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Wikipedia's editors are significantly biased. Any somewhat political article is extremely left leaning. God forbid you have to use it for research of any poli

Wikipedia's editors are significantly biased. Any somewhat political article is extremely left leaning. God forbid you have to use it for research of any political topic, always check the references and compare to right leaning sources. It's funny because their critique of DM can be applied to Wikipedia as a whole.

freeflight 5y ago
> Any somewhat political article is extremely left leaning. I've seen that same argument before to argue how the Nazis, and modern neo-Nazi groups are supposedly all "left wing", their categorization on Wikipedia as right wing and far right is allegedly only the result of that very same "left leaning" bias you are claiming. Which, as a German, is just a tad bit weird, because it wasn't Wikipedia that defined these groups as such, those results come out of the political sciences. Nazis being right-wing, and neo-Nazis having moved further into the far-right is a very established fact in Germany.
- throwaway4china 5y ago
  You can pick out a single article that we may all agree on, but my point still stands that overall Wikipedia's political articles are biased to the left. Even Wikipedia's co-founder agrees https://larrysanger.org/2020/05/wikipedia-is-badly-biased/ https://larrysanger.org/2020/05/wikipedia-is-badly-biased/
  - freeflight 5y ago
    > Even Wikipedia's co-founder agrees Those are some odd examples... On one hand he complains Obama's article doesn't mention the Benghazi Attack, when that's actually listed as one of the events during his first term. On the other hand Trump's article doesn't mention the 2019 attack against the US embassy in Baghdad. The choice of topics after that doesn't help dispel the notion of the author having a bit of an bias issue himself: Abortion, Jesus (a whole lot of that), global warming and vaccines. It's like a best-of of the deeper ends of American conservative talking points, the only thing missing is 2A and some good old "teach the controversy". Particularly that Jesus part is very difficult for me to take serious: Recognizing that the biblical Jesus is mostly a myth is not "bias", as much as it might offend some religious sensibilities.
    - throwaway4china 5y ago
      You're not being genuine if you are trying to argue that the coverage of liberals on Wikipedia is the same as conservatives. Possibly you don't notice the biases because you agree with them, but it's there. There's a reason why there's a Conservapedia. https://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Examples_of_Bias_in_Wikipedia https://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Examples_of_Bi... This situation pretty much reflects the state of all outlets, there's few if any places with no bias, you have to cross reference sources with each other and decide for yourself, especially for politically charged topics. Wikipedia cannot be trusted by itself because they usually do not allow right leaning sources or edits even if they are factually correct. They are very lenient to liberal sources even if they are blatantly false. - edit: replying to the commenter below - I did not say Conservapedia is the arbiter of truth or a non-bias source. This is where their religious biases show, at least they are honest about it in the naming and function of their site. The problem with Wikipedia is they masquerade as a bias-free collection of sources, which is false.
      - freeflight 5y ago
