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Wikipedia’s Pyrrhic Victory
(www.newyorker.com)
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this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2026
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Have you actually ever used Libgen and Internet Archive (its book collection specifically)?
Yes. Libgen.whatever is a russian-operated "free" library.
I can find José Saramago books there, but no info on the author himself.
Are you trying to compare libgen with Wikipedia? They don't really serve the same purpose.
Pirate library. I don't think this aspect has to be downplayed.
You can find his biographies, criticism, analyses, the very sources that Wikipedia is using.
They don't serve the same purpose, correct. But as far "repositories of knowledge" go (the phrase that kicked off this sub-discussion), they count as such, and they are massive, I have no doubt they're bigger than WP. English Wikipedia has 7 million articles while Anna's Archive (which mirrors Libgen and a big part of Internet Archive - but far from all of it!) says it has 70 million books and 200 million articles. Cut the number in half, or even in third due to duplicates if you want, to get a more realistic number, it's still bigger.
Sure, yes. Acknowledged.
It is true that the referenced information is present in libgen, but it is not succinctly summarized for consumption, and that is the function Wikipedia fulfills for most users.
I can understand the pitfalls of allowing updates from the public, but I think it's widely accepted that Wikipedia does more good than bad.
It's really difficult to understand your point of view on this, especially when you indulge in semantics arguments.
You may have noticed that this is precisely what I've disagreed on with two other users in this thread, who claimed that Wikipedia should contain as much information as possible. I agree with you, it is good to have an encyclopedia that summarises the most important, and directs towards further materials for further deeper study.
Again, the point I disagreed on with the other poster is simply on what's the "biggest repository of human knowledge ever". You seem to agree that the shadow libraries are bigger, and that settles it, we don't have to disagree further. Being the biggest repository does not, of course, mean that it should be the only repository, that others are bad, or whatever else. Different repositories can fulfill different roles in the sharing of knowledge.
I don't think I disagreed with the latter point, except when I mentioned the smaller borderline fascist wikis somewhere ITT. When it comes to English and some other large WPs I definitely don't disagree.
Maybe you're just supposing that we disagree on something when we really don't, so you can't lead the discussion to the point where we'd finally clearly disagree. I provided some criticism of Wikipedia, that doesn't mean I think it's bad wholesale. Wikipedia is complicated. I've spent quite a while editing it, as well as using traditional encyclopedias. I just negatively reacted to some comments in this thread, the harsh dismissal of traditional encyclopedias, and the somewhat overrated view of Wikipedia.