this absolute nobody's article to avoid the pronoun game:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keiynan_Lonsdale

Lonsdale has been described as queer.[19] Lonsdale does not self-identify with a specific sexuality label.[19] In September 2018, Lonsdale told Billboard, "I don't want to go by 'he' anymore, I just want to go by 'tree.' I want people to call me 'tree,' because we all come from trees, so it doesn't matter if you're a he or a she or a they or a them. At the end of the day, everyone's a tree. I want to call my friends 'tree' and me 'tree' and everyone 'tree.' So, I think, like now, when people ask me what my preferred pronoun is, I'm going to say 'tree.'"[20]

 

[Yangon]

View attachment 2013473

Imagine being a wokeass wikipedophile painstakingly rearranging this absolute nobody's article to avoid the pronoun game:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keiynan_Lonsdale

If his preferred pronoun is "tree", why did they use "they" in the article? Bigots.

Also I thought the purpose of pronouns is to not repeat the same noun over and over, but apparently now Wikipedia editors has to mental-gymnastic their way through using either nonsensical pronouns or someone's full name.

 

[Fictional Character]

Today I learned pronouns are a spectrum.

On one end is making your pronoun an extremely common noun and making everything written or said about you ten times more confusing than just using your name would be.

On the other end is making your pronoun a word so unique it's only used when referring to you. Then you don't have a pronoun, you have a name.

 

[Captain Hastings Official]

This isn't from Wikipedia, but it's still an absolutely bizarre editorial choice for an online encyclopedia: the Encyclopedia Britannica article on Tippu Tib does not once mention the word "slave." For those of you unfamiliar with the 19th century exploration of Africa, this is about as absurd as if the article on Robert E. Lee never mentioned slavery. Actually, it's worse - you could probably do a very short article on Lee saying he was a Confederate general and listing his military accomplishments, but Tippu was the king of a vast slave trading empire. It's the whole reason why he was important. He's a massively neglected, but deeply fascinating, figure in the Scramble for Africa whose actions had effects on central Africa with consequences that resound to the present day.

For once, Wikipedia is better (and, shockingly, less woke, in that it successfully identifies a black man as a slave trader and owner). Its article is of a similar length, but gives his slave trading activities the attention they deserve.) I have no idea what weird political decision made the Britannica chose to do this, but it just goes to show that your middle school teacher was right: don't trust encyclopedias.

 

[DoubleD]

Once again on the subject of Wikipedia going out of its way to obey the rules of pronoun ettiquette. Someone brought to my attention that Keiynan Lonsdale uses "tree/treeself" pronouns, which I quickly googled to verify. The truth is not quite as ridiculous - just some crap he said in an interview about how we're all just trees, maaaan. (Archive)

Wikipedia does not in fact use the tree-based pronouns to describe him. What it does do instead is to avoid using pronouns altogether (archive). And the above paragraph, alongside a vague allusion to his sexual identity, is quoted verbatim in the article.

The editor's comment ("perhaps this is a workable solution; rwd to both avoid using the wrong pronouns, and to avoid those who do not think Wikipedia should use neopronouns") would imply there has been at least some internal disagreement about whether or not to use non-standard pronouns.

Makes me wonder how long Rivers Solomon's fae/faer pronouns will last. For what it's worth, this version of Keiynan's article lasted 7 minutes before wikipedian Molly White implemented the no-pronoun solution as a compromise.

And for what it's worth, the editor in question is exactly the kind of person you'd expect her to be.

 

[BootlegPopeye]

For once, Wikipedia is better (and, shockingly, less woke, in that it successfully identifies a black man as a slave trader and owner). Its article is of a similar length, but gives his slave trading activities the attention they deserve.) I have no idea what weird political decision made the Britannica chose to do this, but it just goes to show that your middle school teacher was right: don't trust encyclopedias.

The whitewashing of non-white slavery has been a thing for academics for a few decades now; I've seen some absolutely wild claims that Ottoman and other Muslim slavery (which continued into the 20th century - see the Arab delegation at the end of WWI - complete with slaves) was more humane, and even perhaps enlightened. Then of course, the figure you mention among others were the ones that helped start the mass slave trade into Europe and the new world - warriors captured in African wars and sold by their fellow blacks were the first source of slaves, raids inland only happening near the end of the transatlantic slave trade when demand could no longer be met.

