11 ms·

Wikipedia Is More One-Sided Than Ever

78 points by preordained 5y ago

iratic0 5y ago
Great effort in this article, which will unfortunately be shot down due to the exact biases and awarelessness described in the article.
tekacs 5y ago
https://archive.is/oEbam https://archive.is/oEbam ... since the site seems to be down as of this writing.
- jessedhillon 5y ago
  I cannot understand how, almost 20 years after it was first created, a default install of WordPress still falls down gracelessly when faced with any significant traffic. There's no reason why a sensible default configuration can't automatically serve a cached version of an article. As it is, the default posture of WP is to be software suitable for those who write things that very few people will read.
ravenstine 5y ago
There's so much bad information on Wikipedia that at this point I hardly use it outside of using it as a launching pad for research related to health and science. If you want to learn about people, current events, and history, you might be better off not taking it very seriously. All you have to do is read the Talk sections of pages to understand how hypocritical and petty the inner circle of Wikipedia editors can be.
- hypertele-Xii 5y ago
  Can you give an example of bad information on Wikipedia?
  - commandlinefan 5y ago
    The linked article gives several.
    - cyberge99 5y ago
      The linked article also didn’t mention that the Capitol Insurrection was one of the most important political events of 2021. Cherry picked nonsense. Garbage article.
      - justshowpost 5y ago
        It was an invasion and mentioned as so in the article. For an insurrection and even a coup there are designated leftist propaganda outlets like NYT.
- julienfr112 5y ago
  Like democraty, it's very bad, but hey, what else do we have !
- the_third_wave 5y ago
  Wikipedia is fine for looking up information about chemical compounds, see what the flag of a given country looks like, read about some physics, maths, hardware-related information and other things which have not yet been politicised. Anything which has been politicised - and that category is getting bigger and bigger - should be read with a critical [1] lens, filtering out the politics which often makes its way into the articles. Whether it is an "Analysis" section based on critical theory which suddenly appears in articles about cartoon characters or myopic reporting on historical events, Wikipedia shows its lack of resistance against concerted attempts to inject ideology into its pages. It is a modern example the tragedy of the commons where people with an ideological axe to grind don't care that they are destroying the reputation of the medium by abusing it for their own political purposes. Just like the medium of email was almost brought to its knees by spammers who cared only for their own profits, the medium of "news" - NNTP - was brought to its knees by a combination of the "eternal September" [2] and the explosion of feed sizes caused by "pirates" (ab)using NNTP to distribute large binaries in the bin groups, so now Wikipedia has fallen victim to zealous editors "colonising" "their" subjects, not allowing any edits which go against their own ideology. [1] really critical, not "critical theory" critical [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September (using Wikipedia to point out Wikipedia is biased)
  - _lettucehead 5y ago
    Re [1] - critical is a word.
    - the_third_wave 5y ago
      It is. It has a specific meaning which can be found in printed dictionaries from a few years ago. While language evolves and words can gain new meanings in time this process has been radically sped up in the last few years with the emergence of a multitude of "critical" theories into the public discourse - critical race theory being the one most often mentioned but there are many more. What these all have in common is that they are off-shoots of Critical Theory [1] which Encyclopaedia Britannica describes as [a] Marxist-inspired movement in social and political philosophy originally associated with the work of the Frankfurt School. Drawing particularly on the thought of Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud, critical theorists maintain that a primary goal of philosophy is to understand and to help overcome the social structures through which people are dominated and oppressed. One of the hallmarks of these "critical" theories is that they tend to use common words like "critical" to indicate different concepts [2] from those which these words actually mean, hence the distinction. The critical eye to be used should be the one following the concept outlined in §2.2 of the Oxford English Dictionary's description of the adjective critical: 2.2 Involving the objective analysis and evaluation of an issue in order to form a judgement. ‘professors often find it difficult to encourage critical thinking amongst their students’ When words change their meaning in a natural way this is called language evolution. When this change is being pushed to serve an agenda it is called language revolution, or revolutionary language. That is why I made the distinction between a critical eye and an eye guided by critical theory. [1] https://www.britannica.com/topic/critical-theory https://www.britannica.com/topic/critical-theory [2] https://newdiscourses.com/tftw-critical/ https://newdiscourses.com/tftw-critical/
voldacar 5y ago
This is a well-written article that exceeded my expectations. It's easy to just point to petty examples of bias, I love that this author just picks a few polarizing topics and explores in detail how WP treats them.
- eldavojohn 5y ago
  This is a very poorly written article that myopically focuses on only the most extremely recent events in the culture war. Wouldn't a better article look at how wikipedia handles, say, the the civil rights act of 1964 and the rise of Evangelicism? Things that are, you know, many years ago and should be much more stable articles than these fly-by-night everyone is having a conniption over at this very moment? Reading this article is kind of like I'm watching Jerry Springer except it's not as entertaining. As things stabilize the articles get better and as time stretches to infinity so too does the editing work eliminate bias on Wikipedia. Is it the greatest thing ever that you should unquestioningly read? Not even close. The author thinks it should be impossibly neutral. Nirvana fallacy.
  - wrycoder 5y ago
    It's rather hard to find examples from the other side of the aisle on Wikipedia.
  - voldacar 5y ago
    Ah so newly created articles are "noisy" in terms of bias and over time they quiet down and approach a neutral point of view? if this is true, you should be able to show me a bunch of articles about polarizing current events that are heavily biased in the opposite direction to the ones featured in the article. (I don't think this is possible, therefore I think you are wrong)
    - eldavojohn 5y ago
