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> I think a lot people underestimate how arbitrary some editorial decisions on wikipedia can be.

I think it is true for all information we consume. One of the very important skills to learn in life is to think critically. Who wrote this? When? What would be their bias?

Text is written by humans (or now sometimes LLMs), and humans are imperfect (and LLMs are worth what they are worth).

Many times Wikipedia is more than enough, sometimes it is not. Nothing is perfect, and it is very important to understand it.

Also, I think for 99% of Wikipedia, there isn't much need to worry about Biases. It's about an uncontroversial chemical compound, a tiny village, a family of bacteria and so on. Knowledge isn't all subjective and prone to bias.

One issue with Wikipedia is that the "who when what bias" can change drastically between articles or fields, making it hard to actually answer.

For traditional news media, editorial boards and author bias are much more consistent over time and across articles.

My point was mostly, people just aren’t as aware of issues with it compared to other forms of media. Issues in other forms of media don’t change that or make it less of an issue.

At the end of the day you’re gonna to consume information from somewhere, it’ll have shortcomings but you’re still better off knowing that going in.

On bias’ of authors: I actually think people fixate a bit too much on bias of an author to the point it’s a solely used as a speculative reason to dismiss something asuntrue. If the claims made by the author are consistent with other information and others trusted sources it’s just irrelevant. I feel people online to readily get hung up motivations and it’s sometimes a crotch for a readers inability to engage with ideas they find uncomfortable.

Like if a private company sponsors a study with a finding that aligns with their business interests, that actually doesn’t mean it’s false. It’s false if no one can reproduce their results. I mean you’d definitely want to verify other sources knowing this, but also researches have their own reputation to preserve as well. In reality the truth ends up being more boring than people anticipate.

But obviously it matters when claims can’t be verified or tested but I find online there’s an overemphasis of this online.

Critical thinking does not mean that you dismiss the information. It just means that you take the potential bias into account.

The media are often pretty bad at doing this: they will often make some kind of average on what is being said, like "the scientific consensus says that cigarettes are killing you, but a study sponsored by Philip Morris says that they are not, so... well we don't know". Where actually it should be pretty obvious that Philip Morris is extremely biased on that, and the scientific consensus is not.

Not every voice is worth the same. During covid, there was a tendency to relay all kinds of opinions, without making the difference between actual experts and non-experts. Sometimes even saying "this person is a doctor, so they know", which is wrong: being a doctor doesn't make you an expert on coronaviruses or epidemiology.

Whenever we get information, we should think about how much trust we can put into it, how biased the authors maybe (consciously or not), etc. Elon Musk saying that going to Mars can help humanity is not worth much. Because he is rich and successful does not make him right. Yet many people relay "Musk predicts that [...]", as some kind of truth.

I guess I had public discourse in mind when I was saying people to readily invoke claims of bias. Also alternative media which tends to be on the other extreme of being overly cynical.

If PM appeared on the news obviously no one would believe them.

That said in Australia we in the last few years we’ve increased the cigarette tax, smoking hasn’t really decreased, but treasury has reported decreased revenue. It clearly looks like the tax has been increased too high if sellers are illegally selling untaxed cigarettes.

It would be very dumb of a cigarette company like PM to come out and point this out (as it would just be a springboard for proponents of the tax to play attack others pointing it out the issue atm), but if they did, it wouldn’t mean it’s not happening. Even if they have a bias it would be irrelevant.

Speculation around bias is just treated too much of smoking gun, and claims of it are more often motivated reasoning not critical thinking.

I couldn't agree more with this.

Small typo though: I believe you meant "crutch" not "crotch" in:

> feel people online to readily get hung up motivations and it’s sometimes a crotch for a readers inability to engage with ideas they find uncomfortable.

Cheers, yeah I did, I think missed that while tired

> people just aren’t as aware of issues with it compared to other forms of media.

Really? I'd think it would be the opposite. Wikipedia has always been decried by academics (and primary school teachers) as "not a real encyclopedia", without giving anywhere near as much of a critical eye toward other sources of information.

Sure, I think Wikipedia's reputation and public image has gotten better over the years, but that stigma of it being created and written by "unprofessional anonymous people" is still there to some extent.

And regardless, the kind of person who is going to watch Fox News or CNN without applying any critical thought to what they hear there... well, probably is going to do the same for Wikipedia pages, or any other source of information.

