24 ms·

Wikipedia is fixing one of the Internet’s biggest flaws

265 points by The_ed17 10y ago

basch 10y ago
Most of the debate on wikipedia is regarding which rules to apply soasto prevent people from submitting edits.
- crooked-v 10y ago
  For my part, I stopped contributing long ago because every single edit attempt I made, including simple stuff like fixing punctuation, would inevitably get reverted by a bot or an overprotective editor within the next day or two.
  - cooper12 10y ago
    If every single edit you made was reverted, maybe they weren't really constructive edits? Just food for thought. > If you run into an asshole in the morning, you ran into an asshole. If you run into assholes all day, you're the asshole. - Raylan Givens, Justified On a more serious note, I always hear people complaining about getting reverted. What they don't realize is that, often, their edits really are just bad. Here's some of the stuff I have to revert daily: * Test edits/gibberish * Vandalism * Original research [0] * Changing stuff to match their variety of English [1] * Making the grammar worse, or going against the Manual of Style [2] * Improper tone [3] * No edit summary giving a rationale for the edit A lot of the time, the changes people make are just arbitrary or don't improve the article. If you ever feel you were improperly reverted though, you can always bring it up on the talk page. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#National_varieties_of_English https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Nati... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Writing_better_articles#Tone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Writing_better_artic...
    - mason240 10y ago
      Considering this very common experience had by people trying to contribute, I think your saying applies more to the "full time" entrenched editors, who are acting as wall of assholes blocking a wider group of contributors. Also, that saying has been around alot longer than Justified.
      - cooper12 10y ago
        I mean I just gave you the reasoning of entrenched editors, they're just not often good edits. These complaints come from people who think that Wikipedia is obliged to take any of their edits just because they took the time to hit the submit button. Wikipedia has policies and standards to uphold and people would complain if we went the other way and accepted all garbage people felt necessary to dump on the site. Also, the people who bring up these accusations never list the articles they were reverted on. Show me some of these edits improperly reverted and I'll personally help reinstate them or explain what was wrong with them.
    - deleted 10y ago
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    - deleted 10y ago
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  - FireBeyond 10y ago
    When the latest Tesla press release came out about performance, I surrendered after about an hour or two of edit warring about how it wasn't actually a verified / independent track time, but rather a PR piece about predicted performance. Pointing out the guidelines on the page themselves didn't matter. Reverting with comments in the revert itself didn't matter. Whether new people or established editor, everyone was falling over themselves to get the edit in. I decided it was futile when they started deciding the solution was instead to rewrite the "guidelines" for what measurements were acceptable, basically "Screw you, we're putting the Tesla in. If it doesn't count based on the rules, we're changing the rules." So now it's in three categories, "independent/ verified", "manufacturer tested", and "manufacturer claimed" (the latter of which only had the new Tesla).
    - greglindahl 10y ago
      Deleting content is one of Wikipedia's biggest issues right now. I'm not surprised that the stable solution was to include the new content, and add a new way of describing it. Futile? No: inclusive. In a month or two you'll have the verified track time to add.
      - FireBeyond 10y ago
        Great. And in a month or two, then it should be added. But as a hint, in an area which isn't exactly new - manufacturers have been releasing new cars for a century, some faster than others, have been releasing press releases ever since, too, especially for supercars/ etc., on a list that has been updated for years (and this is one of my first edits on the topic, so I'm hardly claiming ownership)... the fact that you have to add another column that completely defies the "real world" measurements of every other vehicle there in order to get their fandom vehicle in should be indicative that it was a stretch. Here's an example: "List of fastest 100m races" lists the top 20 verified 100m times in history. Along comes an athlete's team and they release a press release saying "Based on our simulations, we predict he will run 9.45s in this race in a few months time" and, rather than do nothing with it, editors fall over each other to add a new column to the list, so it now has "verified times", "independent times", and "team projected times" and based on that states that Athlete is now the third fastest 100m runner in the world. Instead of, as you say, waiting for that event to verify (or prove false) that claim. But yet, to witness sibling posts, my perspective is "wrong".
  - arjie 10y ago
    I've edited pages, created pages, and added sources, and each time someone has taken the small work I do and turned it into something with quality. I'm very impressed by Wikipedia.
  - DanBC 10y ago
    I agree. Recently WP has recognised that's a serious problem, and was a risk to the project. Some stuff like Twinkle and Rollback got a lot more oversight. Various "vandal patrol" groups got shut down. New Page Patrol got revamped. Here's on discussion about new page patrol: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:New_pages_patrol/RfC_for_patroller_right https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:New_pages_patrol/RfC... I've found far fewer of my gnome edits get reverted now than what used to happen.
- Animats 10y ago
  Editing Wikipedia is not like posting on a blog or a forum. It's more like contributing to a project on Github. Many people do not get this. Wikipedia has converged on a referenced-to-death style, like a PhD thesis. This is part of what keeps it from becoming too biased. People who have never had to write to tightly referenced standards get very frustrated editing Wikipedia. Those who have don't find it difficult.
  - basch 10y ago
    I don't think it's reasonable to expect every edit to be polished. If someone makes a rough contribution with promise, it should stay in the article in its broken form, so other passerbyers can see it and help improve it. Something ugly but of value should stay instead of being relegated to talk pages 99% of viewers never bother to check. I lean towards inclusion because visible mistakes are more likely to be fixed by random surfers. There is one faction of people that treat pages like a final draft, and others who prefer it as working space (with extremely high visibility.) Github isnt a fair comparison, because it has a much better workflow for proposing changes.
    - Animats 10y ago
      If an edit to Wikipedia has new, cited information, but the citation is in the wrong format, someone will probably fix it. If it's uncited writing, and not well written, it's probably going to be reverted. There are sandbox pages, user pages, and talk pages for working drafts. But the main space pages are seen by millions of people, and are not an appropriate place to write drafts. Realistically, if you can't write English without grammatical errors, trying to edit Wikipedia will be a frustrating experience.
      - basch 10y ago
        >But the main space pages are seen by millions of people, and are not an appropriate place to write drafts. The visibility is entirely why it should be where contributions are made and not in behind the scenes obscure spots. It's ok for pages to be flawed. If you fix a grammatical error instead of reverting a contribution, you might teach the person who made it something. If it's uncited, you should cite it, tag it, or leave it, you shouldnt be reverting it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Editing_policy#Try_to_fix_problems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Editing_policy#Try_t... >Fix problems if you can, flag or remove them IF YOU CAN'T. Likewise, as long as any of the facts or ideas added to an article would belong in the "finished" article, they SHOULD BE RETAINED if they meet the three article content retention policies: Neutral point of view (which does not mean no point of view), Verifiability and No original research. I dont have some radical position here. It's written right into editing policy. Removal should be saved for when contributions cant be fixed, not because you think they are ugly blemishes, and dont want to take the time to improve them. An "incomplete" contribution should stay IN the article, waiting for someone else to come along and mend it. Preference for an article to look "finished" should take a back seat. Facts and Ideas first, spit polish next. Always prioritize the former.
libeclipse 10y ago
Apparently AMP prevents the Google trick of being able to bypass paywalls. Can someone post the gist of the article here?
- iamatworknow 10y ago
  Researchers studied the changes to Wikipedia articles and found that in the course of these article's edits the political tone and biases tended to converge toward neutral over time.
  - losteverything 10y ago
    And the flaw was how comments have gone downhill. But really, what is the internet's flaw? No live human body present?
- helthanatos 10y ago
  Isn't the paywall fixed by clearing your cache? Does twitter bypass the paywall?
- ptaipale 10y ago
  Open it in incognito/private window through the "web" link.
amadsen 10y ago
'In a draft paper published last week, Shane Greenstein and his colleagues Feng Zhu and Yuan Gu found that over the years, individuals who edit political articles on Wikipedia seem to grow less biased — their contributions start to contain noticeably fewer ideologically-charged statements. “We thought this was quite striking,” said Greenstein, a professor at Harvard Business School. “The most slanted Wikipedia editors tend to become more moderate over time.”' Uh yeah maybe because the people in question grew older? Many of them may have joined wikipedia in their teens or early twenties and like so many others in that age group had quite raical political views and like so many others become more moderate as they mature and learn more about the world.
- irrational 10y ago
  racial or radical?
  - GavinMcG 10y ago
    You'd have to think "radical", since that's what naturally opposes the later use of "moderate".
  - mrkgnao 10y ago
    Both of those words have Levenshtein distance 1 from what GP wrote. Maybe let's give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they meant the one that doesn't sound like a type-error/makes sense and avoids outrageousness?
    - irrational 10y ago
      But isn't the outrage what keeps the Internet from collapsing in upon itself like a balloon full of hot air? ;-)
    - x3n0ph3n3 10y ago
      Raical has a Levenshtein distance of 2 from racial. Swapping two characters is a deletion + insertion. You'd need to use Damerau-Levenshtein distance for transposition to count as 1 operation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damerau%E2%80%93Levenshtein_distance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damerau%E2%80%93Levenshtein_di...
MollyR 10y ago
After all the replication failures, poor statistics, and more in the social sciences. I am skeptical of this.
stcredzero 10y ago