      Nowhere did I claim that there were equally slanted liberal compared to conservative changes. Are we going to play the "reality has a well known liberal bias" game? Am I supposed to find articles on wikipedia that claim Biden lost the election or that no one should get a vaccine? I mean, this is a political statement: "Now that we have tons of vaccines, every death due to covid is a travesty." You know at least in the USA it's hard to find mainstream media that is conservative because those views have become so asinine. Is that my problem? Is that Wikipedia's problem? What next? Are you going to complain that 98% of college professors are liberal? Okay, go change it. Enjoy trying to get people who enjoy liberal endeavors to promote conservative views. Am I shocked that the people who want to freely edit and debate articles on a website for no profit happen to slant liberal? Not really. > (I don't think this is possible, therefore I think you are wrong) What part exactly was I wrong about? I suggested you look at articles from 30-50 years ago and point out the liberal slant. Instead you invented a claim that I did not make so that I would be incorrect. Strawman. If we cared enough about this, we'd all be reading conservapedia.com.
walkedaway 5y ago
Wikipedia has been on this slippery slope since the late 2000s, and its inability to maintain objective/neutral articles is the reason I stopped my large contributions back then. Just look at wikipedia's one-sidedness relative to "kids in cages" of Obama vs Trump vs Biden. Holy cow, I didn't realize their bias had gotten this bad.
bruce343434 5y ago
Why is this article dead? I thought it was great and definitely makes you think. I myself am not from the U.S., so most of it I had no idea of either way. But I think there's still a gem in this article. I thought the dilemma of neutrality vs objectivity was also interesting. It seems these goals are directly at odds, and if you are writing an encyclopedia you can only achieve one. You can give multiple sides an even amount of attention, including a possibly, objectively wrong perspective. Or, you can forego neutrality and go for objectivity. But, many social issues are precisely subjective and fuzzy. I understand wanting an objective picture, I can even imagine why fox news might not be top of the shelf journalism, but TFA makes a point: sometimes they can be the only ones reporting on a side. And if you are neutral, you must not take sides. The example of Switserland was interesting, as they had to tolerate the nazis as well to remain truly neutral. Do you want neutrality? Or objectivity? Then, what is objective in some of these issues, where we simply don't have all the information, or worse, fuzzy and subjective issues?
- 11thEarlOfMar 5y ago
  No to mention that the author is the co-founder of Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Sanger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Sanger
  - jfengel 5y ago
    Who left almost immediately, and has been railing at Wikipedia ever since. (He also said a lot of negative things about Wikileaks, cited in the Wikipedia article you link.)
    - zozbot234 5y ago
      "Almost immediately", not really. He had major influence on Wikipedia's early policy decisions, including NPOV itself. And he's not even wrong about verifiability and reliability of sourcing being sometimes in tension with NPOV; it's just that the latter is meaningless without the former.
- legitster 5y ago
mountainb 5y ago
The larger issue for me as a former heavy Wikipedia user is the poor quality of web citations. I cannot use it as a research aid if the citations go nowhere and when they go somewhere it’s to a useless source which has no citations or citations that go nowhere. Free resources also tend to be valueless. Archive.org is a far better free resource because it consistently provides access to top tier sources from real libraries. Wikipedia has an unusable gibberish article on every topic if you want to be misinformed about it. Even on popular historical topics you are generally getting thinly sourced fan fiction with inaccuracies sprinkled in. A Wikipedia user is just reading misinformation to gain the illusion of knowledge. The less said about the sewage in the contemporary topic pages the better, although Sanger does a good job describing the issue, anyone who trusted those pages in the first place has brain damage, so it’s not like something glorious or valuable has been wrecked there. It started off bad and became worse.
zozbot234 5y ago
> " ... And Wikipedia thought there were no reliable sources at all? Why not?" The reason is that the sources that provide mainstream coverage of conservative points of view, including Fox News, The New York Post, and the (U.K.) Daily Mail—as well as pretty much all of newer conservative news media sources, which are the only outlets doing any reporting on many important stories—have all been added to a list of sources "deprecated" for their coverage of political news. ... Yes, and they've been deprecated because they kept making stuff up, over and over again. Whether they're right and doing important reporting in any single instance is entirely beside the point, they still can't be trusted to be accurate and that's what matters.
- legitster 5y ago
  It's pretty telling that most of this article is "Wikipedia is biased because they don't use enough right-wing sources" and doesn't spend much time defending those actual sources' integrity.
- the_third_wave 5y ago
  The problem here is that this aversion to sources which have been caught making up things is mostly limited to "conservative" sources. While sources like the Daily Mail are considered to be off-limits there is no rule against using the New York Times or the Washington Post, both of whom have been caught making up things. This is what Sanger reacts to, not the mere fact that there are sources which are deemed to be unreliable.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - ambirex 5y ago
    Except the NYT and Wapo have a much better history of correcting mistakes. Comparing Daily Mail and NY Post to other serious news organizations is really an apple to oranges comparison.
    - the_third_wave 5y ago
MattGaiser 5y ago
> The reason is that the sources that provide mainstream coverage of conservative points of view, including Fox News, The New York Post, and the (U.K.) Daily Mail—as well as pretty much all of newer conservative news media sources, which are the only outlets doing any reporting on many important stories—have all been added to a list of sources "deprecated" for their coverage of political news. As conservatism is increasingly a cult of nonsense. They aren't willing to bring any of the supposed election fraud evidence to court because it either doesn't exist or is so absurdly ridiculous that those who presented it would be disbarred. Wikipedia neutrality applies to viewpoints, not information.
- commandlinefan 5y ago
  > They aren't willing to bring any of the supposed election fraud evidence Hm - I recall they did try to bring it to the supreme court and the court declined to hear the case.
  - MattGaiser 5y ago
    Texas v. Pennsylvania was about procedures for changing election procedures. I don't recall any fraud being alleged, just Texas saying they did not need to prove it as it was possible.
  - weakfish 5y ago
