Comment by beloch | Hacker News Reader

Comment by beloch | Hacker News Reader

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There's a reason why historians tend to view anything more recent than 10-20 years ago as politics. If you don't want to get embroiled in political debates, stick to stuff old enough to be history. There's still politics there, but it's less raw.

Wikipedia doesn't restrict itself to topics that are older than ten years ago, so some of their material is necessarily going to be viewed as political.

e.g. Wikipedia has a stand-alone page on Elon Musk's Nazi salute[1].

{Edit: It's worth noting here that Wikipedia also maintains separate pages for things like Bill Clinton's relationship with Jeffrey Epstein[3].}

This particular page is very interesting because of the sheer amount of political blow-back it's caused for Wikipedia. If you're a Republican, this one page may be the biggest reason you might view Wikipedia as having become "ridiculously partisan". As a direct result of this page, and the refusal to remove or censor it, Musk is now taking aim at Wikipedia and calling for a boycott[2]. He also had his employees produce Grokipedia which, notably, does not include a page on his Nazi salute.

Musk may have had a public falling out with Trump, but he is still very much plugged into the Republican party. He's about to throw a lot of money at the mid-term elections. So, naturally, one hand washes the other and Wikipedia is on every good Republican's hit list. The kicker is that a lot of Republicans, who don't like Musk and think he's a Nazi/idiot, are going to feel a lot of Musk-instigated pressure from their own party to target Wikipedia.

This is the price Wikipedia pays for including recent events and refusing to bow to demands for censorship.

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[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk_salute_controversy

[2]https://www.lemonde.fr/en/pixels/article/2025/01/29/why-elon...

[3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relationship_of_Bill_Clinton_a...

Disclosure: I'm Canadian and am neither a Republican or a Democrat.

I'm also not American so I'm not well-versed in this topic, but perhaps to raise the obvious:

Does Wikipedia really need a page running for thousands of words on Musk allegedly making a Nazi salute?

It's longer than some of the content on major historical figures, yet this is a subject that I'd be surprised to see mentioned again after a few years have passed.

Considering that the subject matter is highly sensitive and concerns a living person I'm surprised that such an article was allowed at all.

It shows a recency bias, which is probably unavoidable. I'd hope that, as time passes, there are mechanisms to archive (not delete!) pages that seem unimportant. However, while this level of coverage may present a noise problem for average users, it will be a gift to future historians. How much material about the historical figures you mention was simply lost?

That being said, there should be absolutely no regard for "sensitivity" or the fact that Musk is a living person. He is a public figure wielding a ridiculous amount of resources to reshape the world as he sees fit. Regardless of his virtues or shortcomings, his power makes him somebody that should be watched closely. He helped shape the last U.S. election, played a key role in this presidency, and promises to continue his influence in the mid-terms. It matters if he's a Nazi.

Kudos to Wikipedia for leaving that page up.

To my view it looks more like an attempt to inflate a minor controversy by excessively documenting it. If this much effort were being put into writing about government policy I'd totally agree with you, but this level of detail is uncharacteristic even for Wikipedia.

> That being said, there should be absolutely no regard for "sensitivity" or the fact that Musk is a living person

Wikipedia always had particularly strong rules about how living persons are supposed to be covered. I wouldn't agree with making exceptions just because I dislike a powerful individual.

In terms of leaving the page up: I don't expect Wikipedia to be censored, but looking at this page the content unavoidably comes across as something that'd only merit a couple of lines on the main article. Instead you have a literal essay just to record "those aligned with the left believe that Musk made a Nazi salute, those aligned with the right say that he didn't".

> If this much effort were being put into writing about government policy I'd totally agree with you, but this level of detail is uncharacteristic even for Wikipedia.

Honestly, I think you're very much underestimating how much Wikipedia writes about government policy - but perhaps more to the point, it's trivial to find articles about controversies regarding the "other side" that are also quite well furnished, e.g.:

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama_tan_suit_controve...

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let%27s_Go_Brandon

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Did_That!

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_White_House_cocaine_incid...

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Township_High_School_District_...

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_name_Geronimo_controversy

So I don't think there's much of an argument to say that they're being particularly biased in doing this (you might believe that none, or almost none of these articles at all should exist, but that's a different issue).

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