We might once have dreamed that the miracle of cheap, instant communication would knit society together. The reality has been closer to the opposite. Once again, Douglas Adams turns out to be prophetic. "Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation." In the sentence before, he also predicted his friend Richard Dawkins' books: "Most leading theologians claim that this argument is a load of dingo's kidneys, but that didn't stop Oolon Colluphid making a small fortune when he used it as the theme of his best-selling book, Well That About wraps It Up For God. http://hitchhikers.wikia.com/wiki/Babel_Fish http://hitchhikers.wikia.com/wiki/Babel_Fish
- convolvatron 10y ago
  "Like this: Take two opposed pressure groups--Record the most violent and threatening statements of group one with regard to group two and play back to group two--Record the answer and take to back to group one--Back and forth between opposed pressure groups--This process is known as "feed back"--You can see it operating in any bar room quarrel--In any quarrel for that matter--Manipulated on a global scale feeds back nuclear war and nova--These conflicts are deliberately created and aggravated by nova criminals" - Nova Expresss, William Burroughs
  - stcredzero 10y ago
    But in reality, it's also more mundanely exploited by Facebook and Tumblr to drive traffic.
- agumonkey 10y ago
  I was just hearing some party leader in a meeting and thinking like this article. Echo chamber, ideological divide. Also, this backward effect of the lack of friction is also why I believe Email is still there. A tiny and sweet spot for communication. It requires time, will to read, understand and respond. If you want to release reflex negative emotions, you'll still have to work a little bit for it.
- 77pt77 10y ago
torkable 10y ago
I wonder if WSJ has someone just sit and post their articles on HN all day
thesz 10y ago
If I may weigh in, the "cocoon" that is so scorned by many, is a feature. It allows people to actually get things done. It allows them to spend less thought on the topics that are not concerned them in their day lives and spend more on their... day lives! Basically, if you want people to go out of their cocoons, make their life easier. Otherwise, the fight is futile.
- 77pt77 10y ago
  > Basically, if you want people to go out of their cocoons, make their life easier. If the past 200 years are any indication it won't make a difference.
  - thesz 10y ago
    The life in USSR was so easy, people went out of their cocoons. And I mean easy when I speak about USSR. Life in contemporary Russia is much harder.
- woodchuck64 10y ago
  > It allows them to spend less thought on the topics that are not concerned them in their day lives and spend more on their... day lives! This works as long as the cocoon is perfectly insulated. But it isn't, as elections show. The political process basically cuts through the cocoon like a predatory wasp-- assuming there is at least one candidate or law that is incompatible with insulated beliefs. And then all that saved energy is wasted on moral warfare against the invaders. Cocoons are always bad in a non-homogeneous society.
  - norea-armozel 10y ago
    Or maybe people should be free to associate as they wish? This seems to be the hardest concept for fellow Americans to grasp because it seems to be a growing (parasitically so) notion that we have to be friends to strangers who actively oppose to who we are or our interests. I don't want to force someone who thinks I'm a sinner for being bi and trans to be my friend nor do I want to be a friend to such a person. Nor should they or I have to endure each other's company beyond what's necessary to get a task done in public. If that's putting up a cocoon I'm not sure how civilization will get along then when every social interaction turns into a virtual duel. I'd rather just put up with fake courtesy than force someone into a fight with me or vice versa. Toleration is a better lubricant for social order than is constant challenges to deeply held beliefs.
pixelbill 10y ago
Why have there been so many washingtonpost articles lately? Pretty annoying to those who don't want to deal with paywalls to get their news.
- The_ed17 10y ago
  Incognito mode is your friend.
- teh_klev 10y ago
  When all else fails (web link, incognito), learn to archive.is: http://archive.is/Wh2iM http://archive.is/Wh2iM
vonklaus 10y ago
I don't think the "internet's biggest flaw" is that it allows for free, unmoderated speech. > What’s even more interesting is that Wikipedia seems to exert a moderating influence on its contributors. This is a great concept, but usually is horrible in practice. It says that wikipedia was partisan and quite left, and has since become more balanced. However, this illustrates a positive outcome of a dangerous potential. This model works much worse for less authoritative sites, but I personally do not believe wikipedia should moderate based on anything other than "truth". Regardless, this is extremely subjective and difficult to do. I think it is working at wikipedia (compared to other places) and am optimistic, but I have seen this go wrong so many times.
cooper12 10y ago
As a Wikipedia editor, I think this can mostly be attested to the site's policy on maintaining a neutral point of view. [0] Over time you learn to watch out for certain words [1] and you can sniff out things that were copied verbatim or written in a improper tone. In terms of discussions, personal attacks are discouraged [2] and there's a strong focus on providing reliable sources, [3] so discussion often shifts to discussing those instead. Off-topic discussion is also commonly removed [4] and there are avenues for dispute resolution. [5] Of course you'll still find plenty of heated disputes and some biased articles, but the project is a work in progress after all. I think the most important factor is that there are people of different viewpoints willing to work together to integrate them in a way to best give weight to them rather than creating content forks. (this is why conservapedia is doing so bad) [6] You can't fix bias by creating an echo chamber or pretending it isn't there, but rather by keeping an open mind and welcoming those who think differently. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_vie... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Words_to_watch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Word... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_personal_attacks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_personal_attacks [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Identifying_reliable_sources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Identifying_reliable... [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Talk_page_guidelines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Talk_page_guidelines [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Dispute_resolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Dispute_resolution [6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Content_forking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Content_forking
- schoen 10y ago
  As a counterpoint, here Wikipedia's discussion on why NPOV is hard or maybe unattainable: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Why_Wikipedia_is_not_so_great#NPOVness_.28non-bias.29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Why_Wikipedia_is_not... I think the NPOV policy has been great for Wikipedia and contributes to many positive outcomes, but I often think Wikipedians are too sanguine that they can recognize and/or achieve it, and about the scope of the "neutrality" they're actually working towards. One reason for that is the other policies on reliable sources and undue weight, which means Wikipedia will usually appear to be NPOV when it reflects the attention and approaches given to something by media and academic scholarship that are readily accessible to Wikipedia editors. While that might be more neutral than any available alternative, it's still going to reflect tons of biases found in the underlying sources and in the editors' ability to select and access them. I've been thinking of trying to describe some examples, maybe deliberately including points of view that I don't hold or agree with instead of those that I do. :-) I think one highlight is that if a point of view is now a minority view or extremely unfamiliar in middle-class English-speaking communities, paying a lot of attention to it on enwiki will be considered undue weight because editors can correctly describe the status of the view as marginal. But that point of view might be more correct or extremely important from some other perspective, even though reading an encyclopedia that gave more weight to it would be jarring for many readers and they might find it less useful overall. (It might also be a majority view in some other social classes, cultures, or language communities whose views aren't expressed in reliable sources that many Wikipedians can access, understand, or defend as reliable sources.)
devheart 10y ago
Use Infogalactic instead.
triplesec 10y ago
I'm not sure your single variable alternative explanation of this effect warrants such a dismissive tone to the hypothesis in the article. Using such rhetoric is Truthy, by being plausible and socially and rhetorically effective without being backed up by any research or even data. Claiming you have greater expertise through attempted ridicule of the original is not a valid argument. Such a rhetorical tactic likely has a fallacy named after it. (Any debaters here cars to chime in? ) What are your justifications for your beliefs, and how are they superior to those in the article?
- daveloyall 10y ago
  (I can spare a couple down votes...) What part of the internet do YOU come from, triplesec? I've seen your kind before... You nitpick the form of some comment, but not the content... And along the way, you entirely misrepresent the original content. It appears to me that amadsen is speaking plainly and asking if the study took maturation into account. That's a perfectly good question!
  - triplesec 10y ago
    Ad hominem is not a useful or contentful response. Again, an attempt at ridicule over engaging with the ideas and content itself. I made a perfectly polite but strong objection on style and justification grounds. Your second half warrants response. The content of his response is irrelevant to the important point I raise, which unlike your ad hominem is about ensuring better more rational discussion: I think he's making a poor representation and skewing the average response with underhand rhetoric. 'Uh yeah' starts something less than useful. Using emotion, not reason. HN is about polite reasonable discourse. I have no _strong_ opinion YET (edit for emphasis, I'm thinking about this) on the actual literal content of the arguments at this juncture, though that may change as I read others' justifications, theories, data and references. Edit: My response is important for the content, as rhetorical tricks impact reception and evaluation of content. I object to emotive skews.
    - striking 10y ago
maxt 10y ago
This is why I quite admire initiatives like Hypothesis[1] where we can annotate the web by overlaying an abstraction on top of it which can give a page more depth and context. Similar projects like the Genius web annotator[2] tries to achieve the same. It doesn't mean the commenters (or annotators) will be any less mean, but it certainly is preferable to a Disqus widget dangling on the end of a page, or the default Wordpress commenting engine which allows seemingly anyone to comment regardless of whether they signed up or not. [1]: http://hypothes.is/ http://hypothes.is/ [2]: https://genius.com/web-annotator https://genius.com/web-annotator
- smacktoward 10y ago
