this post was submitted on 05 Nov 2023
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ProleWiki

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ProleWiki

A community related to the ProleWiki project.

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[–] CriticalResist8@lemmygrad.ml 26 points 2 years ago (10 children)

It's impossible to be neutral. For example even "Israel-Palestine conflict", calling it a conflict is already taking a stance, even if the intention is to make it more neutral. But it implies that both sides are equal in strength, but really it's a genocide with Palestinians doing whatever they can to avoid it.

Wrong opinions need to be challenged as they are harmful, and on the Oct 7 events for example, a neutral stance would require to represent both sides equally, thereby equating them. But there can be no equating in this case; as an example, you would have arguments from Zionists about why they are native to "Israel", why they need to kill "Hamas terrorists", their "bring them home" campaign... and on the Palestinian side, giving it equal representation, you would just need to explain that they don't want to get herded into concentration camps and killed. But presenting these Zionist arguments, which are all lies, is harmful and could still convince some people of these arguments.

And if you push back against the Zionist arguments, are you still being neutral? For example if you would add that despite "Israel" calling to bring the POWs home, they are bombing them... is this still being neutral? Isn't it taking a stance?

It's a fine line and there's no one answer.

You've correctly identified that Wikipedia is far from neutral (they tend to make a lot of pro-war and pro-regime change edits), but they still try to pretend they're objective. On ProleWiki we've decided that we will embrace not being neutral and unbiased, as it's simply impossible to be.

[–] roastpotatothief@lemmy.ml -1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (9 children)

Yes that's all true. Wikipedia deals with this as every encyclopaedia does, by feigning being neutral, feigning that it is possible to be neutral, and posting some version of events as the truth. That was fine for 20th century naïve readers, but not tenable today.

Prolewiki can give the Marxist version of events and that's a valuable addition, another credible perspective. But it will always cover only niche topics for niche readers.

Better than this would be a project bigger then Wikipedia. It would be more useful and credible to readers, because it shows diverse views. It could replace Wikipedia.

On day one it would show exactly the same content as Wikipedia, but would quickly grow to be broader.

Imagine Wikipedia, prolewiki, anarchistwiki, neoconwiki, keynsianwiki, all on the same website on different tabs. People can flick from one to the other.

People who start off looking only at the neocon version will one day flick to the prole one. They might find it more convincing.

[–] Shinhoshi@lemmygrad.ml 8 points 2 years ago (7 children)

anarchistwiki

They’re free to make one if they want, but they’d probably not last very long due to collapsing over hierarchies. 😂

Incidentally, you’re also free to make that website you refer to, but there’s no reason ProleWiki should integrate it into itself just as Wikipedia never would.

[–] roastpotatothief@lemmy.ml 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

LOL

Yes of course. Just because this other project is possible doesn't make your project less valuable.

I would like to make this. It would replace wikipedia with something more better. I have a much simpler encyclopedia project I'd like to do first, for practice. And I don't even have the skills to do the simple project yet.

[–] Shinhoshi@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

your project

I don't even have an account on ProleWiki; it's not "my project".

Good luck though!

[–] roastpotatothief@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Do you know how to start a wiki? Is there a very easy way just to start writing? I saw that github has a wiki section, so I could do it from a github account. But I don't that that's a real wiki at all, because random internet people couldn't contribute to it.

[–] Shinhoshi@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 2 years ago

You'll probably need to look into MediaWiki and hosting a website

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