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Comment by whimsicalism | Hacker News Reader

I have found that wikipedia articles have gotten more biased over time. Early on in my usage of wikipedia, it was clear there were substantial issues in article about things like Israel-Palestine (substantial pro-Israeli bias then), but most articles were still pretty balanced.

Now, it seems that on many actively contested political issues (ie. not something about climate change), there is a clear editorial stance. I say that as someone who has only voted D their entire life and likely will continue to do so absent some realignment. Efforts to change articles like these are reverted by high-status wikipedeans who have made articles like these their pet projects and build up a community of defenders.

Example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia_investigation_origins_c...

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A couple years ago, I tried to edit a page about the economist Deidre McCloskey to add some information about a campaign McCloskey had helped organize in the early aughts to attack & discredit the sex researcher Michael Bailey. McCloskey has tried to cultivate a pro-free speech libertarian image, so I was particularly alarmed when I read a thorough accounting of the Bailey affair in a journal article by Alice Dreger.[0] In fact, I had met McCloskey after the Bailey incident, and knew nothing about it based on the excessively mild portrayal in the Wikipedia article.

I tried to edit the page with a more accurate description: namely, that McCloskey attempted to have Bailey fired from Northwestern for violating "research ethics" and tried to have his license to practice psychology revoked in Illinois. Those facts seemed relevant to me, especially about someone who claims to be libertarian or "Classical Liberal." Wikipedia editors did not think so. The change was reverted almost immediately, even despite my citation of a high-quality source - much higher quality than the journalism garbage backing up many of the claims made on Wikipedia, yada yada. I eventually gave up after realizing one of the editors was on a moral crusade to suppress this piece of information, and none of the other editors were going to question her bias.

I imagine the same thing happens on thousands of other politically sensitive pages.

[0]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3170124/

This example probably goes against the hypothesis that there is an increasingly illiberal turn, however, as I can find discussions/arguments about this issue in the talk page dating from 2007.

Looking at your edit, I can see why your initial edit was removed (did not really seem npov) but your corrected edit seems fine to me and I do not understand why it was reverted. The current page is net worse in that none of this controversy is even discussed.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Deirdre_McCloskey#Bailey_...

You gave up pretty quickly! The last response you got was basically: "I agree that the Bailey incident can be expanded and her signature on the Harper letter is worth mentioning, but this has to be written in a neutral way.[...]"

Which is as close to "just tidy it up and you're good" as you're going to get, to be frank. Especially seeing earlier contention on the same topic.

I wonder which editor you thought was on a moral crusade. The last times the topic was touched were in 2007 and 2017, and your edit was in 2020. It's somewhat unlikely that you'd encounter the same editors as back then to begin with, and as far as I can tell the only interaction you had on-wiki was one response to you, which you didn't reply to.

Am I missing something?

If I'm seeing correctly, they did tidy it up and resubmit it - where it was then removed (I don't quite understand why - perhaps because they didn't reply to the talk saying so?).

The talk page was later. The text still needed a bunch of tidying. Could have asked the other editor to help out!

That said, that looks like quite the controversy. Adding that kind of thing to wikipedia is tricky because it can be hard to represent in a neutral way. Same sequence of events could have happened to me, or anyone else. Fortunately other editors are there to help, but you do need to talk with them.

(edit) Basically Baryphonic started out fine. Discussing on the talk page was the next logical step, after which you can edit the text to fix the issues. Often this kind of change takes several iterations to iron out the problems.

Ah good catch, I missed that. I agree that they probably could have gone through WP:BRD and gotten this into the article.

The article I linked in my original comment is different though and the user Valjean maintains a number of pages that they revert edits from and don't really engage in BRD in good faith.

Would you like to look at a particular situation in detail with me?

Without knowing which 'particular situation' you're talking about, I can just save your confusion.

There are articles in Wikipedia which will _always_ convey a certain perspective. Edits to them will always be reverted. The reverters will not engage with the audit process. The senior staff will not challenge those reverters. The procedure to handle this situation will not work. Arguments will be made that make literally no sense and will yet be accepted. If you persist in trying to make those changes your account will be banned on spurious grounds.

Well, that's not supposed to happen, obviously, not in the way you put it anyway.

But definitely give me an article/situation on Wikipedia where you feel that this is the case, and I'll take a look with you. Diffs appreciated!

The user whimsicalism is probably more interested in discussing this, I'd take it up with them.

I sense that this conversation will lead to a great deal of wordy justifications for the unjustifiable. I've already said that's part of the dissuasion process, I'm not interested in participating in it.

These discussions were already had at great length on reddit r/wikiinaction and resulted only in the subreddit being castrated.

This happens on every article related to these type of people. There is a clique of editors and administrators who go out of their way to keep any such uncomfortable information off Wikipedia, and maintain bias towards their cause on various pages, particularly on those of people critical of their activist movement.

You can see similar on HN, with comments and stories most often being flagged to oblivion if they say anything against this activism and the people involved. I'm even being oblique with my words now because they search for comments that don't toe the line. This comment will probably get flagged too.

Anything not to do with STEM is probably biased. It’s the nature of those subjects.

The cofounder of WP himself says the site is compromised.

https://twitter.com/SystemUpdate_/status/1686396348159987712

Yeah, I think the Trump era pretty much killed NPOV on wikipedia.

That cofounder had some... not impressive takes

How so? Seems pretty insightful to me.

I’m curious to know too, but not only is there no response, my original comment seems have been downvoted into relative oblivion.

The last time I commented on WP, the same thing happened. Interesting.

This is because Larry Sanger is crazy. There are legitimate criticisms of Wikipedia to be made, but citing them to Sanger makes them weaker not stronger.

Calling Sanger “crazy” is not helpful.

The same tag could be applied to almost anyone creative from Tesla to Picasso to Musk.

Do you have anything more enlightening than "Larry Sanger is crazy"? It's not a particularly substantive critique.

Important to note the co-founder has been desperately trying to usurp Wikipedia essentially since it became popular, his opinions on the site should be taken with a heavy pinch of salt.

Voting D doesn't mean much.

I think it makes it less likely I am a pro-Trump partisan, no?

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