  And then someone will invent a tool to let you put annotations on top of someone else's annotations... after which someone else will invent a tool to let someone else put annotations on top of your annotations of someone else's annotations... It's annotations all the way down! :-D
- DonaldFisk 10y ago
  Ted Nelson thought of this idea (annotating hypertext) for use in his Xanadu hypertext project, decades before the World Wide Web existed.
- EazyC 10y ago
  Are there any legitimate wikipedia competitors though? I still view genius and hypothesis as not in the same field of "encyclopedia knowledge base." To really be a competitor to wikipedia you'd need to look like an actual wiki in my opinion.
redthrowaway 10y ago
Never thought I'd see WP talk pages held up as an example of civility. They certainly weren't when I was there. AN/I, ArbCom, flame wars a plenty.
- FireBeyond 10y ago
  And the civility is definitely oftentimes a facade thereof. Quoting rules, policies, passive aggressive civility was the norm, rather than sincere attempts at compromise.
  - makomk 10y ago
    Yeah. The "assume good faith" policy in particular has always been a favourite weapon of skilled edit warriors and flamers, for obvious reasons.
  - Analemma_ 10y ago
    Seriously. I gave up editing Wikipedia a long time ago after one too many of my good-faith edits were reverted by some random busybody citing WP:OMGWTFBBQ. It was done in an ostensibly polite way but the passive-aggressive "fuck you, go away" was very clear. I eventually just gave up because it wasn't very important to me, but I don't think that model can successfully transfer to society writ large.
    - EazyC 10y ago
      I had the very same exact experience. It is astounding to me that there are no legitimate competitors to Wikipedia at all after 15 years. It's funny how social networking is such a competitive space from facebook --> instagram --> snapchat etc but it's still just Wikipedia --> Wikipedia --> Wikipedia
      - oblio 10y ago
        What money is there to be made from an online encyclopedia? Selling ads? :)
bjourne 10y ago
In most political topics on Wikipedia, you have a consensus because those who do not agree with it are quickly booted. It works like this. Most of the time most editors are polite, but sometimes you get frustrated and are not. You might not write "fuck you fucking nazi-lover!" or something extreme, but something like "your opinion is idiotic!" or "you don't know what you're talking about here..." It happens everyone. However, if you don't agree with the "consensus" every little outburst will cost you much more. A newbie will be banned for much smaller infractions than a regular. So, if you are having an argument with someone who is a "respectable editor" or "valuable contributor" in the community, they can and will be quite rude to you but you must not pay back in kind because you will be banned. There are also intricate rules governing "reverting". Reverting means you are undoing someones changes and I can say from experience that having your edits reverted can be frustrating. I don't know exactly what the rules are but they seem to be effectively that the more "respectable" you are, the more you can revert your opponents edits. This power imbalance can be seen all over Wikipedia if you look for it. Many articles have editors that consider themselves the "owner" of that article. The way they have written the article is the best way and they don't see their own NPOV violations (Wikipedia term for writing biased texts). Sometimes the talk pages and their archives contain dozens of comments from anonymous ip users raising issues with the article and they are all refuted by the owner. They don't have the endurance or enough standing in the Wikipedia community to fight so they give up and find more constructive things to spend their time on.
- daveguy 10y ago
  NPOV == Neutral Point of View for those wondering. Wikipedia strives for "just the facts", but as you point out they don't have it everywhere. Most of the articles are very good or at least acknowledge where there is bias that should be resolved.
  - Lawtonfogle 10y ago
    Even 'just the facts' Is broken because one cannot tell if all facts were given or if only certain facts were given designed to create some view. For example, given two studies that find opposing results, I can then list all the criticisms of the study I don't like while listing only the least significant criticisms of the study I do like. As long as I don't claim to have listed all criticisms, I have given 'just the facts' and yet made an quite biased article.
omouse 10y ago
>In a draft paper published last week, Shane Greenstein and his colleagues Feng Zhu and Yuan Gu found that over the years, individuals who edit political articles on Wikipedia seem to grow less biased — their contributions start to contain noticeably fewer ideologically-charged statements. This seems obvious: as you are exposed to more points of view, you start to develop your own nuanced view of the world. At a certain point you feel okay with reading FOX News because you would like to see how other people think and it trains you to see the logical fallacies and biases.
jcoffland 10y ago
> By looking for these kinds of partisan idioms in Wikipedia articles, the Harvard researchers could determine whether the text sounded more like the product of a Republican or a Democrat. They were also able to document how the articles evolved over time. Another explanation that fits the results of this study is that the popular party idioms changed over time. As the old idioms were replaced by new ones this analysis made the Wikipedia pages and editors appear to become less biased.
- Bartweiss 10y ago
  This seems like a serious risk, and I'd like to see how the "partisan idioms" were collected. "Illegal aliens" stood out to me as something I don't hear much from either party - the fight today is generally over "illegal immigrants" versus "undocumented immigrants". That looks like an obvious candidate for a marginalized phrase distorting the analysis. "Death tax" is still around, but I think there's a euphemistic treadmill thing happening - plenty of people on the right will now say "estate tax" and expect it to be understood as a thing they're strongly opposed to. Finally, the example given seems to be about maturation rather than moderation. "Turbans and terrorists" is rather un-encylopedic, and it would be totally possible to strip it from an article even while preserving a strong conservative bent. I wouldn't be shocked if these results were right, but it also feels like a sociology paper I wouldn't want to trust without a secondary analysis.
  - smsm42 10y ago
    "Turbans and terrorists" gave me a pause too. Then again, that was in 2006, where Wikipedia was much less prominent than now, which means less editors, so I took a look. If we look at the article at the eve of 2006 it's not "turbans and terrorists" at all: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Afghanistan&oldid=33409879 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Afghanistan&oldid... I mean maybe it has some bias, it's quite large so I didn't analyze it, but it's not blatantly bad like WaPo seems to imply. I suspect they fallen the victim of what many journalists fall victim too - concentrating on rare exceptions like some troll putting there "turbans" for lulz and it surviving on the site for some short time - and not on the processes that govern the regular life of the site.
zer0gravity 10y ago
This article is hardly about Wikipedia. You can feel the electoral smell from a mile away.
- SloughFeg 10y ago
  It's the washington post. What else would you expect from them?
sickbeard 10y ago
sorry I can't take someone/entity seriously when they claim the internet's biggest flaw is shit-posting, or free expression as I call it.
empath75 10y ago
> Go to any article and visit the “talk” tab. More often than not, you'll find a somewhat orderly debate, even on contentious topics like Hillary Clinton's e-mails or Donald Trump's sexual abuse allegations. Oh, for the really good talk sections, you need to look at anything vaguely related to Macedonia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Alexander_the_Great https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Alexander_the_Great
- FireBeyond 10y ago
  What about Palestine and Israeli foreign relations, if you want orderly debate?
- hogrammer 10y ago
  There are talk pages that are locked! Some topics are too controversial to even discuss! See https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3AProtectedPages&namespace=1&type=edit&level=0&sizetype=min&size= https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3AProtect...
- justinlardinois 10y ago
  Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1665/ https://xkcd.com/1665/ The talk page for San Jose (or is it San José?) has a very passionate debate about whether the article's name should be accented or not: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:San_Jose,_California#Requested_move_23_July_2016 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:San_Jose,_California#Requ...
webwanderings 10y ago
The real problem with the comments on the Internet, is of logistics of huge number, and lack of human ability to process them at scale. Just look at any of the popular HN threads. You cannot expect anyone to be reading all the comments when they show up in large numbers under one thread. The rest of everything else is secondary.
drxyzzy 10y ago
The internet is a large, evolving cognitive system. Present information flow, riddled as it is with disinformation, faulty reasoning, and category errors, might be comparable to disorganization in the minds of individual creatures during early development.
pastProlog 10y ago
From 1933 to 1953, the Democratic party held the presidency in the United States. Twenty years out of power is said to have been one of the factors leading to McCarthyism. McCarthy called it "20 years of treason" (then once he started fighting Eisenhower he started talking about 21 years of treason). Republicans began accusing the entire Democratic establishment of being KGB spies. The head of the John Birch Society thought this was a foregone conclusion, he wrote a book about how the Republican establishment including Eisenhower were all KGB spies. This cold war paranoia and political shift is all over Wikipedia. The faintest accusation of someone back then is all over their Wikipedia article. Much of the Democratic and liberal establishment from 1932-1952 is said to be Soviet spies on Wikipedia, and as far as I know, 100% of people who had questions about the Cold war. I don't know one liberal from that period who was more skeptical of the Cold war than Truman (who launched the Truman Doctrine in March 1947, then became involved in the Korean war) who is not accused of being a Soviet spy. I wish I could remember the whole list. The article for journalist I. F. Stone. The article for treasury official Harry Dexter White. Commerce department official and later author Harry Magdoff. Lieutenant Colonel Duncan Lee who had the misfortune of being acquainted with the kooky, flighty Elizabeth Bentley. In the light of all of these, the article for secretary of state Dean Acheson all but accuses him of being pro-communist. The "China hands" like Owen Lattimore (being accused of being an agent of the Chinese wouldn't do, so he was accused of being a Soviet agent). John S. Service who had the misfortune to be assigned to the Dixie Mission while working for the Foreign Service. Actually the article on China hand Theodore H. White manages to have been relatively unscathed by the crazies. I'm sure there were some Russian spies in the US in the 1940s, and some American spies in Russia. Wikipedia still has this McCarthyist idea spread out over the high officials of that time were all KGB spies. Forget about anyone to the left of the 1947 Truman Doctrine to fight the Greek left, they're almost automatically concluded to be communist spies. Then it's proffered that Venona proves all these people as spies. But Venona has code names, not names. Venona says something like "Agent TREE met us in Central Park in May 8, 1948". As so-and-so lived in New York in 1948, the editors use that fact to link a codename to a name. Venona is said to prove every accusation, but it does not. Most of the people who it does seem to confirm were European emigrees and people in the communist party orbit. Not the liberal WASPs in the Democratic establishment who are accused of being Soviet spies. The Wikipedia articles on various Democratic officials in the 1930s and 1940s are really nuts. Even a neutral article like the Theodore White one has to mention that he was suspected to be a communist spy at one time.