    Well, you have to have a basic set of evidence for any court to hear it. That was lacking.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > Hm - I recall they did try to bring it to the supreme court and the court declined to hear the case. They brought lots of election cases, but they didn't bring allegations of fraud in most of them (Giuliani got chastised by a judge in one case for going on a tirade about fraud even though the case he was arguing did not allege fraud), and in the cases where they initially made fraud or fraud-adjacent claims, those claimsnl were often withdrawn before the case was resolved. Fraud has been something they’ve argued in the media, and in GOP controlled state legilaative show hearings, but not really (at least properly) in court.
commandlinefan 5y ago
I can't really get my head around how every well-known internet source - Google, Twitter, Facebook, Wikipedia, Reddit - is so left-wing. I know that they like to defend their biases (when they confess to them, anyway) with Stephen Colbert's "reality has a liberal bias" quote, but right or wrong, there are a lot of people who disagree with leftist politics and even more who disagree with the extreme fringes which seem to dominate the "default" internet. It's even stranger when you consider that the early internet was right-ish libertarian leaning.
- shadowgovt 5y ago
  > It's even stranger when you consider that the early internet was right-ish libertarian leaning. Yes, that is strange. Perhaps what has changed is not the leaning of the political alignment of people who frequent the internet, but the political landscape against which concepts like "liberal" or "conservative" are applied?
srl 5y ago
OP focuses on extremely contentious issues, but these are (as OP and other commenters note) exactly where our own biases can make it most difficult to accurately decide whether a source is being truly neutral. I think the clearest evidence of distortions in Wikipedia is found in less-contentious (although still politically coded) topics. A couple months back I encountered a striking example: the Wikipedia article on "Balance of trade" [1]. An important object-level question is "are trade deficits bad?". (I have no real opinion on this question, because hey, I'm not an economist --- none of this is about the object-level question!) For those who live under an even larger rock than I do, Trump sided with "yes", causing a predictable sorting of opinions in US politics. The article leans very strongly in the direction of "no", stating above the fold: > The notion that bilateral trade deficits are bad in and of themselves is overwhelmingly rejected by trade experts and economists. There follow 5 citations, of which 4 are articles about Trump. (Three mention Trump in the title.) The claim is repeated in the body of the article; it's the first sentence in the section "Views on Economic Impact". But the very next sentence is > According to the IMF trade deficits can cause a balance of payments problem, which can affect foreign exchange shortages and hurt countries. The paragraph structure makes it seem like this is a sentence in support of the thesis, but it's really not. And the very next sentence, again, is on negative effects of trade deficits: > On the other hand, Joseph Stiglitz points out that countries running surpluses exert a "negative externality" on trading partners, and pose a threat to global prosperity, far more than those in deficit. Note that this specific claim of "negative externalities" is very similar to the strongly politically coded claim that this article and its citations are so keen to claim is "overwhelmingly rejected". The following sentence is on negative effects of eurozone imbalances, but I'll stop quoting here. I've seen similar patterns on other articles, but this is the clearest example. The article actually reads as something that was once a representative hodge-podge of arguments for and against, and then had to be "fixed" in the days of Trump and brexit to avoid confusing hapless readers. It's relatively petty, but note another sentence above the fold: > The notion of the balance of trade does not mean that exports and imports are "in balance" with each other. This sort of pre-emptive heading off of common misconceptions is not encyclopedic. There are only seven sentences above the TOC, and one of them is this! (For instance, I checked the article on "quantum superposition", and no similar sentence is included, despite the obvious and common misconceptions.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balance_of_trade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balance_of_trade
unpopularopp 5y ago
My main problem with Wikipedia how almost every article is already "claimed" by an editor/editors and a peasant like me has no chance to fix factual errors. (made up) example: I live in a small town which has a blue stone in a square but the Wikipedia article says it's red. I went, made a photo that it's blue but Wikipedia doesn't accept it (several roadblocks to use your own photo, set up license, use correctly in the article etc.) then the editors just shut it down because there is no outside 3rd party source (just my photo, you can't reference yourself). So yeah I gave up and I hate it. And probs the editors never been here or I'd not even be surprised if they not even live in the same country.
commandlinefan 5y ago
If you're wondering who the author is: > To the best of my knowledge, I was first described in the press as co-founder of Wikipedia back in September 2001 by The New York Times. This isn't just some right-wing wingnut raging against liberals.
- pyuser583 5y ago
  Thank!! That is a really important fact I missed reading the article.
- jaybrendansmith 5y ago
  Minor Correction: He is a co-founder of Wikipedia who happens to have become a right-wing wingnut. All of his examples cite sources known to have issues presenting facts. Either a media organization attempts to report facts, meaning it stays neutral, verifies sources, submits retractions, and avoids 'people are saying...' kinds of queries, or it does not. If it does not, that means it is not a credible source of information. I would suggest that he try to clean up his sources a bit and resubmit perhaps?
legitster 5y ago
There are legitimate complaints to be made about Wikipedia. It's a pity this author chooses his handful of pet political issues and spends most of time arguing about the summary sections of certain pages. And most of the complaints are "how come they aren't making a big deal about the things I want them to". Man, can you believe how unfair Wikipedia is to Stalin? They didn't talk about any of the nice things people said about him? Ultimately, these complaints are incredibly self-defeating. The point about Wikipedia is that literally anyone can change it. If you don't like the information presented, you are more than free to actually fix it instead of bitching on the internet. But it turns out you will actually have to put in research, provide valuable information, work with other volunteers to establish consensus, and survive the scrutiny of every reader. And no on will pat you on the back or hand you internet points. And it turns out that a lot of these random ideas, like Hunter Biden's totally real laptop or the deep state plants in the January 6th riots might very well be true, but in no way do we get to stop the train on every stop so that every fringe viewpoint can get on board. Or no one who believes in this stuff is actually willing to put in the work. If your entire political identity is that you would rather pick up your ball and go home to complain rather than put in the work to establish your points, I say good riddance. I don't want your lazy tropes on Wikipedia.
