Latest / UK Column Radio / Wikipedia Is a Central Intelligence and Woke Nest — Larry Sanger | Jerm Warfare

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Wikipedia Is a Central Intelligence and Woke Nest — Larry Sanger | Jerm Warfare · UK Column Radio

0:35
None. Larry Sanger, thank you for
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joining me In the Trenches for the first time on my UK column
0:42
show. Well, it's it's good to be here.
0:46
Take me through your background if you don't mind.
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Sure. Well, I in the 1990s, I knew
0:55
Jimmy Wales and when he, to make a Long story short, had the idea
1:02
of New Pedia, a new public contributed encyclopedia, he
1:08
asked me to basically start it on behalf of his company called
1:13
Momus Inc. And so I did, and it was in the
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process of creating a new Pedia that I had the idea for and
1:25
launched Wikipedia. And so I actually helmed the
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project for the first 14 months. I established a lot of the
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original policies and that's essentially how it got started
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anyway. I was talking to my wife, just
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yesterday in fact, about the concept of Wikipedia, and it
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appears that the idea has turned out to be a better than the
1:55
reality. I think that's fair to say,
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right? It's just amazing when you first
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hear about it, it sounds like total nonsense of course, I
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mean, anybody can edit any page. It sounds like it's going to be
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total chaos. Didn't end up being quite chaos.
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What what people didn't realize in the early days was just how
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subtle the the ways, the many ways in which it could be taken
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over influenced. And yeah, that that's the thing
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that has disappointed me the most.
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Ultimately it's basically a big game and the wrong people have
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won the game. But I mean, if you think about
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it, Larry, so I mean, an old school encyclopedia has put
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together, let's say annually by a group of people in whom you
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put your trust. You go, OK, fine.
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That group of people, they doing all the homework and the book
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that I have in front of me must be reliable because I trust
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those 12 people or, or have a menu, right?
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It would make sense that something like Wikipedia is more
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reliable because it can be updated not annually, but every
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minute and it can be it can be held the the updates can be held
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accountable by essentially the peers.
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It's effectively peer review like in its best form.
3:28
Yes. And, and to be fair, there's
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something to that. Even today, there's certain
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indisputable facts that are perhaps not No one really cares
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about them too much. And such facts are allowed to
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exist on Wikipedia and to be updated right away.
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And there are still people who do the hard work of of actually
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finding those and updating them as soon as they appear.
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So that that actually is what makes Wikipedia as as useful as
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it is. It's just the problem areas are
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are what has turned off so many people, especially in the last
4:12
five or ten years. What are those problem areas?
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Oh, well, I mean various kinds of ideological bias.
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So, and it kind of depends on what country you're talking
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about. But let's not begin with the
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United States. Let's begin with, say India.
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If you talk to a Hindu from India you will get an earful I I
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have multiple times about just how biased Wikipedia is against
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the the Hindus and in favour of the Muslim faction of Indian
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society. Not that I know anything about
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it, I don't, but that I am assured is, is a thing and a a
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serious problem on Wikipedia in in the Israeli Palestinian
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conflict. Basically Wikipedia has decided
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that the Palestinians are the good guys and the Israelis are
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the bad guys and period that there's really nothing more to
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say, that there's very little nuance.
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And and then of course, when it comes to US and Western news
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generally, the platform is essentially captured by the
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globalist left. So basically whatever the
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left-leaning parties favor that's popular on Wikipedia that
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is represented sort of depends again on the country that the
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issue whatever. So the there is a very narrow
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Overton window and it is definitely tilted to the left.
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The only sources that are permitted on Wikipedia now that
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are remotely conservative are the extremely establishment
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ones, so like the Wall Street Journal and the Telegraph.
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And there isn't much more than that that that's pretty much it.
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So Fox News, the the New York Post, all of the alt right or
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new media sources are basically not allowed a lot of how did
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that. Happen, though, I mean, if it's
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open to all, yeah, how how does that happen?
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Well, there has been what is called institutional capture.
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So Wikipedia was one of the institutions that the left likes
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to March through and it has successfully marched through and
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captured it. How that's possible being an
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open platform, That's, that's a good question.
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I, I think there's, there's sociological issues and
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psychological issues that at work there.
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I think a lot of it simply has to do with the fact that
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conservatives and libertarians don't like to go where they
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don't feel welcome, and the left just loves to make anyone who
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disagrees with them not feel welcome.
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But clearly there's a lot going on behind the scenes.
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You cannot see how the sausage is being made, really.
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I used to say, you know, when I gave interviews and looked in on
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on Wikipedia as I have done consistently throughout the
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years, from time to time, I used to say that if you want to see
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how Wikipedia articles come to be the way they are, you just
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need to go to the talk page and read the discussions.
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And there is still something to that.
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You really can't understand why it reads the way that it does
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unless you unless you look at that conversation.
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But there are points in the, in such conversations on the talk
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page. This is the page that everybody
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goes to when they're negotiating about what the article will look
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like. And there there are some points
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that in such conversations when it everyone seems to agree on a
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point that seems very much unreasonable and not proven.
