Wikipedia is currently in an edit war over the definition of recession
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
People have customarily defined recession a certain way, i.e.'2 quarters of negative growth'. If there were historically any other way of defining it, it would be totally reasonable to cite that now. But inventing a new way now can't be anything but a dodge.
Well, there has. For US recessions, Wikipedia has historically relied on NBER research to decide when recessions begin and end. Don't believe me, check out this version of the list of recessions from 2008 recession era [1], or a more recent one from 2021 [2]. Even though the 2008 article's lead incorrectly suggests that it uses the 2 quarters of negative growth definition, for modern recessions they are referencing the NBER's dating, which back in 2008 (and well before that) was looking at other measures [3]. Here's an article from 2004 about the NBER changing the start date of the early 2000s recession, and comments under it complaining that the methodology was changed to make Bush look good (it wasn't actually changed) [4].
Within the context of Wikipedia, this current dispute is ridiculous and entirely politically motivated. Being quite cynical, I think the people fighting to change the lead of the "Recession" article to remove the reference to the NBER are trying to create an incorrect perception that it is some obscure and probably liberal organization that liberal media outlets are using to protect Biden. In fact, for better or worse it seems to have long been the "official" authority on recessions in the US as far as economists and historians are concerned.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_recession...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_recession...
[3] https://web.archive.org/web/20080306073115/http://www.nber.o...
[4] https://alt.politics.narkive.com/4cf9LZYk/economists-say-rec...
[1] https://twitter.com/HowardMortman/status/1552767281981231104...
Or, "A recession is defined as two consecutive periods of negative GDP growth, except when a Democrat is in power, beginning effective 2022."
Yeah, that's useless for policymaking: NBER defines recessions historically, i.e. 6 - 18 months AFTER THEY HAVE OCCURRED.
The "two quarters of negative GDP" is what is used by policymakers, which have to adjust immediately.
Totally different things.
I have no strong feelings either way about the wording. The lead of an article is generally a place to introduce a concept and explain why it matters in a few sentences, but the '2 quarters of negative growth' heuristic for measuring (rather than defining) a recession is so widespread that it's not really an object of controversy.
Had the person who changed it offered that their aim was economy and clarity I doubt much argument would have broken out, though editing for style is best done at a low point of the news cycle around any given topic. But responding to the lukewarm reception of the rewrite with accusations of narrative warfare, censorship, and so on look a little forced, to put it mildly.
Recession means two quarters of negative GDP growth while a Republican is President and basically always has. It doesn't apply here!
Actually, "redefine" means to change the definition regardless of the motive.
Is define in your redefinition redefined to mean something other than the traditional definition of define as encountered in a redefine context? Or are you defining define within the redifinition of redefine as defined outside of the definition of your redefined redefine definition?
Language evolves, this is true. It is a slow and uncoordinated process which usually starts in a specific geographical location after which the changed words spread.
This is not what is happening here. The type of intentional and coordinated redefinitions of terms is not language evolution but language revolution - or revolutionary language, viz. Merriam Webster's recent redefinition of terms like 'female' [1], 'sexual preference' [2], 'anti-vaxxer' [3] and more.
[1] 'female' now includes the term 'having a gender identity that is the opposite of male' in a bid to appease transgender activists to allow them to answer the question 'what is a woman' with 'an adult human female'
[2] during the hearings for Supreme Court justice Amy Coney Barrett she (Barrett) used the term 'sexual preference' upon which the dictionary quickly modified the definition of the word 'preference' to include a claim that 'The term preference as used to refer to sexual orientation is widely considered offensive in its implied suggestion that a person can choose who they are sexually or romantically attracted to'
[3] this term was amended during the COVID vaccine mandate discussion by adding the claim that anyone who opposed vaccine mandates is an anti-vaxxer
"All major topics have at least one word that is critical to our debate, that we don't use the same way."
"Words That Don’t Have Meaning Anymore, So We Can Stop Debating Them": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGIUUzDj3hU (about 5 minutes in).
The words were:
- Woman - Find (i.e. discover vs make up) - Insurrection - Fascism - Autonomy - Phobic - Racist - Vaccine - Meeting - Baby - Evidence - Audit - Science - Healthy - Rights
When arguments about whether or not we are in a recession get so frequent and heated that they are annoying, we are in a recession.
When people accept their fate and stop talking about it, the recession has ended.
Wikipedia is untrustworthy now, and it sucks.
Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
If you have specific evidence of prejudice, or better yet arguments regarding specific policy positions, feel free to share them. To my mind, ad hominem arguments reflect more a dearth of substantive criticisms than they do a likelihood of bias and abuse.
At least we'll have flying cars.
American conservatives today have internalized many mid-20th century liberal civil rights arguments, especially regarding 1st Amendment jurisprudence. Conversely, over the past several decades conservatives have been so successful in selling constitutional Originalism that liberals now reflexively (and without any sense of irony) resort to making Originalist claims. Indeed, one reason conservatives don't realize they've adopted what not too long ago were extremely far left beliefs is because of exhaustive efforts to re-contextualize them in terms of newly revealed historical narratives.
The more general belief that history can indisputably resolve claims has slowly been internalized by liberals, too. It's why both sides now endlessly bicker over historical narratives and regularly put forth ever more bizarre and facially false historical claims. Somewhat similarly, conservatives and liberals seem to cycle through periods where one side or the other relies on "science" to provide irrefutable answers. In another few decades don't be surprised if conservatives become stalwart defenders of programs and rules intended to address global warming, while liberals advocate for programs seemingly in conflict.
Absolutely yes.
It is such an absurd clown show. I've heard politics compared to professional wrestling and I feel that is very apt.
And it is the flying cars.
The general situation is also kind of amusing because if you want to really contribute to the solution of a one-word problem (not their job, I know, but), it's usually very helpful to start by listing as many definitions of that one word as you can. Especially if there's disagreement over the correct definition.
And then the super secret trick next move is to never throw any of the definitions away, but rather to identify the leverage points of each separate definition.
And poof, where you once had a disagreement, you now have a bunch of discrete tools with identified advantages, and hopefully the smarts to use 'em!
(I also get that the WP community can also be extremely singular in its honing-in approach to problem solving. In general, a really common introvert curse is always being too focused on one conclusion, one question, one process, etc.)
> What's the deal with there being a million edits on this page in one day? > Articles get edited a lot, for all kinds of reasons… The fact that a page is being edited doesn't itself mean something crazy is going on. It usually means someone is replacing a colon with a semicolon.
Maybe in principle, but 1 million edits?? That’s like 12 a second. Not impossibly large, but it feels disingenuous to claim “something crazy” isn’t going on. I doubt many other pages get edited 12 times a second for 24hr straight.
> Although the definition of a recession varies between different countries and scholars, two consecutive quarters of decline in a country's real gross domestic product is commonly used as a practical definition of a recession.[3][4][5] In the United States, a recession is defined by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) as "a significant decline in economic activity spread across the market, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in real GDP, real income, employment, industrial production, and wholesale-retail sales".[6] In the United Kingdom and other countries, it is defined as a negative economic growth for two consecutive quarters
Nothing significant in many hours on history https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Recession&action=...
Despite breathlessness around "redefine" and such nonsense, nothing going on
Look at the savings rate, look at various metrics of inflation and purchasing power, or look at the stability/volatility of the market.