- bruce343434 5y ago
  > but in no way do we get to stop the train on every stop so that every fringe viewpoint can get on board TFA describes that this is actually exactly what true "neutrality" is, and that wikipedia alleges to aim to be neutral.
  - legitster 5y ago
    > "Neutral Point of View" is a fundamental principle of Wikipedia and of other Wikimedia projects. It is also one of Wikipedia's three core content policies; the other two are "Verifiability" and "No original research". OP is conveniently forgetting the other two Wikipedia requirements.
- wrycoder 5y ago
  If the article is politicized, and many are, or "owned", like so many are, you will be quickly reverted. You will find that the "owners" are most persistent!
morpheos137 5y ago
It seems to me a core cause of this problem is enabling a relatively small cabal of power users to determine what is and is not a reliable source. A neutral wikipedia should despense with the "reliable source" requirement. Let the reader make up his own mind. It is astounding that an english lanuage reader will find basic facts and details about the Biden scandals censored by wikipedia because no "reliable" sources reported on them.
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  I believe that Larry Sanger is not a human being but a turnip. I have no evidence of this whatsoever and there is substantial evidence that he is indeed a human being, but I believe it. I am sure I can get other people to believe it. I will cite my Hacker News comment as evidence that he is indeed a turnip. Stuff like this would rapidly ruin Wikipedia without the reliable sources requirement.
  - morpheos137 5y ago
    >Stuff like this would rapidly ruin wikipedia. No not really. That is a straw man. Unless the community consensus was that Sanger really was a turnip the edit would not stand. If wikipedia is not going to be neutral why bother reaading it at all. Plenty of sources exist already that will tell you what to think. I think neutrality is more important even than "factual" accuracy.
  - jaybrendansmith 5y ago
    Would presenting a picture of a turnip with the caption 'Larry Sanger' below it provide credibility to the claim? Sadly, it would not, unless presented from a reliable source of factual information.
legitster 5y ago
It's worth pointing out that neutrality is only one of Wikipedia's three core values, the others being "Verifiability" and "No original research".
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_vie... If anyone wants an explanation.
  - legitster 5y ago
    - Avoid stating opinions as facts. - Avoid stating seriously contested assertions as facts. - Avoid stating facts as opinions. - Prefer nonjudgmental language. - Indicate the relative prominence of opposing views.
    - just_askin 5y ago
      Check out the Project Veritas page to see how ignoring all these rules can pass through directly to the Google search results. You don't even have to dirty up your history by going to the site. From the talk page you can see the main editor who is orchestrating the effort (don't forget to look at the talk page history for the whole story) and from the editor's user page you can see an enemies list and other details establishing the proper bona fides. A real case study on mindset as well as technique. https://www.google.com/search?q=project+veritas https://www.google.com/search?q=project+veritas
LordDragonfang 5y ago
From Wikipedia's article on NPOV: >Neutrality requires that mainspace articles and pages fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in the published, reliable sources Giving due weight and avoiding giving undue weight means articles should not give minority views or aspects as much of or as detailed a description as more widely held views or widely supported aspects. Generally, the views of tiny minorities should not be included at all, except perhaps in a "see also" to an article about those specific views. For example, the article on the Earth does not directly mention modern support for the flat Earth concept, the view of a distinct (and minuscule) minority; to do so would give undue weight to it. The author goes on to complain that extreme minority views on "mask efficacy" and "vaccine side effects" are not adequately represented. Wikipedia definitely has a left/liberal bias, but it's not entirely without merit. "Conservative" views are increasingly minority views, as evidenced by the their figurehead never once having majority approval in four years (barring outlier polls) and dropping to an average of below 40% [1]. Support for the various fringe beliefs regarding covid-19 are even lower, if Fauci's approval ratings are anything to go by. Considering between 4 and 10 percent of people lean towards belief in a flat Earth, the canonical example of a tiny minority opinion, the bar increasingly close. [1] https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/ https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/ [2] https://www.sciencealert.com/one-third-millennials-believe-flat-earth-conspiracy-statistics-yougov-debunk https://www.sciencealert.com/one-third-millennials-believe-f...
doggodaddo78 5y ago
NPOV is never going to happen. Human biases, corporate boiler-room shady editors, ignorance, mistakes, and agenda-driven editors. The other day I found a compound listed as a potent diuretic when was, in fact, a potent antidiuretic. Multiple minor celebrity-types who have garbage written on their pages that isn't accurate, precise, or even true. The only way to ensure a NPOV is to be able to "fire" editors and limit them from becoming as such, but that defeats the purpose of a wiki. Wikipedia is a Tragedy of the Commons and will never be authoritative because it blindly trusts in infinite openness rather than assembling a company around gathering authoritative expertise.
wavepruner 5y ago
I wish Wikipedia allowed unlimited forks of each topic. Imagine if a FOSS software project somehow banned all forks and forced all developers to compromise on every little thing.
- detaro 5y ago
  How does wikipedia "ban" you from forking their articles anymore than any open-source project that doesn't volunteer to host your fork of it?
  - wavepruner 5y ago
    Github will host all forks. I just wish there was a home for forked Wikipedia articles. The analogy isn't perfect. Whatever.
justshowpost 5y ago
An fastest and easiest way to confirm the bias and identify who's behind that bias is too check Wikipedia's rendition of the very first most important right-wing value: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-wing_politics#Positions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-wing_politics#Positions

