Wikipedia Is More One-Sided Than Ever
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I thought the dilemma of neutrality vs objectivity was also interesting. It seems these goals are directly at odds, and if you are writing an encyclopedia you can only achieve one. You can give multiple sides an even amount of attention, including a possibly, objectively wrong perspective. Or, you can forego neutrality and go for objectivity. But, many social issues are precisely subjective and fuzzy.
I understand wanting an objective picture, I can even imagine why fox news might not be top of the shelf journalism, but TFA makes a point: sometimes they can be the only ones reporting on a side. And if you are neutral, you must not take sides.
The example of Switserland was interesting, as they had to tolerate the nazis as well to remain truly neutral.
Do you want neutrality? Or objectivity? Then, what is objective in some of these issues, where we simply don't have all the information, or worse, fuzzy and subjective issues?
(He also said a lot of negative things about Wikileaks, cited in the Wikipedia article you link.)
Except OP's actual examples aren't of Wikipedia "picking a side", it's that Wikipedia is ignoring his side of things.
It's one thing to say Switzerland is going to stay neutral to the Nazis. But that doesn't mean Switzerland is somehow required to hand out Nazi leaflets that it is delivered.
"Switserland is handing out leaflets for the allies but not the axis".
Which would of course not be neutral.
Trash article from someone trying to stay relevant.
> A neutral treatment would, of course, give broad factual coverage of such things as where the rioting took place, how many people were arrested, and numbers of injuries and deaths attributable to the rioting. The main Wikipedia article actually seems to do a good job there, as far as I can tell.
Sorry he said "good job" and I said "great job". I suppose there is a difference there and I apologize for that.
> The rest of the article—which, I confess, I did not read entirely, as it is very long
He cares so much about the bias that he can't be bothered to find it. The only thing I saw (and I mentioned in my original post) is that he took issue with the description of statue removal phrasing. So he skips through three long articles, doesn't read them all but finds what he's looking for. This is largely how people operate today, they start with what they want to believe then they go looking for it.
Also to your point: "This is largely how people operate today, they start with what they want to believe then they go looking for it."
If he went looking for it, he certainly found it very easily. I would agree with you if he had found the bias in niche topics and in later sections of articles much less likely to be read. But when the articles with the most traffic and most contributors demonstrate bias, its clear there is a problem.
> Why don't you quote his article and then the wikipedia "interpretation" that is "very biased"? Let's take concrete examples.
That's a request for concrete examples. Regardless, why don't you provide concrete examples of the liberal bias in those articles to back up your claims?
When did HN become worse than reddit?
Your use of the word "Let's" was either a suggestion or an order. Based on your tone it appears to have been an order XD
I would hope that the mods would remove the flag.
Cherry picked nonsense. Garbage article.
It is a modern example the tragedy of the commons where people with an ideological axe to grind don't care that they are destroying the reputation of the medium by abusing it for their own political purposes.
Just like the medium of email was almost brought to its knees by spammers who cared only for their own profits, the medium of "news" - NNTP - was brought to its knees by a combination of the "eternal September" [2] and the explosion of feed sizes caused by "pirates" (ab)using NNTP to distribute large binaries in the bin groups, so now Wikipedia has fallen victim to zealous editors "colonising" "their" subjects, not allowing any edits which go against their own ideology.
[1] really critical, not "critical theory" critical
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September (using Wikipedia to point out Wikipedia is biased)
2.2 Involving the objective analysis and evaluation of an issue in order to form a judgement. ‘professors often find it difficult to encourage critical thinking amongst their students’
When words change their meaning in a natural way this is called language evolution. When this change is being pushed to serve an agenda it is called language revolution, or revolutionary language. That is why I made the distinction between a critical eye and an eye guided by critical theory.
(made up) example: I live in a small town which has a blue stone in a square but the Wikipedia article says it's red. I went, made a photo that it's blue but Wikipedia doesn't accept it (several roadblocks to use your own photo, set up license, use correctly in the article etc.) then the editors just shut it down because there is no outside 3rd party source (just my photo, you can't reference yourself). So yeah I gave up and I hate it. And probs the editors never been here or I'd not even be surprised if they not even live in the same country.
As conservatism is increasingly a cult of nonsense. They aren't willing to bring any of the supposed election fraud evidence to court because it either doesn't exist or is so absurdly ridiculous that those who presented it would be disbarred.
Wikipedia neutrality applies to viewpoints, not information.
Hm - I recall they did try to bring it to the supreme court and the court declined to hear the case.
