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Comment by onyva | Hacker News Reader

From my experience with trying to contribute to the Hebrew version, try contributing focusing on expanding an existing article and watch what happens. In my case there was a very strong push back even against adding links that expand on issues mentioned which imho helped to balance an obvious slant. I gave up after a while. At university of course you’re warned not to use Wikipedia, it’s not acceptable as a reference and many examples are presented of experts in their field who contributed articles, which were then rewritten to the point where there was nothing left, other than the revised version of the moderators and the small mafia that runs the Israeli Wikipedia. There’s also the examples of the Croatian version which was taken over by neonazis and even the ministry of education had to publish a warning.

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The political bias of wikipedia editors is horrible in most smaller countries. You mention Israel and Croatia. I can add Sweden. For an example, compare the wikipedia entries of the two largest parties in the Swedish parliament. One, Socialdemokraterna, starts with a blurb on how the party provides public welfare and the party slogan ("av var och en efter förmåga, åt var och en efter behov"). Compare with the second largest party, Sverigedemokraterna, which has an entire section devoted to listing scandals, controversial quotes and shunnings. Whatever you think about the two ideologies, these two wikipedia entries alone should be enough proof that there is a (left) political bias of wikipedia editors.

I use wikipedia often because it has a lot of information in it, but would never rely on it as a source of fact. It is a google result like any other, and must be treated with caution.

I can echo your concern. German wikipedia has the same troubles. That's why it's not uncommon amongst anyone I've aksed or observed to habitually fact-check a German wiki-page with a quick hop into the English version (If there is any ideological classification involved).

There at least, Wikipedia's promise, that the heterogenity of writers creates informational breadth and balancedness, seems to be more kept.

In contrast to the German version, the English articles often have dedicated "criticism"-chapters, that also leave the criticism uncommented. The German versions often start with a political classification right away. If the classification is contested, then it stays there and just gets slighty changed into reported speech. If any counter-arguments to that classification make it into an article, then they are almost always commented, often with a counter-argument to the counter-argument from groups that created that classification in the first place, litteraly giving them the last word.

>The German versions often start with a political classification right away. If the classification is contested, then it stays there and just gets slighty changed into reported speech. If any counter-arguments to that classification make it into an article, then they are almost always commented, often with a counter-argument to the counter-argument from groups that created that classification in the first place, litteraly giving them the last word.

It's exactly the same in English Wikipedia for anything to do with current politics. Try reading any article about President Trump.

I don't think it's left vs. right in this case.

Without going into specifics, and considering the description of the process as was mentioned by the one of the commentators, the example I'm referring to was specifically a link to the academic paper from which a certain quote was paraphrased ...

I first tried to add a direct quote from the writer's paper, which was removed, and then a link to her paper, which was removed.

What they were trying to achieve is to minimize the importance of that source, by qualifying it as "some researchers claim" sort of qualifier.

It's really not about the content, but equal and balance representation of authentic and reliable sources. ie. a research paper which was already referenced. Not every "opinion" and slant is important, but preferring a paraphrase to direct quote is obviously an attempt to minimize the source.

Does your central parties have as many outrageous scandals as your far right party? Because if they don’t, what you say, doesn’t suggest any sort of bias.

I know in my country things are somewhat similar, and you’ll find less scandals listed on the central parties than you will for the left or right wing parties. That is mainly because the central parties don’t go around talking about how the holocaust never happened (right wing) or how violence against the police is warranted (left wing) though.

Scandals from one party or the other are rarely covered equally in the news of any country. The US is not alone in the divisiveness of our politics, nor in the lack of unbiased reporting.

The centrism bias should be considered bias too. The "truth is in the middle" or "both sides must be the same" is quite often just not true - in politics, work and personal life.

Almost all social platforms on the internet have a left-leaning tilt because, at least partially, the left (historically) organizes much better than the right does. This is one of those "well duh" statements once it's said out loud, considering the left's entire platform is about unification and social issues in most countries. That said, there are signs that point to a change in that recently (the second amendment rallies and sanctuaries around the US as examples).

This is extremely visible on Reddit, to the point that even moderates on the left can find it exhausting.

Is that true? I've always thought that the right was mildly more hierarchial (which i would describe as "organized") and the left a little bit more grass roots. That said i have no sources and another ancedote doesn't mean much.

The vast majority of large social movements have their origins in the left. Climate change, most social justice movements, the push for higher minimum wage, immigration reform, etc.

In general, people leaning 'right' are less interested in social initiatives on the whole. In the US, one of the most common talking points from the right is the desire to be 'left alone' by the government or social movements.

The only issue the right seems to really be organized about (in the US) is guns, and that's because a huge percentage of military folk lean that direction.

Large grass roots social movements are not the only way to be organized though. I agree that the left seems to better be able to capitalize on that type of movement in recent history, but i dont think it follows that the right is disorganized, just organized differently. (Then again this is the trump ers and he is not really the establishment right wing im thinking of-To me at least he seems to be riding a wave of fairly disorganized [but powerful] right wing populism, so maybe you are right in regards to him)

In what way is right more disorganized or was? Both extreme right and moderate right are full of groups, think tanks, movements, grass root movements and what not. Whether you decide right as economics or as dealing with social issues (women, race) or religious, it was never disorganized.

On English Wikipedia, the tilt is not exactly "left." It's generally more "liberal" (in the American sense). The group of editors that controls American politics articles pretty clearly isn't feeling the Bern, for example.