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And it's almost as if there were a lot of back channel backroom
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deals being made. Or perhaps people are just in a
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lot of habits that allow them to settle on common understandings
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without having to make such deals.
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But generally speaking, we know that there are a lot of back
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channels. There are a lot of, well, the,
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the vast majority of people who work on Wikipedia are anonymous
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and so they can talk to each other off Wiki and you will
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never know that they are doing so.
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So it's the the actual coordination of what's going on
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on Wikipedia, including who is getting paid to write what.
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It's all very opaque at this point.
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And it wasn't like that for what, first five years, 10
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years? It's hard to say.
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I I think people started getting paid to work on Wikipedia
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probably within the first few years of the project.
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But I think the number of people who are secretly under the table
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getting paid is, has grown. I I don't couldn't even tell you
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what the percentage is today because there's really no good
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way of knowing. Am I correct in saying that only
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about 14 or 15% of the most powerful 60 or 65 users on
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Wikipedia are that give their real names?
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That's right. That's right.
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So I counted up a group of people I call the Power 62 and
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that these are spread across three groups.
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The Arbitration Committee, which is like the Wikipedia Supreme
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Court, the bureaucrats as they're called, which have the
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ability to promote people to administrator hood and an
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administrator has the ability to kick people out of the project.
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So these are the ones who bless the administrators.
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And then, you know, there's a third group that escapes me at
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the moment. And so these sort of represent
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the most powerful people on Wikipedia. 85% of those people
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are anonymous. We don't know who they are,
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right? They they don't share their real
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name. They don't have an identifying
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picture. We don't know where they live,
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like even the country in many cases.
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And that's the most responsible people on the project.
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It's very weird if you think about it, if people just, if you
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ask them I, I have discovered like if you just go up to a
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random person. So you know about Wikipedia,
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right? Of course.
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Did you know that 85% of the people with the most power on
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the platform are totally anonymous?
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You don't even know have any idea who they are.
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It's a no. That's how can that be?
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Wikipedia is supposed to be this open democratic place.
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How is that even possible? Well, part of the thing that has
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made it as active as it has been over the years is precisely the
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fact that people can write what they want without any
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consequences on the platform. And because it's anonymous, I'm,
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I'm not actually arguing against anonymity as such.
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But in my 9 theses, which I imagine we will, we will get to,
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I, I promote the idea that those power 62 or the people who will
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be in their positions, they should not be anonymous.
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We should know who they are. They should take real world
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responsibility because they are, after all, the editorial
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leadership of the most powerful media platform in the world,
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information platform, anyway, as long as we're not talking about
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search engines and perhaps a few other things.
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So. You refer to the 9 theses as
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what? The Hail Mary proposal.
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Yes, right. Which means that there's not a
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lot of chance that it's going to be adopted.
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Certainly not all of the 9 theses, perhaps one or two,
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we'll see. But the, the, the jury is not
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out to change the metaphor. You know, we're still talking
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about it. Not as actively as we were last
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fall, but yeah. So the proposal is in generally.
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I I posted a set of nine theses, as I called them, like the 95
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theses of Martin Luther on Wikipedia nailed.
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It on the door. That's right, that's right.
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So I virtually nailed the 9 theses on the door of Wikipedia
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and invited people to comment, put them also on my blog, and
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I've been doing a lot of interviews about them since
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then, essentially trying to get support for this thoroughgoing
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the the world's first thoroughgoing reform proposal
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for Wikipedia. No, nobody has ever.
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People proposed a lot of piece meal reforms, you know, like you
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should change this or you should change this that, but this is an
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attempt to actually make some realistic and extremely
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reasonable reforms to Wikipedia that will change it for the
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better and various ways. Well.
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Let's talk about some of them. Sure, the ending of consensus.
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I'm a big fan of that. Sure, you're a big fan of
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consensus or ending it? Ending ending it.
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Yes. So let me explain then how
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difficult editorial questions are decided on Wikipedia.
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All right, so here's here's a good example when Israel after
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the October 7th bombing, not bombing, but attack on on Israel
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after that, Israel just wreaked devastation on Gaza, as
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everybody knows. And then the question became,
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should that have been called, should that be called a genocide
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or not? All right, so that actually goes
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to the very name of an article, Gaza genocide.
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Is that what what the thing should be called?
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Well, there is an article on Wikipedia called Gaza Genocide,
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and there is a particular process that you're expected to
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go through to arrive at what they call a consensus.
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Now, if you ask me, it's just nonsense to say that anyone
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could arrive at a consensus on an issue like that.
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I mean, it's over a hot war, so people are going to disagree and
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and. Emotional.
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And, and exactly, very much so. People are shooting at each
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other over, over this disagreement.
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And so it, it's, it cannot really be called a consensus,
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regardless of how you arrive at it.
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What it ultimately means in Wikipedia space is it's a
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consensus of everyone who thinks the way that they do.
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And that's all it means. And the way it's arrived at is
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simply they look at what they consider to be reliable sources,
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which as we discussed earlier, excludes basically all
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conservative sources and excludes other sources that are
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unpopular with the the leadership about that area of
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the world. Right.