78 points by preordained 5y ago

Great effort in this article, which will unfortunately be shot down due to the exact biases and awarelessness described in the article.

tekacs 5y ago

https://archive.is/oEbam https://archive.is/oEbam ... since the site seems to be down as of this writing.

jessedhillon 5y ago
I cannot understand how, almost 20 years after it was first created, a default install of WordPress still falls down gracelessly when faced with any significant traffic. There's no reason why a sensible default configuration can't automatically serve a cached version of an article. As it is, the default posture of WP is to be software suitable for those who write things that very few people will read.

ravenstine 5y ago

There's so much bad information on Wikipedia that at this point I hardly use it outside of using it as a launching pad for research related to health and science. If you want to learn about people, current events, and history, you might be better off not taking it very seriously. All you have to do is read the Talk sections of pages to understand how hypocritical and petty the inner circle of Wikipedia editors can be.

hypertele-Xii 5y ago
Can you give an example of bad information on Wikipedia?
- commandlinefan 5y ago
  The linked article gives several.
  - cyberge99 5y ago
    The linked article also didn’t mention that the Capitol Insurrection was one of the most important political events of 2021. Cherry picked nonsense. Garbage article.
    - justshowpost 5y ago
      It was an invasion and mentioned as so in the article. For an insurrection and even a coup there are designated leftist propaganda outlets like NYT.
julienfr112 5y ago
Like democraty, it's very bad, but hey, what else do we have !
the_third_wave 5y ago
Wikipedia is fine for looking up information about chemical compounds, see what the flag of a given country looks like, read about some physics, maths, hardware-related information and other things which have not yet been politicised. Anything which has been politicised - and that category is getting bigger and bigger - should be read with a critical [1] lens, filtering out the politics which often makes its way into the articles. Whether it is an "Analysis" section based on critical theory which suddenly appears in articles about cartoon characters or myopic reporting on historical events, Wikipedia shows its lack of resistance against concerted attempts to inject ideology into its pages. It is a modern example the tragedy of the commons where people with an ideological axe to grind don't care that they are destroying the reputation of the medium by abusing it for their own political purposes. Just like the medium of email was almost brought to its knees by spammers who cared only for their own profits, the medium of "news" - NNTP - was brought to its knees by a combination of the "eternal September" [2] and the explosion of feed sizes caused by "pirates" (ab)using NNTP to distribute large binaries in the bin groups, so now Wikipedia has fallen victim to zealous editors "colonising" "their" subjects, not allowing any edits which go against their own ideology. [1] really critical, not "critical theory" critical [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September (using Wikipedia to point out Wikipedia is biased)
- _lettucehead 5y ago
  Re [1] - critical is a word.
  - the_third_wave 5y ago
    It is. It has a specific meaning which can be found in printed dictionaries from a few years ago. While language evolves and words can gain new meanings in time this process has been radically sped up in the last few years with the emergence of a multitude of "critical" theories into the public discourse - critical race theory being the one most often mentioned but there are many more. What these all have in common is that they are off-shoots of Critical Theory [1] which Encyclopaedia Britannica describes as [a] Marxist-inspired movement in social and political philosophy originally associated with the work of the Frankfurt School. Drawing particularly on the thought of Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud, critical theorists maintain that a primary goal of philosophy is to understand and to help overcome the social structures through which people are dominated and oppressed. One of the hallmarks of these "critical" theories is that they tend to use common words like "critical" to indicate different concepts [2] from those which these words actually mean, hence the distinction. The critical eye to be used should be the one following the concept outlined in §2.2 of the Oxford English Dictionary's description of the adjective critical: 2.2 Involving the objective analysis and evaluation of an issue in order to form a judgement. ‘professors often find it difficult to encourage critical thinking amongst their students’ When words change their meaning in a natural way this is called language evolution. When this change is being pushed to serve an agenda it is called language revolution, or revolutionary language. That is why I made the distinction between a critical eye and an eye guided by critical theory. [1] https://www.britannica.com/topic/critical-theory https://www.britannica.com/topic/critical-theory [2] https://newdiscourses.com/tftw-critical/ https://newdiscourses.com/tftw-critical/

voldacar 5y ago

This is a well-written article that exceeded my expectations. It's easy to just point to petty examples of bias, I love that this author just picks a few polarizing topics and explores in detail how WP treats them.

eldavojohn 5y ago
This is a very poorly written article that myopically focuses on only the most extremely recent events in the culture war. Wouldn't a better article look at how wikipedia handles, say, the the civil rights act of 1964 and the rise of Evangelicism? Things that are, you know, many years ago and should be much more stable articles than these fly-by-night everyone is having a conniption over at this very moment? Reading this article is kind of like I'm watching Jerry Springer except it's not as entertaining. As things stabilize the articles get better and as time stretches to infinity so too does the editing work eliminate bias on Wikipedia. Is it the greatest thing ever that you should unquestioningly read? Not even close. The author thinks it should be impossibly neutral. Nirvana fallacy.
- wrycoder 5y ago
  It's rather hard to find examples from the other side of the aisle on Wikipedia.
- voldacar 5y ago
  Ah so newly created articles are "noisy" in terms of bias and over time they quiet down and approach a neutral point of view? if this is true, you should be able to show me a bunch of articles about polarizing current events that are heavily biased in the opposite direction to the ones featured in the article. (I don't think this is possible, therefore I think you are wrong)
  - eldavojohn 5y ago
    Nowhere did I claim that there were equally slanted liberal compared to conservative changes. Are we going to play the "reality has a well known liberal bias" game? Am I supposed to find articles on wikipedia that claim Biden lost the election or that no one should get a vaccine? I mean, this is a political statement: "Now that we have tons of vaccines, every death due to covid is a travesty." You know at least in the USA it's hard to find mainstream media that is conservative because those views have become so asinine. Is that my problem? Is that Wikipedia's problem? What next? Are you going to complain that 98% of college professors are liberal? Okay, go change it. Enjoy trying to get people who enjoy liberal endeavors to promote conservative views. Am I shocked that the people who want to freely edit and debate articles on a website for no profit happen to slant liberal? Not really. > (I don't think this is possible, therefore I think you are wrong) What part exactly was I wrong about? I suggested you look at articles from 30-50 years ago and point out the liberal slant. Instead you invented a claim that I did not make so that I would be incorrect. Strawman. If we cared enough about this, we'd all be reading conservapedia.com.

