I wanted to update a local wiki page with newer data from its original sources, but apparently I have become blacklisted because I use/used Apple’s private relay and safari’s privacy measures by default in all my browsing. Disabling them didn’t fix it. I would love to sign up as a fallback measure to be able to contribute, and verify my account by whatever means necessary, but apparently in the 2020s that’s just not something Wikipedia supports (as I’m also black listed from signing up despite never contributing to Wikipedia.)

Increasingly I see out of date and opinionated articles and I wonder how many of us have meaningful contributions ready but are forced to sit on the sidelines because there’s no “way in” with this product.

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Apple_iCloud_Private_Relay has some context and list potential problems that might arise (and do in your case).

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Apple_iCloud_Private_Re... is the related discussion page if you want to ask more.

Back in the old days, we maintained a list of trustworthy http proxies for which we trusted the IP of their client. The community could then block the user behind the proxy. With everything behind https nowadays, that is no more possible (the intermediate proxy can not inject any header to carry the information). So the sole thing we see is the Apple relays IPs and if those are a source of vandalism for sure the community will block them from contributing.

There is a more or less similar issue with TOR exit node for which the issue is described at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Editing_with_Tor

Given the relay is only enforced by Safari (as I understand it), you can use the IOS Wikipedia application for editing: https://apps.apple.com/app/wikipedia/id324715238 , though that will not pass through the Apple relays and leak your IP.

Not exactly true - the "Proxy Protocol" [1] was invented for that purpose. Wikipedia as an entity should be large enough to ask Apple if they can implement support for it - the question is if they want to.

[1] https://www.haproxy.com/documentation/hapee/latest/load-bala...

We do have direct point of contacts with engineers at Apple, Facebook, Google etc and do collaborate with them on a wide range of technical topics. The foundation has a dedicated team to vandalism, blocking etc https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Anti-Harassment_Tools . I forwarded your remark and maybe they can update the wiki page at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Apple_iCloud_Private_Relay (it is mostly from November 2021 and looks like it might use a refresh).

Basically any change you make it insta-reverted by some bot or over-zealous power-crazed editor.

I think some editors decide that they "own" certain pages or group of pages and install themselves as some sort of authority/gate keeper/moderator. If your edit does not please them, it's gone. Instantly. You only get to edit the pages if you are in the editor's cabal of friends.

If you don't have an account, or you do have an account but perhaps have only made a handful of edits, you are instantly distrusted and assumed to be malicious.

Of course, you can never prove that you are not malicious, because there is the default stance of immediate-distrust for anyone, so your edits are constantly undone and you never get to build up enough credibility to appease the editors who control who gets to edit "their" articles.

I gave up years ago after a small edit-war with someone who kept reverting changes about a UK politician who was in national news at the time. No amount of references or citations from e.g. the BBC or the Guardian was good enough as I guess the verifiable truth didn't fit with their view of what this page should selectively say about that person, and so they banned my IP as a "vandal". I gave up (but got a new IP after redialing so it was pointless)

'Nearly All of Wikipedia Is Written By Just 1 Percent of Its Editors Researchers found that 77 percent of Wikipedia articles are written by 1 percent of Wikipedia editors, and they think this is probably for the best.'

You sound like someone who was pushing a particular point of view about politics, which is precisely the kind of edits that are set up for organ rejection given Wikipedia's strict stance on neutrality, sourcing, and the fact that politics are naturally contentious / prone to edit warring.

There are between 1.5 and 2 million anonymous edits to Wikipedia every month. https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/all-wikipedia-projects/contrib... A lot of them are in reality vandalism, spam, and garbage by passersby, but they aren't all reverted.

It was one of the first culture war battlegrounds... And it's been owned for a while now.

Looking at these gross payments (and executive migration to think tanks), are you really pretending things aren't political?

Honestly you sound like a conspiracy theorist who doesn't really understand how Wikipedia works.

They mention the topic of the Gaza flotilla raid in the video. If you read the actual article on this topic, it's pretty balanced, and mentions in the introduction that Israel was condemned by the UN Human Rights Council and their use of force was called excessive and unreasonable. Hardly a Zionist propaganda piece.

Tried a few times and realized it wasn't worth the effort.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t52LB2fYhoY

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/aug/18/wikipedia-edit...

Every Public Relations agency claims to 'manage' the content on clients' Wikipedia pages.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alt-right_pipeline

For an exercise, try mentally replacing terms like "alt-right movement" with "woke movement", "alt-right pipeline" with "woke pipeline" etc.

There could also be an article about a "woke pipeline" if that's a concept label people are taking about.

You couldn’t report on that and simultaneously be on the side of reality without also being against the Trump campaign.

Also, is alt right a slur? Cause woke isn’t.

> Sometimes being wrong is wrong. It’s hard to talk about conservatives in a neutral tone sometimes because stating just the facts can sometimes sound negative.

The same thing can be said about progressives. Nonetheless, the above example would be seen as highly biased.

$200k less than Beeple's "Everyday" NFT sold for.

So those values can be more about money laundering or poor signaling than any indication of real worth.

[0] https://www.businessinsider.com/meta-lost-30-billion-on-meta...

But I don't think anyone is disagreeing that Wikipedia is offering good value for money, just that some people might be justifying that to excessively compensate themselves for an operation that requires very little to run and depends almost entirely on unpaid volunteers.

"well, our service is a boon to mankind, therefore it warrants skimming a bit off the top"

And that could be a problem in the long run.

Assuming this is not rhetorical - everything is in git so you can look at the git log. Although it is spread through many repos, and not all contributors are paid by wmf.

https://github.com/wikimedia

And it can't be set without being logged in ;/

Redirect: https:\/\/(.)\.wikipedia\.org\/wiki\/([^?])(?!=\?useskin=vector)

to: https://$1.wikipedia.org/wiki/$2?useskin=vector

Applies to: Main window (address bar)

[EDIT] Fuck me! It does work both on wikipedia and the Arch wiki. So long.

Special:Version (example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Version#mw-version-ski... )

An API query: * direct: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&format=json&... * demo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:ApiSandbox#action=quer...

Which yields the code name of each skins installed (eg: vector-2022, vector, monobook ...).

BTW, to make it work I had to change:

    (.) to ([^.]*) and ([^?]) to ([^?]*) 

So if you adjust for the rising costs of doing anything in tech, their operating budget has increased by much less than would seem - only about 20%.

In those same six years, they've had to deal with a rise in misinformation campaigns, spam, infosec threats and recently ML models.

Call me crazy, but dealing with all of the extra complexity 2022 has over 2016 on a 20% budget increase is pretty great.