I think academics are too critical for a source of general surface level knowledge. But it’s no substitute for primary sources

I don’t think the problem is anyone can jump on and edit Wikipedia, they have process, but it’s the processes, informal institution’s, where the issues I’m referring arise. The average person hears there a process and assume this means it’s legitimate and flawless and are over confident in its quality.

It’s a great resource but I tin it’s helpful to be realistic about its limitations.

The problem with Wikipedia as an Academic source is that it's impossible to cite. You have no idea whether the information on there today is going to be there tomorrow or was there yesterday.

> I think a lot people underestimate how arbitrary some editorial decisions on wikipedia can be.

You can say that about Encyclopedia Brittanica or any of the old-school encyclopedias too. You can say that about the news desks at ABC, CBS, CNN, etc. You can say that about the New York Times, Washington Post, Guardian, etc.

I don't think people tend to blindly trust Wikipedia any more than they do for other sources of information. YouTube is full of garbage Wikipedia-regurgitating articles because Wikipedia is an easy, centralized source to scrape, not because of any level of trust they put in it.

I find this type of snap negative reaction boring, tiring, and unhelpful. It's disappointing that they often end up as top comments here. (Human psychology at work.)

My take: I expect that Wikipedia is more unbiased and a better reflection of reality then most -- maybe even all -- other sources of information on the Internet. On average! There are certainly crap articles, just like anywhere else.

If you look at the news in a democratic country vs an authoritarian one, you may easily walk away with the impression that the former is in a state of perpetual chaos, because of all the scandals, protests, resignations and snap elections. The authoritarian country will look like a paragon of stability in contrast. New infrastructure projects, record economic growth, seditious officials swiftly trialed and imprisoned. There is barely any conflict and the ones that do exist get solved quickly.

But unless you are a total mark, you should know that the stability is just a facade. That infrastructure project only went through because locals who opposed got beaten up by the cops, the economics data was cooked up by statisticians who fear the consequence of telling the truth and the seditious officials are only at the receiving end of justice because they lost the power struggle within the party. But of course you don’t know any of that, because why would the state let you?

Wikipedia, like democracies, run on transparency. This is why you get to read the editing history and talk page of any Wikipedia page and walk away with the impression that Wikipedia is uniquely full of drama. You never feel the same about the New York Times or the BBC because they run more like autocracies and keep everything inside. If we get a chance to read the internal emails of establishment media we will walk away with a very different impression.

I’ve said to a few other replies, but tbc I wasn’t promoting other mediums as alternatives.

> I don't think people tend to blindly trust Wikipedia any more than they do for other sources of information

I actually disagree or at least I think the extent to which people do is higher than it warrants. Especially to the degree people invoke it’s contents online

> I find this type of snap negative reaction boring, tiring, and unhelpful.

I didn’t ask for this to be the top comment, nor did I make you read it. I also don’t think it’s useless, just less useful than its proponents claim it is. And I think people do themselves a disservice in not looking beyond it when looking into a topic

I disagree, I know the opinion of WSJ, WP, FT or national like france24,DW, BBC, RT,AJ Or at least know is always opinion Base, the facts are selected in a subjecive way.

Is way harder to know how opinionated Wikipedia is, and everything make them sound like their opinion is only base on facts but isn't.

I think people underestimate how arbitrary editorial decisions are for any media.

Things like PBS and Wikipedia might have biases, but idk if it's realistic to expect better.

It's funny how the more accurate a source gets the more it draws in people desiring accuracy.

Then this rather small cohort of high precision people express frustrations without providing the context of accuracy against the masses preferred methods (TikTok, cable news, broadcast, truth social)

So now the water is muddled and people and Ais are mistrained because an "absolute scale" is not used when discussing accuracy.

Idk if this how it came off but just tbc my point also wasn’t indirectly promoting traditional media.

I think a lot if ppl are rightly sceptical of traditional media, but I feel I see more people giving Wikipedia a pass or placing it on a higher pedestal as a resource than it should be at times.

Admittedly I think I would prefer Wikipedia to traditional media in most cases. Although that wasn’t really what I was getting at

I very rarely watch PBS (I don't live stateside), but it is extremely biased. I lasted one and a half documentaries on the free trial.

I've seen plenty of their other content elsewhere. Maybe it doesn't resonate with non-Americans.

Can you provide concrete examples? Like what was the documentary about and why did you feel it was biased?

This just reads like out-of-touch elitism, sorry.

Most people don't even have the reading level for full comprehension of a wiki article, let alone being able to discern the nuance of some aspects of the topic.