walkedaway 5y ago

Wikipedia has been on this slippery slope since the late 2000s, and its inability to maintain objective/neutral articles is the reason I stopped my large contributions back then. Just look at wikipedia's one-sidedness relative to "kids in cages" of Obama vs Trump vs Biden. Holy cow, I didn't realize their bias had gotten this bad.

bruce343434 5y ago

Why is this article dead? I thought it was great and definitely makes you think. I myself am not from the U.S., so most of it I had no idea of either way. But I think there's still a gem in this article. I thought the dilemma of neutrality vs objectivity was also interesting. It seems these goals are directly at odds, and if you are writing an encyclopedia you can only achieve one. You can give multiple sides an even amount of attention, including a possibly, objectively wrong perspective. Or, you can forego neutrality and go for objectivity. But, many social issues are precisely subjective and fuzzy. I understand wanting an objective picture, I can even imagine why fox news might not be top of the shelf journalism, but TFA makes a point: sometimes they can be the only ones reporting on a side. And if you are neutral, you must not take sides. The example of Switserland was interesting, as they had to tolerate the nazis as well to remain truly neutral. Do you want neutrality? Or objectivity? Then, what is objective in some of these issues, where we simply don't have all the information, or worse, fuzzy and subjective issues?

11thEarlOfMar 5y ago
No to mention that the author is the co-founder of Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Sanger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Sanger
- jfengel 5y ago
  Who left almost immediately, and has been railing at Wikipedia ever since. (He also said a lot of negative things about Wikileaks, cited in the Wikipedia article you link.)
  - zozbot234 5y ago
    "Almost immediately", not really. He had major influence on Wikipedia's early policy decisions, including NPOV itself. And he's not even wrong about verifiability and reliability of sourcing being sometimes in tension with NPOV; it's just that the latter is meaningless without the former.
legitster 5y ago

mountainb 5y ago

The larger issue for me as a former heavy Wikipedia user is the poor quality of web citations. I cannot use it as a research aid if the citations go nowhere and when they go somewhere it’s to a useless source which has no citations or citations that go nowhere. Free resources also tend to be valueless. Archive.org is a far better free resource because it consistently provides access to top tier sources from real libraries. Wikipedia has an unusable gibberish article on every topic if you want to be misinformed about it. Even on popular historical topics you are generally getting thinly sourced fan fiction with inaccuracies sprinkled in. A Wikipedia user is just reading misinformation to gain the illusion of knowledge. The less said about the sewage in the contemporary topic pages the better, although Sanger does a good job describing the issue, anyone who trusted those pages in the first place has brain damage, so it’s not like something glorious or valuable has been wrecked there. It started off bad and became worse.

zozbot234 5y ago

> " ... And Wikipedia thought there were no reliable sources at all? Why not?" The reason is that the sources that provide mainstream coverage of conservative points of view, including Fox News, The New York Post, and the (U.K.) Daily Mail—as well as pretty much all of newer conservative news media sources, which are the only outlets doing any reporting on many important stories—have all been added to a list of sources "deprecated" for their coverage of political news. ... Yes, and they've been deprecated because they kept making stuff up, over and over again. Whether they're right and doing important reporting in any single instance is entirely beside the point, they still can't be trusted to be accurate and that's what matters.

legitster 5y ago
It's pretty telling that most of this article is "Wikipedia is biased because they don't use enough right-wing sources" and doesn't spend much time defending those actual sources' integrity.
the_third_wave 5y ago
The problem here is that this aversion to sources which have been caught making up things is mostly limited to "conservative" sources. While sources like the Daily Mail are considered to be off-limits there is no rule against using the New York Times or the Washington Post, both of whom have been caught making up things. This is what Sanger reacts to, not the mere fact that there are sources which are deemed to be unreliable.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- ambirex 5y ago
  Except the NYT and Wapo have a much better history of correcting mistakes. Comparing Daily Mail and NY Post to other serious news organizations is really an apple to oranges comparison.
  - the_third_wave 5y ago

MattGaiser 5y ago

> The reason is that the sources that provide mainstream coverage of conservative points of view, including Fox News, The New York Post, and the (U.K.) Daily Mail—as well as pretty much all of newer conservative news media sources, which are the only outlets doing any reporting on many important stories—have all been added to a list of sources "deprecated" for their coverage of political news. As conservatism is increasingly a cult of nonsense. They aren't willing to bring any of the supposed election fraud evidence to court because it either doesn't exist or is so absurdly ridiculous that those who presented it would be disbarred. Wikipedia neutrality applies to viewpoints, not information.

