There is a tag for that, although not all related articles are tagged. There is an article on RationalWiki that made the whole thing popular, and there is also a mention at Wikipedia, because the RationalWiki admin also happens to be a Wikipedia admin.
Long story short, a Less Wrong user called Roko once wrote a comment containing a thought experiment about an artificial intelligence that would incentivize its creation by torturing everyone who did not contribute to its creation. (So once people started building this monstrosity, it would be a Prisonner's Dilemma kind of situation where everyone has a selfish motive to contribute to the project, even if they actually wish it never existed.) Some people were triggered, Eliezer Yudkowsky deleted the comment, then of course people talked about it more; then Eliezer nuked the entire discussion saying that brainstorming publicly about machines that would torture people is a really stupid idea regardless of whether the plan is feasible or not, and banned further discussion on similar topics, just in case.
Then our friends at RationalWiki noticed this, and rationally concluded that because this comment was posted on Less Wrong, it must represent what all Less Wrong users actually believe, and because Eliezer deleted it, it must be Eliezer's darkest secret. And therefore, it is their civil duty to document it for the posterity, and make sure everyone knows about it, and everyone knows this is what Less Wrong is actually about -- especially Wikipedia.
Because at that time RationalWiki had quite high ranking in Google results, everyone who googled about Less Wrong found this, and every journalist who wrote an article mentioning Less Wrong or the rationalist community, made sure to also mention this. Some people call this Streisand effect, some call it citogenesis.
Since then, about once in a year someone comes and asks people to explain what the Roko's Basilisk is all about. In 2022, it happens to be you. Congratulations! As you can clearly see, we talk about this topic all day, every day, because we deeply care. But we also never talk about it, because it is our deepest held secret. Sorry if this is confusing.
EDIT: If you click on the tag, and then click "Read More", there is actually a long explanation of the idea.
EDIT2: I just learned that there is a Reddit forum where about once a week someone new asks about Roko's basilisk. (And XiXiDu is its moderator, why am I not surprised?) Seems like there is a huge basilisk fan community out there.
And what are/were the problems with RationalWiki? I am also pretty new here and was aware of the Basilisk controversy, but I don't know about that seemingly related problem... Probably I just forgot I read about RationalWiki when reading about the Basilik because i don't know what it is. If it can be shortly summarised, please do it as I am now quite curious. If not, please don't bother --it is not way the effort!
This community has a virtue of taking weird ideas seriously. Roko came up with a weird idea which, the more seriously you took it, the more horrifying it became. This was deemed an info hazard, and censored in some way, I don't know how. But the people who didn't take it seriously in the first place weren't horrified by the idea and thus were confused about why it should have been censored, and thus boosted the Streisand effect.
the more seriously you took it, the more horrifying it became.
Eh. Up to a point. And then if you take it more seriously than that, it becomes less horrifying again.
Arguments for why it's scary are the decision theory equivalent to someone describing how scary knives are, and how to make your own sharp knives, but never mentioning any knife safety tips.
"Sharp knives," in this metaphor, is the recognition that other people might try to manipulate us, and the decision theory of why they'd do it and how it would work. "Knife safety" is our own ability to...
I don't know how.
If you don't know, why try to answer?
In general, your post is pretty misleading. It was not censored because the idea itself horrified people.
The idea was either wrong, in which case preventing people from reading a wrong idea is net beneficial by getting them better ideas or the idea was right and that suggests it's dangerous. EY censored it because he believed that neither state would make it valuable to have the post on LessWrong and maybe out of a general precautionary principle. You don't need to be horrified by things to use the precautionary principle.
I don't think that someone who by their own admission doesn't think that they have a good understanding should offer up their explanation on a rumor in a case like this.
I'm pretty new here and would like to learn more about Roko's Basilisk and the drama that happened here. Could someone of you explain this?