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Comment by sverige | Hacker News Reader

The idea that anyone (including me and you, dear reader) is free from bias, especially when discussing politics, seems painfully obvious after reading lots of history. And yet, the claim that this or that person or organization is 'neutral' is very common.

Further, the desire to create a 'neutral' 'encyclopedia' online is presumably what drives the entire Wikipedia community. I'd wish for a Wikipedia that consistently allows all viewpoints to be given an opportunity to be presented on any given topic, but I have no faith that such a thing is possible given the pervasiveness of the idea of neutrality and the interests at work to preserve that myth.

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This isn't about content provided by some editor (Phillip Cross) being neutral, it is about being abusive, threatening, and vindictive, as well as particularly politically focused with an regular activity level that indicates either group activity or a profoundly unhealthy mental state. This took place over a period of years without any response by Wikipedia.

It is about Wales/Wikipedia demanding diffs to substantiate "outrageous" claims and ignoring the very diffs that are presented multiple times by multiple people. Then it is about punishing those who provided the diffs. It's about sickness not neutrality

:edit perhaps you are referring not to Wikipedia, but to the lack of a need for any curated "neutral" documentation available on the web.

> as particularly politically focused with an regular activity level that indicates either group activity or a profoundly unhealthy mental state

Why would an organized group use one account to make thousands of edits in their own favour? That would make it really obvious it's coming from one source and make themselves far easier to spot.

The fact he's a conservative poster, with people on both sides showing highly-politicized tendencies (including his favourite targets for abuse who themselves are known for highly polarizing politics) my default response here it to be highly skeptical of claims that it is some organized grand scheme by some party, intel agency, or group of rich people to manipulate the world for the worse.

That secret "cabal" behind everything bit is a cliche pattern in political conspiracy theories.

There have been plenty of individual Wikipedia editors with an inhuman-amount of work they contributed. You find prolific contributors like that in open-source projects all the time too.

The statement you quoted and challenged is well-supported by facts. Have you seen the graph of contributions of "Philip Cross"? Very evenly paced across very long and predictable working hours. Nearly impossible that it is one person.

"Cabal" is a strawman. Think "PR office with outsourced help" for one much more mundane hypothesis that fits the available facts.

> That secret "cabal" behind everything bit is a cliche pattern in political conspiracy theories.

Except in Wikipedia's case, it's been shown, on numerous occasions, that such a thing _does_ exist. Backdoor channels, IRC, mailing lists, where a small in-crowd of Administrators regularly ask for "backup" when they're about to do something, shall we say "contentious", and make clear that certain topics are only to be discussed there, where there are no logs, rather on other moderated forums.

That is nihilism, plain and simple.

You can recognize bias and try to avoid it, like Wikipedia, by requiring credible citations and having processes to avoid editorial bias from impacting the end result (which it obviously did, eventually, as we're reading about here). Like CNN, the WSJ, NYT, Bloomberg, WP, and many other sources of information (across the political spectrum) do every day.

Or you can go the route of Fox news, take a pronounced editorial bias that takes clear precedence over reporting facts. I would post video of Jeanine Pirro or Hannity, but it seems unecessarily crude.

This ignores the problem of bias by ommission, where an editor merely doesn't include something that goes against their bias. This is impossible to solve with sources because editors still need to be able to choose to ignore something they see as unimportant.

It also ignores that the degree to which a sources "credibility" derives from your agreement with it, and therefore its political bias. When a source you agree with says something wrong, this is seen as an honest mistake, but when you disagree with them, it acts as a tarnish on their credibility forever more. Wikipedia editors can use "credibility" to prevent others from correcting their ommissions.

Credibility is earned and lost. Question if this article would happen if the source material was Alex Jones/Infowars. There would not be an article about "British politics bias" there. It's noteworthy if they concede that there aren't sinister forces trying to steal your precious bodily fluids.

The only reason the posted article exists and that we are having this thread is that Wikipedia takes pains to be unbiased and has some expectations of being so by reputation.

>having processes to avoid editorial bias from impacting the end result

>like CNN, WP, NYT

Um... really? Are you saying those three specifically aren’t putting out very biased results? You could be left of Marx and know that isn’t true for those three specifically. Esp CNN!

The only explanation here is a different topic, that you yourself are so biased that you think CNN is putting out good journalism.

Yes. All of those outlets attempt to put out unbiased news. CNN is "left of Marx"? I sincerely hope you are being sarcastic.

ps: instead of downvoting, why don't you do something more effective, and post an example of biased reporting by CNN (and something that isn't a story about a biased article that resulted in reporters being disciplined or fired)

The person youre responding to isnt saying CNN is “left of Marx”, they’re saying a reader to the left of Marx politically could tell that CMN is biased

CNN, WP, and NYT basically do just present the facts in their reporting. To the extent that it's a big deal when they put out a falsehood and people have gotten fired. Opinion sections are obviously different.

CNN constantly uses loaded words in their reporting, along with more subtle things like condescending smiles when a person is talking who does not hold a left-wing opinion.

