Feel free, I shamelessly redistributed it from @DeHuq2@lemmygrad.ml posting on !emoji@lemmygrad.ml
i can't believe that nobody has made a fork of Wikipedia to give a broader and more neutral perspective.
It would be a very simple project, because you would simply add to the existing database. You would have tabs. "mainstream" would be a usual Wikipedia content. You could switch to the "Marxist" tab to see modified content.
It's impossible to be neutral. For example even "Israel-Palestine conflict", calling it a conflict is already taking a stance, even if the intention is to make it more neutral. But it implies that both sides are equal in strength, but really it's a genocide with Palestinians doing whatever they can to avoid it.
Wrong opinions need to be challenged as they are harmful, and on the Oct 7 events for example, a neutral stance would require to represent both sides equally, thereby equating them. But there can be no equating in this case; as an example, you would have arguments from Zionists about why they are native to "Israel", why they need to kill "Hamas terrorists", their "bring them home" campaign... and on the Palestinian side, giving it equal representation, you would just need to explain that they don't want to get herded into concentration camps and killed. But presenting these Zionist arguments, which are all lies, is harmful and could still convince some people of these arguments.
And if you push back against the Zionist arguments, are you still being neutral? For example if you would add that despite "Israel" calling to bring the POWs home, they are bombing them... is this still being neutral? Isn't it taking a stance?
It's a fine line and there's no one answer.
You've correctly identified that Wikipedia is far from neutral (they tend to make a lot of pro-war and pro-regime change edits), but they still try to pretend they're objective. On ProleWiki we've decided that we will embrace not being neutral and unbiased, as it's simply impossible to be.
Yes that's all true. Wikipedia deals with this as every encyclopaedia does, by feigning being neutral, feigning that it is possible to be neutral, and posting some version of events as the truth. That was fine for 20th century naïve readers, but not tenable today.
Prolewiki can give the Marxist version of events and that's a valuable addition, another credible perspective. But it will always cover only niche topics for niche readers.
Better than this would be a project bigger then Wikipedia. It would be more useful and credible to readers, because it shows diverse views. It could replace Wikipedia.
On day one it would show exactly the same content as Wikipedia, but would quickly grow to be broader.
Imagine Wikipedia, prolewiki, anarchistwiki, neoconwiki, keynsianwiki, all on the same website on different tabs. People can flick from one to the other.
People who start off looking only at the neocon version will one day flick to the prole one. They might find it more convincing.
No reason that we need non-Marxist encyclopedia. No reason to allow that either
anarchistwiki
They’re free to make one if they want, but they’d probably not last very long due to collapsing over hierarchies. 😂
Incidentally, you’re also free to make that website you refer to, but there’s no reason ProleWiki should integrate it into itself just as Wikipedia never would.
It would be possible to use a semi-agile approach like we do for ProleWiki, though we still have some thin hierarchies. In true agility, everyone is free to engage in what they like, but the keyword is "delivering the most value [with what we have]". So you could have people talking in the name of the whole project when they've been on it for 2 days only, and that's something we're not quite ready to give yet lol.
I personally have no interest in collaborating with neocons (which such a broad wiki would necessarily require) but certainly someone can try this project out, put it into practice, and we'll know if it's a workable idea or not. I always say that ideas are great but putting them into practice is better, and you can't really have one without the other.
The very real conditions behind ProleWiki (same as Conservapedia, same as Wikipedia) is that you need to find people to help you out and they all have a vision. I would rather find Marxist-Leninists to help with ProleWiki than finding neoliberals to write their version of the Joe Biden article, why would I help neoliberals get more exposure when I'm at the complete opposite of what they stand for? (And they more easily get funding for their projects than I could)
Alternatively there could be a service that scrapes and pulls from different independent wikis into one instead of being like a big coalition, but someone still has to make it 😁
There are good reasons to want to collaborate with ideological enemies.
Conservatives are generally good people, and are right about many things. They are just misguided on a few economic points. I know many people like this. They just haven't read widely enough, or can't think creatively about economics, or have never heard any other theory convincingly expressed.
People will generally stay in their boxes and read only their own wikis. Conservapedia people will remain conservative and misguided forever. But maybe you want to influence people outside your box. That's where you want to share a space with other groups. If it's equally easy to read any perspective, people people might read a few and change their minds about what the truth is. This is a good thing for a very niche but very true perspective like marxism.
For this to work, the new shared wiki has to be widely read. That means it has to become bigger than wikipedia, to supplant wikipedia.
The most important thing is to make it obvious to close-minded people that there are always different valid perspectives on every issue. If the go-to encyclopedia has this concept built-in, many people will start to understand it.
Alternatively there could be a service that scrapes and pulls from different independent wikis into one instead of being like a big coalition, but someone still has to make it 😁
Yeah, that’s how I was interpreting it because neither Wikipedia, ProleWiki, Conservapedia, etc. would have any desire to integrate that natively, and each would have good reasons
LOL
Yes of course. Just because this other project is possible doesn't make your project less valuable.
I would like to make this. It would replace wikipedia with something more better. I have a much simpler encyclopedia project I'd like to do first, for practice. And I don't even have the skills to do the simple project yet.
your project
I don't even have an account on ProleWiki; it's not "my project".
Good luck though!
Do you know how to start a wiki? Is there a very easy way just to start writing? I saw that github has a wiki section, so I could do it from a github account. But I don't that that's a real wiki at all, because random internet people couldn't contribute to it.
You'll probably need to look into MediaWiki and hosting a website
