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A few people, however, have figured out how to manipulate Wikipedia’s supposedly neutral system to turn a profit. Neutral system? A few? Let's not kid ourselv

A few people, however, have figured out how to manipulate Wikipedia’s supposedly neutral system to turn a profit. Neutral system? A few? Let's not kid ourselves here. Wikipedia is filled with bias. Yes, there are some informative articles and it's great that some people have spent a sizable chunk of time tending to the garden. But there's a lot of stuff missing, and the problems of new contributors being shut out or shut down is well-documented (https://www.technologyreview.com/s/520446/the-decline-of-wikipedia/ https://www.technologyreview.com/s/520446/the-decline-of-wik...). As for paid/planted content, it's easy to spot certain types (fawning celebrity or corporate profiles) but others are far more subtle. And sometimes when I'm reading an apparently well-researched article on a technical, historical, or scientific topic, I wonder if some contributor way down the line had an axe to grind or is outright messing with audiences by inserting bogus information.

snvzz 8y ago
>wikipedia bias A favorite example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamergate_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamergate_controversy
- ihuman 8y ago
  I think thats the first time I've seen the "Extended confirmed protection" lock. > Extended confirmed protection, also known as 30/500 protection, allows edits only by editors with the extended confirmed user access level, granted automatically to registered users with at least 30 days tenure and 500 edits.
  - tim333 8y ago
    They have that on the Donald Trump page also. I guess controversial stuff.
    - Geimfari 8y ago
      Not necessarily controversial, but articles that see an endless stream of disruptive editing. It was originally implemented to limit disruption on articles related to the Isreal/Palestine conflict.
  - 99052882514569 8y ago
    I understand why they did this. If someone disagrees and thinks it's "biased" to do this, they need to either present their alternative to keeping spam and edit wars in check, or have their 'bias' criticism summarily dismissed.
- tomp 8y ago
  Same here. I refuse to donate any money to Wikipedia until they at least fix that one...
  - tux1968 8y ago
    Could you give a suggestion on how to improve that Article?
    - tomp 8y ago
      It should be neutral, and/or jnclude the pro-GG view, not just the anti-GG view. A few concrete points: (1) there was extreme harassment from both sides; (2) targeted harassment against some women doesn’t mean “mysoginy” (just like targeted harassment against Hitler doesn’t mean “misandry”); (3) the overarching theme isn’t “right-wing reaction against progressivism”, but a reaction against feminist politically-correct politics that started to affect the gaming world (that was previously happily genderless, offensive and agenda-free).
      - ceejayoz 8y ago
        Expanding that beyond GG for a moment... Does every Wikipedia article have to include both pro- and anti- views? Do they need to be given equal weight?
        tomp 8y ago
        That’s what I would expect from a generic (as opposed to clearly biased in the title, like “Christian view on creation of man” or something) encyclopaedic article on a topic, yes.
        ceejayoz 8y ago
        So the Earth article should give equal time to flat-Earthers, the Apollo moon landings should devote 50% to the "it was faked" idea, and Queen Elizabeth II's page should talk about her being a lizard person? I think I'd prefer a useful encyclopedia.
- fvjft 8y ago
  What's wrong with that one? I don't want to read it and I don't follow silly Twitter drama.
- botanrice 8y ago
  What is showing bias in this? I don't know much of that controversy so I don't know what I should be looking for.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- throwawaymath 8y ago
  Is there a way for you to quickly explain where/what the bias is, for people who have no idea what Gamergate is?
  - tim333 8y ago
    Yeah I'm puzzled too. I think it's along the line of sexist racist trolls attacking women for being into gaming then wikipedia being against sexist trolling?
    - Xelynega 8y ago
      From what I understand the bias is that the Wikipedia article describes the controversy as "targeted harassment" with a side note of ethics in video game journals, even though there is a case to be made that the gamergate hashtag was started to point out unethical practices in game journalism which the accused took as harassment to save face.
      - untog 8y ago
