I was under the impression that the assertion that chiropractic neck manipulation causes vertebral artery dissection is often suggested, but that evidence of such a causation is inconclusive. I certainly believe it, but I can’t assume. Chiropractors may twist the inconclusiveness into suggesting that such neck manipulation is safe, but that’s a fallacy.
I lean towards believing it, based on having met a person who suffered a vertebral artery dissection, and cerebellar infarcts, following chiropractic treatment.
I think in this case MMO is another word for “people will people”.
IRL people talk behind each other’s backs, online they sockpuppet, spreading rumors and half-truths, or even outright lies. It’s always been like that, but places like Wikipedia have better transparency tools to track them down, better than trying to track what some people talked about over a cup of tea, or while walking their dogs in the park.
I will give some more info on what I saw at wikipedia, which arguable is common knowledge.
After I translated pages, I noticed people coming in to make small edits. I don’t mind those, but is baffled that people seem to be making meaningless changes all the time. Not to mention I am pretty sure I am more knowledgeable on said subjects than those “editors”.
I later realized that the number of edits and the number of edited pages count towards some arbitrary numbers which people can use to claim and move up the ladder of admin rights. It all made sense on why there are so many minimal edits performed by individuals. They are looking for low hanging fruit.
It soured my feelings toward wikipedia. I thought of it as a good volunteer project. Turns out some people play it as a numbers game. And they have enormous influence on the site.
Those people than use their power to suppress whatever they don’t like to see on wikipedia, similar to what OP posted.
By the way, to understand how absurd wikipedia’s system is, please take a look at the following news:
Why Emily St John Mandel asked for help getting divorced on Wikipedia
Well, edit count actually doesn’t matter at all in the scheme of admin rights, but some people think it to be some part of their ego. Getting admin rights is apparently exhausting and people usually oppose territorial people from getting admin. Also I’m curious how meaningless the edits were, copyediting is also important.
That was more than 10 years ago. Maybe the changes are indeed meaningful and maybe I was too young at that time. And I honestly don’t mind people making changes.
What made me quit was accidentally reading about wikipedia dramas and realized I was participating in a giant MMO in text. It was not a good feeling.
I do volunteer work to feel good. (Yes, really.) I still sometimes do volunteer work. Just not on wiki.
I know about those, and I have to partially disagree.
The number of edits limits were introduced to filter out people who had no clue, or wish to have a clue, about how Wikipedia worked. I remember having to spend some time on the latest edits page looking for vandalism, or searching for misspellings, or helping people with the formatting of their articles, to get to a minimum number of edits needed for some vote. I learned a lot during that time, and I think it was a reasonable way of achieving it.
Where it started getting out of hand, is when over time the minimum number of edits got increased, and increased again, and again… getting into silly amounts more fit for a bot than for an actual human.
I haven’t looked at it for several years, probably lost my voting rights long ago.
Why Emily St John Mandel asked for help getting divorced on Wikipedia
This isn’t absurd, it’s one of the safety mechanisms to keep a minimum of quality to the information included in the Wikipedia: to be a tertiary source.
Anyone can be a primary source; they might be the ones with the most knowledge… or some rando making stuff up. Wikipedia doesn’t have a panel of experts capable of judging this, or even people in charge of verifying the identity of anyone, so instead it simply rejects all primary sources as a rule.
Because of that, Wikipedia is based on secondary sources and their reputation, on people deciding to analyze, and verify more or less, what someone else is saying.
It isn’t absurd, it’s the only way to run a project where everyone can edit everything, including people totally clueless of the subject at hand… who can nonetheless report on the analyses done by secondary sources, help with the formatting, spell checking, or double check the validity of sources added by others.
I am pretty sure I am more knowledgeable on said subjects than those “editors”.
That’s the thing: you may be pretty sure, but Wikipedia has no way of knowing whether that’s true, and doesn’t even try to.
If you are more knowledgeable, you’re free to become a primary source and publish your stuff, whether through academic means or simply on a website.
If you’d rather apply your knowledge to analyzing the articles of others, you can become a secondary source just as easily, start a WordPress or Medium blog and go ahead… but don’t forget to cite your primary sources.
Wikipedia is the entry point for people totally clueless about a topic, aimed not towards presenting knowledge, although it does some of that, but mainly towards presenting where to learn more.