 

[Big Brown Schlub]

I've seen some absolutely wild claims that Ottoman and other Muslim slavery (which continued into the 20th century - see the Arab delegation at the end of WWI - complete with slaves) was more humane, and even perhaps enlightened.

Oh yeah it was really humane and enlightened to sell women to sex slavery as late as the 20th century and it was extremely humane to lop the cocks off men and/or turn them into sex slave to be buggered by closet gays. Then again maybe it's enlightened because it's TRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANS

 

[Popoto]

In a subversion of the genre, today I bring you dumb shit soon to be off wikipedia: Emma Portner, ex-wife of Ellen/Elliot Page, is having her article up for deletion.

Eh, these people were absolute nobodies and who the fuck cares, good riddance, right?

Well, you see, once they completely scrubbed Ellen/Elliot's article to remove all traces of being a woman, the lesbian relationship got downgraded to a heterosexual relationship.

 

[vulg]

https://pdc.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haaptblatt - Here's Pennsylvania Dutch Wikipedia, which is the language basically nobody but the Amish and a few hardcore Mennonites speak.

Wikipedia

ik.wikipedia.org

https://iu.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E1%90%8A%E1%92%A5%E1%96%85

Wikipedia for Eskimos. There's a bunch of Wikipedia versions for Native American languages (and IIRC one or two Australian Aboriginal languages) which are basically dead. Their main goal is to promote use of dying languages to those communities. Unfortunately this seems to be a project (often bundled with tech literacy/"bringing computers/the internet to the rez" outreach) that lasts for a few sessions and then is mostly abandoned.

Far more strange are Wikipedias for African languages which are very much alive and have millions of speakers. The outreach programs are similar (you have pictures of white people posing with local villagers and teaching them about Wikipedia) but even though it isn't just one rez in the middle of nowhere but giant chunks of your average African country, the Wikis similarly lay abandoned. Even in South Africa (which is semi-developed by African standards) they can't get wikis in any local language but Afrikaans (i.e. Boers). There are a lot of sub-Saharan Africans online as evidenced by bizarre websites like Nairaland but they all want to write in broken English (or French apparently) instead of the languages they speak.

I'm all for people speaking local languages or revitalizing dead languages, and Wikipedia's role in this seems rather odd to say the least.

the whole accommodating alternative languages is complete nonsense, the value of wikipedia is in the amount of articles it has, focusing on other languages undermines that.

Not to mention, if youre an internet user you’ll have knowledge of a major world language, because the internet is, you, international.

 

[Popoto]

the whole accomadating alterantive languages is complete nonsense, the value of wikipedia is in the amount of articles it has, focusing on other languages undermines that.

Not to mention, if youre an internet user you’ll have knowledge of a major world language, because the internet is, you, international.

I think, on some level, there is merit in preserving human languages through a Rosetta Stone like project where we know for sure each article is a faithful and accurate translation of the same subject.

The question comes down to "Do we want some dumb Wikishit article about wound licking on faeself to be the Rosetta Stone of the future"?

The answer is overwhelmingly a hell naw.

 

[Zbk3VmLfujjzjxBd43tL]

the whole accommodating alternative languages is complete nonsense, the value of wikipedia is in the amount of articles it has, focusing on other languages undermines that.

Not to mention, if youre an internet user you’ll have knowledge of a major world language, because the internet is, you, international.

Some of those small wikis have insane detail. Take the Yiddish Wikipedia for instance, most Yiddish speakers remaining are ultra-Orthodox Jews and mostly older Jews since younger Jews speak Hebrew or English or whatever their country's language is. So what you get on Yiddish Wikipedia are huge articles devoted to obscure Rabbis both past and present and also a curious amount of articles about random towns in Eastern Europe where lots of Jews used to live. It's so Jewish that I'm amazed Yiddish Wikipedia doesn't have an automated warning on it if you try and browse it on the Sabbath.

Personally if you want to turn the Wikipedia for the language you speak into a directory of rabbis and shtetls and no one gives a fuck about it because everyone reading has the same interest, is there really a problem?

 

[vulg]

Some of those small wikis have insane detail. Take the Yiddish Wikipedia for instance, most Yiddish speakers remaining are ultra-Orthodox Jews and mostly older Jews since younger Jews speak Hebrew or English or whatever their country's language is. So what you get on Yiddish Wikipedia are huge articles devoted to obscure Rabbis both past and present and also a curious amount of articles about random towns in Eastern Europe where lots of Jews used to live. It's so Jewish that I'm amazed Yiddish Wikipedia doesn't have an automated warning on it if you try and browse it on the Sabbath.