        Is there a case to be made there? "The accused took as harassment" implies that there was no harassing intent and... there's just no way that's true. People like Zoe Quinn were absolutely harassed, I don't see how anyone could argue otherwise. Even the original incident that sparked the whole controversy was bunk: that Zoe Quinn got a favorable review from a journalist because she was sleeping with him. He never even reviewed her game! If Gamergate wanted to point out unethical practises in game journalism then holy hell was there a lot to work with. "Exclusive" reviews that are always positive, "sneak peeks" and so on that are openly and obviously traded for positive coverage. Video games journalism is so far deeply in bed with the major publishers in the industry it covers that it's absurd. But somehow, Gamergate became all about a small number of independent game developers who just happened to be women, and were (indisputably) the victims of harassment, rape threats and doxxing. Weird, that.
      - jasonwatkinspdx 8y ago
        No. This is preposterous. I ended up on gamergate's hate list and they dumped so much filth into my reddit inbox I deleted my account and never looked back. And I'm a total nobody. The harassment from the core GG folks was systematic and severe. In several cases it escalated to physical stalking of women where the police became involved. And should we be surprised? This whole thing got started when one angry ex boyfriend wrote a rant and got the whole 4chan gaming world to start harassing and demonizing his ex. But sure, go ahead and keep claiming "it's about ethics in gaming journalism" and that there's no harassment, just people being too sensitive or faking it. Utterly. Preposterous.
- taneq 8y ago
  I mostly stayed away from Gamergate but the little I did see of it convinced me that both sides were awful and that staying away was the only sane choice.
  - CedarMadness 8y ago
    The fact that it's still impossible to discuss it without someone resorting to personal attacks indicates that this was the right decision.
    - triplewipeass 8y ago
      It’s best to stay away from broadly controversial topics that attract masses of non-experts. These people have no idea what reasoned debate is all about, so there’s no point in subjecting oneself to such an assault.
- dEnigma 8y ago
  I only have read the abstract so far, but it seems to me to be written pretty objectively. Could you maybe point out some parts that you feel are examples of bias?
  - snvzz 8y ago
    It's actually limited to the anti-gamergate narrative. It sounds legit, because it's written in an authoritative tone, with large walls of text full of links to anti-gamergate sources. It's worth seeing how gamergate describes itself. The "what is gamergate" column on the sidebar of a subreddit where they hang out[0] might help there. Do note that I do provide the hyperlink, but I do not endorse either front. [0]: https://old.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/ https://old.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/
    - untog 8y ago
      It's worth seeing how GamerGate describes itself... then looking at the top posts of the last month on KotakuInAction. They are not similar.
      - malvosenior 8y ago
        https://old.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/top/?sort=top&t=month https://old.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/top/?sort=top&t=mont... Those posts are almost exclusively about media bias, manipulation and censorship. Isn't that what GamerGate claims to be about?
        untog 8y ago
        A large number of them are about Captain Marvel. What do you suppose it is about that particular movie that would lead to such outrage? In the top ten, precisely one item (number ten) is about video games.
        malvosenior 8y ago
        You can read the posts themselves to see what they are complaining about. Movie studios drummed up fake outrage about people being angry about a woman superhero when such controversy never existed. Then they took all the negative reviews of Captian Marvel and blamed them on misogyny. They also got Rotton Tomatoes and other platforms to lock user reviews. This is all classic GamerGate stuff I think. GamerGate is about more than video games, it's about media manipulation and bias and it's about journalists acting like activists.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
_Codemonkeyism 8y ago
Basically every history article is heavily biased, just compare the different language versions.
- gabbygab 8y ago
  Pretty much every political or corporate sensitive topic has heavy bias. Even biology related topics are subject to external pressure from journalists, politicians and activists. There have been huge fights over how fetus, gender, sex, etc are defined on wikipedia. And it isn't just wikipedia, it's all of social media and pretty much all of the internet. From silly nonsense like movie reviews to serious matter like war footage, if it has political or financial impact, it is subject to heavy censorship and bias.