It isn’t a perfect system, ideally you’d hire a panel of experts and have them curate all content… but that comes with a whole set of problems, that would never have let Wikipedia reach the size it has as fast as it has.
Keep in mind the original Encyclopédistes took 19 years to publish a single edition with little over 70,000 articles, while the Wikipedia has grown to 6.7 million articles in just 22 years (Size of Wikipedia as of Nov 2023)… plus some more in a bunch of different languages.
I’ve checked it now, and I see the permission systems have been changed since I was last seriously active on Wikipedia.
Somewhat ironically, I’ve now found a years old notification for a deletion vote… which I couldn’t take part in, because at the time I was busy almost dying. Funny how these things work.
When I was growing up, you’d hear the saying “TV will rot your brain” go around a lot. I kinda rolled my eyes.
These days, I see a lot of truth in the idea that modern convenience and luxury is creating a generation of apathetic people who will seek validating information, and avoid being challenged, which is the real way that people learn and make good long term decisions.
To be clear I’m not saying people have changed. People have always sought the easy answers. What’s different now is the expectation of convenience, and the ease of immersing yourself in an echo chamber is higher than ever.
People really are becoming soft, with rotten brains, unwilling to think critically and adapt. Not because of who they are but because of the environment we’ve created for ourselves
While I’d like voting rights to be more universal, there are 2 states+DC that allow voting from prison and 20 states where you immediately regain the right once you’re out of prison. A further 17 restore those rights when probation/parole is complete. The remaining 11 have a mixed bag of laws regarding the right.
I used to have that when I was a teenager. About one out every ten times I was falling asleep just at the moment I drifted off I’d feel this crazy big pop that went from deep behind my right eye to the top right part of my skull. Sometimes it was more like a noise, sometimes it was more like a physical impact, like somebody bounced a golf ball off of my skull. It was really annoying. It started to happen less and less as I got older though. It pretty much went away completely by the time I was in my late 20s.
I get that as well! When it’s not a horrifyingly loud boom, it’s like an increasingly loud wind sound. When I get that one, it’s accompanied by my body feeling like I’m in a wind vortex being whipped around every direction. Makes me scared to go back to sleep.
Old Arabian speaks “majus” because they lack a hard G sound, similar to Japanese lacking L sound
This isn't quite right. We start with Old Persian (not Arabic) maguš, pronounced like mag-ush. That gets loaned into Ancient Greek as μάγος (mágos), originally referring to Zoroastrian priests and then generally to magicians, sorcerers, and tricksters in general. This gets carried over to Latin as magus (still pronounced with a 'hard' g). The plural of this form is magi, pronounced in Antiquity as mag-ee. As we enter into the Middle Ages, some sound changes happen and most Latin pronunciations soften the G, producing something like maj-ee. At some point in Middle English, the Latin -i plural ending gets replaced with the native English -es plural, producing mages . The singular mage is then derived from that. There's also undoubtedly an influence from French, where an -age ending would always be pronounced with a soft G (ie, the word age).
Looking a bit deeper, the Bible plays a big role here, as the plural of the Greek word, μάγοι (magoi) is used in the original text of Matthew 2:1. That gets translated in the Latin Vulgate as magi, and then I'd presume a Middle English gospel translation as 'mages'. The singular 'mage' then gets derived from that.
I didn’t try to imply that we should start with arabic, or that that is the source of the current spelling, I left that arabic bit there because of the wiki page being Majus. I did try to be clear in the title: “derives from magush, the old persian name(…)”.
Ah, my bad there, I though you were implying that the reason why the English word has a soft G is because Arabic doesn't have a hard G sound. Those are actually independent developments. Arabic actually used to have a standard hard G sound (and in Egypt it still does!), but it shifted to the J sound at some point (wanna say vaguely Middle Ages?).
I was born one mornin’ when the sun didn’t shine I picked up my shovel and I walked to the mine I loaded 16 tons of number nine coal And the straw boss said, “Well, a-bless my soul”
You load 16 tons, what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt St. Peter, don’t you call me 'cause I can’t go I owe my soul to the company store.
I used to think my daddy was a black man
With script enough to buy the company store
Now he goes to town with empty pockets
And his face is white as February snow
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