> Yeah perfect is the enemy of the good but imperfect is still imperfect.

This assumes perfection is attainable. I'd like to see your idea of a "perfect" book or article on some topic.

I think you’re assuming I’m calling for perfection and suggesting people abstain from something less than perfect, we live in reality most things aren’t perfect.

Even if Wikipedia was the least worse resource people would still do themselves a disservice in ignoring issues with it. Acknowledging issues isn’t the same as dismissing it entirely.

How is this elitist? These other resources are more accessible than ever, no gate keepers are keeping anyone from looking at them. I’m also not making any judgments about anyone who uses Wikipedia either.

Yes, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia.

It's not supposed to be a learning source, it's not supposed to be an exhaustive reference on topics, it's not supposed to replace books and it has to be editorialized a lot to match the format.

It's by far the best encyclopedia ever created by mankind, on all metrics, but it's fundamentally an encyclopedia and nothing else.

And similarly about History and Geography YouTube, the problem isn't that they are regurgitated from Wikipedia, it's just YouTube is an entertainment platform.

JJ McCullough‘s gripe seems to be that wikipedia is kind of a mediocre summary of the information on a topic. But I'm not sure you should expect much more. You can always go to individual sources if you want that.

I think that’s fair. Though I think the sources sometimes also aren’t at great times.

I've seen proudly uneducated people with no understanding take sledgehammers to history and real knowledge, and so I have no illusions about how Wikipedia is horrible, unfair, unprofessional, mercurial, and vulnerable to manipulation.

I would've gladly paid more in taxes to make Encyclopædia Britannica an international non-profit public service delivered in web form to all so long as each area were managed and curated with subject matter expert input.

I think if anything if Wikipedia contributes to encouraging someone take an interest in these things like this, despite not in school, that’s definitely a positive.

But if these are moderators on Wikipedia that sounds pretty bad, but even that would surprise me.

It’s tricky cause I think being dependent on funding would also expose it to censorship risk. Like if it was funded by the UN then it’s remit might be limited by what some more influential nations would allow. At the same time you might end up with higher quality resources in the less controversial topics of what’s allowed? But also alternatively bias ones on politically controversial topics.

If it was funded by individual nations it’s same problem possibly worse, if it’s funded by “benevolent” individuals there’s a risk it becomes tool to propagate their personal ideology. Even if it doesn’t, it would probably affect the reputation of the publication.

So in this respect I think this is one case where Wikipedia has some obvious appeal. I think they may need to elevate their standards in their moderation. It feels a bit elitist but maybe some kind of signal for qualifications in a field, or at least specific fields (like natural sciences).

That said political interference aside, some fields are very subjective or operate on lines of thinking that’s can’t be challenged through falsification, are last in the social sciences. Like history can be very political.

Maybe a nonfree encyclopaedia isn’t so bad if it’s free from these issues, but can it even be sustained by a market? idk

Reading (the right) books is definitely the best way to learn about a topic, but its not great for quickly looking up random stuff. Books can spread misinformation too, from Malleus Maleficarum to Erich von Däniken.

It is useful for quickly looking up simple facts, and provides a list of sources.

The video makes some interesting criticisms. The lack of diversity is not surprising. Dominated by white, male, American's with time on their hands! how would have thought that? Its very obviously American dominated (at least the English version).

I once partly cross verify a virologist's lecture. He confused a brother of an important scientist who made an important discovery. I have no doubt that he knows what he's talking about when it comes to viruses.

All in all, checking other sources to see if they lines up is a pain and labor intensive, never mind actually checking to see if the references are actually sound evidence.

Spanish Wikipedia is dominated by folks from Spain, despite Spain being a minority of Spanish speakers.

The Scottish Gaelic Wikipedia is dominated by a German. As was the Greenlandic one before he decided to dismantle it.

> jj mccullough‘s opinions

holy heck there is so much wrong about this video. i can't believe "internet influencers" can just turn on their cameras and spew so much untruth without a care in the world...

comparatively wikipedia is imperfect, but much better than this kind of slop.

Feel free to actually articulate the actual issues you’re referring to.

It’s been a while since I watched it but the thing I remember taking away was you can do a lot better than Wikipedia, and he encouraged people to spend more time looking at primary sources for deeper research, and points out how it’s the basis of a lot of slop on YouTube.

Seems like he's recommending secondary sources over Wikipedia as a tertiary source.

That’s probably more correct actually, I guess primary source would be talking to witnesses or the subjects themselves.