
Wikipedia Signpost: Crypto and bitcoins and blockchains, oh no! - davidgerard
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2020-01-27/In_focus
======
sparkzilla
I am not convinced that having a vocal blockchain skeptic (Mr Gerard has
written the book "Attack of the 50ft blockchain" and has written many articles
critical of blockchain and distributed ledger technologies) as an arbiter of
Wikipedia pages on cryptocurrencies and blockchain is necessarily a good idea.
For example, Mr Gerard will refuse to allow the addition of well-sourced
articles on popular projects even though they are reliably sourced in major
crypto news publications. As you can imagine, much crypto news doesn't reach
the mainstream press, so this blocks a lot of useful information appearing on
Wikipedia.

Also, major projects, such as IOTA, don't even have a Wikipedia page or stub,
despite the project having a multitude of academic papers and reliably sourced
news. Mr Gerard will say this is because of the huge amount of spam on the
pages, but other crypto pages, and non-crypto pages, have plenty of spam and
they still manage to appear on the site.

As an analogy, imagine if climate deniers were in control of Wikipedia's
climate change pages.

Mr Gerard simply has too much influence on Wikipedia's crypto pages. There is
certainly a crypto spam problem on Wikipedia, but it seems like he is actually
censoring information, which for those interested in crypto, is somewhat
ironic.

~~~
michaelt
One of the downsides of Wikipedia's methods of conflict resolution is
controversial articles select for editors with strong feelings.

I'm largely disinterested about cryptocurrency, so maybe I'd be an ideal
neutral arbiter in arguments about such articles. But for the same reason, I'm
not motivated to do the tiring political work that would involve.

~~~
9588
If you write a negative book about a collection of topics and make it diverse
enough not to have to go in detail you can tailor it such that wikipedia
becomes the perfect promotion vehicle. It has to be negative since removing
positive material is much easier than either writing it or removing negative
material. (There is often some sub-human narcissist volunteer willing to
preserve negativity.)

Sober neutral voices get nothing done. You have to be extreamly biased

~~~
davidgerard
It's literally never not amazing to have crypto fans claim not being a crypto
fan is a conflict of interest, BUT owning the crypto they're promoting isn't a
COI.

------
RichardHeart
Imagine having someone that makes money disparaging a particular technology in
charge of the "truth" about the technology. I've challenged him to a debate on
livestream, which he accepted, and then was never heard from again.

~~~
davidgerard
I've been busy, I'll get back to you eventually.

seriously it's been flat out here, holy shit inbox 600, and my freebie budget
is running sparse

(you can tell by the fact it took me 2 days to respond to this thread)

debates are tedious, let's just talk shit, that's way more fun - i tend to
agree 99% with any coiner after all ... it's like, an atheist is an atheist
for all religions, a theist is an atheist for all but one religion

------
dvfjsdhgfv
Yeah, the cryptocurrency spam everywhere is a problem and I'm glad the
community is fighting it. But for me, the more annoying remnant of this bubble
is the fact that the meaning of the word "crypto", used for decades for
"cryptography" (like in "strong crypto"), has now been altered and by default
means "cryptocurrency." Which, because of many crooks involved, is often
associated with its shady aspects.

~~~
baud147258
The "You can treat [crypto] as short for "cryptosporidium[1]"." is a good
find.

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptosporidium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptosporidium)

> Cryptosporidium is a genus of apicomplexan parasitic alveolates that can
> cause a respiratory and gastrointestinal illness (cryptosporidiosis) that
> primarily involves watery diarrhea (intestinal cryptosporidiosis) with or
> without a persistent cough

~~~
davidgerard
it's an awful disease that gives you the chronic shits, it's clearly the true
meaning

------
mr_woozy
BTCPay could really use a WP article at this point.

------
redis_mlc
I'm confused.

Can somebody explain who's more corrupt ... cryptocurrency touts or Wikipedia
editors?

Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.

~~~
logicchains
Without Wikipedia editors and high rep Stack Overflow users, who could we rely
on to destroy knowledge that we shouldn't be interested in?