But this is highly dependent on the topic area. Some pages are controlled by relatively right-wing pro-Israeli editors, others are controlled by pro-Palestinian editors (and many are caught in the tug-of-war between these groups). Different groups control different topic areas, and some of those groups can be extremely right-wing.

I was under the impression that this was because the left skews younger, and Gen X and millennials are more active and capable online.

Age is a component, but it doesn't adequately explain the difference in movements that occur in the real world as well as online. Universities have students organizing protests against right-wing figures quite frequently, and it was almost exclusively the left who pushed for the $15 minimum wage - despite both parties populations being affected heavily.

From what I've seen (living in US, Germany, and Sweden) no matter where you go there is a difference in 'wiring.' [0]And according to some sources I've read there appears to be some science behind that as well.

[0]https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/10/can-you...

Universities skew younger even more than the internet does.

I think there is an element of the left wanting to "fix" the world which appeals to young people, and the right wanting to "protect" the world from bad changes, which appeals to older more cautious people.

The US military also skews young but leans more towards the republican party.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/118684/military-veterans-ages-t...

Looks like there are 1.29 million in the US military (0.3% of US population), with an average age of 34.5. (All figures from top search result of Google.)

59% of millennials lean or identify as Democrat compared to 35% Republican https://www.people-press.org/2018/03/01/1-generations-party-...

[0]There were 18.8 million veterans living in the US in 2017.

I don't know a single person in the military today that is over 30, and I live right by Nellis(Not exactly hard data, of course). Most people go into the military right after high school. I'd be surprised if the average age is actually that high, especially considering you can't even join the military over certain ages - though that depends on the branch and other factors. IIRC you cannot join the marines if you are >30

I suspect you probably are specifically looking at officers, which is an entirely different story.

[0]https://www.ncsl.org/blog/2017/11/10/veterans-by-the-numbers...

>The political bias of wikipedia editors

There is the problem of sourcing. Per the Wikipedia's policies[0], any contributions must be grounded in reliable sources, which in case of recent events boils down to big name news publications. Given that most of the big name media seems to gravitate towards either progressive, or socialist views, the contributions are likely to end up with a derived slant.

The other aspect is notable in cases of a conflict between the netizens (or generally the consumers) and the media[1], where Wikipedia is self-bound to side with the media's reporting on themselves. As far as I can tell, Wikipedia has no provision for resolution of this conflict of interest.

[0] "If no reliable sources can be found on a topic, Wikipedia should not have an article on it", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources

[1] terribly sorry about bringing up the specter of echo Tnzretngr pbagebirefl | rot13 in 2020

You may be correct but your proof suffers from the the fallacy of the middle ground.

Unbiased reality by no means implies that the number of scandals, controversial quotes, achievements or even the relevance of the party slogan must be similar for both sides.

Given that it is politics, there could not be no scandal at all, however it be framed. I can't read it, so I won't say there were none present, though.

This was pretty similar to my experience trying to add up to date participation numbers to Australian sport.

There is a big survey done in Australia, the Ausplay survey:

https://www.clearinghouseforsport.gov.au/research/smi/auspla...

They have extensive tables on adult participation.

Two editors would not let this data into the sport in Australia article. The reason was fairly obvious, it shows that soccer/football is the most played team sport in Australia. Roy Morgan, a statistical agency also had similar figures.

There was much time spent in the talk pages spent asking these two what would be acceptable for quoting these sporting statistics. The answer was nothing.

If you can't get fairly unobjectionable material like that into wikipedia what else is being blocked?

> The reason was fairly obvious, it shows that soccer/football is the most played team sport in Australia

I'm not familiar with Australian culture, can you explain why would that be obvious?

Good point. Sorry.

Some older Australians are parochial about sport. Soccer is seen as foreign and something not really Australian.

It's similar to the way soccer has been described as un-American in the US.

You can learn a lot about a topic you care by reading the Talk page and its archives; most relevant information that people wants to add has been discussed at length there, evaluating all pros and cons of the proposed text, and the biases and analysis of the quality of sources. Some small amount of talk is "oversighted" (hidden from view to all but administrators), but that's typically only for scandals who affect living persons. Also you'll have to wade through inflamed battles with unbridled passions, but the main issues of conflict become clear.

That said, there are two kinds of articles: hot topics which get the above treatment for any suggested change (either for political or fanboyism reasons); and abandoned gardens where no one cares and weeds grow, marked with warning signs. These were created either by copying a public domain old encyclopedia, or by a passionate editor in the earlies , and have seen few since then.

Either way, the most valuable resource of Wikipedia has always been the References section. You can skim the definition and safely ignore the rest of the article, and still use it as the starting point for learning about an unknown topic by searching the most promising sources of a well-curated collection of relevant links, that would be hard to find anywhere else using a search engine.

> At university of course you’re warned not to use Wikipedia, it’s not acceptable as a reference

The reason for this is too often misconstrued as being that Wikipedia is somehow misleading. The reality is that you do you reference something that is not a primary source. When everything on Wikipedia ostensibly has to link to something, it is just lazy to cite "wikipedia" as source for something.

I mean, I imagine you couldn't just say "New York Library" as a source for a fact either in university. You'd cite the actual source.

Interestingly Wikipedia itself promotes the use of secondary sources, discouraging over-reliance on primary and tertiary sources. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Identifying_primary_...

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