4 ms·

Well stated. The problem that the blanket ban on one source introduces is that it becomes a divisive issue. The source and faction that subscribes then believes

Well stated. The problem that the blanket ban on one source introduces is that it becomes a divisive issue. The source and faction that subscribes then believes Wikipedia has lost its objectivity (even if it is trying to maintain the truth). The faction then just starts saying Wikipedia is biased and discounts it as a credible source that speaks the truth universally. To be clear I am not saying that the non-truth should be considered in Wikipedia - I am saying that I like what the parent suggests. Wikipedia should look for a more broad application of standards for sources, as the parent suggests flagging universally around citations not meeting standard, etc.

dsfyu404ed 8y ago
I don't see it that way. This is probably just a pragmatic move to keep Wikipedia users and contributors from getting their panties in a knot. It's basically impossible to have a discussion on the internet about the merit something a strongly right leaning media outlet says (well it's possible, but the discussion won't be very civil). Anything factual Breitbart reports will be reported elsewhere because that's how media works, if one outlet covers it others will too. In light of that there's not much to be lost by banning Breitbart as a source. What you gain is that it gives the monkeys that edit pages one less reason to fling poo at each other.
- pattrn 8y ago
  Many conservatives consider CNN as left wing and disreputable as many liberals consider Breitbart. Your same reasoning would also apply to Wikipedia banning CNN. Would you consider that a pragmatic move? If not, then for what reasons would they differ?
  - lolc 8y ago
    Does Breitbart even publicly retract or correct stories at all?
    - masonic 8y ago
      I've seen it a couple of times. More relevant: can you identify any examples of Breitbart content that is, and remains, factually incorrect?
      - lolc 8y ago
        Yes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breitbart_News#False_report_of_Muslim_mob_in_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breitbart_News#False_report_of...
        repolfx 8y ago
        Great, some meat, let's meta-check the first fact check. This is useful because your citatation is a good example of misleading commentary that tries to make Breitbart look worse than it actually is (again, do not mistake this argument for claiming it's actually super reliable). The story described on that page isn't false and the fact checks contradict themselves or end up agreeing. Wikipedia is writing about a story headlined "Revealed: 1,000-Man Mob Attack Police, Set Germany’s Oldest Church Alight on New Year’s Eve". It states "the story was later shown to be false". This seems pretty categorical. The story was false, entirely false, and nothing but false. The citation for this statement is citation 189, a story in TheLocal.de So let's read this takedown. Wiki says: St. Reinold's Church is neither the oldest church in Germany nor was the church set on fire. But the article Wikipedia cites says: St. Reinold is not Germany's oldest church - that would be the Cathedral of Trier - and a small fire had started on some netting on scaffolding around the church, not the roof, due to one firework. Wikipedia states St Reinold is the oldest church in Dortmund, Germany. So the claim of falsity here hinges on a dispute over whether churches are the same thing as cathedrals, or maybe there is an older church somewhere else in Germany, I was unable to establish that within a few minutes. However it makes no actual difference to the story, is the sort of mistake that is easily made, and in fact Breitbart has published a correction at the bottom of the story: "Correction: This article states St. Reinold’s Church is the oldest in Germany. We are happy to clarify that accolade belongs to the Trier Cathedral. Breitbart News stands by all other substantive facts in this article." This sort of minor correction occurs frequently across all news organisations, and is not worth labelling a story as entirely false. Let's continue. The second part of the claim that Breitbart is lying hinges on a dispute over whether the fire was on the roof of the church, or whether it was on some scaffolding around the church. This again does not seem very important, especially as scaffolding typically reaches the roof. The third part of the claim is this: video footage from the scene does not show a "mob", and no policemen were targeted but again, citation 189 contradicts Wikipedia. It says: The original report by the local news site from that