commandlinefan 5y ago
> They aren't willing to bring any of the supposed election fraud evidence Hm - I recall they did try to bring it to the supreme court and the court declined to hear the case.
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  Texas v. Pennsylvania was about procedures for changing election procedures. I don't recall any fraud being alleged, just Texas saying they did not need to prove it as it was possible.
- weakfish 5y ago
  Well, you have to have a basic set of evidence for any court to hear it. That was lacking.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > Hm - I recall they did try to bring it to the supreme court and the court declined to hear the case. They brought lots of election cases, but they didn't bring allegations of fraud in most of them (Giuliani got chastised by a judge in one case for going on a tirade about fraud even though the case he was arguing did not allege fraud), and in the cases where they initially made fraud or fraud-adjacent claims, those claimsnl were often withdrawn before the case was resolved. Fraud has been something they’ve argued in the media, and in GOP controlled state legilaative show hearings, but not really (at least properly) in court.

commandlinefan 5y ago

I can't really get my head around how every well-known internet source - Google, Twitter, Facebook, Wikipedia, Reddit - is so left-wing. I know that they like to defend their biases (when they confess to them, anyway) with Stephen Colbert's "reality has a liberal bias" quote, but right or wrong, there are a lot of people who disagree with leftist politics and even more who disagree with the extreme fringes which seem to dominate the "default" internet. It's even stranger when you consider that the early internet was right-ish libertarian leaning.

shadowgovt 5y ago
> It's even stranger when you consider that the early internet was right-ish libertarian leaning. Yes, that is strange. Perhaps what has changed is not the leaning of the political alignment of people who frequent the internet, but the political landscape against which concepts like "liberal" or "conservative" are applied?

srl 5y ago

OP focuses on extremely contentious issues, but these are (as OP and other commenters note) exactly where our own biases can make it most difficult to accurately decide whether a source is being truly neutral. I think the clearest evidence of distortions in Wikipedia is found in less-contentious (although still politically coded) topics. A couple months back I encountered a striking example: the Wikipedia article on "Balance of trade" [1]. An important object-level question is "are trade deficits bad?". (I have no real opinion on this question, because hey, I'm not an economist --- none of this is about the object-level question!) For those who live under an even larger rock than I do, Trump sided with "yes", causing a predictable sorting of opinions in US politics. The article leans very strongly in the direction of "no", stating above the fold: > The notion that bilateral trade deficits are bad in and of themselves is overwhelmingly rejected by trade experts and economists. There follow 5 citations, of which 4 are articles about Trump. (Three mention Trump in the title.) The claim is repeated in the body of the article; it's the first sentence in the section "Views on Economic Impact". But the very next sentence is > According to the IMF trade deficits can cause a balance of payments problem, which can affect foreign exchange shortages and hurt countries. The paragraph structure makes it seem like this is a sentence in support of the thesis, but it's really not. And the very next sentence, again, is on negative effects of trade deficits: > On the other hand, Joseph Stiglitz points out that countries running surpluses exert a "negative externality" on trading partners, and pose a threat to global prosperity, far more than those in deficit. Note that this specific claim of "negative externalities" is very similar to the strongly politically coded claim that this article and its citations are so keen to claim is "overwhelmingly rejected". The following sentence is on negative effects of eurozone imbalances, but I'll stop quoting here. I've seen similar patterns on other articles, but this is the clearest example. The article actually reads as something that was once a representative hodge-podge of arguments for and against, and then had to be "fixed" in the days of Trump and brexit to avoid confusing hapless readers. It's relatively petty, but note another sentence above the fold: > The notion of the balance of trade does not mean that exports and imports are "in balance" with each other. This sort of pre-emptive heading off of common misconceptions is not encyclopedic. There are only seven sentences above the TOC, and one of them is this! (For instance, I checked the article on "quantum superposition", and no similar sentence is included, despite the obvious and common misconceptions.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balance_of_trade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balance_of_trade

unpopularopp 5y ago

My main problem with Wikipedia how almost every article is already "claimed" by an editor/editors and a peasant like me has no chance to fix factual errors. (made up) example: I live in a small town which has a blue stone in a square but the Wikipedia article says it's red. I went, made a photo that it's blue but Wikipedia doesn't accept it (several roadblocks to use your own photo, set up license, use correctly in the article etc.) then the editors just shut it down because there is no outside 3rd party source (just my photo, you can't reference yourself). So yeah I gave up and I hate it. And probs the editors never been here or I'd not even be surprised if they not even live in the same country.

commandlinefan 5y ago

If you're wondering who the author is: > To the best of my knowledge, I was first described in the press as co-founder of Wikipedia back in September 2001 by The New York Times. This isn't just some right-wing wingnut raging against liberals.

pyuser583 5y ago
Thank!! That is a really important fact I missed reading the article.
jaybrendansmith 5y ago
Minor Correction: He is a co-founder of Wikipedia who happens to have become a right-wing wingnut. All of his examples cite sources known to have issues presenting facts. Either a media organization attempts to report facts, meaning it stays neutral, verifies sources, submits retractions, and avoids 'people are saying...' kinds of queries, or it does not. If it does not, that means it is not a credible source of information. I would suggest that he try to clean up his sources a bit and resubmit perhaps?

legitster 5y ago

There are legitimate complaints to be made about Wikipedia. It's a pity this author chooses his handful of pet political issues and spends most of time arguing about the summary sections of certain pages. And most of the complaints are "how come they aren't making a big deal about the things I want them to". Man, can you believe how unfair Wikipedia is to Stalin? They didn't talk about any of the nice things people said about him? Ultimately, these complaints are incredibly self-defeating. The point about Wikipedia is that literally anyone can change it. If you don't like the information presented, you are more than free to actually fix it instead of bitching on the internet. But it turns out you will actually have to put in research, provide valuable information, work with other volunteers to establish consensus, and survive the scrutiny of every reader. And no on will pat you on the back or hand you internet points. And it turns out that a lot of these random ideas, like Hunter Biden's totally real laptop or the deep state plants in the January 6th riots might very well be true, but in no way do we get to stop the train on every stop so that every fringe viewpoint can get on board. Or no one who believes in this stuff is actually willing to put in the work. If your entire political identity is that you would rather pick up your ball and go home to complain rather than put in the work to establish your points, I say good riddance. I don't want your lazy tropes on Wikipedia.