mrcactu5 10y ago
The Internet is dotted with cesspools, also known as comments sections Comments sections are also extremely REVEALING... It seems we are getting a theory of why public opinion is so moderate -- it's not just one opinion. It's half of people expressing one view, the other half expressing another view. The version on Wikipedia is effectively the average between the two. The history sections of wikipedia document this process in action. A lot of the things I look at are pretty dead but I am often impressed when a crappy wikipedia page and a few months later the page has really excellent discussion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagorean_triple https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagorean_triple and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagorean_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagorean_theorem
exstudent2 10y ago
First sentence: > The Internet is dotted with cesspools, also known as comments sections. Comment sections are the only thing keeping a check on publications like the Washington Post. Whether they're on-site or off-site (like what you're reading now on HN), they're invaluable. Sure, not all of the audience with an opinion will be politically correct, but I value the commentary of a piece as much or more as the piece itself. Especially when it's something purely opinion based like this one.
yarrel 10y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikilawyering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikilawyering
clusmore 10y ago
I think one of the interesting consequences of the echo chamber that social networks create is that everybody thinks they are in the majority. For example, if you view the comments on political pages, you'll often see conflicting claims that "the majority of people think X". I think each person making these claims genuinely feel that they are in the majority because their echo chamber distorts the proportion of supporting voices, and then you see comments like "who are all these people who voted for Y?" Edit to add: I think the problem is not only that people don't see views other than their own, but that they become unaware that other views even exist.
kristofferR 10y ago
The title of this piece makes no sense. How are the talk pages on Wikipedia supposedly going to fix the vicious comment sections on the internet?
throwaway420 10y ago
Look at the utter contempt that the Washington Post is displaying for free individuals here. They refer to comments sections, where actual human beings who are not paid and bought for by corporate interests get to voice their opinions, as cesspools. What arrogance on their part! Yeah, you'll see some ugly comments on all kinds of social media once in a while, but seeing an uncouth phrase or three is absolutely nothing compared to the WAR PROPAGANDA on behalf of the military industrial complex that leads to the deaths of thousands and thousands. So yeah, I'll take the cesspool of a comment section where I might see some truth every time over bought and paid for presstitutes, which we all know as absolute and undeniable fact now from Wikileaks.
- jedimastert 10y ago
  I reeealy can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not[1] [1]https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Poe's_law https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Poe's_law
  - gravypod 10y ago
    Would you like to refute their statements or provide your own view point? If not then there isn't much of a reason to think that the parent isn't correct in his analysis of the situation.
    - Eupolemos 10y ago
      There is no analysis in OP's post, he just states opinions. I value quality in comments, which is one of the reasons I come to Hacker News. It is not a waste of my time. Reading comments on Facebook or any newspaper usually is. Wikipedia isn't a waste either, mired in a Yahoo Answers low quality answers. That is why I donate. Creating quality interaction isn't easy on the internet - I admire every success. Shitposting in the comment-section of a newspaper or indeed Hacker News isn't "free speech", it is just disruptive and destructive. When governments and corporations engage in bullshit (in the Harry Frankfurt sense) programs to disrupt public discourse, the answer isn't to yell and scream in the comment sections - that only helps them, in fact. The answer is to insist on solid arguments against their gish-gallops and red herrings.
stirner 10y ago
A centrist argument is not necessarily correct. There are many more dimensions to ideology than the left/right spectrum. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation
- fulafel 10y ago
  Also, a position in the middle of the two US parties usually quite right-leaning in the global context and hardly a good benchmark for neutrality outside the Washington Post.
abalashov 10y ago
The main skill—in short supply—that Wikipedia fosters is to look at things from varying points of view, through a kind of detached pseudoprofessionalism. Because the function of Wikipedia is to exhibit different viewpoints (where applicable) rather than to convince anyone of them, it's much easier to step into a relativistic, descriptive mindset, rather than a prescriptive one.
hogrammer 10y ago
Good L-rd, this is a horrible idea. The Wikipedia's POV is not everyone's POV.
icantdrive55 10y ago
My problem is people read Wikipedia like it's an encyclopedia. I didn't know they had a discussion page. That said, I went to my favorite site-- GuideStar.org. A site that used to make it easy to vet 591C3's. They changed it all up. It's now much harder to get to those precious 990's. That's a shame. Those 990's are Public information. Guide Star used to make it easy to access them. While Wiki is begging, they have 3/4 of a billion in assets in 2014. 2013 to 2014 added 25 million. Took Jimmy's credit card away. Looks like he got carried away with it? He still works 10 hrs a month on the board. Susan makes over 300,000 Jones law firm makes close to three million a year.
dsfyu404ed 10y ago
It's possible that highly biased editors drifting toward center is just another instance of "a lie repeated often enough becomes the truth" where the lie is the opposing ideology that one must read in order to edit.
notliketherest 10y ago
Has anyone read the comments section below a DrudgeReport linked article? Oh my god you will lose your faith in humanity.
tangerine_beet 10y ago
I'm wondering how popular media sites could apply to their comments sections some of the things Wikipedia is doing. For example, imagine commenters divided into two opposing camps over a controversial issue discussed in a news report. A separate discussion is organized to create a report on the issue using the Wikipedia process and rules. Any commenter can contribute, and it is guided by (perhaps volunteer) editors. Such reports then get aggregated in a separate section of the site... Could something like this actually 1) create value for the media by engaging users and generating content 2) elevate the discourse between readers and 3) actually make the media less biased over time as it is repeatedly called out for partisan slant in its editorial and reporting?
jimmaswell 10y ago
There's a subreddit of people who think Wikipedia operates with large-scale bias by the administration. https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiInAction/ https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiInAction/
wallace_f 10y ago
If you read this carefully, you can see something quite ironic about this article: The article's argument is: "Something's terribly wrong with the internet." Evidence provided for something wrong was three pro-Trump comments about an anti-Trump article. The article then suggests "recent research from Harvard Business School suggests that Wikipedia has become increasingly balanced in the course of its 15-year history." So, the internet is biased, and people are uncivil. Wikipedia is civil and not biased; here are some points to learn from them. The irony is that the article itself is no shining beacon of neutrality because it provides an anti-Trump and anti-alt right narrative. Any right-leaning comments must be fixed by editors, but left-leaning comments 'fix themselves over time.' Instead of the article making a sound argument for neutrality, it does nothing of the sort. Disclaimer: criticism of the DNC, media and Clinton != support for Trump. I do not support Trump. This article is masterfully written, but it's not very pure in its intentions.
hardwaresofton 10y ago
Am I the only one that actually finds immense value in the comments sections of different sites on the internet? Obviously there's some sifting to do (inflammatory comments that are meant to be nothing but inflammatory should just be ignored), but I come to the internet to interact with people, not just seek out knowledge. I find things like hn (or reddit) hivemind immensely fascinating, almost like a shared consciousness. I like the comments sections. I often go there for a chuckle, or to see what other people think. Yeah, some people use that opportunity to troll, or say hurtful things or whatever, but that's what the world is, I'd rather never forget that. I also don't want everyone to mellow to the same position and then everyone holds the same (possibly wrong) position forever, that sounds like a bland existence. Free discourse is not a flaw, it's a feature.
artcodedata 10y ago
The search for an unique , single truth is the mentality that destroy ancient ruins and burn books, no matter if it's coming from Wikipedia, Trump supporters or BLM all of them are valid. And that's Wikipedia's biggest flaw, their system can only handle one version of truth. A more complex system would be able to handle more than one version of the truth.
matthewmorgan 10y ago
'Don't take refuge in the false security of consensus, and the feeling that whatever you think you're bound to be OK, because you're safely in the moral majority.' --Christopher Hitchens Well worth a watch imho https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4hqFvXm57M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4hqFvXm57M
fulafel 10y ago
It's disingenious to apply a methodology designed to find out "republican" and "democratic" positions to Wikipedia, and then draw conclusions about how objectively biased the content is, especially since the center in US politics is so right-leaning in the global context.
- Eupolemos 10y ago
  Indeed, but their method is clearly stated and very easy to understand, so the reader can take the conclusion with an appropriate grain of salt.
kseifried 10y ago
This is why for CVE's assigned via the Distributed Weakness Filing (DWF) Project I require a copy of the artifact, the reality is your website might go away, or get lost at sea, or deleted, or whatever. For information supporting CVE identifiers it's a super huge pain in the ass when the website/document disappears.