They brought lots of election cases, but they didn't bring allegations of fraud in most of them (Giuliani got chastised by a judge in one case for going on a tirade about fraud even though the case he was arguing did not allege fraud), and in the cases where they initially made fraud or fraud-adjacent claims, those claimsnl were often withdrawn before the case was resolved.
Fraud has been something they’ve argued in the media, and in GOP controlled state legilaative show hearings, but not really (at least properly) in court.
A lot of claims were being made. They then filed lawsuits.
But there are rules about what lawyers can put in court filings: they can’t just make stuff up.
So the lawsuits were paper thin, which contrasted greatly with the extreme claims being made outside the courtrooms.
Because the lawsuits were so paper thin, the courts said there’s just not much to consider.
The law suit alleges that the states changing their election procedures due to the spreading of Sars-CoV-2 is unconstitutional.
The court dismissed the case for lack of standing, stating that states do not have this sort of interest in how another state conducts their elections.
[0] - https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/texas-v-pennsylv...
[1] - https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22O155/163215/2020...
... since the site seems to be down as of this writing.
As it is, the default posture of WP is to be software suitable for those who write things that very few people will read.
Reading this article is kind of like I'm watching Jerry Springer except it's not as entertaining. As things stabilize the articles get better and as time stretches to infinity so too does the editing work eliminate bias on Wikipedia. Is it the greatest thing ever that you should unquestioningly read? Not even close. The author thinks it should be impossibly neutral. Nirvana fallacy.
(I don't think this is possible, therefore I think you are wrong)
What next? Are you going to complain that 98% of college professors are liberal? Okay, go change it. Enjoy trying to get people who enjoy liberal endeavors to promote conservative views. Am I shocked that the people who want to freely edit and debate articles on a website for no profit happen to slant liberal? Not really.
> (I don't think this is possible, therefore I think you are wrong)
What part exactly was I wrong about? I suggested you look at articles from 30-50 years ago and point out the liberal slant. Instead you invented a claim that I did not make so that I would be incorrect. Strawman.
If we cared enough about this, we'd all be reading conservapedia.com.
Yes, that is strange. Perhaps what has changed is not the leaning of the political alignment of people who frequent the internet, but the political landscape against which concepts like "liberal" or "conservative" are applied?
The other day I found a compound listed as a potent diuretic when was, in fact, a potent antidiuretic.
Multiple minor celebrity-types who have garbage written on their pages that isn't accurate, precise, or even true.
The only way to ensure a NPOV is to be able to "fire" editors and limit them from becoming as such, but that defeats the purpose of a wiki. Wikipedia is a Tragedy of the Commons and will never be authoritative because it blindly trusts in infinite openness rather than assembling a company around gathering authoritative expertise.
>Neutrality requires that mainspace articles and pages fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in the published, reliable sources Giving due weight and avoiding giving undue weight means articles should not give minority views or aspects as much of or as detailed a description as more widely held views or widely supported aspects. Generally, the views of tiny minorities should not be included at all, except perhaps in a "see also" to an article about those specific views. For example, the article on the Earth does not directly mention modern support for the flat Earth concept, the view of a distinct (and minuscule) minority; to do so would give undue weight to it.
The author goes on to complain that extreme minority views on "mask efficacy" and "vaccine side effects" are not adequately represented.
Wikipedia definitely has a left/liberal bias, but it's not entirely without merit. "Conservative" views are increasingly minority views, as evidenced by the their figurehead never once having majority approval in four years (barring outlier polls) and dropping to an average of below 40% [1]. Support for the various fringe beliefs regarding covid-19 are even lower, if Fauci's approval ratings are anything to go by. Considering between 4 and 10 percent of people lean towards belief in a flat Earth, the canonical example of a tiny minority opinion, the bar increasingly close.
[1] https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/
[2] https://www.sciencealert.com/one-third-millennials-believe-f...
If anyone wants an explanation.
- Avoid stating seriously contested assertions as facts.
- Avoid stating facts as opinions.
- Prefer nonjudgmental language.
- Indicate the relative prominence of opposing views.
From the talk page you can see the main editor who is orchestrating the effort (don't forget to look at the talk page history for the whole story) and from the editor's user page you can see an enemies list and other details establishing the proper bona fides.
A real case study on mindset as well as technique. https://www.google.com/search?q=project+veritas
> To the best of my knowledge, I was first described in the press as co-founder of Wikipedia back in September 2001 by The New York Times.
This isn't just some right-wing wingnut raging against liberals.