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So Al Jazeera, that's totally greenlit.
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You can use it. The Anti Defamation League
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comments about the geopolitics of Israel is absolutely
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disallowed. Isn't that strange?
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It's like you can use Al Jazeera but you can't use the the some
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of the the most official opinionizing about the place
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that it it concerns you. You should at least be able to
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cite what they think about what's going on exactly.
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Right, so I mean this shouldn't be about your own personal
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position. If you are truly looking for
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something that is true, you should consider all arguments.
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Right, absolutely. That's actually just what
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neutrality is originally consensus in in the see this has
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happened over and over again. If you read my 9 theses and the
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accompanying essays you will see it.
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Looks like a cargo cult to me. So the original version made
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sense, but the version that we're left with now has been
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twisted out of recognition of of what it what what it used to be.
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So originally working toward consensus simply meant trying to
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get everybody to agree on an expression of the, of a
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description of all the different views on a, on a subject which
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is very much controversial. And so they had to agree on, on
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basically given that others had to have a say right and and
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everyone needed to be treated fairly.
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And that was essentially what consensus was built on.
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What the consensus was about was not a particular position.
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The consensus was about whether this is a fair representation of
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all positions, given that everyone had to be treated
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fairly. And we see this, for example, in
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climate science. They will argue that consensus
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is science, and it absolutely is not.
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It was falsely attributed to Einstein, but it was something
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along the lines of. 9 out of 10 scientists might agree, but I'm
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only interested in that one scientist that doesn't agree.
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That's right. I mean, a lot of the progress in
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science, all the important progress in science, begins with
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one dissenter and yeah, or a very small group of dissenters.
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In the case of climate science, there's controversy even about
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what the the supposed consensus even is who to count when you
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are counting heads. And then they they generally
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don't even take account of the fact that people are very much
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influenced within their own fields, right?
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Climate science as a field is paid for by competing sides.
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And there's those who want to be able to influence government
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through climate policy. And then there's those who want
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to allow oil companies and other polluters to do whatever the
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hell they want, and others in between.
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So. So yours, your second, what is
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it? What is a what is a singular
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thesis? Would that be the singular is is
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enabling competing articles Now? I like that very much also
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because that creates accountability.
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Right. Well, I suppose that's true in
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so far as if you allow even one alternate article and it has a
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lot of facts that are not revealed in the first article,
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that makes the first article look a lot worse, doesn't it?
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And I think this has got to be one of the main reasons why
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anyone who uses Wikipedia as an ideological platform does not
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want competing articles. Generally speaking, they
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interpret this as being a, a proposal to, to, to make
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Wikipedia biased when really all they are demonstrating with the,
22:38
with the push back here is that they want Wikipedia to, to have
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exactly the bias that it does have.
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So I, I characterize the bias of Wikipedia and I think I have
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nailed it on the head. So I use a, an acronym gasp,
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GASP. And it stands for globalist,
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academic, secular and progress. Yes.
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So these 4th quality is maybe individually they have their
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place, especially academic in an encyclopedia of course, but it's
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the way that they come together that gives Wikipedia its unique
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flavor. So globalist.
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This does not mean a kumbaya, peace loving open platform.
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It means the platform in which multinational organizations are
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imposing their will on the whole globe from places like Geneva
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and New York City and London or Washington, DC.
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And as far as academics ago, of course, I'm not saying that
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academics should not have a special say.
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In fact, I'm kind of infamous for taking the position that in
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Wikipedia, academics should have a special say, at least in
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approving articles, at least in in some sort of review review
24:23
system. But the problem on Wikipedia is
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that there are academics and then there are academics, and
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they will approve only certain views that can be found in
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academia. And the rest of the views and
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the disfavored medical research about COVID, for example, was
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right. Might as well not exist as far
24:52
as they're concerned. I remember in 2020, I was trying
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to figure out, like all of us, what was going on and, and
25:03
suddenly these articles about the effectiveness on mosques
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were appearing on Wikipedia. And I mean, that is complete
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nonsense. I learned in school, you know,
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the effectiveness of mosques. And now suddenly there's this
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obvious kind of medical imposition happening on
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Wikipedia. Yes.
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Yes, no, absolutely. Well, I mean it it, it was, it
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was obvious when Fauci just did a complete 180 within the space
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3 weeks. Oh he did multiple one 80s.
25:38
Yes, exactly. He.
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Was dancing. He was doing so many.
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Right, right. So what else we were going
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through? Gasp.
25:48
We we talked about globalism and academics secular here again,
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you would think, what's wrong with taking with a secular point
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of view? Well, of course there should be
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a secular point of view represented on Wikipedia.
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That's very important. But it is a secular point of
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view that is actively imposed by Wikipedia articles and and
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basically any sort of confessional point of view is
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disallowed if the secular academics have to say something
26:26
on the subject. So for example the the ordinary
26:31
view of God for example, is that the the personal name of God is
26:39
Jehovah or Yahweh. The Tetragrammaton in in Hebrew
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represents 4 letters represents the name of God.
