alt Hacker NewsI spent ~2 years actively editing Wikipedia for multiple hours every day. I remember taking my laptop out at airports for 20 minutes between transfers, just to tweak an article or improve a source. While I originally started because I found some articles lackluster, I quickly realized how vigorous the editing process could be on controversial topics.
For what simple HTML you see on the surface, you would be absolutely shocked to see how many hundreds of thousands of hours are spent to create an encyclopedia that, to be honest, is about as unbiased, astroturf-free, and low barrier of entry as you can get. It's not built with crappy automation but instead hand crafted with love and respect. I would bet my salary on Wikipedia turning to shit within a year if the editors who signed the Editor Strike[0] leave en masse.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wiki_Workers_United_...
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Just want to express gratitude for you and all who contributed to a Wikipedia "hand crafted with love and respect". Your contributions will last-- some of us set up Kiwix and a local copy of pre-AI Wikipedia that we'll keep forever, GFS style. No matter what happens your work will be preserved and used.
I've basically stopped using wikipedia entirely since OpenAI Deep Research does a much better job.
Not sure I agree with the whole "human editors" stuff anymore.
From a brief skim, the list includes pretty much all active Arbitration Enforcement (AE) admins.
For those not in the loop, AE is the main mechanism to enforce civility and neutrality in contentious areas (obvious stuff like Israel-Palestine, American Politics, but also India-Pakistan, casteism, etc etc). It removes editors that are obviously only on the site to astroturf a specific belief relating to a globally controversial topic.
This requires painstaking review of one's conduct and is the main reason Wikipedia is not astroturfed in the same way Reddit or other discussion forums are.
If the strike goes forward, Wikipedia will have a massive realignment towards whatever political groups can amass the most accounts agreeing with them.
Grokipedia would unironically become more neutral in a year.