Down the memory hole: Wikipedia editors are now deleting content from the talk pages

submitted by Jacinda from self.debatealtright

This may be old news to you but it is news to me.

For a number of years now I have been sporadically editing Wikipedia pages, both in an attempt to make them more accurate, and also to present evidence for an alternative point of view.

From about six years ago it became increasingly difficult (no matter how well sourced) to present anything that dissented from the liberal orthodoxy. More and more woke editors took control of the pages. These people did not play fair, were not interested in the truth, and were relentless in pushing their particular agenda. At this point collectively working on what had seemed at the beginning an admirable project began to feel pointless.

No matter — there were always the talk pages. Often when I was researching something I found valuable information buried in the talk pages and made it a habit to always check them to see what had been deleted or censored. Assuming other people were doing this I made sure any of my edits were simultaneously well documented there. I assumed this would act as a permanent record after the edit itself was deleted.

Now I see the talk pages themselves are being severely edited. Huge chunks are simply gone. I have no idea how widespread this is, or if it is only affecting topics the left deems sensitive, but given the material deleted is often the most contentious, it is extremely frustrating, as well as a blow to future scholarship.

Obviously there are times when perhaps talk pages need to be edited but it is disappointing to see such partisanship.

Thanks for reading this rant. I really appreciate this sub for letting me let off steam like this.

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[–]Nombre27 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Sorry to hear that. Sounds extremely frustrating and disappointing.

[–]Jacinda[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

It's only to be expected as 'activists' take over various websites but deleting the talk pages themselves (and the links they contain) seems amazingly underhand.

Here, for example, is a historian complaining about how his field of study is being distorted by Islamists, and how their distortions are in turn fed into the MSM, and into our understanding of history in general.

Spectator:

[These days a more subtle campaign is being waged to persuade us that Islam’s role in the rise of modern science was a great deal more significant than realised. There is some truth in this.... [However] these modest but real contributions have proved insufficient for Islamic apologists. They want us to believe that science was all but invented by Muslims and they have found the perfect medium to get their message across. Of course, it’s Wikipedia. [Cont...]

Sadly I only feel it will get worse. The Left seems determined to demonize white civilization at the expense of truth which is increasingly regarded as provisional, a product of will rather than objective reality.

[–]NeoRail 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Archive copies if you can, document what's being done and message some free speech conservative grifter about it - it might at least help spread awareness. This is a serious suggestion. If you can, please do this.

[–]Jacinda[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Quite apart from Wikipedia, archiving the Internet is essential these days. Whole articles seem to get removed with depressing regularity or else someone gets doxxed, often over something relatively trivial and they take down their blog — no matter how excellent their actual writing was.

If I had the time it would be interesting to actually conduct a social experiment and make, for instance, fifty or so uncontroversial corrections to Wikipedia and see how long it takes for them to be deleted.

I am old enough to remember the early days of the Internet and how intoxicating the access to information promised to be. Now it seems as though we are going to be living in the digital equivalent of Fahrenheit 451 with huge amounts of wrong thought simply expunged from the net.

Perhaps it always was the case. Ron Unz writes iabout his awakening in his American Pravda series after he digitized a massive amount of literature from the past 200 years and realized huge amounts of historical knowledge had seemly been forgotten because it didn't fit the contemporary narrative.

[–]nordmannenLegionnaire 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I've also noticed this, even on seemingly innocuous things. It's more frustrating that the only people who talk about it are 9/11 truthers complaining about their edits on the 9/11 wiki page being deleted.

[–]Jacinda[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

It's not just Wikipedia but also Google that is messing with search results. I used to re-find articles easily simply by googling key words but now sites such as theoccidentalobserver.net seem to be becoming increasingly buried — the only way to find stuff is to force search within the website. Even articles on innocuous websites such as VDare are being hidden.

[–]Jacinda[S] 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

A fake death camp.

[–]Jacinda[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Here is an article excellent article in VDare about the Wikipedia, how it influences culture, and how it is being colonized by dishonest actors. It is worth reading in full.

VDare:

In the ongoing war between reasonable people and Leftism, there is a vital battle being waged on Wikipedia, which, like it or not, is a latter-day oracle of information. Control the fourth-most popular website in the Western world (according to Wikipedia itself) and you, at least partly, control the Western mind. For this reason, online skirmishes over Wikipedia’s non-PC topics are particularly vicious, and the murky manipulators prepared to devote their time to the struggle take fanaticism, and even insanity, to levels that defy belief. [Cont...]