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And this has been essentially squatted on by people who
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insist. The only position that can be
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allowed that should be allowed on Wikipedia is that of
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unbelieving scholars who think that Yahweh was originally the
27:13
head of a polytheistic pantheon and the article is all about
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that pre monotheistic deity. So right.
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So it's, it's like, it's as if there were still Zeus
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worshippers and this article was about Zeus of ancient times.
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So that's what they're trying to treat him like.
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Because they maintain, although this is actually false, they
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maintain that this is the only mode in which he is discussed in
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academia. So these things shade in right.
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They use the academic orientation of Wikipedia to
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shore up the the supposed requirements of secularism on on
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Wikipedia. So what, what it what it means
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is basically you can't actually say even in the first few
28:15
paragraphs of the article where Christians and Jews got the
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idea, according to them of Yahweh, they think that Yahweh
28:25
announced what his name was in Exodus chapter 3.
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I think it is right. And that's, that's the origin.
28:35
That's where we got the name. But anyway.
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So that I mean that creates again an ideological bias.
28:46
Yes, Oh, absolutely, absolutely. Well, in this case it's the
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ideology of religion, or the lack thereof.
28:55
Yes, for sure and. Then the last letter in your
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acronym is progressive, but I think I mean that's quite
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obvious that's going to lead to men can be women.
29:08
That's a good example. There's a lot of examples like
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that, you know, anything having having to do with socialism.
29:17
The the notion that they're is a, a body count or a death count
29:24
for communism is difficult to unearth on Wikipedia.
29:29
Last I checked, buried anyway. So yes, a lot of the people who
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write for Wikipedia, if they reveal anything about their
29:43
politics, they will say I am a Marxist or I am a socialist.
29:48
And they're, they make no compunctions, compunctions about
29:51
it. They tend to reveal relatively
29:54
extreme positions. Like they don't generally say,
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you know, I am a centred centrist Democrat or whatever.
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No one. Or two of your other theses has
30:08
effectively been covered by our conversation.
30:11
Like, for example, I've got them in front of me.
30:14
So like reviving neutrality. I mean, we've spoken about that
30:18
as well as abolishing the source blacklists, which is, as you
30:24
were talking about earlier, allowing in alternative sources.
30:28
That's right, yes. So that's that's very important.
30:32
Obviously Wikipedia, because it has this blacklist page.
30:39
It's a literal blacklist. It doesn't call itself that, but
30:46
you can look it up on your search engine of choice.
30:49
Just look up perennial sources Wikipedia and it will come right
30:54
up. And it's just fascinating to
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browse the list and see what's allowed and what's disallowed on
31:00
Wikipedia. It's not obvious actually.
31:03
And in some cases you can understand why they take the
31:07
position they do on grounds of sort of establishment
31:15
respectability. You know, I guess that's why
31:18
they allow the New York Times, Washington Post and the, say,
31:23
the Wall Street Journal, the Times of London, the BBC, Le
31:27
Monde, all these things are allowed.
31:30
There's a lot of things that are take radical positions routinely
31:35
that are also fully allowed. So I, I can't think of all of
31:43
the examples. Al Jazeera is certainly one of
31:45
them. So the nation.
31:52
So it's, it doesn't make sense, is what I'm saying, Right.
31:58
And meanwhile, it's not possible to cite pretty much any source
32:03
of conservative opinion. Maybe some of them have the
32:07
yellow background, which essentially means you can use
32:11
it, but use sparingly if there isn't a better source.
32:16
But that usually means that it's can't be used at all.
32:20
You certainly. Can't use, yeah, you certainly
32:23
can't use let's say smaller websites or blogs or something
32:26
as as reliable information and yet they could be.
32:30
So there's an interesting diagram on, I don't know if you
32:33
know the website Swiss Policy Research or Swiss, I forget now
32:37
what the title of the website is, but it's, it's, it's
32:40
basically about figuring out propaganda around the world.
32:44
And they've got a, and they've got a diagram in which they,
32:48
it's just a, a guide, rough guide.
32:50
They show how to approach media and they they basically say the
32:57
closer the media outlet is to a source of power.
33:00
Let's say Fox is quite close to the White House when when
33:03
there's a Republican president and CNN is quite close to the
33:06
White House when there's a Democratic president.
33:11
But both sources are close to power.
33:13
Therefore, you need to treat both with with a degree of of
33:16
suspicion and skepticism. And you might want to
33:18
triangulate what you're eating from them.
33:20
And the way to do that is to perhaps find media sources that
33:24
are further away from, from sources of power and, and, and
33:30
potentially put more faith in those.
33:32
Not, doesn't mean that they're going to be right or accurate or
33:35
whatever. But there's a greater chance
33:37
because they've got skin in the game, There's a greater chance
33:39
that that their reliability will be more than that from let's
33:43
say, CNN or or or Fox or whatever.
33:47
Sure. Well, you can't assume that the
33:49
smaller sites are uniformly further away from power, because
33:53
you don't. Know.
33:54
For them, you know, some sometimes the investors, the
33:58
owners are private and and therefore you, you know, they
34:04
might be owned by the CIA or something like that.