night describes how some individuals did start launching fireworks from within the crowd towards police, who told them to stop but were ignored. So local non-Breitbart news sources reported that policemen were targeted and I suppose, whether you describe a crowd of 1000 people deliberately launching fireworks at police as a "mob" is dependent more on your viewpoint than facts - any crowd can be described that way and Breitbart makes no claim to be neutral. However they were just re-reporting what local German news itself claimed here. Final inspection. One of the stories central claims is that a group of men unfurled the flag of the "Free Syrian Army", which Breitbart describes as a group of "al-Queda and ISIS collaborators". The video is included in the Breitbart story so you can check this claim for yourself. It's actually kind of hard to see because the man unfurling the flag is facing away from the camera and we only get to see small parts of it, but it does look somewhat like the FSA flag, and again, TheLocal.de (the primary citation for the claim "the story is false") does not disagree with what happened. Instead they describe it like this: "In fact, the video shows a man holding a flag widely flown by those opposing the current government." - this is not a refutation. The FSA did indeed oppose the Syrian government. Breitbart's claim that they're "ISIS and al-Qaeda" collaborators relies on another story I won't bother to fact check, but I note nobody is disputing that claim specifically. As fact checks go this is one of the weaker ones I've seen. Most of the claims Breitbart made came from local German press to begin with, and the claims that the story is "false" turn out to be quibbles over trivial details that Breitbart itself happily corrected because they were irrelevant to the story. The other claims are all things that those disputing them actually agree with, they just have a preferred spin. Do you have other stories you believe demonstrates this problem better? I'm sure they have published entirely false stories because it's such a common thing. But this case doesn't seem to be one of those times.
  - rubyfan 8y ago
    I’m not sure if this deserves the downvotes or not. I get the point that right leaning and left leaning people look at these sources differently. I imagine there are differences with respect to their publishing standards and that is perhaps what is attracting the downvotes. I get the point though, the partisan divide makes it such that any programmatic banning of a source comes across looking partisan. I think this is why Twitter and others took so long to ban some publishers.
    - pattrn 8y ago
      Programmatic banning of sources takes power away from editors to determine legitimacy. It censors the conversation that would have otherwise taken place. Wikipedia cannot claim impartiality once it picks and chooses sources at an organizational level. Due to having little interest in keeping up to date with Wikipedia's ban list, I certainly will no longer see it as impartial from this point onward. I'm not concerned about the downvotes when I don't see a clear reason for them. As far as I can tell, I raised a legitimate point. I'm assuming that it's legitimate because none of the downvoters commented to explain why they disagreed with my point. (I shouldn't have to say this, since it neither aids nor harms my arguments, but I don't read Breitbart.)
- strken 8y ago
  I don't think this is completely true. They've also deprecated Occupy Democrats as a source of facts, so it's not like they're solely against the right, and if you read the RFC the editors are more concerned with their lack of fact checking and their history of publishing blatantly wrong information than their bias.
scarejunba 8y ago
If some group of people think Wikipedia is bullshit, they're going to miss out on the most accessible repository of human knowledge that Man has ever compiled. That's their own problem. They will fall behind others.
- qbaqbaqba 8y ago
  Should we care more about accessibility or reliability? If Wikipedia is the source of knowledge for you, you may have a problem.
  - scarejunba 8y ago
    It's both, of course. Never before has something so comprehensive and accurate ever been compiled. You can condescend all you want. It is unparalleled as a first part of call regarding anything. People easily understand that reading about The West Bank on Wikipedia is a different exercise from reading about Charlotte Brontë and act accordingly.
- legostormtroopr 8y ago
  Wikipedia is biased to hell now days - pages are now routinely “owned” by editors, not because they are experts in a field but because they have the most time to camp pages.

