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I regularly find that the criticisms you see launched across the internet at various projects are a lot less worthy than the criticisms that they generate internally. I'm of the mind that if you believe that something is valuable or worthy you should criticize it because that is how it will improve. And as such I quite look forward to reading criticisms exciting new projects like say Wikipedia or Khan Academy.

I am, almost without exception, deeply disappointed by the knee-jerk reactionary defensiveness you generally find in these things. Conversely, you go visit Wikipedia itself and it has insightful comments about how its user base tilts the content away from the global south, women, the poor etc. and constructive ideas for how to measure and ameliorate such issues.

I think it's only natural for people to react to such uninformed, accusatory criticism in the way they do. It reminds me of John C Dvoraks anti-Mac columns from years ago, which he later admitted were professional trolling.



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