34:07
There's any number of of organizations of that sort that
34:10
have been accused of being fronts for intelligence and that
34:14
sort of thing so around. 2008 or 2007 when it was revealed that a
34:20
whole bunch of Wikipedia editors were basically at the CIA and
34:26
FBI. Well, the the story at the time.
34:32
So this was researched by Virgil Griffith and his wiki scanner
34:39
project simply fed the IP addresses which were generally
34:46
available. A lot of people made edits to
34:48
Wikipedia without signing in, and therefore their IP addresses
34:52
were logged publicly. And so all he had to do was look
34:57
up the IP addresses and where they were located.
35:00
And there were a bunch in Langley, West Virginia.
35:04
Langley, Virginia. In other words, the CIA.
35:07
And then there were a lot also in IP addresses that were owned
35:13
by Microsoft and other major corporations and so forth.
35:17
The the point being that that it looks like employees of various
35:23
influential organizations, public and private, were editing
35:28
Wikipedia. So I, I wouldn't say that this
35:31
proves that the CIA owns Wikipedia or is controlled
35:35
calling it or anything like that.
35:36
I've never made that claim, by the way.
35:39
I have no idea what the ultimate power structure of Wikipedia is
35:44
like. It's very unlikely that anyone
35:47
organization controls it somehow.
35:51
I suppose it's possible though. I just, I just don't think so.
35:55
Well, I mean, there's been any number of of different people
36:00
and organizations that have been accused for accused of of
36:05
abusing Wikipedia. There is, I'll take another
36:09
example. Basically there is this fairly
36:17
large PR corporation called Wikipri, don't know if they're
36:22
still in business or not, that has edited Wikipedia over the
36:28
years and they do so pretty openly is my understanding.
36:35
And I believe they were accused about, I don't know, 12-13 years
36:41
ago. I believe, if I'm not mistaken,
36:45
of doing a lot of anonymous editing, which is a big no no on
36:51
Wikipedia. So paid editing that is not
36:55
actually confessed admitted upfront on Wikipedia.
37:00
So, yeah, so I found the the Bell Pottinger reference.
37:05
So the Bell Pollinger scandal exposed how major PR firms
37:08
systematically manipulate Wikipedia for corporate clients.
37:11
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism revealed that Bell
37:14
Pollinger made hundreds of alterations to Wikipedia entries
37:17
about its clients, adding favourable comments whilst
37:20
removing negative content. And then and then further down.
37:25
Yeah, it says. Listen to this.
37:28
In 2023, investigators discovered that Saudi Arabia had
37:31
installed 16 agents as Wikipedia administrators who not only
37:35
controlled political articles, but revealed the identities of
37:38
independent admin administrators to Saudi authorities.
37:42
That's precisely what you're talking about.
37:44
Right. No, absolutely.
37:47
And I'm sure this, this Bill Pottinger scandal is, it's just
37:55
an example, right? I mean, it's, it's only one of
38:00
many, many over the years. So it's a widespread problem
38:06
that has, it's well known to exist.
38:09
And on Wikipedia, if you if you look at it, it it, they don't go
38:14
all the way as far as they ought to in in discussing the
38:20
ramifications of the problem. They simply say paid editing is
38:24
bad. Like this is supposed to be an
38:27
amateur, you know, truth loving project and here you are going
38:35
after filthy lucre. That's not actually what the
38:40
objection is. If there really is anonymous
38:45
paid editing, a lot of it going on, and if the people who are
38:51
anonymously paid for their editing, right, and we and, and
38:57
again, we don't know which of all of the editors those are, if
39:01
they're being paid by extremely wealthy, extremely powerful
39:07
people and organizations, then what are we to make of that?
39:11
I mean then what you're saying is public opinion about Israel
39:17
is being controlled by Saudi Arabia maybe for example, right?
39:23
Or public opinion about the trans transgenderism or whatever
39:30
you want to call it is actually determined by a bunch of left
39:37
wing think tanks that are pushing a certain point of view,
39:41
that are trying to normalize a certain set of opinions.
39:48
That's, that's very interesting, right?
39:50
If you look at it that way, then it's no longer a thread on the,
39:56
the amateurism of Wikipedia. It has very little to do with
40:00
that. It has to do rather with the
40:02
fact that Wikipedia is. Well, it certainly looks like
40:06
it's being controlled secretly by any number of.
40:14
Deep pocketed organizations and we have no way of knowing what
40:18
they are. I think my favorite thesis is
40:25
the one about letting the public rate articles.
40:30
I find that SO is so intuitive because the rating system is
40:37
what is what helps you decide on something from Amazon or or
40:41
whatever. Absolutely right.
40:44
Exactly. So there are some articles I, I
40:49
have no doubt whatsoever would be very low rated on Wikipedia
40:54
and some would be rated very high.
40:57
People would have no problems with them at all.
41:02
And if we had access to that information, then we would read
41:08
Wikipedia differently, wouldn't we?
41:10
But I think the a lot of Wikipedians just don't like that
41:16
that idea. They don't like the idea of
41:19
their work being rated at all by outsiders.