dsfyu404ed 8y ago

I don't see it that way. This is probably just a pragmatic move to keep Wikipedia users and contributors from getting their panties in a knot. It's basically impossible to have a discussion on the internet about the merit something a strongly right leaning media outlet says (well it's possible, but the discussion won't be very civil). Anything factual Breitbart reports will be reported elsewhere because that's how media works, if one outlet covers it others will too. In light of that there's not much to be lost by banning Breitbart as a source. What you gain is that it gives the monkeys that edit pages one less reason to fling poo at each other.

pattrn 8y ago
Many conservatives consider CNN as left wing and disreputable as many liberals consider Breitbart. Your same reasoning would also apply to Wikipedia banning CNN. Would you consider that a pragmatic move? If not, then for what reasons would they differ?
- lolc 8y ago
  Does Breitbart even publicly retract or correct stories at all?
  - masonic 8y ago
    I've seen it a couple of times. More relevant: can you identify any examples of Breitbart content that is, and remains, factually incorrect?
    - lolc 8y ago
      Yes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breitbart_News#False_report_of_Muslim_mob_in_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breitbart_News#False_report_of...
      - repolfx 8y ago
        Great, some meat, let's meta-check the first fact check. This is useful because your citatation is a good example of misleading commentary that tries to make Breitbart look worse than it actually is (again, do not mistake this argument for claiming it's actually super reliable). The story described on that page isn't false and the fact checks contradict themselves or end up agreeing. Wikipedia is writing about a story headlined "Revealed: 1,000-Man Mob Attack Police, Set Germany’s Oldest Church Alight on New Year’s Eve". It states "the story was later shown to be false". This seems pretty categorical. The story was false, entirely false, and nothing but false. The citation for this statement is citation 189, a story in TheLocal.de So let's read this takedown. Wiki says: St. Reinold's Church is neither the oldest church in Germany nor was the church set on fire. But the article Wikipedia cites says: St. Reinold is not Germany's oldest church - that would be the Cathedral of Trier - and a small fire had started on some netting on scaffolding around the church, not the roof, due to one firework. Wikipedia states St Reinold is the oldest church in Dortmund, Germany. So the claim of falsity here hinges on a dispute over whether churches are the same thing as cathedrals, or maybe there is an older church somewhere else in Germany, I was unable to establish that within a few minutes. However it makes no actual difference to the story, is the sort of mistake that is easily made, and in fact Breitbart has published a correction at the bottom of the story: "Correction: This article states St. Reinold’s Church is the oldest in Germany. We are happy to clarify that accolade belongs to the Trier Cathedral. Breitbart News stands by all other substantive facts in this article." This sort of minor correction occurs frequently across all news organisations, and is not worth labelling a story as entirely false. Let's continue. The second part of the claim that Breitbart is lying hinges on a dispute over whether the fire was on the roof of the church, or whether it was on some scaffolding around the church. This again does not seem very important, especially as scaffolding typically reaches the roof. The third part of the claim is this: video footage from the scene does not show a "mob", and no policemen were targeted but again, citation 189 contradicts Wikipedia. It says: The original report by the local news site from that night describes how some individuals did start launching fireworks from within the crowd towards police, who told them to stop but were ignored. So local non-Breitbart news sources reported that policemen were targeted and I suppose, whether you describe a crowd of 1000 people deliberately launching fireworks at police as a "mob" is dependent more on your viewpoint than facts - any crowd can be described that way and Breitbart makes no claim to be neutral. However they were just re-reporting what local German news itself claimed here. Final inspection. One of the stories central claims is that a group of men unfurled the flag of the "Free Syrian Army", which Breitbart describes as a group of "al-Queda and ISIS collaborators". The video is included in the Breitbart story so you can check this claim for yourself. It's actually kind of hard to see because the man unfurling the flag is facing away from the camera and we only get to see small parts of it, but it does look somewhat like the FSA flag, and again, TheLocal.de (the primary citation for the claim "the story is false") does not disagree with what happened. Instead they describe it like this: "In fact, the video shows a man holding a flag widely flown by those opposing the current government." - this is not a refutation. The FSA did indeed oppose the Syrian government. Breitbart's claim that they're "ISIS and al-Qaeda" collaborators relies on another story I won't bother to fact check, but I note nobody is disputing that claim specifically. As fact checks go this is one of the weaker ones I've seen. Most of the claims Breitbart made came from local German press to begin with, and the claims that the story is "false" turn out to be quibbles over trivial details that Breitbart itself happily corrected because they were irrelevant to the story. The other claims are all things that those disputing them actually agree with, they just have a preferred spin. Do you have other stories you believe demonstrates this problem better? I'm sure they have published entirely false stories because it's such a common thing. But this case doesn't seem to be one of those times.
- rubyfan 8y ago
  I’m not sure if this deserves the downvotes or not. I get the point that right leaning and left leaning people look at these sources differently. I imagine there are differences with respect to their publishing standards and that is perhaps what is attracting the downvotes. I get the point though, the partisan divide makes it such that any programmatic banning of a source comes across looking partisan. I think this is why Twitter and others took so long to ban some publishers.
  - pattrn 8y ago
    Programmatic banning of sources takes power away from editors to determine legitimacy. It censors the conversation that would have otherwise taken place. Wikipedia cannot claim impartiality once it picks and chooses sources at an organizational level. Due to having little interest in keeping up to date with Wikipedia's ban list, I certainly will no longer see it as impartial from this point onward. I'm not concerned about the downvotes when I don't see a clear reason for them. As far as I can tell, I raised a legitimate point. I'm assuming that it's legitimate because none of the downvoters commented to explain why they disagreed with my point. (I shouldn't have to say this, since it neither aids nor harms my arguments, but I don't read Breitbart.)
strken 8y ago
I don't think this is completely true. They've also deprecated Occupy Democrats as a source of facts, so it's not like they're solely against the right, and if you read the RFC the editors are more concerned with their lack of fact checking and their history of publishing blatantly wrong information than their bias.

scarejunba 8y ago

If some group of people think Wikipedia is bullshit, they're going to miss out on the most accessible repository of human knowledge that Man has ever compiled. That's their own problem. They will fall behind others.

qbaqbaqba 8y ago
Should we care more about accessibility or reliability? If Wikipedia is the source of knowledge for you, you may have a problem.
- scarejunba 8y ago
  It's both, of course. Never before has something so comprehensive and accurate ever been compiled. You can condescend all you want. It is unparalleled as a first part of call regarding anything. People easily understand that reading about The West Bank on Wikipedia is a different exercise from reading about Charlotte Brontë and act accordingly.
legostormtroopr 8y ago
Wikipedia is biased to hell now days - pages are now routinely “owned” by editors, not because they are experts in a field but because they have the most time to camp pages.