  - umvi 8y ago
    Reminds me of when Bradley Manning's wiki page turned to Chelsea Manning within seconds of the announcement. It was unreal. It was like there were an army of activists ready to pounce as soon as the announcement was made and the article was quickly locked. I've seen other, more important, news take much longer to update (hours) on their main pages.
    - tim333 8y ago
      The way Wikipedia works you don't need an army of activists - just one enthusiast to edit it. The important news probably took longer because no one was very interested. That's how it works with volunteers.
    - andrepd 8y ago
      Running s/Bradley/Chelsea and s/he/she probably takes significantly less effort than writing on the latest news.
  - tim333 8y ago
    Not just the internet but human culture throughout history basically.
  - 8y ago
cf141q5325 8y ago
A big problem is also that Wikipedia doesnt get rid of contributors pushing a bias and sabotaging wikipedia pages. Jörg Matthias Claudius Grünewald "Feliks" is just a rather prominent example in the German Wikipedia.
- jgtrosh 8y ago
  I suppose an argument against banning such profiles is that it's easier to spot a consistently bad actor than to try to play whack-a-mole with new profiles.
- mikorym 8y ago
  > Jörg Matthias Claudius Grünewald "Feliks" is just a rather prominent example Could you elaborate?
  - Semaphor 8y ago
    I googled the name, all sources I could find are German, most seem to be from the conspiracy theory and right wing area. He's apparently an editor who used to be anonymous, converted to judaism and is said to behave manipulatively. But as I said, can't really find reliable information.
    - cf141q5325 8y ago
      The far right had to suffer the most, but there are also plenty of left wing politicians who had to suffer from his "manipulation". There was a great article about it at nachdenkseiten but they deleted it. No wonder since he sued anyone mentioning him. https://web.archive.org/web/20180908111231/https://www.nachdenkseiten.de/?p=45899 https://web.archive.org/web/20180908111231/https://www.nachd... edit: To give an example, he deleted any mention on human rights violations in Facility 1391 with the argument, that Israel investigated the reports and found no evidence of any wrongdoing. Thats still where the page is today, different to the english version. For other individuals, like Nirit Sommerfeld he altered their Wikipedia page to push them into antisemetic corners.
mikorym 8y ago
This may be true. But I use wikipedia for mathematics and then things like geography and history. For the former, it works very well. For the latter two it seems like it's not too bad.
- electriclove 8y ago
  Though many times subtle, history is often misrepresented in Wikipedia and definitely has a bias.
  - adrianratnapala 8y ago
    Sadly, there is no substitute for careful reading. History books will always be subtly representing the historians biases, even as the present a lot of detailed facts. The Wikipedia is no different. But it still allows the interested-amateur to do a breadth-first study of a topic without drilling down into a whole book. In both cases, the reader can't assume that she has seen an unbiased (whatever that means) story. But she can glean enough facts to be less ignorant about the topic than before.
- oefrha 8y ago
  Mathematics on Wikipedia is top notch (my training was in mathematics so I can say this with a high level of certainty), but mathematics is hardly controversial. Not surprisingly, the more controversial the topic, the more biased Wikipedia gets. Try to look up any controversial political topic, current or historical, in most cases the objectivity and comprehensiveness of articles are highly questionable. Also, you would hardly ever see edit wars on math topics, but they happen all the time on politics.
  - scriptkiddy 8y ago
    Any online resources you could recommend to someone looking to learn some higher level math? The highest I ever got in school was the beginnings of Calculus and I'd like to dig a little deeper. However, I keep running into the issue of not really understanding all of the Greek symbology.
simias 8y ago