41:25
The thing is, if you really care about truth, right, at the very
41:30
least, especially if you, you know, take a gasp point of view,
41:35
then why don't you make a gasp board and, and have them rate
41:40
the Wikipedia articles or something like that, right?
41:43
But they don't even want that. They don't even want a panel of
41:46
experts to, you know, create a review system.
41:51
They don't want anyone to rate the articles.
41:54
They want the whole thing to appear to be as equally
41:57
authoritative as everything else on the platform, when it clearly
42:01
isn't. This the.
42:05
Potential downside though is you can get orchestrated attacks on
42:11
particular articles or products. For example, we large sums of of
42:17
trolls and bots are sent to give a thumbs down, and I think
42:20
that's one of the reasons why YouTube decided to remove the
42:24
number of of of people giving thumbs down.
42:27
Thumb, thumb, thumb downs, thumb.
42:29
What's the plural thumbs downs? I don't know what.
42:34
I don't know what the plural is. Down votes down.
42:37
Votes. There we go, down votes.
42:39
So they removed that number. So you've got no idea now how
42:42
heavily downvoted a video is. And that is a risk, though.
42:46
Right, right. So obviously any rating system
42:51
can be gamified and there are various ways to to fight that.
42:57
The what I propose is that considering the actual real
43:03
world importance of having reliable ratings of an
43:07
encyclopedia, that Wikipedia should just undertake the
43:12
expense of creating a system that identifies one person, one
43:19
vote. That actually requires that
43:21
somebody know the identities of each of the voters.
43:25
And it can be some third party which is under legal obligations
43:30
to keep the information entirely secret from everyone, etcetera.
43:35
And that would be, you know, one way of doing it.
43:39
There are other ways of doing it without anyone revealing their
43:42
identity, but then it becomes much harder.
43:47
So I I simply think at the very least what they need to do is
43:54
create a a a system in in which academics can declare their
44:00
institutional affiliations and and treat Wikipedia articles as
44:06
articles for review and leave actual reviews.
44:11
Why Wikipedia has never done that and simply made an academic
44:16
peer review system of Wikipedia articles, I really don't
44:20
understand. It doesn't make any sense.
44:25
What does this one more that I'm trying to find here?
44:27
Oh, so you talk about adopting A legislative process, right?
44:33
On Wikipedia, there is nothing like an editor in chief, and
44:39
there's no editorial board. There's no elected officials
44:48
that determine any sort of policy.
44:51
The there are, you might say, elected groups, publicly
44:58
approved groups like the administrators as group that
45:05
that would be the largest of of those sorts.
45:07
Or I guess there's an an even larger one.
45:12
I forget what it's called anyway.
45:14
But the point is that these don't they are not specially
45:19
designated as legislators in the project.
45:23
They can't set new policies. They can't established new
45:28
projects. There is no way in fact on
45:32
Wikipedia of of determining any new policy or or project
45:42
direction. So no official way of blessing
45:46
anything. There's a lot of of ways that
45:50
are kind of unofficial and accepted as being good enough,
45:56
but as a result, Wikipedia changes very, very slowly and
46:04
might say, OK, that that doesn't sound bad, but sometimes it
46:08
needs dramatic change. I think we have actually come to
46:13
the point now where it it's just obvious that Wikipedia needs
46:17
some pretty dramatic change. There is no process whatsoever
46:23
of making dramatic change on Wikipedia.
46:27
So what I'm proposing is simply Wikipedia create a body of
46:32
overseers, of editorial overseers you might call them.
46:37
But what I, what I call them in the proposal, and this is thesis
46:41
9, is the editorial assembly. So a legislature of Wikipedia.
46:51
Wikipedia has a huge body of rules and these semi rules
46:57
called essays. And the essays are routinely
47:01
cited as if they were in fact policy when they're not.
47:07
But they're treated that way by a lot of the rank and file and
47:13
the the ordinary user. If you actually wanted to
47:18
actually read all of the policies that just that the
47:23
plain policies without the the extra essays, it would be like
47:28
reading a couple of books and with the essays, that's a whole
47:31
library practically. It's crazy.
47:35
So this is a basically policy creep that needs to be reined in
47:41
by someone, but there's no way to to rein it in unless there is
47:45
some designated organization like a editorial assembly to do
47:51
the reining in. So I think that Wikipedia needs
47:55
to actually meet face to face in a representative body and start
48:01
deciding the hard questions. How can AI play a role in
48:10
Wikipedia They're. Generally they do not like AI on
48:19
Wikipedia. Like certainly it is a an
48:24
enormous no no to use Wikipedia to write articles.
48:29
I would say that's that's actually the correct position.
48:32
It's a very bad idea to use AI to write articles that are
48:37
supposed to be expected to be written by human beings.
48:41
So if you want to have an AI written encyclopedia like
48:44
Grocopedia, fine, you can work on that.
48:47
But Wikipedia should not involve that.
48:51
What I would say is that AI can be used to do automatic ratings
48:59
and feedback on Wikipedia articles, and why Wikipedia
49:03
hasn't done that is a little obscure to me.
49:08
I think that, again, they just have this sort of official
49:14
contempt of LLMS. And of course everybody knows,
49:21
though, it's just a fact that LLMS are incredibly useful.