        > You're not being genuine if you are trying to argue that the coverage of liberals on Wikipedia is the same as conservatives. And you are injecting a lot of your very uniquely American biases and perceptions into something where they don't really apply. Wikipedia has over 140.000 active contributors across over 200 languages. Your notion that all of them have conspired to suppress American conservatives in favor of "liberals", across dozens of different languages, is frankly quite a bit out there and reminiscent of that whole "cultural Marxism" narrative. That's not to say that Wikipedia doesn't have its issues, it has them, but jumping from there to something that could very well be described as a conspiracy theory, is reaching a bit far. > There's a reason why there's a Conservapedia. There's also a RationalWiki, a PsychonautWiki, a GayPedia, there's a Wookieepedia, there's a Wiki for pretty much everything. The existence of these is not evidence for a lack of such topics on actual Wikipedia, it's merely evidence of more specialized communities creating their own specialized Wikipedias where they can take things to details and dept that would usually be considered inappropriate for a general encyclopedia.
  - arp242 5y ago
    Larry Sanger hasn't been involved in Wikipedia for almost 20 years. He's just a random person on the internet, one with some feelings of animosity towards Wikipedia to boot – he's hardly neutral. Wikipedia has its problems, but an article that complains "Oh no, Wikipedia calls Trump a liar!" from someone with a chip on his shoulder about Wikipedia in general is silly.
- jasonfarnon 5y ago
  Their name has "socialist" right in the middle of it. You might argue over definitions of socialism and whether it's left or right. But I don't think you can say "a group that calls itself socialist has at least this one left-leaning trait" isn't a position reasonable people can disagree on. What I find worse than people going both ways on wether nazis are left or right leaning, is someone in a position of authority like wikipedia saying, one side is objectively right [about a question that isn't even rigorously posed] and will be treated as such.
  - the_only_law 5y ago
    I suppose you believe the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea is democratic then?
    - jasonfarnon 5y ago
      Oh, I don't think socialism is only in the name of nazis, I think their nationalization of many practices and aspects of culture is key. Do you think "nazis had socialist tendencies" is a position that no reasonable people can take? I didn't mean to suggest taking the name itself as the only evidence of socialism.
      - danans 5y ago
        > Do you think "nazis had socialist tendencies" is a position that no reasonable people can take? Yes, because a socialism that benefits only members of the "Aryan race" while excluding, oppressing and murdering others in the same country is not socialism at all.
        throwaway4china 5y ago
        I'd say that's a staple of socialism/communism/marxism. From Mao to Venezuela, the core idea depends upon excluding, oppressing, and murder of others in the same country based on class. The only thing different about the Nazis is they targeted by race not class, though Communist China is targeting Uighur and other minorities in their country.
- jokethrowaway 5y ago
  That's a well established fact everywhere. That's what every kid studies in school. I don't think it's correct. The main problem is that left wing and right wing are meaningless terms. Left and right generally apply to the economical sphere which goes from communism (entirely state operated economy) to libertarianism (entirely de-regulated market). Usually when people talk about left wing vs right wing they attach some authoritarian / anarchic connotations. The politicalcompass.org (which is kind of left leaning) has a nice explanation of this problem. Going back to nazis: if you look at their policies and how the economy operated in nazi Germany, nazis are closer to socialism than libertarianism. There is a nice analysis here: https://mises.org/library/why-nazism-was-socialism-and-why-socialism-totalitarian https://mises.org/library/why-nazism-was-socialism-and-why-s... Sure, Hitler may have been to the right of Stalin, but he was much more left leaning than any of nowadays left wing parties.

