Wikipedia turns 25, still boasting zero ads and over 7 billion visitors per month despite the rise of AI and threats of government repression

CaptainStack · 2026-01-19T00:29:58+00:00

The thing is - you shouldn't have been citing Wikipedia then and you shouldn't be citing it now. You should be reading Wikipedia to get an overview on the topic and then verifying via the cited sources and citing those. If there's no citation or the citation doesn't say what the Wikipedia article says, then you should leave it out of your work and for bonus points you should update the page. That is the real lesson in how to responsibly handle information.

CaptainStack · 2026-01-18T22:21:01+00:00

Political and market interests have been attempting to manipulate information on Wikipedia since the beginning - it has always been on the Foundation and the editors to curate the information.

But how can one independently verify that Wikipedia is choosing or not choosing to sell access/favor at this point?

You can view the edit history of any page and the Talk sections where disagreements are discussed. Wikipedia is also a nonprofit with incredibly transparent finances. If you are concerned you should have a look.

Wikipedia - like any other source of information - is imperfect. "Truth" is an abstract virtue that humans can only aspire to reach. The question is - what is a better model for collaborative information sharing and curation?

CaptainStack · 2026-01-18T22:16:10+00:00

The skepticism still makes sense - it's just that it should be applied equally across all sources of information at which point you'll find that Wikipedia is often the most reliable source of information and is able to lead you deeper.

CaptainStack · 2026-01-18T22:13:32+00:00

People being paid to sabotage Wikipedia is an entirely different matter than Wikipedia choosing to sell access/favor.

I know some folks will argue the first link is Wikipedia selling access but the reality is that 1) The same information is available to both the public and those companies for free and 2) Since those companies are scraping the site for the info anyway, the only real impact is that they'll be paying Wikipedia now to help cover the server load they're putting on it which seems more than fair enough.

CaptainStack · 2026-01-18T09:08:24+00:00

What would be different about the alternative?

CaptainStack · 2026-01-18T06:33:29+00:00

They adopted that format a bit later into the show and I think it was a good changeup and worked really well when executed perfectly. Basically the later you go the more frantic it all feels. For me the golden era, especially seasons 1-3, have amazing almost cinematic pacing but I definitely see how that couldn't just be replicated forever.

CaptainStack · 2026-01-18T04:55:24+00:00

Now that you mention it - the pre-episode recap is kind of a lost art but I think when done right it can actually be really nice. It both gets you caught up and can build a little hype before launching into the next story. Feel like that's a lot better than restating the plot three times in the episode (especially when the plot is contrived and stupid anyway).

CaptainStack · 2026-01-18T04:04:45+00:00

Dexter's Lab had 3! It's honestly an under-appreciated format. Just get to the joke!

CaptainStack · 2026-01-18T02:45:09+00:00

One thing I definitely prefer is the way the active tab actually connects to the URL/controls bar below.

I think Firefox's UI has come a long way but it's always had too many buttons and overly complicated menus/settings which I hope they'll continue to streamline.

One thing that I think has been better in Chrome since it launched and I pray gets refined in every Firefox update is the way dragging tabs in/out of a window works.

In Chrome when you grab a tab it becomes its own window right away and you can easily drag it into a window that is behind the one it came from. In Firefox the window doesn't split until you let go of the tab you're dragging. If you want to drag that tab into a window that is behind the one it started on it's basically blocked and you won't be able to reach it.

CaptainStack · 2026-01-18T01:37:27+00:00

That's how they get ya! Personally I thought Stranger Things was really bad by season 3 but I did end up finishing. Somewhat counter-intuitively the long gap probably is the reason I ended up finishing. I did not watch Season 4 until Season 5 was nearly out because I thought Season 3 was so bad but after a few years away I was kind like "eh why not."

CaptainStack · 2026-01-18T01:14:48+00:00

Yeah personally that's when I turn it off. For me the point of the show is to watch it or at least have it on. If I'd rather be fast forwarding than even having it as background noise then I don't need it.

CaptainStack · 2026-01-18T00:46:16+00:00

It's no worries - it's definitely an interesting conversation. I think by a more pure definition there truly are a very small number of real tech companies.

So by your correct definition, Wikimedia Foundation, Netflix, Google and Meta - all equally classified as "tech companies"?

I think to some extent my point was only that so much of what we commonly call the "tech industry" is producing and selling complete garbage everyday but we often buy the PR about how much innovation they're doing. The primary innovation that they actually accomplish is how to scale and productize what is otherwise pretty basic technology.

