Wikipedia became a battleground for racial justice | Hacker News Reader

Wikipedia became a battleground for racial justice

slate.com

35 pointsedward23 comments

Unsurprisingly, this doesn't seem to be a left vs. right issue but a far left vs. centre issue.

None of the edit suggestions or controversies were racist or biased. It is clear that ardent supporters of the BLM movement simply want to shape the historical record in the way they want to. And Wikipedia will probably side with them.

How is mentioning Floyd's past criminal record on his biographical page (not even on the "Killing of..." page) a detraction from his death? Are we just going to edit Wikipedia to remove anything that detracts from people we idolise? Wikipedia should present the facts (all of them) and that is it. If the facts detract, then maybe there's a reason for that. That doesn't change the fact that they are facts.

This has been happening for a while. There were posts on HN about the revision wars around the Orlando shooting, and then again on almost every major world event.

When it comes to political events, you cannot take Wikipedia as a reliable source anymore.

The sad fact is that the people who have the most time to give to wikipedia, are typically the most biased.

If you look at the linked talk page almost all votes are yes, include. It is currently included. You appear to be railing not against what is, but against an unrealized possibility which was in fact stopped by the very hive-mind you falsely assume would push, or at least accept it.

Call me slanted all you want, but this, the current state of comments here, that's what an agenda looks like.

I was basing my comments on the linked Slate article.

And the link I referred to is in that article.

This morning, I chanced upon the wiki page for "George Floyd protests".

I consider myself more liberal than many, and yet I was struck by the obvious left slant of that page.

Not that it has inaccuracies, but its selection of facts and how they are presented, are definitely not neutral. From the header ("protests" or "riots"?) to the prevalence ("George Floyd protests in Minnesota"[0] and "George Floyd protests"[1], etc[2], [3], [4], [5] ...) to the descriptions and topics....

IMO such bias erodes their trust, and the more centrist will have to choose between one echo chamber and another and decide their facts by emotion.

Unfortunately, I am beginning to feel that the more "woke" a subject is, the less likely the facts will be presented fairly.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Twin_Cities_riots [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Floyd_protests [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Floyd [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_George_Floyd [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_George_Floyd_protests_... [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_George_Floyd_protests_...

I've noticed this as well.

Reminds me of this from Scott Alexander: https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/01/neutral-vs-conservativ...

I'm not sure I understand your point. By questioning the choice of "protests" vs "riots", are you suggesting that the actions taken by a minority of those participating should be used as the header for the whole article? Because that would seem to be a much more biased way to record the events.

Per that one example.

The URL of the article being linked to was "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Twin_Cities_riots" (it has now been changed).

Compare the two: "Twin Cities whatever" used in the URL is a lot less political than "Goerge Floyd whatever". And the "riots" used in the URL is obviously something people were searching Google for.

Wikipedia could have used the more conservative name, and acknowledged that "the protests, also known as the "George Floyd Riots" (as is obvious from the URL)....

Don't get fixated on that example though - the whole article reads like it was written by the press team of a large corporation with a narrative to sell.

The current name of the article is "George Floyd protests in Minnesota", and first paragraph contains "The course of events in Minnesota has also been referred to as the Minneapolis riots".

I disagree riots is a more conservative name - this would imply an article solely about the riots, necessiting an additional article about the protests, one which, being written in a way as to minimize overlap, would probably be accused of downplaying the very much existing riots. Or at the very least balkanize coverage.

Unfortunately it's been years since I can trust any wikipedia article on anything political or social related. Sad thing is these issues now taint topics like games, movies, software. Not being from US makes it even harder to swallow.

I guess it's unavoidable though. Having your ideological group stand on such a popular resource is incredibly powerful propaganda. It's like having millions of dollars lying in the street, you can't expect people not to touch it.

I’m of the opinion that it’s not just ‘like’ money. It is money. Firstly, there are people from ‘community organizations’ that get paid to AstroTurf as their full time job. Secondly, those organizations wouldn’t get funding in the first place if some big company didn’t somehow depend on their political action to maintain their profits.

I get that Jimmy Wales acted questionably towards Larry Sanger, but I'm always a little saddened that Sanger has become a rent-a-quote to criticise something truly amazing that he helped to create. Wikipedia is for all its flaws a remarkable achievement.

Sanger, from what I've read of what he has been saying, doesn't appear to deny the remarkable achivement of Wikipedia. He's arguing it is increasingly losing a sense of - a culture of - neutrality that helped to make Wikipedia possible.

Maybe Wikipedia shouldn't allow certain articles to be added/edited until things cool off a bit. Writing history out of anger is probably not the best idea.

They do that. Articles are often locked to a certain level (e.g. closed for edits from new users, or even all users) for a certain period of time if they relate to a controversial topic or unfolding news event.

Wikipedia has sadly been in this state of subversion for years. Eventually you get a mental bullshit-filter, just like you easily train yourself to ignore ads online etc.

Sadly yes and it is very counter productive from my perspective. It is no secret that there are some groups that just blame people on their skin color or sex or whatever else. They have been there since the dawn of the internet. But recently they seem to be holding a lot of people in some kind of mental prison.

I wouldn't even want to read an article about Floyd because it won't net me believable information. I will just say that he was a victim of state violence. That is more severe than violence between any groups and everyone in a society is responsible to a degree and that social media or the internet in general is a bad place for reverence.

That is an unexpectedly balanced and informative piece from Slate. There are two main assumptions underlying progressive politics: systemic oppression and exploitation. Social Justice Activism takes these assumptions to be true by default. Anti-capitalist Black Bloc anarchists, for instance, take any opportunity to destroy corporate property as a positive move to eliminate economic exploitation. They don’t tend to revisit their assumptions.

Bypassing due process and the presumption of innocence does not promote justice. Perhaps news stories should include subscription links to be notified of the key due process events associated with the criminal investigation.

I would hope that thoughtful protest could be patiently delayed until due process is complete.

I don’t think the ambiguity of the notability requirement should be used as a critique of the neutrality policy.

For the love of all this good, please do not let the poison of political correctness infect Wikipedia.

You think Wikipedia isn't already poisoned? I have sad news for you, my friend...

Pikiwedia sounds better than Wikipedia.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com