Nine Theses on Wikipedia: A Special Feature
I submit these nine theses to Wikipedia’s community and to the world. I do this, as Martin Luther said when he posted his famous 95 theses, “Out of love for the truth and the desire to elucidate it.”
My Blog
-
How I’m locking down my cyber-life
Drafted Jan. 4, 2019; updated occasionally since then; most recently updated May 11, 2019 Three problems of computer technology My 2019 New Year’s resolution (along with getting into shape, of course) is to lock down my cyber-life. This is for three reasons. First, threats to Internet security of all sorts have evolved beyond the reckoning…
52 comments on How I’m locking down my cyber-life20 minutes -
Social media stupidifies and radicalizes us
Back when the buzzword switched from “Web 2.0” to “social media,” I started to get quite suspicious. When I was participating in online communities, I wasn’t propagating “media.” That is something that boring corporate media types did. What would those boring corporate media types, or rather their Silicon Valley equivalents, do with once-unconstrained, lively, frequently…
4 minutes -
I am informed; you are misinformed; and the government should do something about this problem
Poynter, the famous journalism thinktank, has published “A guide to anti-misinformation actions around the world.” This sort of thing is mostly interesting not just for the particular facts it gathers but also for the assumptions and categories it takes for granted. The word “misinformation” is thrown around, as are “hate speech” and “fake news.” The…
5 minutes -
The New York Times comes out against free speech
According to a front page New York Times news (not opinion) article by Adam Liptak (“Weaponizing the First Amendment: How Free Speech Became a Conservative Cudgel”), we must adopt a stance of skepticism toward all this talk of free speech, if we wish to be sophisticated and sensitive, as all good Times readers aspire to…
24 minutes -
Positivity and motivation
One thing that almost nobody knows about me is how much time I’ve spent on self-analysis of one sort or another. I’m deeply impressed by people who are more motivated and self-disciplined than I am, and I frequently try to get to the bottom of the many issues surrounding self-discipline. Recently I’ve been toying with…
4 minutes -
Why do I get so much work done on airplanes?
Riding in planes ain’t so bad. I wholeheartedly believe they’re safer than cars–and this is the one actual advantage of having short legs. So I don’t mind riding in planes. Maybe, I admit, I even look forward to it a little. But more important than that, I usually get quite a bit of work done…
2 minutes -
Is it time to move from social media to blogs?
This began as a Twitter thread. I’ve finally put my finger on a thing that annoys me—probably, all of us—about social media. When we check in on our friends and colleagues and what they’re sharing, we are constantly bombarded with simplistic attacks on our core beliefs, especially political beliefs. “This cannot stand,” we say. So…
2 minutes -
EU copyright reform could threaten wiki encyclopedias
If we are to believe its critics, under the pending EU copyright reform legislation, the EU would implement a “link tax” across all of Europe. So if you link to a news article, for example, including a text snippet, then you’d have to pay a fee. When Spain tried this, Google News simply discontinued service…
3 minutes
Support the Knowledge Standards Foundation:
/larrysanger- An open reply to Jimmy Wales. He's wrong: Grokipedia won't necessarily be biased; and, obviously, the Trump article is badly biased. First of a series of replies to Jimmy's remarks in this Reason exposé: https://reason.com/video/2026/02/23/can-you-trust-wikipedia/
- I invited my X peeps to ask me questions and then "like" the various questions, and I would upload the answers in video form. Here it is! Christian identity – 1:10 "Call no man teacher" – 9:25 Role of government – 15:45 Authority & resistance – 19:15 Wikipedia labor – 24:20 Net value of Wikipedia […]