Highest Rated Comments


jimmywales11797 karma

Wow I really hope you'll join the discussion with me on https://wt.social about policy because you totally get it. The balance is hard to strike and thoughtfulness and hard work is always necessary.

One key to the wiki approach is that creating a subwiki (or for example, a new article at Wikipedia) doesn't give you any special power over it. So you sort of have to find a way to collaborate with people of good will where you may not agree on everything.

But yes, communities often fall into a kind of conservatism (I don't mean politically) where we do things this way because that's the way we do things. I think you could get an easy win on a vote at Wikipedia that we need to figure out how to make more good people admins, but we have no consensus about how to do it, so that problem stays stuck for years.

jimmywales11385 karma

Because everything is collaboratively editable, anyone who tried to put misinformation into Wikipedia (or tries today) generally finds it difficult in the face of a community of goodwill. People who persist get blocked. It isn't perfect, but as we've seen, it works pretty well.

It works pretty well because as it turns out, most people are basically nice. Not everyone, so we can't be naive about it, but pretty much most people are nice.

jimmywales11340 karma

Hahaha. A few years ago a watch company surprised me by asking me to be a model in their advertisements. The ads did very well in China for some reason.

In my internal fantasy land, I like to pretend that I'm actually most known as a watch model in China: https://amotimes.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/untitled.jpg

Ha!

jimmywales11012 karma

I love your thinking - I think the same way.

And I don't pretend to have all the answers right now. I wish I were omniscient and could tell you a magic formula which simultaneously solves all the problems but I am not.

However, I think by paying attention to exactly the things you mentioned, and a few more besides, is the right way forward.

I have said for a long time that I wish facebook would have a setting: "Instead of showing you things we think you will like, we want to show you things we think you'll disagree with, but which we have signals that suggest they are of quality." There's nothing better, really, than finding something challenging and interesting that I disagree with, but for which I have to concede: it makes me think.

Delicious!

jimmywales1914 karma

Meh.