Personally if you want to turn the Wikipedia for the language you speak into a directory of rabbis and shtetls and no one gives a fuck about it because everyone reading has the same interest, is there really a problem?

Spreading more information to more people is great, I don't have a problem with that. My frustration/confusion was mostly directed towards niche wikis like Scots or Creole, which are split off from English and users would likely be better served just reading the English wiki. Same would go for say, Sicilian wiki or Neapolitan wiki, where they're probably better off just reading the Italian wiki.

If these niche wikis really are far more informative than the more mainstream ones then I can get fucked, good for them.

 

[Large]

Spreading more information to more people is great, I don't have a problem with that. My frustration/confusion was mostly directed towards niche wikis like Scots or Creole, which are split off from English and users would likely be better served just reading the English wiki. Same would go for say, Sicilian wiki or Neapolitan wiki, where they're probably better off just reading the Italian wiki.

If these niche wikis really are far more informative than the more mainstream ones then I can get fucked, good for them.

Scots is actually not very related to English. Autistic american furries do not want you to know this.

 

[Captain Hastings Official]

Scots is actually not very related to English. Autistic american furries do not want you to know this.

That depends what you mean by "Scots". There's Scots English, which is a Germanic dialect closely related to mainstream English but which is almost, but not quite, entirely incomprehensible to English speakers worldwide. Its the language of Robbie Burns, "Should auld acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind," an' a' tha'. It's spoken, more or less, by many average Glaswegians or Edinburghers, insofar as the utterances from their mouths can be described as human speech at all. This is what the well-meaning but autistic American teenager was trying to emulate.


Then there's Scottish Gaelic, which is a Celtic language from an entirely different branch of the Indo-European language family. It's spoken, at present, by a few score thousand Highlanders and Islanders who the lowland Scots from Glasgow and Edinburgh have historically looked down upon, and who have, in turn, reciprocated their disdain. It's less closely related to Scots English than Norwegian is, or French. This is probably what you're thinking of.

 

[JimmyNugget]

Why is it certain hot topic pages are blatantly not neutral? White Genocide uses a fucking Salon Source and a source form Harper that's literally just one guy's anecdotal experience with his white friend in SA during the white farmer landgrab. And the Chinese Medicine page may as well be "why alternative medicine is stinky and stupid and why real science rulez!"

 

[Toolbox]

Why is it certain hot topic pages are blatantly not neutral? White Genocide uses a fucking Salon Source and a source form Harper that's literally just one guy's anecdotal experience with his white friend in SA during the white farmer landgrab. And the Chinese Medicine page may as well be "why alternative medicine is stinky and stupid and why real science rulez!"

Because rules for thee and not for wikipedo admins.

 

[BootlegPopeye]

On that train of thought, I was a little surprised how negative the article for Chiropractic is, which I came across by accident. I don't have a feeling about one way or another, but the Wikipedia article you'd think it was on the level of Chinese penis pills or something. And toward the end, they have this red herring section which begins:

Some chiropractors oppose vaccination and water fluoridation, which are common public health practices.

The entire section is basically unrelated to what the practice is, what it does or does not do, but just smearing them as conspiracy theorists.

 

[Toolbox]

On that train of thought, I was a little surprised how negative the article for Chiropractic is, which I came across by accident. I don't have a feeling about one way or another, but the Wikipedia article you'd think it was on the level of Chinese penis pills or something. And toward the end, they have this red herring section which begins:



The entire section is basically unrelated to what the practice is, what it does or does not do, but just smearing them as conspiracy theorists.

Some artists oppose the life of jews and black people, which are existing ethnic groups.

That's what this editor sounds like.

 

[Sinner's Sandwich]

Makes me wonder how long Rivers Solomon's fae/faer pronouns will last. For what it's worth, this version of Keiynan's article lasted 7 minutes before wikipedian Molly White implemented the no-pronoun solution as a compromise.

Tree is the youngest of six children on his mother's side, with three brothers

Tree next appeared in the historical drama The Finest Hours

The following year, tree appeared in an episode of the Australian television medical drama All Saints.

I have no words. It's just madness.