265 points by The_ed17 10y ago

basch 10y ago

Most of the debate on wikipedia is regarding which rules to apply soasto prevent people from submitting edits.

crooked-v 10y ago
For my part, I stopped contributing long ago because every single edit attempt I made, including simple stuff like fixing punctuation, would inevitably get reverted by a bot or an overprotective editor within the next day or two.
- cooper12 10y ago
  If every single edit you made was reverted, maybe they weren't really constructive edits? Just food for thought. > If you run into an asshole in the morning, you ran into an asshole. If you run into assholes all day, you're the asshole. - Raylan Givens, Justified On a more serious note, I always hear people complaining about getting reverted. What they don't realize is that, often, their edits really are just bad. Here's some of the stuff I have to revert daily: * Test edits/gibberish * Vandalism * Original research [0] * Changing stuff to match their variety of English [1] * Making the grammar worse, or going against the Manual of Style [2] * Improper tone [3] * No edit summary giving a rationale for the edit A lot of the time, the changes people make are just arbitrary or don't improve the article. If you ever feel you were improperly reverted though, you can always bring it up on the talk page. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#National_varieties_of_English https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Nati... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Writing_better_articles#Tone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Writing_better_artic...
  - mason240 10y ago
    Considering this very common experience had by people trying to contribute, I think your saying applies more to the "full time" entrenched editors, who are acting as wall of assholes blocking a wider group of contributors. Also, that saying has been around alot longer than Justified.
    - cooper12 10y ago
      I mean I just gave you the reasoning of entrenched editors, they're just not often good edits. These complaints come from people who think that Wikipedia is obliged to take any of their edits just because they took the time to hit the submit button. Wikipedia has policies and standards to uphold and people would complain if we went the other way and accepted all garbage people felt necessary to dump on the site. Also, the people who bring up these accusations never list the articles they were reverted on. Show me some of these edits improperly reverted and I'll personally help reinstate them or explain what was wrong with them.
  - deleted 10y ago
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  - deleted 10y ago
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- FireBeyond 10y ago
  When the latest Tesla press release came out about performance, I surrendered after about an hour or two of edit warring about how it wasn't actually a verified / independent track time, but rather a PR piece about predicted performance. Pointing out the guidelines on the page themselves didn't matter. Reverting with comments in the revert itself didn't matter. Whether new people or established editor, everyone was falling over themselves to get the edit in. I decided it was futile when they started deciding the solution was instead to rewrite the "guidelines" for what measurements were acceptable, basically "Screw you, we're putting the Tesla in. If it doesn't count based on the rules, we're changing the rules." So now it's in three categories, "independent/ verified", "manufacturer tested", and "manufacturer claimed" (the latter of which only had the new Tesla).
  - greglindahl 10y ago
    Deleting content is one of Wikipedia's biggest issues right now. I'm not surprised that the stable solution was to include the new content, and add a new way of describing it. Futile? No: inclusive. In a month or two you'll have the verified track time to add.
    - FireBeyond 10y ago
      Great. And in a month or two, then it should be added. But as a hint, in an area which isn't exactly new - manufacturers have been releasing new cars for a century, some faster than others, have been releasing press releases ever since, too, especially for supercars/ etc., on a list that has been updated for years (and this is one of my first edits on the topic, so I'm hardly claiming ownership)... the fact that you have to add another column that completely defies the "real world" measurements of every other vehicle there in order to get their fandom vehicle in should be indicative that it was a stretch. Here's an example: "List of fastest 100m races" lists the top 20 verified 100m times in history. Along comes an athlete's team and they release a press release saying "Based on our simulations, we predict he will run 9.45s in this race in a few months time" and, rather than do nothing with it, editors fall over each other to add a new column to the list, so it now has "verified times", "independent times", and "team projected times" and based on that states that Athlete is now the third fastest 100m runner in the world. Instead of, as you say, waiting for that event to verify (or prove false) that claim. But yet, to witness sibling posts, my perspective is "wrong".
- arjie 10y ago
  I've edited pages, created pages, and added sources, and each time someone has taken the small work I do and turned it into something with quality. I'm very impressed by Wikipedia.
- DanBC 10y ago
  I agree. Recently WP has recognised that's a serious problem, and was a risk to the project. Some stuff like Twinkle and Rollback got a lot more oversight. Various "vandal patrol" groups got shut down. New Page Patrol got revamped. Here's on discussion about new page patrol: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:New_pages_patrol/RfC_for_patroller_right https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:New_pages_patrol/RfC... I've found far fewer of my gnome edits get reverted now than what used to happen.
Animats 10y ago
Editing Wikipedia is not like posting on a blog or a forum. It's more like contributing to a project on Github. Many people do not get this. Wikipedia has converged on a referenced-to-death style, like a PhD thesis. This is part of what keeps it from becoming too biased. People who have never had to write to tightly referenced standards get very frustrated editing Wikipedia. Those who have don't find it difficult.
- basch 10y ago
  I don't think it's reasonable to expect every edit to be polished. If someone makes a rough contribution with promise, it should stay in the article in its broken form, so other passerbyers can see it and help improve it. Something ugly but of value should stay instead of being relegated to talk pages 99% of viewers never bother to check. I lean towards inclusion because visible mistakes are more likely to be fixed by random surfers. There is one faction of people that treat pages like a final draft, and others who prefer it as working space (with extremely high visibility.) Github isnt a fair comparison, because it has a much better workflow for proposing changes.
  - Animats 10y ago
    If an edit to Wikipedia has new, cited information, but the citation is in the wrong format, someone will probably fix it. If it's uncited writing, and not well written, it's probably going to be reverted. There are sandbox pages, user pages, and talk pages for working drafts. But the main space pages are seen by millions of people, and are not an appropriate place to write drafts. Realistically, if you can't write English without grammatical errors, trying to edit Wikipedia will be a frustrating experience.
    - basch 10y ago
      >But the main space pages are seen by millions of people, and are not an appropriate place to write drafts. The visibility is entirely why it should be where contributions are made and not in behind the scenes obscure spots. It's ok for pages to be flawed. If you fix a grammatical error instead of reverting a contribution, you might teach the person who made it something. If it's uncited, you should cite it, tag it, or leave it, you shouldnt be reverting it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Editing_policy#Try_to_fix_problems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Editing_policy#Try_t... >Fix problems if you can, flag or remove them IF YOU CAN'T. Likewise, as long as any of the facts or ideas added to an article would belong in the "finished" article, they SHOULD BE RETAINED if they meet the three article content retention policies: Neutral point of view (which does not mean no point of view), Verifiability and No original research. I dont have some radical position here. It's written right into editing policy. Removal should be saved for when contributions cant be fixed, not because you think they are ugly blemishes, and dont want to take the time to improve them. An "incomplete" contribution should stay IN the article, waiting for someone else to come along and mend it. Preference for an article to look "finished" should take a back seat. Facts and Ideas first, spit polish next. Always prioritize the former.

libeclipse 10y ago

Apparently AMP prevents the Google trick of being able to bypass paywalls. Can someone post the gist of the article here?

iamatworknow 10y ago
Researchers studied the changes to Wikipedia articles and found that in the course of these article's edits the political tone and biases tended to converge toward neutral over time.
- losteverything 10y ago
  And the flaw was how comments have gone downhill. But really, what is the internet's flaw? No live human body present?
helthanatos 10y ago
Isn't the paywall fixed by clearing your cache? Does twitter bypass the paywall?
ptaipale 10y ago
Open it in incognito/private window through the "web" link.

amadsen 10y ago

'In a draft paper published last week, Shane Greenstein and his colleagues Feng Zhu and Yuan Gu found that over the years, individuals who edit political articles on Wikipedia seem to grow less biased — their contributions start to contain noticeably fewer ideologically-charged statements. “We thought this was quite striking,” said Greenstein, a professor at Harvard Business School. “The most slanted Wikipedia editors tend to become more moderate over time.”' Uh yeah maybe because the people in question grew older? Many of them may have joined wikipedia in their teens or early twenties and like so many others in that age group had quite raical political views and like so many others become more moderate as they mature and learn more about the world.

irrational 10y ago
racial or radical?
- GavinMcG 10y ago
  You'd have to think "radical", since that's what naturally opposes the later use of "moderate".
- mrkgnao 10y ago
  Both of those words have Levenshtein distance 1 from what GP wrote. Maybe let's give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they meant the one that doesn't sound like a type-error/makes sense and avoids outrageousness?
  - irrational 10y ago
    But isn't the outrage what keeps the Internet from collapsing in upon itself like a balloon full of hot air? ;-)
  - x3n0ph3n3 10y ago
    Raical has a Levenshtein distance of 2 from racial. Swapping two characters is a deletion + insertion. You'd need to use Damerau-Levenshtein distance for transposition to count as 1 operation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damerau%E2%80%93Levenshtein_distance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damerau%E2%80%93Levenshtein_di...

