Unneutral Wikipedia article about /e/

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#1

Recently I looked at the English Wikipedia article about /e/ and was amazed at how unneutrally /e/ is reported there. In the reception, only sources are quoted that comment negatively about /e/. In addition, as many problems as possible or similar are written about, such as the data leak in the Murena Cloud. Changes to neutralize as I saw in the version history are rejected by a certain user and sometimes even called “vandalism”. Fortunately, in other languages, reports are relatively neutral.

Regain your privacy! Adopt /e/ the unGoogled mobile OS and online servicesphone

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#2

Just to make sure … this is the article: /e/ (operating system) - Wikipedia.

Positive quotes are also given.

Bad example. The data leak was a pretty severe cloud incident, user data was synced to other users. What more do you want as a failure? Public user data access from the internet perhaps? Deserves a mention in my book.

Similar to

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Web_Services#Significant_service_outages

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Azure#Significant_outages

Hmmm … no Google cloud outages in Wikipedia? Well, there’s still the internet.

In the end it’s better to be aware that Wikipedia isn’t neutral.
I’m not too familiar with the inner workings of Wikipedia … question is whether there’s a mechanism which over time would level out a possible bias of over-diligently redacting Wikipedia users?

#3

Good point. There is a history behind the biased Wikipedia /e/OS page. I created the original page way back in 2018. At that point of time I was not an /e/ employee but more of a volunteer. Once I became an employee in 2019 I had to stop as it involved a conflict of interest. If you look at the change history on the page, most of the changes are made by one particular user. This person was at one time banned from our channels and this forum for attacking other users or anyone who made a positive comment about /e/OS. He has even tried to get /e/OS and Gaël’s page deleted !!

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#4

it’s a bit stern, does some select quotations, but is not overly hostile. On feedback forms I always read the worst reviews first.

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#5

There’s a reason why colleges won’t accept Wikipedia as a valid citation and why Michael Scout had so much praise for it in The Office; it’s actually not that great of a resource.
We know that /e/ is a good system, and others are catching on. Over time, that should be enough.

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#6

I think one problem with the English Wikipedia is that changes are published immediately instead of being “sifted” first. Such a mechanism exists in the German Wikipedia (whether it is the same in other languages, I do not know. This also limits the “edit wars”.

@AnotherElk You were right, that was not a good example. Another example would be, mentioning Advanced Privacy as proprietary software (which we know is wrong). Reference was made to a strange link to the E forum. Later this was changed to Andvanced Privacy being proprietary until the first final version, but now open-source.

/E/ includes a proprietary maps app.,{{Cite web |title=Maps application |url=https://support.e.foundation/maps |access-date=2022-04-19 |website=support.e.foundation |language=en}} and a proprietary privacy app.{{Cite web |title=Advanced Privacy? |url=https://community.e.foundation/t/advanced-privacy/40461/9 |access-date=2022-04-19 |website=/e/ community |language=en}}

#7

The wrong or outdated information is being pulled from web archives, which is weird. I thought the idea on Wikipedia was to display up-to-date, correct and balanced information.

#8

Linking to live sites will reference current information, which can change at any moment.
Possible problem: The reference can go defunct, can simply become unhelpful, or can go contrary to what it was originally intended for … until checked and corrected.

Linking to web archives will make sure the referenced information doesn’t change.
Possible problem: Referencing outdated information, which should tend to be unhelpful, but will not go defunct and will fit to the text which uses the reference as long as text and reference are left unchanged.

Both methods can easily lead to weird situations if not checked and corrected in time, but using web archives seems way more robust.

Broken by design as soon as humans were needed for this :wink: .

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