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Comment by tenpies | Hacker News Reader

> state of wikipedia moderations

I'm glad others are keeping an eye on this issue. It is incredibly ironic to me that anyone in a leadership role at Wikipedia would criticize Zuckerberg or Dorsey. It's not even just political content, it's getting to the point where history is being actively re-written and re-interpreted to match a radical narrative.

In some sort of temporal example of humour, I've gone back to recommending people use Britannica as a starting point and for surface level reading.

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> It is incredibly ironic to me that anyone in a leadership role at Wikipedia would criticize Zuckerberg or Dorsey.

According to (ironically) Wikipedia[1], Sanger left the project in 2006^W the early 2000s:

> Frustrated by sustained content battles and feeling he had a lack of support from Wales, Sanger eventually left the project.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Sanger

Thanks. My bad.

It's not even just political content or history. Take for example economics:

There is an article about economics, obviously. And in its "criticism" section there is a long paragraph about criticism of economics from a feminist point of view.

However wikipedia also has an article about feminist economics. Which is almost equal in length to the article about economics in general. And if you go to the feminist economics page - there is no criticism section. But you can open the talk page, and there is a discussion, where editors argue that criticism hurts the neutrality of the article and should not be added there.

It just doesn't seem impartial to me.

You say that the "feminist economics" article does not seem impartial to you, but have you tried improving it? You could add that Criticism section.

My point was more about a big part of Wikipedia being ideologically biased. This Feminist Economics page was just an example.

A lot of articles in Wikipedia are inside the battle ground for politics. I like to talk about it and point it out. But would rather stay a safe distance away.

Yeah, but people wanting to "stay a safe distance away" is exactly what makes articles vulnerable. Wiki-style projects rely on many different interested parties contributing for accuracy and "neutral" point of view.

I would be quite a bit sceptical of "neutral point of view" emerging from two ideologies fighting against each other and the stronger one winning... To me it looks like the deeper problem is that there is little gain for a truly well-intentioned and impartial editor to keep editing articles for free, seeing that all around them neutrality is being suppressed for political party lines and ideologies.

I agree with you that wiki-style projects depend on neutral volunteers to succeed. But you and me are not wiki-style projects. Our knowledge can be gathered from several differently biased sources and then combined, in hopes to get closer to "neutral".

Also it might just be the case that it was too early to praise Wikipedia as success. When it started people had precisely these doubts in mind - how could a "democratic" platform aim at truth. Maybe critics were right, just the down-spiral effect was delayed. And at first it was delayed because there was a technical barrier at being an editor. Then various groups began to train people in editing Wikipedia, and here we are.

But what alternative to Wikipedia do you propose?

Also see this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20371610

> But what alternative to Wikipedia do you propose?

What I do personally for subject that feel a bit controversial is: 1) read the Wiki article 2) read the Talk page 3) look for edits that were made earlier (special before the 2016 USA election) 4) look for primary sources when feasible.

As another commenter mentioned here - editing articles in Wikipedia is a waste of time now, because there are interest groups that control a lot of "touchy" subjects. As an example (and I am adding it because I know the subject matter, having read 5 books by the author) compare the leading abstract of "Julius Evola" before 2016, and after:

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Julius_Evola&oldi...

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Julius_Evola

What changed? Evola was one of the authors that Steve Bannon mentioned in one of his interviews. So editors tried to turn Evola into a misogynist + racist + fascist, just to smear the Bannon guy.

Have you tried to edit contentious Wikipedia articles? The edits would get nuked and Wikilawyered away by editors who control the article.

You should look at "Wikilawyering" as mostly a scare tactic.

I acknowledge that making ones edits pass by other interested editors (especially those with more time or numbers than you have) is exhausting. But it is worth it, considering Wikipedia gets first place in Google's search results.

> it's getting to the point where history is being actively re-written and re-interpreted to match a radical narrative

A human tradition dating back to the origin of storytelling. But at least now it comes packaged with a version history.

> in a leadership role at Wikipedia

Nitpick: Sanger is not part of Wikipedia or the WMF as far as I know.

> t's not even just political content, it's getting to the point where history is being actively re-written and re-interpreted to match a radical narrative.

Mind giving some examples?

> In some sort of temporal example of humour, I've gone back to recommending people use Britannica as a starting point and for surface level reading.

In what way could Britannica possibly be better than Wikipedia. It is usually based on a single viewpoint, instead of Wikipedia's thousands.

> n what way could Britannica possibly be better than Wikipedia.

> Mind giving some examples?

Google can help you with these questions, to your own satisfaction.

You mean "Google can help you on a reality tunnel choose your own adventure"?

I'm not sure what that's supposed to mean, but I assume it has something to do with arguing about choosing the alternate source of fact on top of the discussion about criticism of wikipedia, which is used as a source of fact.

This is not a winnable debate, but differing views exist.

This is an incomplete list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedia_controversie...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict-of-interest_editing_o...

https://www.quora.com/Am-I-the-only-frustrated-former-Wikipe...

etc.

The dubious nature of wikipedia's editing is recorded within books and articles from over the last decade that are casually discoverable from google. AFAIK, anyone who implies they aren't aware of the biases of editors, are either willfully ignorant (since this is covered under multiple topics within wikipedia itself) or trolling.

But is it documented only because it is documentable? Other encyclopedias don't have an openly visible history of edits. Their bias isn't non existent it's just hidden.

Regarding your parent comment, see [0].

All the criticism of Wikipedia that you raise is valid, but there are some things implied in your posts that are dubious:

* That there exists an encyclopedia better than Wikipedia (or some other Wikimedia project).

* That Wikipedia can just be ignored.

Considering the placement Wikipedias currently have, it is hard to imagine a better or more influential project being created, so we might as well try improving what already exists.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_tunnel

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