The news is almost all factual but is meant to swing a person's opinion in just about every way without actually citing false facts (unless the subject is WMDs in Iraq). It is probably the best TV news source we have in the US but it still sets a fairly low bar in terms of objectivity.

Oftentimes, just leaving out certain facts while including others can have just as much of an influence as citing false facts outright, especially when done repeatedly.

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/cnn/

We all know that even a composition of words used (or avoided) to report a fact may be very loaded. And it just how it happens in all media, big and small, because apparently journalists are humans, and editors are humans. There are worse, and better cases, but there's no such thing as 100% neutral reporting.

At least during the 2016 primaries, they were basically just mouthpieces of the Clinton campaign.

That's just not true.https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-donald-trump-hacked...

https://www.salon.com/2016/11/09/the-hillary-clinton-campaig...

The Clinton campaign specifically asked the news media (including CNN, WP, NYT) to increase coverage of Trump (as well as Carson and Cruz). This is so that they'd either have someone easier to beat in the case of these 'pied piper' candidates, or pull a stronger opponent farther right come the general.

Nate Silver didn't know about this in March of 2016 when he wrote that article.

This is the most inconvenient truth of the entire 2016 Campaign. Hillary requested Trump to be propped up as someone she "knew" she could beat. If she had just played fair, she might have actually won against Jeb who the GOP actually wanted.

Don't like Trump? Thank Hillary Clinton, the DNC, and the media for playing along.

> That is nihilism, plain and simple.

I don't understand what you mean by this. What exactly do you mean by nihilism in this context?

The general shape is:

"Nobody can avoid being X, so therefore X is pervasive, and it is pointless to try to constrain X"

In this case, it's "everyone has bias, so being unbiased is possible, therefore all viewpoints are equally valid and should be presented as such".

You can substitute X with greed, violence, jealousy... any human failing, and it can be used as a method to justify poor behavior by appealing to epistemological or moral nihilism (all knowledge, morality). It's essentially the last refuge of people backed into a corner of epistemic closure and an attempt to avoid reconciling their worldview with reality but rejecting that there is any knowable basis for morality or truth.

>rejecting that there is any knowable basis for morality or truth.

Which is correct. There is no such thing as The Morality or The Truth or The Good. They are but figments of our imagination, byproducts of a mind that's evolved to generate patterns and see order in the chaos that is reality. Blame Plato's witchcraft.

The golden rule is so trivially easy, has been repeated in multiple cultural and historical contexts, and provides a reasonable basis for all moral philosophy. If you want to indulge epistemological nihilism then please turn in your laptop and cell phone, because you don't even want to know how many things they take for grant as "The Truth".

"Nobody can avoid being X, so therefore X is pervasive, and it is pointless to try to constrain X"

That's not a nihilist. It's being defeatist. Giving up because you can't win is defeat. Giving up because there's really no point in the first place is nihilism.

I'm sorry but out of those only the WSJ and Bloomberg are what I consider impartial, with NYT doing a better job than CNN and WP because they at least refrain from loaded language, though are not entirely unbiased in what they choose to report.

I used to pick my general news from a financial newspaper. Why? Because they didn't care. As far as they were concerned, non-financial news were there only for their readers to have the most basic understanding of the main topics and not make fools of themselves. "There was this protest, so many people showed up, and these were their central demands", done.

I don't doubt that a neutral article about anything is possible. The problem is removing from the loop those who care deeply about it.

Lindsey Anderson, left wing film director of "If" only read the UK right wing newspaper The Telegraph because "it's easier to see the lies" compared to papers his peers read.

What does that have to do with what the OP said? That is quite the opposite of neutrality. And the fact she self-identifies as 'left-wing' says everything you need to know.

The point being, I assume, that as a left-wing person they would be more sensitive to right-wing lies, so that they would get a more accurate model of the world through right-wing media.

> so that they would get a more accurate model of the world

...Assuming that is the goal instead of seeking out counter-narratives to fulfill confirmation bias and fuelling the outrage culture that has exploded in recent years (and which online newspapers have learned to feed into they way 24/7 news shows have been doing for years). The fact she summarized it as lies says a lot.

The film director mentioned died in 1994.

*He ;)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindsay_Anderson

>The idea that anyone (including me and you, dear reader) is free from bias, especially when discussing politics, seems painfully obvious after reading lots of history.

As a Canadian I find Wikipedia very US-biased. Such topics as the Alaskan panhandle or Machias Island or anything the US views as right from its viewpoint.

A good rule of thumb is if the topic does not concern current politics or other hot-cake issue, Wikipedia is a usually good source of common facts (i.e. ones that would not require very deep knowledge to understand or present properly) and a decent source of links to more in-depth treatment of the topics. Not always true, but very frequently is.

However, when you approach a topic having to do with everyday politics, the neutral point of view is nothing but a dream. A noble dream, but a dream nonetheless. There would be facts omitted, there would be facts presented in a distorted fashion, there would be biased sources quoted, there would be claims that the source does not support, there would be unsourced claims, there would be biased and agenda-driven language. There be dragons.

And that is just from well-meaning (and probably even supporting the NPOV dream if asked) volunteers, I am not even talking about paid and conflict-of-interest (i.e. editing page about oneself or one's boss) editors which exist too. Such is human nature. It is possible to fight it, and sometimes it is possible to win, but it is hard, annoying, exhausting and demands a lot of time. So, a lot of people don't have time or desire to get into this. Which means, be careful with Wikipedia pages that are about current politics.

What viewpoints do you feel are underrepresented? Personally I’m not convinced that all viewpoints require “airtime” and I’d prefer not to endure anti-vaxxer, flat earth, creationist, ariosophy, QAnon, or whatever David Icke is raving about today, in the name of “balance”.

When I go to an article about quantum mechanics, I don’t need a section on The Secret because it’s a “viewpoint” that exists. I want a curated experience, not the full hue and cry of the Internet. I also want to avoid undue bias, but that doesn’t mean a total abrogation or editorial policy.

My point is that there are lots of people who don't want to endure the viewpoints that you perceive as being so obviously correct that there is no need for further discussion. This attitude is much closer to the Catholic Church's ancient position on astronomy than Galileo's.

For example, I have no doubt that the flat earth theory is incorrect, but it wouldn't bother me if it we're included in Wikipedia. How can anyone learn to think critically if certain ideas are forbidden? And once the idea that it's ok to forbid certain ideas takes hold, the list of forbidden ideas always expands. That is far more dangerous than allowing what seem to be obviously ridiculous ideas to be expressed.

The problem with editorial policy for a site like Wikipedia is who gets to decide what that policy is? Thus, we have the endless fights like this one. It's avoidable in theory, but "curation" is always in vogue -- so long as the curators think like us.

"For example, I have no doubt that the flat earth theory is incorrect, but it wouldn't bother me if it we're included in Wikipedia."

Sure, but it belongs in its own article (where it is found) not in the middle of the articles on Earth, geography, etc.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_flat_Earth_societies

these minority viewpoints don't need to be given prominence, but I think they should certainly be given the right to exist and to be documented. From my perspective, even the most egregious views should be aired against their subject of interest, for numerous reasons:

- if they are badly argued ideas they will stand in stark contrast to well supported ideas, naturally diffusing the benefit that conspiracy theories often gain from being "banned" in the style of "what they don't want you to know"-type arguments.

- The best way to critique an idea into the ground is to understand it better than its advocates.

- Even a bad idea can raise questions of good ideas, in the same vein as getting to the right answer through the wrong reasoning. Poking holes in our best ideas forces innovation.

- More awareness of the kind of ideas that exist in the world is, in my opinion, never a bad thing.

- An outlier opinion can still be right. Obviously theories like flat earth don't fall into this category, but quantum mechanics and heliocentrism once did.

From development to widespread acceptance QM didn’t take very long, because of course it’s possible to test to a high degree of accuracy. Flat Earth was debunked many centuries (millennia really) ago, but still persists. I’m not sure how much more critique needs to be done, or what questions can be raised. Most people are aware of it, and rightly dismiss it. The only people who think it should be treated seriously are people who, believe in it.

So why entertain it? Because of some vague ideological opposition to curation? It seems to me, from experience at least, thst it usually has to do with a desire to use “universal acceptance” as an excuse to smuggle someone’s own pet crank idea into the mix. Creationists don’t seriously care about scientific inquiry or bias, they just started using those lines when legal bans on teaching evolution failed. Fascists and racists turned from trying to dominate society, to undermining it.

Once an idea has been thoroughly and comprehensively discredited it’s a waste of time at best, propaganda at worst. Yes, it can be challenging to deal with ideas on the borderline, and we should always try harder, but the solution isn’t intellectual nihilism. Ceasing to use any critical thinking because it might invite bias is a bad idea, and I think only really put forth by people who’s marginal ideas have no other hope of being heard.

After all, terrible ideas are documented, but there’s no moral, practical or intellectual reasons to document them everywhere.

All of these things should certainly be given the right to exist and to be documented, but not in an encyclopaedia. Going through all your reasons:

If an idea is badly argued - it's not yet ready/mature enough to be described in encyclopaedia.

The best way to critique an idea into the ground needs to happen in the scientific discussion, and only the aftermath of that critique needs to be included in an encyclopaedia.

Poking holes in our best ideas - again, that's the scientific discussion happening on papers in response to other papers; this process is good and important, but it should happen in that medium, and kept out of Wikipedia.

More awareness of wrong ideas without appropriate disclaimers that they're wrong and why they're so leads to mass disinformation and is essentially harmful propaganda. There is a tradeoff between being authorative+truthful and all-encompassing; getting one of those requires to actively work against the other. As Wikipedia has chosen that it "wants" to work towards the first, so it's chosen not to be the place that will facilitate "more awareness of the kind of ideas that exist in the world" - this was a contentious issue some decades ago, resulting multiple other wiki-like resources with lower criteria for notability, achieving what you propose but sacrificing other things that are important for Wikipedia.

An outlier opinion can later be shown to be right - when that happens, an encyclopaedia like Wikipedia should describe it.

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