Larry Sanger

>I've been on this journey myself, not that I'd ever harm anyone, but I was definitly radicalised by some of the far-left areas of YT when I was younger. I lost a number of friends because I was so convinced I was morally correct and they were wrong on topics like immigration and capitalism.

I can sympathize. It's worse off in Canada. We literally watched far left stuff in school. Not once did they ever show anything even marginally conservative.

>I'm aware of a few cases now where subscribers of TYT have killed people, but it's hard to know how direct those conncetions are.

I did not know that. Are you refering to Armenian Genocide or like TYT channel has created violent antifa type people?

>I know for me TYT definitely misled me and caused me to believe everyone who didn't share my views were evil and I have wondered before what I might have done had I been a violent person.

I too saw many of their videos years ago and they made lots of sense. They quite wrongfully portrayed Republicans as all nazis and KKK. Or at least a minimum of racists. Mind you, I'm not American nor do I live there. I don't particularly care about the republicans. For all I know they are all racists.

>I don't really know what the answer to this is. I know for me YouTube was also part of my deradicalisation process. Listening to people like Sam Haris allowed me to shift into the centrist I am today.

I followed Sam before TYT era mainly during the Hitchens and Dawkins time. Sam is very smart but…

Larry Sanger was banned mainly because he was found "guilty" of:

1- Canvassing: the act of notifying/recruiting people in a biased, selective, mass, or off-wiki way to sway a discussion.

2- Meatpuppetry: the problem created when recruited real people show up and function as extra votes/support for the recruiter’s side.

because he promoted his project "WikiProject Intellectual Diversity" [1] and posted it on X to over 90.000 followers [2] which resulted in a massive engagement of four posts and seven reposts.

"Canvassing" and "Meatpuppetry" are two of many things to avoid when dealing with Wikipedia. Their full policies and guidelines consist of hundreds of pages and sub-pages, starting at [3].

The final perma-ban was issued by "ScottishFinnishRadish" by declaring a "community consensus" in the ANI at [4]. ANI stands for "Administrators’ noticeboard/Incidents". ScottishFinnishRadish is an admin since September 2022 and is responsible for a total of 17,394 block entries on Wikipedia since then – according to Codex querying the API, counting all log entries with type:block and user:ScottishFinnishRadish – over 12 blocks per day. Codex also calculated that i would need up to a full year of 8-hour-days, 7 day weeks, to actually read and understand all of these blocks by this one admin. ScottishFinnishRadish also has no user page and seems to be completely anonymous [5]. Doxxing of admins is also prohibited btw.

There are ways for Larry Sanger to appeal. The most promising…

I've read the guidelines. I do not see how what I wrote breaches them.

The first half enquires on reckless group-think in tech that would bring about a situation such as Xinjlang, I wrote this in the hope those behind it could engage to allay my fears, provide context or offer links to discussions on the recent politicisation of our software. I made a submission when purges were enacted 50 days ago - it was instantly flagged. [1]

I've designed systems in place in both defence and telecommunications. I don't trust any aspect now that updates without thorough audit, you might not like it, but that is undeniably relevant to this place. I did not post it to wage some political battle, it is in response to one waged upon us all. [2]

The second half responds directly to the submitted article, offering a rational position on why China might persue active measures while speculating on why media bylines might push disgust. I've not minced words, I am from the UK so the burden is upon you to tell us what the ideal replacement population is in a country which rejects theocracy, believes in equality before the law and loves its pets to bits? Theil and so Palantir predict it as a potential destiny of ours, our loved ones and our descendants. [3]

Now, if we were to search 'racist' here on HN, over the last month there's over 100 pages of unchallenged comment. When this term is used carelessly without justification or applied to groups it is most insidious, we can accurately label it…

I'm trying to understand what specifically makes a worldview conspiratorial for you. Are you disagreeing that the "Great Reset" involves implementing particular ideological views and political positions? Would you agree that people are allowed to disagree with those positions? And that those who disagree with those positions are allowed to call attention to powerful people pushing those positions? Personally I don't see any of those as being "cranky" or "conspiratorial" as much as just regular political engagement.

Regarding the quote from Wikipedia - I don't agree with how that portion of the article is written or sourced. It is debated on the Talk page, and is a reflection of a growing bias in Wikipedia (https://larrysanger.org/2020/05/wikipedia-is-badly-biased/). That section starts off by mentioning QAnon, then says Trump amplified QAnon, and never makes a connection between all of that and "Great Reset" (it's a sort of "guilt by association" argument). Additionally, it lists out a number of right-leaning TV personalities and claims they were pushing a conspiracy theory, but none of the source articles they reference show any false claim from those same people. From those sources, it looks like these people complained that the pandemic is being exploited as a political opportunity to introduce and push various left-leaning political positions. That seems not only very reasonable to me, but also easily provable.

From my perspective, I am seeing people take the very…

I knew it was going to be Sanger based on just the title.

"Trust but verify" is a good strategy for Wikipedia; the idea that Wikipedia as a whole is "partisan" is kind of ridiculous, but there's no denying that it's not uncommon to be out-edited by someone with more zeal and spare time on their hands, and these people are not necessarily always there with the best of intentions. This has always been the case, since day 1, and these slants exist in all directions.

If you read the accompanying article[1] Sanger wrote then it's plenty clear that he's coming at this from a very partisan stand; that's not necessarily a bad thing, although personally, I think Sanger's anger that Wikipedia doesn't give equal merit to Tucker Carlson's unhinged conspiracy theory that the Jan 6th riots were organised by the FBI to be ... well, unhinged. He's also angry it only presents the "Established" view on climate change.

We can discus the merits of what he's saying at length, but at the core it points to a fundamental problem: people have profoundly different views on reality that are impossible to unify. This has always been the case to some degree; any article will have to curate the information, or you'll end up with the weirdest quackery in any medical article. But things have moved so far apart that you'll soon become Adolf Stalin: for the left you'll be Adolf Hitler and for the right you'll be Joseph Stalin. I'm not even joking, I've seen this happen on a number of occasions. It's…

I don't think anybody who has seen an edit war thinks wiki editors (not mods, mods have a different role) are saints. I would imagine that fewer than 1% of people who view a Wikipedia article in a given month have knowingly 'seen an edit war'. If I'm right, you're not talking about the vast majority of Wikipedia users.

But a Wikipedia page cannot survive stating something completely outside the consensus. Bizarre statements cannot survive because they require reputable references to back them. This is untrue. There are several high profile examples of false information persisting on Wikipedia:

Wikipedia’s rules and real-world history show that 'bizarre' or outside-the-consensus claims can persist—sometimes for months or years. The sourcing requirements do not prevent this.

Some high profile examples:

- The Seigenthaler incident: a fabricated bio linking journalist John Seigenthaler to the Kennedy assassinations remained online for about 4 months before being fixed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Seigenthaler_biography_incident

- The Bicholim conflict: a detailed article about a non-existent 17th-century war—survived *five years* and even achieved “Good Article” status: https://www.pcworld.com/article/456243/fake-wikipedia-entry-on-bicholim-conflict-finally-deleted-after-five-years.html

- Jar’Edo Wens (a fake aboriginal deity), lasted almost 10 years: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/04/15/the-great-wikipedia-hoax/

-…