MollyR 10y ago

After all the replication failures, poor statistics, and more in the social sciences. I am skeptical of this.

stcredzero 10y ago

We might once have dreamed that the miracle of cheap, instant communication would knit society together. The reality has been closer to the opposite. Once again, Douglas Adams turns out to be prophetic. "Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation." In the sentence before, he also predicted his friend Richard Dawkins' books: "Most leading theologians claim that this argument is a load of dingo's kidneys, but that didn't stop Oolon Colluphid making a small fortune when he used it as the theme of his best-selling book, Well That About wraps It Up For God. http://hitchhikers.wikia.com/wiki/Babel_Fish http://hitchhikers.wikia.com/wiki/Babel_Fish

convolvatron 10y ago
"Like this: Take two opposed pressure groups--Record the most violent and threatening statements of group one with regard to group two and play back to group two--Record the answer and take to back to group one--Back and forth between opposed pressure groups--This process is known as "feed back"--You can see it operating in any bar room quarrel--In any quarrel for that matter--Manipulated on a global scale feeds back nuclear war and nova--These conflicts are deliberately created and aggravated by nova criminals" - Nova Expresss, William Burroughs
- stcredzero 10y ago
  But in reality, it's also more mundanely exploited by Facebook and Tumblr to drive traffic.
agumonkey 10y ago
I was just hearing some party leader in a meeting and thinking like this article. Echo chamber, ideological divide. Also, this backward effect of the lack of friction is also why I believe Email is still there. A tiny and sweet spot for communication. It requires time, will to read, understand and respond. If you want to release reflex negative emotions, you'll still have to work a little bit for it.
77pt77 10y ago

torkable 10y ago

I wonder if WSJ has someone just sit and post their articles on HN all day

thesz 10y ago

If I may weigh in, the "cocoon" that is so scorned by many, is a feature. It allows people to actually get things done. It allows them to spend less thought on the topics that are not concerned them in their day lives and spend more on their... day lives! Basically, if you want people to go out of their cocoons, make their life easier. Otherwise, the fight is futile.

77pt77 10y ago
> Basically, if you want people to go out of their cocoons, make their life easier. If the past 200 years are any indication it won't make a difference.
- thesz 10y ago
  The life in USSR was so easy, people went out of their cocoons. And I mean easy when I speak about USSR. Life in contemporary Russia is much harder.
woodchuck64 10y ago
> It allows them to spend less thought on the topics that are not concerned them in their day lives and spend more on their... day lives! This works as long as the cocoon is perfectly insulated. But it isn't, as elections show. The political process basically cuts through the cocoon like a predatory wasp-- assuming there is at least one candidate or law that is incompatible with insulated beliefs. And then all that saved energy is wasted on moral warfare against the invaders. Cocoons are always bad in a non-homogeneous society.
- norea-armozel 10y ago
  Or maybe people should be free to associate as they wish? This seems to be the hardest concept for fellow Americans to grasp because it seems to be a growing (parasitically so) notion that we have to be friends to strangers who actively oppose to who we are or our interests. I don't want to force someone who thinks I'm a sinner for being bi and trans to be my friend nor do I want to be a friend to such a person. Nor should they or I have to endure each other's company beyond what's necessary to get a task done in public. If that's putting up a cocoon I'm not sure how civilization will get along then when every social interaction turns into a virtual duel. I'd rather just put up with fake courtesy than force someone into a fight with me or vice versa. Toleration is a better lubricant for social order than is constant challenges to deeply held beliefs.

pixelbill 10y ago

Why have there been so many washingtonpost articles lately? Pretty annoying to those who don't want to deal with paywalls to get their news.

The_ed17 10y ago
Incognito mode is your friend.
teh_klev 10y ago
When all else fails (web link, incognito), learn to archive.is: http://archive.is/Wh2iM http://archive.is/Wh2iM

vonklaus 10y ago

I don't think the "internet's biggest flaw" is that it allows for free, unmoderated speech. > What’s even more interesting is that Wikipedia seems to exert a moderating influence on its contributors. This is a great concept, but usually is horrible in practice. It says that wikipedia was partisan and quite left, and has since become more balanced. However, this illustrates a positive outcome of a dangerous potential. This model works much worse for less authoritative sites, but I personally do not believe wikipedia should moderate based on anything other than "truth". Regardless, this is extremely subjective and difficult to do. I think it is working at wikipedia (compared to other places) and am optimistic, but I have seen this go wrong so many times.

cooper12 10y ago

As a Wikipedia editor, I think this can mostly be attested to the site's policy on maintaining a neutral point of view. [0] Over time you learn to watch out for certain words [1] and you can sniff out things that were copied verbatim or written in a improper tone. In terms of discussions, personal attacks are discouraged [2] and there's a strong focus on providing reliable sources, [3] so discussion often shifts to discussing those instead. Off-topic discussion is also commonly removed [4] and there are avenues for dispute resolution. [5] Of course you'll still find plenty of heated disputes and some biased articles, but the project is a work in progress after all. I think the most important factor is that there are people of different viewpoints willing to work together to integrate them in a way to best give weight to them rather than creating content forks. (this is why conservapedia is doing so bad) [6] You can't fix bias by creating an echo chamber or pretending it isn't there, but rather by keeping an open mind and welcoming those who think differently. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_vie... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Words_to_watch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Word... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_personal_attacks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_personal_attacks [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Identifying_reliable_sources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Identifying_reliable... [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Talk_page_guidelines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Talk_page_guidelines [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Dispute_resolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Dispute_resolution [6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Content_forking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Content_forking

schoen 10y ago
As a counterpoint, here Wikipedia's discussion on why NPOV is hard or maybe unattainable: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Why_Wikipedia_is_not_so_great#NPOVness_.28non-bias.29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Why_Wikipedia_is_not... I think the NPOV policy has been great for Wikipedia and contributes to many positive outcomes, but I often think Wikipedians are too sanguine that they can recognize and/or achieve it, and about the scope of the "neutrality" they're actually working towards. One reason for that is the other policies on reliable sources and undue weight, which means Wikipedia will usually appear to be NPOV when it reflects the attention and approaches given to something by media and academic scholarship that are readily accessible to Wikipedia editors. While that might be more neutral than any available alternative, it's still going to reflect tons of biases found in the underlying sources and in the editors' ability to select and access them. I've been thinking of trying to describe some examples, maybe deliberately including points of view that I don't hold or agree with instead of those that I do. :-) I think one highlight is that if a point of view is now a minority view or extremely unfamiliar in middle-class English-speaking communities, paying a lot of attention to it on enwiki will be considered undue weight because editors can correctly describe the status of the view as marginal. But that point of view might be more correct or extremely important from some other perspective, even though reading an encyclopedia that gave more weight to it would be jarring for many readers and they might find it less useful overall. (It might also be a majority view in some other social classes, cultures, or language communities whose views aren't expressed in reliable sources that many Wikipedians can access, understand, or defend as reliable sources.)

devheart 10y ago

Use Infogalactic instead.

triplesec 10y ago

I'm not sure your single variable alternative explanation of this effect warrants such a dismissive tone to the hypothesis in the article. Using such rhetoric is Truthy, by being plausible and socially and rhetorically effective without being backed up by any research or even data. Claiming you have greater expertise through attempted ridicule of the original is not a valid argument. Such a rhetorical tactic likely has a fallacy named after it. (Any debaters here cars to chime in? ) What are your justifications for your beliefs, and how are they superior to those in the article?

daveloyall 10y ago
(I can spare a couple down votes...) What part of the internet do YOU come from, triplesec? I've seen your kind before... You nitpick the form of some comment, but not the content... And along the way, you entirely misrepresent the original content. It appears to me that amadsen is speaking plainly and asking if the study took maturation into account. That's a perfectly good question!
- triplesec 10y ago
  Ad hominem is not a useful or contentful response. Again, an attempt at ridicule over engaging with the ideas and content itself. I made a perfectly polite but strong objection on style and justification grounds. Your second half warrants response. The content of his response is irrelevant to the important point I raise, which unlike your ad hominem is about ensuring better more rational discussion: I think he's making a poor representation and skewing the average response with underhand rhetoric. 'Uh yeah' starts something less than useful. Using emotion, not reason. HN is about polite reasonable discourse. I have no _strong_ opinion YET (edit for emphasis, I'm thinking about this) on the actual literal content of the arguments at this juncture, though that may change as I read others' justifications, theories, data and references. Edit: My response is important for the content, as rhetorical tricks impact reception and evaluation of content. I object to emotive skews.
  - striking 10y ago

maxt 10y ago

This is why I quite admire initiatives like Hypothesis[1] where we can annotate the web by overlaying an abstraction on top of it which can give a page more depth and context. Similar projects like the Genius web annotator[2] tries to achieve the same. It doesn't mean the commenters (or annotators) will be any less mean, but it certainly is preferable to a Disqus widget dangling on the end of a page, or the default Wordpress commenting engine which allows seemingly anyone to comment regardless of whether they signed up or not. [1]: http://hypothes.is/ http://hypothes.is/ [2]: https://genius.com/web-annotator https://genius.com/web-annotator

smacktoward 10y ago
And then someone will invent a tool to let you put annotations on top of someone else's annotations... after which someone else will invent a tool to let someone else put annotations on top of your annotations of someone else's annotations... It's annotations all the way down! :-D
DonaldFisk 10y ago
Ted Nelson thought of this idea (annotating hypertext) for use in his Xanadu hypertext project, decades before the World Wide Web existed.
EazyC 10y ago
Are there any legitimate wikipedia competitors though? I still view genius and hypothesis as not in the same field of "encyclopedia knowledge base." To really be a competitor to wikipedia you'd need to look like an actual wiki in my opinion.

redthrowaway 10y ago

Never thought I'd see WP talk pages held up as an example of civility. They certainly weren't when I was there. AN/I, ArbCom, flame wars a plenty.

