« Until very recently, the most common photo of him online consisted of a misidentified photo of Vietnamese writer Chu Cẩm Phong. Only in January of this year did a French Wikipedia user, perhaps one of his surviving relatives, upload a photo of Bùi that we verified with his Utah classmates. »
This shows how Wikipedias, even comparatively obscure ones, have become important infrastructure and therefore have a duty to guarantee quality.
More explicitly: if I see it, you can be frigging certain that far-Right activists and hostile foreign powers have seen it. And they are trying to capture Wikipedias as a high ground from which they can broadcast propaganda. We must not be naive about attempts to seize control of Wikipedias, and we must counteract them.
self-organisation emerging from minimal rules and enforcement (a rich Libertarian White cis-dude fantasy)
the worse threat coming from schoolchildren pranks and the occasional temperamental eccentric.
This completely breaks apart against organised militants with specific tactics and long-term goals. It was already breaking at the seams with the Bogdanov Brothers. Now we see overt racist and homophobic discourses go unsanctioned, and even be defended.
Add comment