It's a pity this author chooses his handful of pet political issues and spends most of time arguing about the summary sections of certain pages. And most of the complaints are "how come they aren't making a big deal about the things I want them to". Man, can you believe how unfair Wikipedia is to Stalin? They didn't talk about any of the nice things people said about him?
Ultimately, these complaints are incredibly self-defeating. The point about Wikipedia is that literally anyone can change it. If you don't like the information presented, you are more than free to actually fix it instead of bitching on the internet. But it turns out you will actually have to put in research, provide valuable information, work with other volunteers to establish consensus, and survive the scrutiny of every reader. And no on will pat you on the back or hand you internet points.
And it turns out that a lot of these random ideas, like Hunter Biden's totally real laptop or the deep state plants in the January 6th riots might very well be true, but in no way do we get to stop the train on every stop so that every fringe viewpoint can get on board. Or no one who believes in this stuff is actually willing to put in the work.
If your entire political identity is that you would rather pick up your ball and go home to complain rather than put in the work to establish your points, I say good riddance. I don't want your lazy tropes on Wikipedia.
TFA describes that this is actually exactly what true "neutrality" is, and that wikipedia alleges to aim to be neutral.
OP is conveniently forgetting the other two Wikipedia requirements.
Imagine if a FOSS software project somehow banned all forks and forced all developers to compromise on every little thing.
I just wish there was a home for forked Wikipedia articles. The analogy isn't perfect. Whatever.
Just look at wikipedia's one-sidedness relative to "kids in cages" of Obama vs Trump vs Biden. Holy cow, I didn't realize their bias had gotten this bad.
Yes, and they've been deprecated because they kept making stuff up, over and over again. Whether they're right and doing important reporting in any single instance is entirely beside the point, they still can't be trusted to be accurate and that's what matters.
Have a look at the list of "reliable sources" as defined by Wikipedia [1] and decide for yourself whether there is an unbalance between the number of green (which translates to "reliable") "progressive" and "conservative" publications.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Per...
An important object-level question is "are trade deficits bad?". (I have no real opinion on this question, because hey, I'm not an economist --- none of this is about the object-level question!) For those who live under an even larger rock than I do, Trump sided with "yes", causing a predictable sorting of opinions in US politics.
The article leans very strongly in the direction of "no", stating above the fold:
> The notion that bilateral trade deficits are bad in and of themselves is overwhelmingly rejected by trade experts and economists.
There follow 5 citations, of which 4 are articles about Trump. (Three mention Trump in the title.)
The claim is repeated in the body of the article; it's the first sentence in the section "Views on Economic Impact". But the very next sentence is
> According to the IMF trade deficits can cause a balance of payments problem, which can affect foreign exchange shortages and hurt countries.
The paragraph structure makes it seem like this is a sentence in support of the thesis, but it's really not. And the very next sentence, again, is on negative effects of trade deficits:
> On the other hand, Joseph Stiglitz points out that countries running surpluses exert a "negative externality" on trading partners, and pose a threat to global prosperity, far more than those in deficit.
Note that this specific claim of "negative externalities" is very similar to the strongly politically coded claim that this article and its citations are so keen to claim is "overwhelmingly rejected". The following sentence is on negative effects of eurozone imbalances, but I'll stop quoting here.
I've seen similar patterns on other articles, but this is the clearest example. The article actually reads as something that was once a representative hodge-podge of arguments for and against, and then had to be "fixed" in the days of Trump and brexit to avoid confusing hapless readers.
It's relatively petty, but note another sentence above the fold:
> The notion of the balance of trade does not mean that exports and imports are "in balance" with each other.
This sort of pre-emptive heading off of common misconceptions is not encyclopedic. There are only seven sentences above the TOC, and one of them is this! (For instance, I checked the article on "quantum superposition", and no similar sentence is included, despite the obvious and common misconceptions.)
It is astounding that an english lanuage reader will find basic facts and details about the Biden scandals censored by wikipedia because no "reliable" sources reported on them.
Stuff like this would rapidly ruin Wikipedia without the reliable sources requirement.
No not really. That is a straw man. Unless the community consensus was that Sanger really was a turnip the edit would not stand.
If wikipedia is not going to be neutral why bother reaading it at all. Plenty of sources exist already that will tell you what to think.
I think neutrality is more important even than "factual" accuracy.
The less said about the sewage in the contemporary topic pages the better, although Sanger does a good job describing the issue, anyone who trusted those pages in the first place has brain damage, so it’s not like something glorious or valuable has been wrecked there. It started off bad and became worse.