FireBeyond 10y ago
And the civility is definitely oftentimes a facade thereof. Quoting rules, policies, passive aggressive civility was the norm, rather than sincere attempts at compromise.
- makomk 10y ago
  Yeah. The "assume good faith" policy in particular has always been a favourite weapon of skilled edit warriors and flamers, for obvious reasons.
- Analemma_ 10y ago
  Seriously. I gave up editing Wikipedia a long time ago after one too many of my good-faith edits were reverted by some random busybody citing WP:OMGWTFBBQ. It was done in an ostensibly polite way but the passive-aggressive "fuck you, go away" was very clear. I eventually just gave up because it wasn't very important to me, but I don't think that model can successfully transfer to society writ large.
  - EazyC 10y ago
    I had the very same exact experience. It is astounding to me that there are no legitimate competitors to Wikipedia at all after 15 years. It's funny how social networking is such a competitive space from facebook --> instagram --> snapchat etc but it's still just Wikipedia --> Wikipedia --> Wikipedia
    - oblio 10y ago
      What money is there to be made from an online encyclopedia? Selling ads? :)

bjourne 10y ago

In most political topics on Wikipedia, you have a consensus because those who do not agree with it are quickly booted. It works like this. Most of the time most editors are polite, but sometimes you get frustrated and are not. You might not write "fuck you fucking nazi-lover!" or something extreme, but something like "your opinion is idiotic!" or "you don't know what you're talking about here..." It happens everyone. However, if you don't agree with the "consensus" every little outburst will cost you much more. A newbie will be banned for much smaller infractions than a regular. So, if you are having an argument with someone who is a "respectable editor" or "valuable contributor" in the community, they can and will be quite rude to you but you must not pay back in kind because you will be banned. There are also intricate rules governing "reverting". Reverting means you are undoing someones changes and I can say from experience that having your edits reverted can be frustrating. I don't know exactly what the rules are but they seem to be effectively that the more "respectable" you are, the more you can revert your opponents edits. This power imbalance can be seen all over Wikipedia if you look for it. Many articles have editors that consider themselves the "owner" of that article. The way they have written the article is the best way and they don't see their own NPOV violations (Wikipedia term for writing biased texts). Sometimes the talk pages and their archives contain dozens of comments from anonymous ip users raising issues with the article and they are all refuted by the owner. They don't have the endurance or enough standing in the Wikipedia community to fight so they give up and find more constructive things to spend their time on.

daveguy 10y ago
NPOV == Neutral Point of View for those wondering. Wikipedia strives for "just the facts", but as you point out they don't have it everywhere. Most of the articles are very good or at least acknowledge where there is bias that should be resolved.
- Lawtonfogle 10y ago
  Even 'just the facts' Is broken because one cannot tell if all facts were given or if only certain facts were given designed to create some view. For example, given two studies that find opposing results, I can then list all the criticisms of the study I don't like while listing only the least significant criticisms of the study I do like. As long as I don't claim to have listed all criticisms, I have given 'just the facts' and yet made an quite biased article.

omouse 10y ago

>In a draft paper published last week, Shane Greenstein and his colleagues Feng Zhu and Yuan Gu found that over the years, individuals who edit political articles on Wikipedia seem to grow less biased — their contributions start to contain noticeably fewer ideologically-charged statements. This seems obvious: as you are exposed to more points of view, you start to develop your own nuanced view of the world. At a certain point you feel okay with reading FOX News because you would like to see how other people think and it trains you to see the logical fallacies and biases.

jcoffland 10y ago

> By looking for these kinds of partisan idioms in Wikipedia articles, the Harvard researchers could determine whether the text sounded more like the product of a Republican or a Democrat. They were also able to document how the articles evolved over time. Another explanation that fits the results of this study is that the popular party idioms changed over time. As the old idioms were replaced by new ones this analysis made the Wikipedia pages and editors appear to become less biased.

Bartweiss 10y ago
This seems like a serious risk, and I'd like to see how the "partisan idioms" were collected. "Illegal aliens" stood out to me as something I don't hear much from either party - the fight today is generally over "illegal immigrants" versus "undocumented immigrants". That looks like an obvious candidate for a marginalized phrase distorting the analysis. "Death tax" is still around, but I think there's a euphemistic treadmill thing happening - plenty of people on the right will now say "estate tax" and expect it to be understood as a thing they're strongly opposed to. Finally, the example given seems to be about maturation rather than moderation. "Turbans and terrorists" is rather un-encylopedic, and it would be totally possible to strip it from an article even while preserving a strong conservative bent. I wouldn't be shocked if these results were right, but it also feels like a sociology paper I wouldn't want to trust without a secondary analysis.
- smsm42 10y ago
  "Turbans and terrorists" gave me a pause too. Then again, that was in 2006, where Wikipedia was much less prominent than now, which means less editors, so I took a look. If we look at the article at the eve of 2006 it's not "turbans and terrorists" at all: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Afghanistan&oldid=33409879 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Afghanistan&oldid... I mean maybe it has some bias, it's quite large so I didn't analyze it, but it's not blatantly bad like WaPo seems to imply. I suspect they fallen the victim of what many journalists fall victim too - concentrating on rare exceptions like some troll putting there "turbans" for lulz and it surviving on the site for some short time - and not on the processes that govern the regular life of the site.

zer0gravity 10y ago

This article is hardly about Wikipedia. You can feel the electoral smell from a mile away.

SloughFeg 10y ago
It's the washington post. What else would you expect from them?

sickbeard 10y ago

sorry I can't take someone/entity seriously when they claim the internet's biggest flaw is shit-posting, or free expression as I call it.

empath75 10y ago

> Go to any article and visit the “talk” tab. More often than not, you'll find a somewhat orderly debate, even on contentious topics like Hillary Clinton's e-mails or Donald Trump's sexual abuse allegations. Oh, for the really good talk sections, you need to look at anything vaguely related to Macedonia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Alexander_the_Great https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Alexander_the_Great

FireBeyond 10y ago
What about Palestine and Israeli foreign relations, if you want orderly debate?
hogrammer 10y ago
There are talk pages that are locked! Some topics are too controversial to even discuss! See https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3AProtectedPages&namespace=1&type=edit&level=0&sizetype=min&size= https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3AProtect...
justinlardinois 10y ago
Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1665/ https://xkcd.com/1665/ The talk page for San Jose (or is it San José?) has a very passionate debate about whether the article's name should be accented or not: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:San_Jose,_California#Requested_move_23_July_2016 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:San_Jose,_California#Requ...

webwanderings 10y ago

The real problem with the comments on the Internet, is of logistics of huge number, and lack of human ability to process them at scale. Just look at any of the popular HN threads. You cannot expect anyone to be reading all the comments when they show up in large numbers under one thread. The rest of everything else is secondary.

drxyzzy 10y ago

The internet is a large, evolving cognitive system. Present information flow, riddled as it is with disinformation, faulty reasoning, and category errors, might be comparable to disorganization in the minds of individual creatures during early development.

pastProlog 10y ago

From 1933 to 1953, the Democratic party held the presidency in the United States. Twenty years out of power is said to have been one of the factors leading to McCarthyism. McCarthy called it "20 years of treason" (then once he started fighting Eisenhower he started talking about 21 years of treason). Republicans began accusing the entire Democratic establishment of being KGB spies. The head of the John Birch Society thought this was a foregone conclusion, he wrote a book about how the Republican establishment including Eisenhower were all KGB spies. This cold war paranoia and political shift is all over Wikipedia. The faintest accusation of someone back then is all over their Wikipedia article. Much of the Democratic and liberal establishment from 1932-1952 is said to be Soviet spies on Wikipedia, and as far as I know, 100% of people who had questions about the Cold war. I don't know one liberal from that period who was more skeptical of the Cold war than Truman (who launched the Truman Doctrine in March 1947, then became involved in the Korean war) who is not accused of being a Soviet spy. I wish I could remember the whole list. The article for journalist I. F. Stone. The article for treasury official Harry Dexter White. Commerce department official and later author Harry Magdoff. Lieutenant Colonel Duncan Lee who had the misfortune of being acquainted with the kooky, flighty Elizabeth Bentley. In the light of all of these, the article for secretary of state Dean Acheson all but accuses him of being pro-communist. The "China hands" like Owen Lattimore (being accused of being an agent of the Chinese wouldn't do, so he was accused of being a Soviet agent). John S. Service who had the misfortune to be assigned to the Dixie Mission while working for the Foreign Service. Actually the article on China hand Theodore H. White manages to have been relatively unscathed by the crazies. I'm sure there were some Russian spies in the US in the 1940s, and some American spies in Russia. Wikipedia still has this McCarthyist idea spread out over the high officials of that time were all KGB spies. Forget about anyone to the left of the 1947 Truman Doctrine to fight the Greek left, they're almost automatically concluded to be communist spies. Then it's proffered that Venona proves all these people as spies. But Venona has code names, not names. Venona says something like "Agent TREE met us in Central Park in May 8, 1948". As so-and-so lived in New York in 1948, the editors use that fact to link a codename to a name. Venona is said to prove every accusation, but it does not. Most of the people who it does seem to confirm were European emigrees and people in the communist party orbit. Not the liberal WASPs in the Democratic establishment who are accused of being Soviet spies. The Wikipedia articles on various Democratic officials in the 1930s and 1940s are really nuts. Even a neutral article like the Theodore White one has to mention that he was suspected to be a communist spy at one time.

