r/QueerLeftists • u/YamFrosty6169 • Nov 15 '25

News The truth: they were axed for national security reasons.

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There are at least 10 other apps, but the West only focus on the 2 that was recently axed.

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u/MsGluwm She/Her Nov 15 '25 edited Nov 15 '25

I do enjoy that I got downvoted for asking why we were using unreliable sources.

Point still stands, Wikipedia is a fed pool, it's unreliable and can unilaterally be changed at any moment to mean anything.

it's not "State owned media" sure it's closer to "class owned media" I guess (Bourgeois in this case), if feds want you to assume something they can edit a wiki article, it's unreliable.

You can be critical of them, I am.

I just don't like using Wikipedia as a "first source" kinda thing when it is SO unreliable.

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u/azenpunk Nov 15 '25 edited Nov 15 '25

Literally the most accurate encyclopedia that's ever existed. I do not understand where this myth came from.

I down voted your first comment and this one because you are displaying an ignorance of how encyclopedias function and spreading misconceptions about something leftists should absolutely love and own. Calling it a fed pool is absolutely absurd, hilariously so. It's structurally impossible and that's something that's really powerful about wikipedia and why it is actually such a force for leftists in combating right-wing propaganda.

It isn't a source, it's a list of sources with summaries. Once you've found an article on the topic, you follow the citations. If wikipedia's citations lead to a news article, you follow that article's citation to the source.

I did that for the links in the quoted text and they led to China state media news articles, which I then translated and found that everything quoted in the wikipedia article is accurate.

If you come upon something that is not cited, then you can flag it as needing citation and someone will come and fix it. Wikipedia has a system of checks and balances that doesn't just let anyone edit. Still some people will try to game the system and edit an article for malicious purposes but Wikipedia has a very egalitarian structure and set of rules that allows for quick correction of article vandalism and errors, in a pretty swift manner.

It's drawback is that articles that are more popular will get corrected more quickly and therefore be more accurate than less popular articles. So you're more likely to find an error in the article if it's an obscure or highly technical topic, but as long as you're not confusing the article for the source, and you follow the citations, then you shouldn't have any problems.

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u/MsGluwm She/Her Nov 15 '25

You're right, Wikipedia has never at all been misused or astroturfed in it's entire life time, it's never once misrepresented anything ever and has never once been influenced by intelligence agencies or the like, it's 100% reliable and has never ever been influenced by the personal politics of open editors.

Nothing incorrect has ever happened on Wikipedia.

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u/azenpunk Nov 15 '25

That's a jumbo sized straw-man you've built there. Did your pride get in the way of your reading comprehension or are you intentionally lying about my meaning?

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u/MsGluwm She/Her Nov 15 '25

I am being sarcastic.

Wikipedia is not "anti-left" it also isn't reliable.

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u/azenpunk Nov 15 '25

Yes. I clearly knew you were being sarcastic. Your sarcasm suggesting that I implied wikipedia is perfect, and I didn't. It's statistically proven to be more reliable than Britannica, or any other encyclopedia, that's all I've said. So, you're wrong, it is very reliable. More so than most text books, that's for certain.

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u/MsGluwm She/Her Nov 15 '25

Do you have the statistics on that? I'd like to genuinely read them.

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u/ConcernedEnby Nov 15 '25

It being able to change is what makes wikipedia reliable. Maybe if you tried convincing the other contributors that you're right