49:25
They give you all sorts of information.
49:27
Of course, you have to sort through the good from the bad,
49:31
as you do all information. After all, you know, especially
49:34
Wikipedia articles, those things are not reliable at all.
49:39
So yeah, generally I think Wikipedia should use LLMS to get
49:50
feedback a lot more on their articles and, and they haven't
49:54
been doing that officially. I I think LLMS could actually
49:58
give a letter grade to each article and it wouldn't be a
50:01
terrible resource for that. I've actually proven that to my
50:05
own satisfaction. I've tried that with several
50:08
articles, a few dozen articles all together, gone through the
50:13
process of of engineering the prompt.
50:16
So it gives me just the sort of feedback that I want, goes to
50:20
work on long Wikipedia articles, divides them into chunks, rates
50:25
the subparts and so forth. And they are totally capable of
50:30
doing that sort of work. So having.
50:33
Having said that, LLMS themselves fall into the same
50:38
ideological trap. Oh, of course, yeah.
50:42
Especially in so far as they are to a great extent not exclusive
50:47
exclusively or anything not at all trained on Wikipedia.
50:51
Right? But it you might think, doesn't
50:55
this mean that like if I were to use ChatGPT to rate a Wikipedia
50:59
article, it would be like Wikipedia rating Wikipedia?
51:04
But it's actually not the case. So the the big reputable LLMS
51:13
are all pretty much they've got a lot of information beyond
51:21
Wikipedia and a lot of information that allows them to
51:25
comment critically on Wikipedia articles.
51:29
It's it's an eye opener for people who don't actually know
51:34
about a topic. You just feed in the the
51:37
introductory section. More than that, it's probably
51:40
too much. Feed in the introductory section
51:43
of a Wikipedia article and just ask the LLM to review it from
51:50
different points of view. If you just tell it give me a
51:53
review of this article from a general point of view, it might
51:56
give glowing praise. But if you actually ask it to
51:59
dig, do a an in depth Fact Check, you know from different
52:04
points of view that will reveal all sorts of things that are not
52:09
in the article. So.
52:12
At the beginning of our discussion, I said that the idea
52:19
of Wikipedia might be better than the reality, and I'm
52:23
wondering, Larry, without being too cynical, are your 9 theses
52:29
not just moving chairs around on the Titanic?
52:33
It's a good question, I think. Let's put it this way.
52:40
The reputation of Wikipedia has taken an enormous hit in recent
52:47
years, and but that damage is mostly done at this point.
52:53
I suppose it could get worse, but I don't think Wikipedia is
52:57
going anywhere. It's possible that grocopedia
53:00
will be bigger. We know that it's going to be
53:03
bigger, that's for sure. In terms of article count.
53:09
That does not mean that people are going to turn to Grogopedia
53:13
instead of Wikipedia. We'll see.
53:15
It's possible, but I I don't think we can rule out Wikipedia
53:21
for the very simple reason that writing an encyclopedia with an
53:26
LLM is a very tall task. We don't know how long it's
53:31
going to take before it can really compete with even
53:36
Wikipedia and like competing with professionally written
53:40
encyclopedias that it may never be able to do that.
53:44
So but but. But you say that, but as far as
53:48
I know, and it's been a while since I've been at any tertiary
53:52
institution, but as far as I know, many simply do not accept
53:56
Wikipedia as as a source. Of course, yes, yes, that's
54:01
right. What doesn't stop people from
54:03
using it though, right. It's still one of the most
54:06
popular websites in the world. It it actually has declined a
54:10
little bit in traffic in the last couple of years and it is
54:15
speculated that is because of L alms.
54:19
But I mean. People are using ChatGPT for
54:22
example for searching more than Google.
54:26
Right, exactly I do. Despite the ideological issues
54:32
also. That's right.
54:35
Well of course you can always tell.
54:37
The LLM, especially ChatGPT, I find to answer from a certain
54:43
point of view and it will dutifully comply.
54:46
So it doesn't do a terrible job at that either.
54:51
I don't know about you but I don't use Wikipedia for
54:53
anything. I haven't for years.
54:54
In actual fact my search engine is kagi.com.
54:59
KAGIII think a couple of the guys were from Brave and MIT and
55:05
it's very privacy orientated search engine and it's premium
55:08
so you you get what you pay for. But nice thing I beg pardon.
55:13
I didn't know about that. I didn't know that that Kagi
55:17
existed. I'll have to check it out.
55:19
It's a phenomenal search engine. I've been using it for for about
55:22
2 1/2 years. And why I'm telling you this is
55:25
you can manipulate your search results.
55:26
So I've told it to put Wikipedia at the bottom of my search.
55:32
So Wikipedia notoriously comes up at the top of every search
55:36
engine, just about. And so in Cogi you can either
55:38
remove it entirely, which I've done with most mainstream news.
55:42
But Wikipedia, sometimes I want to check something, but I put it
55:45
right at the bottom of the page. It automatically does that.
55:49
Right. Interesting.
