Top all-time · #13193
The Wikipedian
Personal blog · thewikipedian.netculturewriting
The Wikipedian is a personal blog at thewikipedian.net about culture and writing. Since 2016, 6 different Hacker News readers have linked it 7 times. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-08-06, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (4) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Commenters link this blog in threads on Wikipedia's funding, paid editing, and the Wikimedia Foundation. None of the comments judge the writing itself.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 4 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Explain Wikipedia or die trying.
What Hacker News says?
Sure, there are paid editors performing PR services on Wikipedia (both above-board, declared, and flying under the radar, undeclared). What the WMF does do at times is fund community "organizers" trying to get unpaid volunteer editors to work on its content. See e.g.: https://diff.wikimedia.org/2022/09/22/join-the-organizer-lab... Direct editing paid for by the Foundation was tried once, with bad results: https://th…
Comment linking /2014/04/02/bats-in-the-belfer-a-beginners-guide-to-the-biggest-wikipedia-controversy-youve-probably-never-heard-of/
on “Wikipedia is not short on cash”Submitted What Happened to CongressEdits? The Life and Death of the Famous Wikipedia Bot as a story · 3 points
HN discussionFull disclosure: I am the author of the Wikipedia essay "Wikipedia has cancer". See https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=21700802 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_C... Re: "Wikipedia has a great output. In my view they don't need my time and effort. They're doing great now." We really need a lot more help here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Typo_Team "The Wikipedia Typo Team…
Comment linking /2016/03/11/modest-proposal-wikimedia-future/
on “Wikipedia Has Cancer (2017)”Submitted How Wikipedia Is Covering the Coronavirus Pandemic as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThe Wikimedia Foundation does not edit Wikipedia. So what I said above has got little to do with the information quality on the level of an individual article. I still find it interesting though that the organisation attracts so many politicos. And as far as the Wikimedia Foundation's Strategy 2030 is concerned, it's absolutely relevant. A lot of people in the volunteer community felt that the result of the strategy…
Comment linking /2014/04/02/bats-in-the-belfer-a-beginners-guide-to-the-biggest-wikipedia-controversy-youve-probably-never-heard-of/
on “School vs. Wikipedia”Submitted Search and Destroy: The Knowledge Engine and the Undoing of Lila Tretikov as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI’m immediately reminded of John Siracusa’s rant about Wikipedia on his old Hypercritical podcast. This is a lengthy rebuttal from (presumably) a Wikipedia lover that includes a link and timestamp to the original podcast segment [0] I agree, verifiability makes sense, and truth can’t really be claimed without verification, and so it’s a confusing argument to say: truth should be above verifiability; but I must admit…
Comment linking /p/verifiability-truth-john-siracusa-hypercritical
on “Concrete Shipbuilding – Argentina”