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Political content is a landmine, articles are often locked because vandals are often indistinguishable from those with better information but still controversia

Political content is a landmine, articles are often locked because vandals are often indistinguishable from those with better information but still controversial.

Macha 6y ago
One example: Britishfinance/"Ireland as a tax haven"[1] Summary: A user, Britishfinance (believed to be Paddy Cosgrave, disgruntled founder of the web summit, a major EU tech event that moved from Ireland to Lisbon as the Irish government wouldn't give him what he wanted) spent about a year primarily editing articles related to Ireland to make a link of claims about the country being a tax haven the most prominent feature of them. Case in point, look at the overview for the article on Ireland after the user edited it [2]. It's since been rolled back somewhat by other wikipedia editors who felt that was a disproportionate amount of space given to that discussion. But Wikipedia isn't so well equipped to handle this kind of dispute. 1. Ireland certainly has benefited from its tax policies, including both competitive but undisputed to be the right of the country, like having a lower corporate headline tax rate than its neighbours, and 2. Ireland has been involved in tax loopholes, such as the now defunct double irish/dutch sandwich stuff 3. You can find sourced articles for all of this. So at what point does putting this information as the most prominent information in a wide variety of Ireland related articles cross from being just adding facts to encyclopedia articles to being politically motivated? When one side is an active wikipedia admin and the other side is a bunch of casual editors or users who don't edit, who gets the benefit of the doubt? 1: https://old.reddit.com/r/ireland/comments/bgyfet/til_theres_a_wikipedia_editor_called/ https://old.reddit.com/r/ireland/comments/bgyfet/til_theres_... 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Republic_of_Ireland&oldid=837235350 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Republic_of_Irela...
- andrepd 6y ago
  All very well and true, but isn't this also a problem in closed encylopedias?? Surely even a paid editor has her biases, and at the very least would have to make a judgement call on whether or not to include that information in the opening paragraph and so on. Wikipedia actually has the advantage here as the discussion is completely open and you can see the all arguments and the process that led to a decision.
- jerry1979 6y ago
  Should I believe that the Republic of Ireland's wikipedia entry had an issue with how it talked about taxes, but now wikipedia has corrected that issue?
robin21 6y ago
Yeh if you read the talk pages (which are hard to find and many people wouldn’t even know about) you will find so many people pushing an agenda rather than trying to adhere to some neutrality. Small subtle changes designed to push someone’s world view. I think it’s so rare these days to find people who can remain objective and leave their opinions at the door. Everyone seems fueled by rage, it’s like their political views are their purpose in life.

Political content is a landmine, articles are often locked because vandals are often indistinguishable from those with better information but still controversial.

Macha 6y ago

One example: Britishfinance/"Ireland as a tax haven"[1] Summary: A user, Britishfinance (believed to be Paddy Cosgrave, disgruntled founder of the web summit, a major EU tech event that moved from Ireland to Lisbon as the Irish government wouldn't give him what he wanted) spent about a year primarily editing articles related to Ireland to make a link of claims about the country being a tax haven the most prominent feature of them. Case in point, look at the overview for the article on Ireland after the user edited it [2]. It's since been rolled back somewhat by other wikipedia editors who felt that was a disproportionate amount of space given to that discussion. But Wikipedia isn't so well equipped to handle this kind of dispute. 1. Ireland certainly has benefited from its tax policies, including both competitive but undisputed to be the right of the country, like having a lower corporate headline tax rate than its neighbours, and 2. Ireland has been involved in tax loopholes, such as the now defunct double irish/dutch sandwich stuff 3. You can find sourced articles for all of this. So at what point does putting this information as the most prominent information in a wide variety of Ireland related articles cross from being just adding facts to encyclopedia articles to being politically motivated? When one side is an active wikipedia admin and the other side is a bunch of casual editors or users who don't edit, who gets the benefit of the doubt? 1: https://old.reddit.com/r/ireland/comments/bgyfet/til_theres_a_wikipedia_editor_called/ https://old.reddit.com/r/ireland/comments/bgyfet/til_theres_... 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Republic_of_Ireland&oldid=837235350 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Republic_of_Irela...

andrepd 6y ago
All very well and true, but isn't this also a problem in closed encylopedias?? Surely even a paid editor has her biases, and at the very least would have to make a judgement call on whether or not to include that information in the opening paragraph and so on. Wikipedia actually has the advantage here as the discussion is completely open and you can see the all arguments and the process that led to a decision.
jerry1979 6y ago
Should I believe that the Republic of Ireland's wikipedia entry had an issue with how it talked about taxes, but now wikipedia has corrected that issue?

robin21 6y ago

Yeh if you read the talk pages (which are hard to find and many people wouldn’t even know about) you will find so many people pushing an agenda rather than trying to adhere to some neutrality. Small subtle changes designed to push someone’s world view. I think it’s so rare these days to find people who can remain objective and leave their opinions at the door. Everyone seems fueled by rage, it’s like their political views are their purpose in life.