The discussion about "bias" and perceived "neutrality" is one that I see ten times a day on the internet and it truly baffles me. When it comes to hard sciences it makes a certain amount of sense but as soon as you enter any kind of social or political subject then good luck finding the "neutral" point of view. And even if you actually manage to find it somehow that won't stop people on either side of the issue to say that you're biased. As such arguing about Wikipedia's biases is a waste of time. For instance I see people in this thread who seem to argue that qualifying GamerGate as a harassment campaign is biased, personally I think it's a fairly accurate description of the movement. Am I wrong? Maybe, but good luck settling that. Ditto with, say, anything regarding the Venezuelan situation, Donald Trump etc... Look at the discussion thread for Wikipedia articles about subjects like astrology, homeopathy, climate change or the holocaust and you'll find people with fringe opinions accusing Wikipedia of bias. I think the most important factor is not this absurd concept of neutrality, what matters is honesty. Are the authors deliberately trying to hide or misrepresent some of the facts in order to push a narrative? Are they genuinely trying to inform or do they have ulterior motives? Clearly paying an editor to whitewash an article is not honest so that's a big problem for me.
- sandworm101 8y ago
  Because in a post-truth world the person who controls wikipedia controls reality. Those fringe opinions can and do become true. Whether they are actually true in the past is irrelevant. If you can keep it on Wikipedia long enough people will act on it as if it were true. Just look at what happened when wikipedia updated Pi to be 3.14159265358. Within weeks it started appearing in scientific papers. I'd bet good money that spaceX is using that number to launch spacecraft. Whether that is the true value of Pi is irrelevant. The wikipedia collective has decreed that that number and so it is now our scientific truth.
  - shortoncash 8y ago
    I agree with you in principle. I'll add that we've been in a post-truth world since mass media, long before internet use became mainstream. We shouldn't act like this is a new problem just because people got comfortable with the way the previous information-overlords managed to do things.
curlypaul924 8y ago
I've suspected for a while that the pharmaceutical companies are manipulating the drug pages on wikipedia. Often I'll come across a claim about a drug and then click on the reference, only to find that the reference says something completely different from the wikipedia article. I don't have an example off-hand, but it's something to keep in mind: always check the references rather than blindly accepting what wikipedia says. (Related, wikipedia's policy of only accepting secondary sources is similarly problematic, because often the secondary sources say something completely different from the primary source. I understand the need for the policy -- it makes it more difficult someone from writing an article just to manipulate wikipedia -- but again, it underscores the need not just to check wikipedia's reference, but also to check the primary source).
- reaperducer 8y ago
  wikipedia's policy of only accepting secondary sources is similarly problematic This is why I stopped contributing. Article about a radio station where I was in management and selected the call letters? I added the meaning of the call letters to a Wikipedia article. Rejected because I'm not a secondary source. Added an article about a dial-up BBS network that did store-and-forward e-mail a decade before the internet went mainstream. I ran one of they key nodes. Rejected because I'm not a computer magazine available in archive.org. Added an article about what was probably the world's first online cartoon series (helped with distribution, since this was pre-internet). Rejected. Same reason. I as a journalist at the scene of an event when it happened and watched it unfold before my eyes. Added some information to that event's entry in Wikipedia. Rejected. The irony is that if there was a copy of the broadcast I did on the event, that would be perfectly OK. But the people who patrol the sources on Wikipedia are under the impression that there was no recorded history before the internet.
  - PhasmaFelis 8y ago
    I can see the argument that they want sources people can check and evaluate for themselves. You're a legitimate expert, but anyone with a bit of sense can claim to be an expert and appear just as credible to a layman. Faking a credible secondary source is not impossible, but it is difficult--a "news" site that opened three months ago and only has articles on subjects linked to Wikipedia sources is pretty obviously fake. I wonder if there's some sort of happy medium. Maybe a thing where legit experts can submit credentials to be cleared by the moderators, the way Reddit verifies identities for AMAs. You'd still be expected to source everything you can, but eyewitness details could be sourced to your verified credentials. (Which could then be re-reviewed en masse if you start posting bullshit later on.)

snvzz 8y ago

>wikipedia bias A favorite example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamergate_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamergate_controversy

ihuman 8y ago
I think thats the first time I've seen the "Extended confirmed protection" lock. > Extended confirmed protection, also known as 30/500 protection, allows edits only by editors with the extended confirmed user access level, granted automatically to registered users with at least 30 days tenure and 500 edits.
- tim333 8y ago
  They have that on the Donald Trump page also. I guess controversial stuff.
  - Geimfari 8y ago
    Not necessarily controversial, but articles that see an endless stream of disruptive editing. It was originally implemented to limit disruption on articles related to the Isreal/Palestine conflict.
- 99052882514569 8y ago
  I understand why they did this. If someone disagrees and thinks it's "biased" to do this, they need to either present their alternative to keeping spam and edit wars in check, or have their 'bias' criticism summarily dismissed.
tomp 8y ago
Same here. I refuse to donate any money to Wikipedia until they at least fix that one...
- tux1968 8y ago
  Could you give a suggestion on how to improve that Article?
  - tomp 8y ago
    It should be neutral, and/or jnclude the pro-GG view, not just the anti-GG view. A few concrete points: (1) there was extreme harassment from both sides; (2) targeted harassment against some women doesn’t mean “mysoginy” (just like targeted harassment against Hitler doesn’t mean “misandry”); (3) the overarching theme isn’t “right-wing reaction against progressivism”, but a reaction against feminist politically-correct politics that started to affect the gaming world (that was previously happily genderless, offensive and agenda-free).
    - ceejayoz 8y ago
      Expanding that beyond GG for a moment... Does every Wikipedia article have to include both pro- and anti- views? Do they need to be given equal weight?
      - tomp 8y ago
        That’s what I would expect from a generic (as opposed to clearly biased in the title, like “Christian view on creation of man” or something) encyclopaedic article on a topic, yes.
        ceejayoz 8y ago
        So the Earth article should give equal time to flat-Earthers, the Apollo moon landings should devote 50% to the "it was faked" idea, and Queen Elizabeth II's page should talk about her being a lizard person? I think I'd prefer a useful encyclopedia.
fvjft 8y ago
What's wrong with that one? I don't want to read it and I don't follow silly Twitter drama.
botanrice 8y ago
What is showing bias in this? I don't know much of that controversy so I don't know what I should be looking for.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
throwawaymath 8y ago
Is there a way for you to quickly explain where/what the bias is, for people who have no idea what Gamergate is?
- tim333 8y ago
  Yeah I'm puzzled too. I think it's along the line of sexist racist trolls attacking women for being into gaming then wikipedia being against sexist trolling?
  - Xelynega 8y ago
    From what I understand the bias is that the Wikipedia article describes the controversy as "targeted harassment" with a side note of ethics in video game journals, even though there is a case to be made that the gamergate hashtag was started to point out unethical practices in game journalism which the accused took as harassment to save face.
    - untog 8y ago
      Is there a case to be made there? "The accused took as harassment" implies that there was no harassing intent and... there's just no way that's true. People like Zoe Quinn were absolutely harassed, I don't see how anyone could argue otherwise. Even the original incident that sparked the whole controversy was bunk: that Zoe Quinn got a favorable review from a journalist because she was sleeping with him. He never even reviewed her game! If Gamergate wanted to point out unethical practises in game journalism then holy hell was there a lot to work with. "Exclusive" reviews that are always positive, "sneak peeks" and so on that are openly and obviously traded for positive coverage. Video games journalism is so far deeply in bed with the major publishers in the industry it covers that it's absurd. But somehow, Gamergate became all about a small number of independent game developers who just happened to be women, and were (indisputably) the victims of harassment, rape threats and doxxing. Weird, that.
    - jasonwatkinspdx 8y ago
      No. This is preposterous. I ended up on gamergate's hate list and they dumped so much filth into my reddit inbox I deleted my account and never looked back. And I'm a total nobody. The harassment from the core GG folks was systematic and severe. In several cases it escalated to physical stalking of women where the police became involved. And should we be surprised? This whole thing got started when one angry ex boyfriend wrote a rant and got the whole 4chan gaming world to start harassing and demonizing his ex. But sure, go ahead and keep claiming "it's about ethics in gaming journalism" and that there's no harassment, just people being too sensitive or faking it. Utterly. Preposterous.
taneq 8y ago
I mostly stayed away from Gamergate but the little I did see of it convinced me that both sides were awful and that staying away was the only sane choice.
- CedarMadness 8y ago
  The fact that it's still impossible to discuss it without someone resorting to personal attacks indicates that this was the right decision.
  - triplewipeass 8y ago
    It’s best to stay away from broadly controversial topics that attract masses of non-experts. These people have no idea what reasoned debate is all about, so there’s no point in subjecting oneself to such an assault.
dEnigma 8y ago
I only have read the abstract so far, but it seems to me to be written pretty objectively. Could you maybe point out some parts that you feel are examples of bias?
- snvzz 8y ago
  It's actually limited to the anti-gamergate narrative. It sounds legit, because it's written in an authoritative tone, with large walls of text full of links to anti-gamergate sources. It's worth seeing how gamergate describes itself. The "what is gamergate" column on the sidebar of a subreddit where they hang out[0] might help there. Do note that I do provide the hyperlink, but I do not endorse either front. [0]: https://old.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/ https://old.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/
  - untog 8y ago
    It's worth seeing how GamerGate describes itself... then looking at the top posts of the last month on KotakuInAction. They are not similar.
    - malvosenior 8y ago
      https://old.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/top/?sort=top&t=month https://old.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/top/?sort=top&t=mont... Those posts are almost exclusively about media bias, manipulation and censorship. Isn't that what GamerGate claims to be about?
      - untog 8y ago
        A large number of them are about Captain Marvel. What do you suppose it is about that particular movie that would lead to such outrage? In the top ten, precisely one item (number ten) is about video games.
        malvosenior 8y ago
        You can read the posts themselves to see what they are complaining about. Movie studios drummed up fake outrage about people being angry about a woman superhero when such controversy never existed. Then they took all the negative reviews of Captian Marvel and blamed them on misogyny. They also got Rotton Tomatoes and other platforms to lock user reviews. This is all classic GamerGate stuff I think. GamerGate is about more than video games, it's about media manipulation and bias and it's about journalists acting like activists.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

_Codemonkeyism 8y ago

Basically every history article is heavily biased, just compare the different language versions.

gabbygab 8y ago
Pretty much every political or corporate sensitive topic has heavy bias. Even biology related topics are subject to external pressure from journalists, politicians and activists. There have been huge fights over how fetus, gender, sex, etc are defined on wikipedia. And it isn't just wikipedia, it's all of social media and pretty much all of the internet. From silly nonsense like movie reviews to serious matter like war footage, if it has political or financial impact, it is subject to heavy censorship and bias.
- umvi 8y ago
  Reminds me of when Bradley Manning's wiki page turned to Chelsea Manning within seconds of the announcement. It was unreal. It was like there were an army of activists ready to pounce as soon as the announcement was made and the article was quickly locked. I've seen other, more important, news take much longer to update (hours) on their main pages.
  - tim333 8y ago
    The way Wikipedia works you don't need an army of activists - just one enthusiast to edit it. The important news probably took longer because no one was very interested. That's how it works with volunteers.
  - andrepd 8y ago
    Running s/Bradley/Chelsea and s/he/she probably takes significantly less effort than writing on the latest news.
- tim333 8y ago
  Not just the internet but human culture throughout history basically.
- 8y ago

cf141q5325 8y ago

A big problem is also that Wikipedia doesnt get rid of contributors pushing a bias and sabotaging wikipedia pages. Jörg Matthias Claudius Grünewald "Feliks" is just a rather prominent example in the German Wikipedia.

jgtrosh 8y ago
I suppose an argument against banning such profiles is that it's easier to spot a consistently bad actor than to try to play whack-a-mole with new profiles.
mikorym 8y ago
> Jörg Matthias Claudius Grünewald "Feliks" is just a rather prominent example Could you elaborate?
- Semaphor 8y ago
  I googled the name, all sources I could find are German, most seem to be from the conspiracy theory and right wing area. He's apparently an editor who used to be anonymous, converted to judaism and is said to behave manipulatively. But as I said, can't really find reliable information.
  - cf141q5325 8y ago
    The far right had to suffer the most, but there are also plenty of left wing politicians who had to suffer from his "manipulation". There was a great article about it at nachdenkseiten but they deleted it. No wonder since he sued anyone mentioning him. https://web.archive.org/web/20180908111231/https://www.nachdenkseiten.de/?p=45899 https://web.archive.org/web/20180908111231/https://www.nachd... edit: To give an example, he deleted any mention on human rights violations in Facility 1391 with the argument, that Israel investigated the reports and found no evidence of any wrongdoing. Thats still where the page is today, different to the english version. For other individuals, like Nirit Sommerfeld he altered their Wikipedia page to push them into antisemetic corners.

mikorym 8y ago

This may be true. But I use wikipedia for mathematics and then things like geography and history. For the former, it works very well. For the latter two it seems like it's not too bad.

electriclove 8y ago
Though many times subtle, history is often misrepresented in Wikipedia and definitely has a bias.
- adrianratnapala 8y ago
  Sadly, there is no substitute for careful reading. History books will always be subtly representing the historians biases, even as the present a lot of detailed facts. The Wikipedia is no different. But it still allows the interested-amateur to do a breadth-first study of a topic without drilling down into a whole book. In both cases, the reader can't assume that she has seen an unbiased (whatever that means) story. But she can glean enough facts to be less ignorant about the topic than before.
oefrha 8y ago
Mathematics on Wikipedia is top notch (my training was in mathematics so I can say this with a high level of certainty), but mathematics is hardly controversial. Not surprisingly, the more controversial the topic, the more biased Wikipedia gets. Try to look up any controversial political topic, current or historical, in most cases the objectivity and comprehensiveness of articles are highly questionable. Also, you would hardly ever see edit wars on math topics, but they happen all the time on politics.
- scriptkiddy 8y ago
  Any online resources you could recommend to someone looking to learn some higher level math? The highest I ever got in school was the beginnings of Calculus and I'd like to dig a little deeper. However, I keep running into the issue of not really understanding all of the Greek symbology.