55:51
Yeah, no, that's, that sounds like how search engines
55:56
generally should operate. But you know, when when it comes
55:59
to the free search engines, you are the product, you're
56:02
basically being manipulated and that's the whole point.
56:07
So. Larry, we're going to come in
56:12
for the final lap here. You're prognosis for Wikipedia
56:18
is it optimistic? Yeah, I if they don't make some
56:28
serious changes, I think they are on the way out.
56:36
How quickly, I can't say. At this point, we we don't know
56:41
the big competitor of Wikipedia is is not just a pedia, although
56:48
that's a great new competitor on the scene.
56:51
And the encyclosphere, which combines all the encyclopedias
56:56
together is also a good idea, if I may say so myself, since I
57:02
came up with the idea. Nevertheless, I think Wikipedia
57:08
is going to remain dominant even more than Grocopedia, until
57:13
Grocopedia is more of a proven quantity right.
57:20
And the the problem, the thing that will stop people from using
57:26
Grocopedia and sticking with Wikipedia, even if they know
57:31
that Wikipedia is not that great and that it has its problems, is
57:36
that with Wikipedia you know that a human being has written
57:41
it, and if they have made mistakes, it has made human
57:45
sorts of mistakes. Whereas with Grogopedia it, it
57:50
could be hallucinating. And that that means making
57:56
mistakes in patterns that no human being ever would.
58:00
There's a real problem with that, you see, as far as I'm
58:05
concerned, you you actually have to solve the problem of
58:11
hallucination in order to have a really reliable encyclopedia
58:16
that will be used by a lot of people.
58:20
Now, I could be wrong. It's it's entirely possible that
58:23
that people will just switch to grocopedia as soon as it is has
58:29
more articles than Wikipedia, for example.
58:32
That won't be long that that could be tomorrow for all I
58:35
know. Like in the next few days.
58:38
Literally. It's possible.
58:40
Go. On to Grocopedia and do a search
58:42
for Wikipedia. Right, right.
58:47
I've done it and there's there's a whole section on biases and
58:51
political influences. It's worth reading.
58:54
Interesting. Yes, Well.
58:57
Yeah. On that, it's very interesting.
59:00
Wikipedia used to have a very fair and, and, and pretty
59:06
devastating self criticism when it came to that topic, you know,
59:12
Wikipedia's biases and so forth and allowed its critics to speak
59:17
quite openly. And that changed in the last few
59:20
years. Wikipedia now has managed that
59:24
information in a way that promotes Wikipedia, which which
59:29
is really not surprising, but it's also kind of disappointing.
59:33
Like they really did turn a page about 5 or or 10 years ago and
59:40
they, they decided basically Donald Trump is so evil and so
59:45
bad. Basically, I think this is the
59:47
thinking so awful that we have to do something to, to manage
59:52
the misinformation and like, well, that that means that
59:57
Wikipedia has just got to start telling people what to think
1:00:01
and, and don't like give them any doubts about their own
1:00:05
reliability or anything like that.
1:00:08
It's it's sad and it's ultimately undermines our
1:00:14
ability to deal with the the the truth as rational adult human
1:00:21
beings properly. Do you think Jimmy, I almost
1:00:24
said Jimmy Page, do you think Jimmy Wales is compromised?
1:00:32
I mean, I, I don't really want to speak to that.
1:00:37
Let's just say it's not my my place to to opine about such
1:00:42
things. Well, having said that, I almost
1:00:44
said Jimmy Page. I certainly do not think he's
1:00:47
compromised. Probably one of the one of the
1:00:49
best guitarists ever. I think that's pretty, pretty
1:00:56
compromising, if you ask me. I don't know.
1:00:58
Didn't he work Lucifer well? OK sure, but I mean Led Zeppelin
1:01:03
were a pretty good band in their time, yes.
1:01:05
Yes. I can't enable that.
1:01:09
Yeah. OK.
1:01:11
So, Larry, how can my audience follow you?
1:01:15
Well, you can go to x.com L Sanger, go to larrysanger.org,
1:01:24
my blog. I'm going to be blogging a lot
1:01:26
actually. And I am going to have a
1:01:29
subscription service starting for the first time in over 15
1:01:34
years since I've have, I've been blogging for a long time and
1:01:37
it's always been 100% free. I'm still going to be, if
1:01:42
anything, creating more free stuff, but I'm, I'm going to
1:01:46
just be doing a lot more blogging.
1:01:48
I'm going to try it out at least for a few months.
1:01:50
So that should be fun. A lot of lot of theology stuff.
1:01:57
So we'll see how that goes. And then encyclosphere.org if
1:02:02
you want to follow the the news about the encyclosphere.
1:02:07
But lately it's been down to a skeleton crew essentially
1:02:13
working on the Knowledge Standards Foundation.
1:02:15
And mostly what I'm doing is, is what I have been doing for the
1:02:19
last year, which is to criticize Wikipedia.
1:02:25
Yeah, it's not just that, though.
1:02:26
We've we've been doing a few other things, but that's, that's
1:02:29
a lot of my own work. Larry Sanger, thank you for
1:02:34
joining me in the trenches. Absolutely.