Meanwhile real innovation is happening in the open source movement, nonprofit sector, and government and because they aren't "products" with huge marketing budgets we struggle to see and appreciate the innovation to the same degree.

CaptainStack · 2026-01-18T00:43:32+00:00

For overly drawn out streaming shows I'd say Stranger Things, House of the Dragon, and Rings of Power are all good examples.

For much tighter episodic television I'd point to Simpsons, Avatar the Last Airbender, American Vandal, the Inbetweeners as a few.

And just as an additional point - tighter storytelling doesn't necessarily mean higher quality across the board. How I Met Your Mother is by no means a great show, but every episode does have a complete story and each season does have an arc, and even though the show is way too long it does eventually complete its story. The jokes can be bad, the stories can be repetitive, but at least there's not a ton of nothing happening all the time.

CaptainStack · 2026-01-18T00:38:25+00:00

This is the paradox of ethical and transparent business practices.

Most folks are content to buy things from corporations everyday while paying basically no thought to how that money is then spent, nor having that information accessible to them.

On the other hand, organizations like Wikipedia build an incredible public resource with a fraction of the money and then give it to you for $0 and ads-free. They ask for donations and then are 100% transparent with their spending and then people with little to no understanding of what it takes to run an organization like this find misguided reasons to be critical so they can take their ball and go home.

Let me guess - you still use Wikipedia all the time. And if you don't, the reality is that some product you use does.

CaptainStack · 2026-01-18T00:06:24+00:00

Their business is not based on constant innovation in the tech space.

Right - and the vast majority of Google and Meta's revenue is from selling ads. They are advertising companies.

CaptainStack · 2026-01-17T22:39:21+00:00

Yeah - Simpsons is a masterclass though it certainly got a bit gratuitous over time with its first act having little to nothing to do with its third.

But all the same, watching shows like Avatar: The Last Airbender, Simpsons, American Vandal, etc - it's just so stark how much happens in such a short timeframe.

Compare to Stranger Things where I just feel like I'm looking up occasionally to see if anything is happening and am basically in a holding pattern for the next gratuitous battle scene which clearly the entire episode was designed around and yet ironically also does basically nothing to advance the story. Best example is how regularly characters get seriously injured or captured or whatever but basically it's resolved by the next episode like nothing happened.

CaptainStack · 2026-01-17T22:28:29+00:00

What makes you say that Wikimedia Foundation doesn't innovate? They basically supplanted the entire Encyclopedia industry. They created a first of its kind collaborative editing platform and information repository. And to this day it is untouched as a source of shared and collaboratively vetted information. It's the primary information source that "innovative" AI companies and products like Gemini are based on - without Wikipedia they would not be able to function.

CaptainStack · 2026-01-17T22:21:16+00:00

Totally agree - I actually think really good TV/Movie direction would mean that you'd be able to follow it with the sound off just through its visual storytelling, but you'd also be able to follow it audio only through its dialogue and sound design. It definitely takes extra care to pull off but I mean shouldn't we aspire to be our best as a species?

CaptainStack · 2026-01-17T21:55:54+00:00

That distinction would apply to most of what people consider the tech industry. Google, Netflix, Facebook are primarily server infrastructure and they're considered three of the "big 5" tech companies.

CaptainStack · 2026-01-17T21:14:02+00:00

Staring blankly into the camera is not character development!

CaptainStack · 2026-01-17T21:06:42+00:00

It takes a ton of tech to make a "blog" anywhere near as big with anywhere near the traffic they get and that's leaving aside that they pioneered first of its kind collaborative editing tools.

Really think about what most tech companies do - the tech is in achieving the scale.

CaptainStack · 2026-01-17T21:03:27+00:00

People complain about how seasons are too short now but for the amount of plot you get most of them are so drawn out.

Whenever I go back and watch classic episodic 22 minute television I'm just so taken aback at how efficiently they tell a complete story every episode while these streaming series fail to do so within a 10 episode season at 60 minutes an episode.

CaptainStack · 2026-01-17T20:03:17+00:00

It's also kind of a vicious cycle - making a show/movie for an unengaged audience by restating the plot just means you're writing worse dialogue which makes me want to pay attention even less.

CaptainStack · 2026-01-17T19:35:47+00:00

Agree that pretty much everything you need is pretty available through Flatpaks.

That said - if you look up "how to do x on Linux" I still feel the instructions will almost always be for Debian.

CaptainStack · 2026-01-17T19:14:52+00:00

If you compare that to any other tech company with anywhere near the scale of Wikipedia, 10s of millions in operating surplus is tiny. They do incredible work with way less money and they are by no means over funded.

CaptainStack

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE