Wikipedia Bans Right Wing Site Breitbart as a Source for Facts | Hacker News Reader

Wikipedia Bans Right Wing Site Breitbart as a Source for Facts

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6 pointscommoner14 comments

Breitbart was one of the first, and almost certainly the most complete, with the dumps of internal Google message traffic following the Damore incident. After looking at many other accounts, and considering Google's response, it appears that the material was entirely factual.

This ban seems to say more about Wikipedia than it does about Breitbart.

As does HN's blanket ban on Breitbart content.

So it'll be all left wing from here on out then? I don't think wikipedia realizes how close they are to irrelevance. With google, facebook, etc lowering wikipedia's priority and with wikipedia's recent move towards a particular ideology, they are really losing their credibility and visibility. Just another in a long series of promising tech institutions that are failing miserably.

Seems like a bit of an overreaction to say the site has become ultraleft because they don't let you cite the "news" site that maintains a "black crime" section.

So it'll be all left wing from here on out then?

Is Breitbart the only source of "right wing" facts in your world? Furthermore if you'd actually read the article you'd see that they also ban "left wing" site of similar quality.

Assuming its all crowd sourced, why can't we just verify the details that were linked instead of shooting the messenger? Isn't that the behavior we would want to see in persuit of information and the truth? Character assassination, regardless of how bad a source is, doesn't mean that the source is always wrong.

For instance, National Enquirer was the first to break the story about Monica Lewinsky.

Wikipedia isn't about breaking news. I don't see a problem with waiting until you have 3-4 news sites with better track records independently corroborateing the story.

This seems like a misunderstanding of the purpose of Wikipedia; if it were as you suggest, original research based on primary sources would be encouraged. In reality it is not, because the idea with Wikipedia is to produce articles based on reliable secondary sources, which precludes the use of a source like Breitbart, Occupy Democrats, or Infowars, to take examples from the article.

> Assuming its all crowd sourced, why can't we just verify the details that were linked instead of shooting the messenger?

Wikipedia is a tertiary source by design; you seem to be suggesting it should be a primary or secondary source, which is not it's mission.

Bans should be on the merit of the individual fact. This seems like an entire publication has been judged as "being incapable of being a source", which is a hell of a castigation, and speaks to the bias in the Wikipedia editor community.

I guess it's all down to if you care more about type 1 errors or type 2 errors. If the only source for a fact is a site known for factual errors then it might be reasonable to reject that fact until more evidence presents itself. Personally I think Wikipedia should be more strict in general with what sources they allow, and require more independent sources before updating anything 'news' related, even if that means being a few days out of date at times.

  a site known for factual errors

Feel free to point out any three Breitbart articles with any factual error, anywhere in their content (e.g. excluding the "Around the Web" clickbait links common to many mainstream sites).

> Is Breitbart the only source of "right wing" facts in your world?

Breitbart isn't "only source" for anything. But it is one of the largest news sites that a lot of people read.

> Furthermore if you'd actually read the article you'd see that they also ban "left wing" site of similar quality.

Firstly, I don't want any legit sites banned. Period. Especially because they lean a certain way politically. Secondly, if that's the case, 99% of the news sites ( including nytimes, cnn all the way to vox and buzzfeed ) would have to be banned. But I highly doubt that is happening.

You seem to think I hold breitbart in high esteem. I don't. I think it is mostly toxic rubbish like the nytimes, washingtonpost, foxnews, msnbc, cnn, etc. They all are biased political advocacy groups. But I don't want them censored. Especially from something like wikipedia ( which I used to value and trust ).

The reason why I trusted wikipedia is because they were trying to be objective as possible. Now, it's clear that they, like many other institutions, are getting highly political. That's not a good thing.

I don't know that you're refuting the idea that you hold Breitbart in higher esteem than most people by saying you see it as the equal of the New York Times (yes, sure, I have my own issues with the Times, but it is a more serious operation than Breitbart).

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