Hacker News Reader

Comment by alkonaut | Hacker News Reader

I just want to be the lone comment that says I do not see any annoying bias or editorializing on Wikipedia. Not even on sensitive or political subjects. But that’s of course my subjective view of it. Judging the number of times I see that complaint here, I’m starting to think that commenters here have a different political midpoint than the one of the people editing the English Wikipedia? Are HN readers more American, for example? (the usual complaint for some reason tends to be that Wikipedia has a progressive bias, that could perhaps be explained by editors being more international).

View on HN

Depends on the entry. For most technical entries I see it as a quick summary you google for and it's fine (if not sometimes a bit outdated on modern practices. But that's fine, it's an encyclopedia, not documentation). It tends to be pretty good as a spingboard to other stuff.

For politicized stuff I see it no differently than any other aggregator like Reddit or Hacker News. get a quick feel from the post and comments (yeah I even read the editor comments), look at several sources and get a feel for their bias. Then try to form my own view based on that. I see bias/editorialization there because I see it in every single person's POV. That's just life and why the number of sources I'd ever take wholesale are ones I can count on onehand.

Wikipedia is definitely very weak at developing stories, where you'll really see the back and forth happen underneath.

Have you ever read the edit history of a page on a topic you know to be controversial in society? The constant back and forth is something to behold. And for people who think Wikipedia is just a static unchanging webpage, they’ll never realize that depending on the minute that you read an article, it could be very biased in one direction or the other versus what your grandma saw when she read it an hour ago and posted a link on facebook.

Yes. And it’s roughly what I expect it to be. And while it fluctuates, I find it pretty rare to see the most extreme biases (which I think means that they are quickly removed and averaged out). Obviously there is vandalism and you can be unlucky and see a page at the wrong time but I think it’s so much better than it one might expect. It’s basically a fantastic restaurant where you stick your head into the kitchen and see a knife fight. Yet the food on the plates is almost always impeccable.

> on a topic you know to be controversial in society

What else could you reasonably expect? Unanimity without discussion?

GP: “I do not see any annoying bias or editorializing on Wikipedia. Not even on sensitive or political subjects” (emphasis theirs)

There is no unanimity being arrived at, it’s simply whomever has made the latest edit by the time a given person arrives at the page. Many people can read the “same” article and if they take it at face value, arrive at different conclusions.

I didn’t state my expectations about how WP should function. I pointed out why I think GP is wrong.

I see the edit wars. But I don’t see the suffering quality. A lot of posts on controversial topics quickly get locked down so the wars slow down too.

I think a lot of people are just... either epistemologically confused, or unreasonable, or a bit of both.

I am an american with libertarian/conservative political views and I rarely see outward political bias toward the left on the articles I visit. I think it happens on contentious issues but it is really mild compared to every other media outlet.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com