simias 8y ago

The discussion about "bias" and perceived "neutrality" is one that I see ten times a day on the internet and it truly baffles me. When it comes to hard sciences it makes a certain amount of sense but as soon as you enter any kind of social or political subject then good luck finding the "neutral" point of view. And even if you actually manage to find it somehow that won't stop people on either side of the issue to say that you're biased. As such arguing about Wikipedia's biases is a waste of time. For instance I see people in this thread who seem to argue that qualifying GamerGate as a harassment campaign is biased, personally I think it's a fairly accurate description of the movement. Am I wrong? Maybe, but good luck settling that. Ditto with, say, anything regarding the Venezuelan situation, Donald Trump etc... Look at the discussion thread for Wikipedia articles about subjects like astrology, homeopathy, climate change or the holocaust and you'll find people with fringe opinions accusing Wikipedia of bias. I think the most important factor is not this absurd concept of neutrality, what matters is honesty. Are the authors deliberately trying to hide or misrepresent some of the facts in order to push a narrative? Are they genuinely trying to inform or do they have ulterior motives? Clearly paying an editor to whitewash an article is not honest so that's a big problem for me.

sandworm101 8y ago
Because in a post-truth world the person who controls wikipedia controls reality. Those fringe opinions can and do become true. Whether they are actually true in the past is irrelevant. If you can keep it on Wikipedia long enough people will act on it as if it were true. Just look at what happened when wikipedia updated Pi to be 3.14159265358. Within weeks it started appearing in scientific papers. I'd bet good money that spaceX is using that number to launch spacecraft. Whether that is the true value of Pi is irrelevant. The wikipedia collective has decreed that that number and so it is now our scientific truth.
- shortoncash 8y ago
  I agree with you in principle. I'll add that we've been in a post-truth world since mass media, long before internet use became mainstream. We shouldn't act like this is a new problem just because people got comfortable with the way the previous information-overlords managed to do things.

curlypaul924 8y ago

I've suspected for a while that the pharmaceutical companies are manipulating the drug pages on wikipedia. Often I'll come across a claim about a drug and then click on the reference, only to find that the reference says something completely different from the wikipedia article. I don't have an example off-hand, but it's something to keep in mind: always check the references rather than blindly accepting what wikipedia says. (Related, wikipedia's policy of only accepting secondary sources is similarly problematic, because often the secondary sources say something completely different from the primary source. I understand the need for the policy -- it makes it more difficult someone from writing an article just to manipulate wikipedia -- but again, it underscores the need not just to check wikipedia's reference, but also to check the primary source).

reaperducer 8y ago
wikipedia's policy of only accepting secondary sources is similarly problematic This is why I stopped contributing. Article about a radio station where I was in management and selected the call letters? I added the meaning of the call letters to a Wikipedia article. Rejected because I'm not a secondary source. Added an article about a dial-up BBS network that did store-and-forward e-mail a decade before the internet went mainstream. I ran one of they key nodes. Rejected because I'm not a computer magazine available in archive.org. Added an article about what was probably the world's first online cartoon series (helped with distribution, since this was pre-internet). Rejected. Same reason. I as a journalist at the scene of an event when it happened and watched it unfold before my eyes. Added some information to that event's entry in Wikipedia. Rejected. The irony is that if there was a copy of the broadcast I did on the event, that would be perfectly OK. But the people who patrol the sources on Wikipedia are under the impression that there was no recorded history before the internet.
- PhasmaFelis 8y ago
  I can see the argument that they want sources people can check and evaluate for themselves. You're a legitimate expert, but anyone with a bit of sense can claim to be an expert and appear just as credible to a layman. Faking a credible secondary source is not impossible, but it is difficult--a "news" site that opened three months ago and only has articles on subjects linked to Wikipedia sources is pretty obviously fake. I wonder if there's some sort of happy medium. Maybe a thing where legit experts can submit credentials to be cleared by the moderators, the way Reddit verifies identities for AMAs. You'd still be expected to source everything you can, but eyewitness details could be sourced to your verified credentials. (Which could then be re-reviewed en masse if you start posting bullshit later on.)