bruce343434 5y ago
> but in no way do we get to stop the train on every stop so that every fringe viewpoint can get on board TFA describes that this is actually exactly what true "neutrality" is, and that wikipedia alleges to aim to be neutral.
- legitster 5y ago
  > "Neutral Point of View" is a fundamental principle of Wikipedia and of other Wikimedia projects. It is also one of Wikipedia's three core content policies; the other two are "Verifiability" and "No original research". OP is conveniently forgetting the other two Wikipedia requirements.
wrycoder 5y ago
If the article is politicized, and many are, or "owned", like so many are, you will be quickly reverted. You will find that the "owners" are most persistent!

morpheos137 5y ago

It seems to me a core cause of this problem is enabling a relatively small cabal of power users to determine what is and is not a reliable source. A neutral wikipedia should despense with the "reliable source" requirement. Let the reader make up his own mind. It is astounding that an english lanuage reader will find basic facts and details about the Biden scandals censored by wikipedia because no "reliable" sources reported on them.

MattGaiser 5y ago
I believe that Larry Sanger is not a human being but a turnip. I have no evidence of this whatsoever and there is substantial evidence that he is indeed a human being, but I believe it. I am sure I can get other people to believe it. I will cite my Hacker News comment as evidence that he is indeed a turnip. Stuff like this would rapidly ruin Wikipedia without the reliable sources requirement.
- morpheos137 5y ago
  >Stuff like this would rapidly ruin wikipedia. No not really. That is a straw man. Unless the community consensus was that Sanger really was a turnip the edit would not stand. If wikipedia is not going to be neutral why bother reaading it at all. Plenty of sources exist already that will tell you what to think. I think neutrality is more important even than "factual" accuracy.
- jaybrendansmith 5y ago
  Would presenting a picture of a turnip with the caption 'Larry Sanger' below it provide credibility to the claim? Sadly, it would not, unless presented from a reliable source of factual information.

legitster 5y ago

It's worth pointing out that neutrality is only one of Wikipedia's three core values, the others being "Verifiability" and "No original research".

MattGaiser 5y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_vie... If anyone wants an explanation.
- legitster 5y ago
  - Avoid stating opinions as facts. - Avoid stating seriously contested assertions as facts. - Avoid stating facts as opinions. - Prefer nonjudgmental language. - Indicate the relative prominence of opposing views.
  - just_askin 5y ago
    Check out the Project Veritas page to see how ignoring all these rules can pass through directly to the Google search results. You don't even have to dirty up your history by going to the site. From the talk page you can see the main editor who is orchestrating the effort (don't forget to look at the talk page history for the whole story) and from the editor's user page you can see an enemies list and other details establishing the proper bona fides. A real case study on mindset as well as technique. https://www.google.com/search?q=project+veritas https://www.google.com/search?q=project+veritas

LordDragonfang 5y ago

From Wikipedia's article on NPOV: >Neutrality requires that mainspace articles and pages fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in the published, reliable sources Giving due weight and avoiding giving undue weight means articles should not give minority views or aspects as much of or as detailed a description as more widely held views or widely supported aspects. Generally, the views of tiny minorities should not be included at all, except perhaps in a "see also" to an article about those specific views. For example, the article on the Earth does not directly mention modern support for the flat Earth concept, the view of a distinct (and minuscule) minority; to do so would give undue weight to it. The author goes on to complain that extreme minority views on "mask efficacy" and "vaccine side effects" are not adequately represented. Wikipedia definitely has a left/liberal bias, but it's not entirely without merit. "Conservative" views are increasingly minority views, as evidenced by the their figurehead never once having majority approval in four years (barring outlier polls) and dropping to an average of below 40% [1]. Support for the various fringe beliefs regarding covid-19 are even lower, if Fauci's approval ratings are anything to go by. Considering between 4 and 10 percent of people lean towards belief in a flat Earth, the canonical example of a tiny minority opinion, the bar increasingly close. [1] https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/ https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/ [2] https://www.sciencealert.com/one-third-millennials-believe-flat-earth-conspiracy-statistics-yougov-debunk https://www.sciencealert.com/one-third-millennials-believe-f...

doggodaddo78 5y ago

NPOV is never going to happen. Human biases, corporate boiler-room shady editors, ignorance, mistakes, and agenda-driven editors. The other day I found a compound listed as a potent diuretic when was, in fact, a potent antidiuretic. Multiple minor celebrity-types who have garbage written on their pages that isn't accurate, precise, or even true. The only way to ensure a NPOV is to be able to "fire" editors and limit them from becoming as such, but that defeats the purpose of a wiki. Wikipedia is a Tragedy of the Commons and will never be authoritative because it blindly trusts in infinite openness rather than assembling a company around gathering authoritative expertise.

wavepruner 5y ago

I wish Wikipedia allowed unlimited forks of each topic. Imagine if a FOSS software project somehow banned all forks and forced all developers to compromise on every little thing.

detaro 5y ago
How does wikipedia "ban" you from forking their articles anymore than any open-source project that doesn't volunteer to host your fork of it?
- wavepruner 5y ago
  Github will host all forks. I just wish there was a home for forked Wikipedia articles. The analogy isn't perfect. Whatever.

justshowpost 5y ago

An fastest and easiest way to confirm the bias and identify who's behind that bias is too check Wikipedia's rendition of the very first most important right-wing value: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-wing_politics#Positions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-wing_politics#Positions