OpenStars

The goal of academic research is to inform the best and brightest of the real information. For e.g. academic extensions to how nuclear power works, or for engineers to have a working basis to build a viable power plant, and so on.

The goal of an encyclopedia though is arguably different: to make people "feel" informed, without necessarily being so? Or at least to serve as a starting point for further studies, maybe?

Science marches ever onwards, and eventually that gets collected into textbooks, and even later into encyclopedias. Or maybe now we're working from a new model where it could skip that middle step? But science still seems leagues ahead of explanations to the masses, and whereas in science the infighting is purposeful and helpful (to a degree), the infighting of making something explainable in a clearer manner to more people is also purposeful and helpful, though federating seems to me to be giving up on making a centralized repository of knowledge, i.e. the very purpose of an "encyclopedia"?

Science reporting must be decentralized, but encyclopedias have a different purpose and so should not be, maybe? At least not at the level of Wikipedia.

This goes beyond riders. "Bought" politicians are SO bought that when lobbyists ask politicians to do stuff, they do it unquestioningly. And I mean: THE WHOLE BILL - not just one sentence within it.

But, you may ask, aren't they also incredibly lazy too? And the answer is yes! So the lobbyists have to do all the work to write out the bills... and then the congressperson simply signs it, easy peasy. "I, insert name here, from state, insert state name here, do solemnly swear that..." - AND I AM NOT EVEN KIDDING, the bill was passed while STILL saying both "insert name here" and also "insert state name here"!!!!!!

So while I am shocked and sickened afresh to hear of plagiarism within academic circles, which I had hoped would be one of the last hold-outs, literal beacons and bastions of Freedom and Truth and all that rizz, politics was the opposite of that and has allowed plagiarism for a LONG time.

I mean, I would not say that it is reality, just that they act like it is - except even that much is not true, b/c when they get REALLY sick, they finally show up at a hospital begging to be saved. So even they know, deep down, where the medicine is at. Cognitive dissonance is a horrific, terrible thing:-(.

Insert name here: John E. Doe

I recall hearing of at least two bills passed that had this... and were not even filled in yet, yeesh:-(.

Someone should really try to poison the well here, and put in a line that says: Insert social security number and a valid credit card number here... Except like the above people probably wouldn't even read that much, yeesh:-(.

Security through ~~obfuscation~~ stupidity! :-) - it can be adaptive under just the right circumstances!:-)

All good points, except the existing software does not have that developers name attached to it.

Good points! Fwiw, though I've never met a roma person, I thought that one was more "cultural" than "ethnic", and also that it was a part of the culture (literally) to steal. That said, one should keep a solid eye on their belongings regardless of who else is around, so the "clutch" seems entirely unnecessary. Being aware is just good advice, though not making an obvious clutch is an "anti-racist" pattern that considers the feelings of the person that just stepped onto the bus, and I would strongly advocate for doing both actually.

One thing to add to your story though: you were willing to learn - but not everybody is. And if your racist parents, just to give an example, were to vote against women's healthcare, then their choices will lead to literal deaths, possibly even of your very girlfriend, like if a period went wrong one day but then doctors did not know what they were allowed vs. not allowed to do and she died as a result. At least, this is happening in America. This is not theoretical - this is ACTUALLY happening.

Russia may be feeding into the existing prejudices in the Western World - by making memes, making TV shows (like Tucker Carlson's, before he got booted out as a result of going too far), bribing politicians; and overall causing or at least inflaming or taking advantage of things like Brexit - but the people who make themselves into sheep and enact those wills... they bear some of the responsibility as well. As in, if they ever were fortunate to have your own experiences, then they would look back at how they voted decades ago and feel guilt. Assuming that they were still alive - which many of the anti-vaxxers are already not anymore. And they did not go down quietly: they took MANY others along with them too. They also prevented us from even so much as counting precisely how many there were, but from the excess death stats it was A LOT - in the USA we lost more people to covid than all the wars we've ever had combined (with the one exception of the immensely bloody civil war on our own soil, and even that number we've probably blown past by now?).

Yes this is very true. IQ is not the same as EQ, and neither are quite the same as "wisdom". The latter comes from evaluated experiences - as in, if you fail to learn from your own mistakes then you will simply get dumber as you age, whereas if you seek out knowledge & learning & evaluate the mistakes of others, then the trajectory of your life will make you SMARTER as you age (up to a point ofc).

Truthfully, the only way to spot a counterfeit is to know the real thing so extremely well that nobody can pull a fast one on you.

Speaking of, don't forget: GWB (the 2nd Bush president) only graduated Yale b/c his father donated a massive amount of $$$$ to the school - his grades (that he had sealed but at some point got leaked) reveal that he flunked out on his own merits. So even "educated" does not mean "educated" if you catch my drift.

As far as a "guarantee" though... nothing is every truly guaranteed, so that might be asking too much. Still, it's a good reminder to look at someone's character - did someone get rich merely b/c of accidents, or b/c they truly deserved it. Though, do any of the recently rich truly deserve it? Bezos who won't let workers pee (even pregnant mothers), Musk for taking a truly fantastic idea and turning into something that literally kills people, and Zuckerberg who... (shudder), just not even going to go there.

You are truly evil... and this story was glorious, thanks for sharing it!:-P

Not in their own minds, and that is all that matters. Also not to their church members, sadly:-(.

And maybe a wheelchair.

Oh, and bacon. A LOT more bacon! :-P

Everyone has implicit biases. It takes a huge amount of effort to work past them and write content that is considered unbiased. The latter is a group effort to achieve consensus, which even in the hard sciences is often difficult, but Wikipedia has had fantastic successes there - e.g. look at any controversial subject (someone mentioned BP, and how half the page was about their "controversies", which does not say that they are true, nor false, but acknowledges that they exist all the same - most people, with the exclusion of the BP execs I am sure - would consider that to be a state that is unbiased).

In fact, the OP brings up a major source of bias to begin with: if someone wants to federate a blogging website, why would we even talk about it - just DO IT!:-) However, the name "Wikipedia" was mentioned b/c it is popular. This introduces a bias whereby the rest of the discussion will be predicated upon the lines of what Wikipedia is vs. what it is not. Even though the OP made it clear that "Wikipedia" is not the goal of that project at all. Even dragging its name into it has thus introduced a source of bias, rather than allowing everyone here to discuss the merits of this proposal on its own, as if made from scratch rather than a Wikipedia-clone ("good" connotations?) or Wikipedia-wanna-be ("bad" ones?) or Wikipedia-whatever.

I think you have 2 replies here that went to the wrong place - instead of to the person you likely aimed them at, they are to yourself. I just thought that you might like to know!:-)