The NY Times shines a light on the battle that the internet resource is involved in with the MAGA types, Musk , other countries and even AI ….
Seems like imparting info in todays world gets ya all sorts of enemies….
Wikipedia is in peril.
In a world where trust in truth is crumbling, the grande dame of collective online fact-gathering is under threat on every front. The MAGA right, with Elon Musk at the fore, is slinging accusations of political bias and antisemitism and has even questioned the site’s nonprofit status. Artificial intelligence is raiding the encyclopedia’s resources and draining attention. Repressive governments have hauled its volunteer editors into penal colonies.
In Wikipedia’s 25-year history, it has never had to fight this hard.
The organization that supports the site, the Wikimedia Foundation, is increasing its lobbying budget and advertising in Times Square. It is charging companies like Google and Meta that gobble up the encyclopedia’s 65 million articles, and throttling access for certain scrapers. And it is expanding its human rights team to better protect volunteers against rising harassment, surveillance and retaliation.
For an organization that holds neutrality as a cardinal rule, it is a lot of conflict, requiring Wikimedia to go on the offensive — diplomatically, of course.
So it found a diplomat: Bernadette Meehan, 50, became Wikimedia’s chief executive in January, after stints as the U.S. ambassador to Chile and at the Obama Foundation, at the State Department, at the National Security Council and on Wall Street….
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Wikipedia has long been a proxy battleground for warring ideas about truth: What constitutes balance? What makes a good source? But now, those online debates could result in real repercussions.
Last year, a Trump administration official made inquiries into the nonprofit’s tax-exempt status. A Republican-led congressional oversight committee initiated an investigation in August, demanding that Wikimedia identify certain editors and produce any evidence of influence from foreign operatives or academic institutions. The foundation said it responded to both inquests last year and had no updates.
To de-escalate the antagonism, Ms. Meehan and her team are addressing misconceptions about the site. Wikipedia is largely decentralized, with independent contributors distilling facts through open debate and agreement. Elected arbitration committees handle dispute resolution. The foundation, with a budget of $208.6 million and about 600 employees and contractors, provides servers and funding but steers clear of content decisions.
There is no shadowy mastermind, no leftist cabal, according to the foundation. Just the Wikipedians — nearly 250,000 unpaid strangers editing 324 times a minute under pseudonyms like “Dr. Blofeld” and “WooHooKitty.”…
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For many Wikipedians, the Trump administration may be the site’s most acute threat, but its most existential one is artificial intelligence. They have resisted the idea of integrating the technology, calling it “truly ghastly” (or, simply, “yuck”).
The more urgent worry, though, is that Wikipedia is being exploited to train its own competitors, as A.I. systems hoover up its content to inform chatbots like Gemini, Claude and ChatGPT. The bots then regurgitate the information, often imperfectly, polluting the information ecosystem that feeds into the encyclopedia….
Note….
I use the service in this place…….
image…C Crazy Egg
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