freeflight 5y ago

> Any somewhat political article is extremely left leaning. I've seen that same argument before to argue how the Nazis, and modern neo-Nazi groups are supposedly all "left wing", their categorization on Wikipedia as right wing and far right is allegedly only the result of that very same "left leaning" bias you are claiming. Which, as a German, is just a tad bit weird, because it wasn't Wikipedia that defined these groups as such, those results come out of the political sciences. Nazis being right-wing, and neo-Nazis having moved further into the far-right is a very established fact in Germany.

throwaway4china 5y ago
You can pick out a single article that we may all agree on, but my point still stands that overall Wikipedia's political articles are biased to the left. Even Wikipedia's co-founder agrees https://larrysanger.org/2020/05/wikipedia-is-badly-biased/ https://larrysanger.org/2020/05/wikipedia-is-badly-biased/
- freeflight 5y ago
  > Even Wikipedia's co-founder agrees Those are some odd examples... On one hand he complains Obama's article doesn't mention the Benghazi Attack, when that's actually listed as one of the events during his first term. On the other hand Trump's article doesn't mention the 2019 attack against the US embassy in Baghdad. The choice of topics after that doesn't help dispel the notion of the author having a bit of an bias issue himself: Abortion, Jesus (a whole lot of that), global warming and vaccines. It's like a best-of of the deeper ends of American conservative talking points, the only thing missing is 2A and some good old "teach the controversy". Particularly that Jesus part is very difficult for me to take serious: Recognizing that the biblical Jesus is mostly a myth is not "bias", as much as it might offend some religious sensibilities.
  - throwaway4china 5y ago
    You're not being genuine if you are trying to argue that the coverage of liberals on Wikipedia is the same as conservatives. Possibly you don't notice the biases because you agree with them, but it's there. There's a reason why there's a Conservapedia. https://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Examples_of_Bias_in_Wikipedia https://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Examples_of_Bi... This situation pretty much reflects the state of all outlets, there's few if any places with no bias, you have to cross reference sources with each other and decide for yourself, especially for politically charged topics. Wikipedia cannot be trusted by itself because they usually do not allow right leaning sources or edits even if they are factually correct. They are very lenient to liberal sources even if they are blatantly false. - edit: replying to the commenter below - I did not say Conservapedia is the arbiter of truth or a non-bias source. This is where their religious biases show, at least they are honest about it in the naming and function of their site. The problem with Wikipedia is they masquerade as a bias-free collection of sources, which is false.
    - freeflight 5y ago
      > You're not being genuine if you are trying to argue that the coverage of liberals on Wikipedia is the same as conservatives. And you are injecting a lot of your very uniquely American biases and perceptions into something where they don't really apply. Wikipedia has over 140.000 active contributors across over 200 languages. Your notion that all of them have conspired to suppress American conservatives in favor of "liberals", across dozens of different languages, is frankly quite a bit out there and reminiscent of that whole "cultural Marxism" narrative. That's not to say that Wikipedia doesn't have its issues, it has them, but jumping from there to something that could very well be described as a conspiracy theory, is reaching a bit far. > There's a reason why there's a Conservapedia. There's also a RationalWiki, a PsychonautWiki, a GayPedia, there's a Wookieepedia, there's a Wiki for pretty much everything. The existence of these is not evidence for a lack of such topics on actual Wikipedia, it's merely evidence of more specialized communities creating their own specialized Wikipedias where they can take things to details and dept that would usually be considered inappropriate for a general encyclopedia.
- arp242 5y ago
  Larry Sanger hasn't been involved in Wikipedia for almost 20 years. He's just a random person on the internet, one with some feelings of animosity towards Wikipedia to boot – he's hardly neutral. Wikipedia has its problems, but an article that complains "Oh no, Wikipedia calls Trump a liar!" from someone with a chip on his shoulder about Wikipedia in general is silly.
jasonfarnon 5y ago
Their name has "socialist" right in the middle of it. You might argue over definitions of socialism and whether it's left or right. But I don't think you can say "a group that calls itself socialist has at least this one left-leaning trait" isn't a position reasonable people can disagree on. What I find worse than people going both ways on wether nazis are left or right leaning, is someone in a position of authority like wikipedia saying, one side is objectively right [about a question that isn't even rigorously posed] and will be treated as such.
- the_only_law 5y ago
  I suppose you believe the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea is democratic then?
  - jasonfarnon 5y ago
    Oh, I don't think socialism is only in the name of nazis, I think their nationalization of many practices and aspects of culture is key. Do you think "nazis had socialist tendencies" is a position that no reasonable people can take? I didn't mean to suggest taking the name itself as the only evidence of socialism.
    - danans 5y ago
      > Do you think "nazis had socialist tendencies" is a position that no reasonable people can take? Yes, because a socialism that benefits only members of the "Aryan race" while excluding, oppressing and murdering others in the same country is not socialism at all.
      - throwaway4china 5y ago
        I'd say that's a staple of socialism/communism/marxism. From Mao to Venezuela, the core idea depends upon excluding, oppressing, and murder of others in the same country based on class. The only thing different about the Nazis is they targeted by race not class, though Communist China is targeting Uighur and other minorities in their country.
jokethrowaway 5y ago
That's a well established fact everywhere. That's what every kid studies in school. I don't think it's correct. The main problem is that left wing and right wing are meaningless terms. Left and right generally apply to the economical sphere which goes from communism (entirely state operated economy) to libertarianism (entirely de-regulated market). Usually when people talk about left wing vs right wing they attach some authoritarian / anarchic connotations. The politicalcompass.org (which is kind of left leaning) has a nice explanation of this problem. Going back to nazis: if you look at their policies and how the economy operated in nazi Germany, nazis are closer to socialism than libertarianism. There is a nice analysis here: https://mises.org/library/why-nazism-was-socialism-and-why-socialism-totalitarian https://mises.org/library/why-nazism-was-socialism-and-why-s... Sure, Hitler may have been to the right of Stalin, but he was much more left leaning than any of nowadays left wing parties.