mrcactu5 10y ago

The Internet is dotted with cesspools, also known as comments sections Comments sections are also extremely REVEALING... It seems we are getting a theory of why public opinion is so moderate -- it's not just one opinion. It's half of people expressing one view, the other half expressing another view. The version on Wikipedia is effectively the average between the two. The history sections of wikipedia document this process in action. A lot of the things I look at are pretty dead but I am often impressed when a crappy wikipedia page and a few months later the page has really excellent discussion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagorean_triple https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagorean_triple and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagorean_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagorean_theorem

exstudent2 10y ago

First sentence: > The Internet is dotted with cesspools, also known as comments sections. Comment sections are the only thing keeping a check on publications like the Washington Post. Whether they're on-site or off-site (like what you're reading now on HN), they're invaluable. Sure, not all of the audience with an opinion will be politically correct, but I value the commentary of a piece as much or more as the piece itself. Especially when it's something purely opinion based like this one.

yarrel 10y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikilawyering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikilawyering

clusmore 10y ago

I think one of the interesting consequences of the echo chamber that social networks create is that everybody thinks they are in the majority. For example, if you view the comments on political pages, you'll often see conflicting claims that "the majority of people think X". I think each person making these claims genuinely feel that they are in the majority because their echo chamber distorts the proportion of supporting voices, and then you see comments like "who are all these people who voted for Y?" Edit to add: I think the problem is not only that people don't see views other than their own, but that they become unaware that other views even exist.

kristofferR 10y ago

The title of this piece makes no sense. How are the talk pages on Wikipedia supposedly going to fix the vicious comment sections on the internet?

throwaway420 10y ago

Look at the utter contempt that the Washington Post is displaying for free individuals here. They refer to comments sections, where actual human beings who are not paid and bought for by corporate interests get to voice their opinions, as cesspools. What arrogance on their part! Yeah, you'll see some ugly comments on all kinds of social media once in a while, but seeing an uncouth phrase or three is absolutely nothing compared to the WAR PROPAGANDA on behalf of the military industrial complex that leads to the deaths of thousands and thousands. So yeah, I'll take the cesspool of a comment section where I might see some truth every time over bought and paid for presstitutes, which we all know as absolute and undeniable fact now from Wikileaks.

jedimastert 10y ago
I reeealy can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not[1] [1]https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Poe's_law https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Poe's_law
- gravypod 10y ago
  Would you like to refute their statements or provide your own view point? If not then there isn't much of a reason to think that the parent isn't correct in his analysis of the situation.
  - Eupolemos 10y ago
    There is no analysis in OP's post, he just states opinions. I value quality in comments, which is one of the reasons I come to Hacker News. It is not a waste of my time. Reading comments on Facebook or any newspaper usually is. Wikipedia isn't a waste either, mired in a Yahoo Answers low quality answers. That is why I donate. Creating quality interaction isn't easy on the internet - I admire every success. Shitposting in the comment-section of a newspaper or indeed Hacker News isn't "free speech", it is just disruptive and destructive. When governments and corporations engage in bullshit (in the Harry Frankfurt sense) programs to disrupt public discourse, the answer isn't to yell and scream in the comment sections - that only helps them, in fact. The answer is to insist on solid arguments against their gish-gallops and red herrings.

stirner 10y ago

A centrist argument is not necessarily correct. There are many more dimensions to ideology than the left/right spectrum. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation

fulafel 10y ago
Also, a position in the middle of the two US parties usually quite right-leaning in the global context and hardly a good benchmark for neutrality outside the Washington Post.

abalashov 10y ago

The main skill—in short supply—that Wikipedia fosters is to look at things from varying points of view, through a kind of detached pseudoprofessionalism. Because the function of Wikipedia is to exhibit different viewpoints (where applicable) rather than to convince anyone of them, it's much easier to step into a relativistic, descriptive mindset, rather than a prescriptive one.

hogrammer 10y ago

Good L-rd, this is a horrible idea. The Wikipedia's POV is not everyone's POV.

icantdrive55 10y ago

My problem is people read Wikipedia like it's an encyclopedia. I didn't know they had a discussion page. That said, I went to my favorite site-- GuideStar.org. A site that used to make it easy to vet 591C3's. They changed it all up. It's now much harder to get to those precious 990's. That's a shame. Those 990's are Public information. Guide Star used to make it easy to access them. While Wiki is begging, they have 3/4 of a billion in assets in 2014. 2013 to 2014 added 25 million. Took Jimmy's credit card away. Looks like he got carried away with it? He still works 10 hrs a month on the board. Susan makes over 300,000 Jones law firm makes close to three million a year.

dsfyu404ed 10y ago

It's possible that highly biased editors drifting toward center is just another instance of "a lie repeated often enough becomes the truth" where the lie is the opposing ideology that one must read in order to edit.

notliketherest 10y ago

Has anyone read the comments section below a DrudgeReport linked article? Oh my god you will lose your faith in humanity.

tangerine_beet 10y ago

I'm wondering how popular media sites could apply to their comments sections some of the things Wikipedia is doing. For example, imagine commenters divided into two opposing camps over a controversial issue discussed in a news report. A separate discussion is organized to create a report on the issue using the Wikipedia process and rules. Any commenter can contribute, and it is guided by (perhaps volunteer) editors. Such reports then get aggregated in a separate section of the site... Could something like this actually 1) create value for the media by engaging users and generating content 2) elevate the discourse between readers and 3) actually make the media less biased over time as it is repeatedly called out for partisan slant in its editorial and reporting?

jimmaswell 10y ago

There's a subreddit of people who think Wikipedia operates with large-scale bias by the administration. https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiInAction/ https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiInAction/

wallace_f 10y ago

If you read this carefully, you can see something quite ironic about this article: The article's argument is: "Something's terribly wrong with the internet." Evidence provided for something wrong was three pro-Trump comments about an anti-Trump article. The article then suggests "recent research from Harvard Business School suggests that Wikipedia has become increasingly balanced in the course of its 15-year history." So, the internet is biased, and people are uncivil. Wikipedia is civil and not biased; here are some points to learn from them. The irony is that the article itself is no shining beacon of neutrality because it provides an anti-Trump and anti-alt right narrative. Any right-leaning comments must be fixed by editors, but left-leaning comments 'fix themselves over time.' Instead of the article making a sound argument for neutrality, it does nothing of the sort. Disclaimer: criticism of the DNC, media and Clinton != support for Trump. I do not support Trump. This article is masterfully written, but it's not very pure in its intentions.

hardwaresofton 10y ago

Am I the only one that actually finds immense value in the comments sections of different sites on the internet? Obviously there's some sifting to do (inflammatory comments that are meant to be nothing but inflammatory should just be ignored), but I come to the internet to interact with people, not just seek out knowledge. I find things like hn (or reddit) hivemind immensely fascinating, almost like a shared consciousness. I like the comments sections. I often go there for a chuckle, or to see what other people think. Yeah, some people use that opportunity to troll, or say hurtful things or whatever, but that's what the world is, I'd rather never forget that. I also don't want everyone to mellow to the same position and then everyone holds the same (possibly wrong) position forever, that sounds like a bland existence. Free discourse is not a flaw, it's a feature.

artcodedata 10y ago

The search for an unique , single truth is the mentality that destroy ancient ruins and burn books, no matter if it's coming from Wikipedia, Trump supporters or BLM all of them are valid. And that's Wikipedia's biggest flaw, their system can only handle one version of truth. A more complex system would be able to handle more than one version of the truth.

matthewmorgan 10y ago

'Don't take refuge in the false security of consensus, and the feeling that whatever you think you're bound to be OK, because you're safely in the moral majority.' --Christopher Hitchens Well worth a watch imho https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4hqFvXm57M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4hqFvXm57M

fulafel 10y ago

It's disingenious to apply a methodology designed to find out "republican" and "democratic" positions to Wikipedia, and then draw conclusions about how objectively biased the content is, especially since the center in US politics is so right-leaning in the global context.

Eupolemos 10y ago
Indeed, but their method is clearly stated and very easy to understand, so the reader can take the conclusion with an appropriate grain of salt.

kseifried 10y ago

This is why for CVE's assigned via the Distributed Weakness Filing (DWF) Project I require a copy of the artifact, the reality is your website might go away, or get lost at sea, or deleted, or whatever. For information supporting CVE identifiers it's a super huge pain in the ass when the website/document disappears.