5 ms·
The partisanship on Wikipedia is becoming more and more visible. Here’s my favorite example [0]. One of the candidates has clearly been given a subpar picture a
by jimbob45 4y ago
The partisanship on Wikipedia is becoming more and more visible. Here’s my favorite example [0]. One of the candidates has clearly been given a subpar picture and then had his profile locked from editing so that it can’t be changed. A quick Google search shows scores of better pictures, leading me to believe that this is intentional sabotage by the opposing candidate.
Fortunately, this is the kind of thing we can all sit back and laugh at. If a candidate can’t be arsed to hire a competent PR firm to handle their public profiles, then they probably don’t deserve the position.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_New_Mexico_gubernatorial_election https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_New_Mexico_gubernatoria...
- dpifke 4y agoPhotos need to be Creative Commons licensed; Wikipedia can't just use ones from a random Google search. The image for Mark Ronchetti was uploaded by a user who shot a video of him in 2020. Since they created the video, they own the copyright to the image and can license it to Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mark_Ronchetti.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mark_Ronchetti.jpg Searching for other CC-licensed images doesn't return anything: https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=mark+ronchetti&iax=images&ia=images&iaf=license%3AAny https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=mark+ronchetti&iax=images&i... https://www.google.com/search?q=mark%20ronchetti&tbm=isch&tbs=il:cl&hl=en-US&sa=X&ved=0CAAQ1vwEahcKEwiwycXzmpr5AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAg&biw=1268&bih=1180 https://www.google.com/search?q=mark%20ronchetti&tbm=isch&tb... I've emailed his campaign to ask if they have a photo they can license appropriately and upload to Commons. If you have a better photo of him (that you took yourself and are willing to license for free use), you can upload it here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:UploadWizard https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:UploadWizard
- jimbob45 4y agoExcellent post! To be sure, I don’t even live in Mark’s state and it’s on him if he wants another picture on his profile. You’re a stellar citizen, though, for taking action on your own! I simply wanted to point out a trend on Wikipedia. Mark is just one of more than a dozen candidates with bad pictures or, worse, empty pictures that seem to be the result of sabotage. If you look on these candidates’ pages (or Mark’s page), you can look at the revision history and determine that there were past pictures taken down or replaced near election times. Again, I don’t care. It’s up to these candidates to fix this stuff if they want to win. With the amount of money they’re bringing in, you’d think they could hire someone to spin them up nice profiles with ‘Political Stances’ sections and quirky stories about their family life. I wonder if they intentionally keep their profiles empty to funnel traffic to their personal websites instead.
- barnbuilder 4y agoRonchetti's Wikipedia page has never had any other photos. And the article was protected[0] due to a series of vandalism edits on July 10[1] that had nothing to do with his page's photo. You are right that his article has a poor quality photo, which seems to be due to it being the only free-licensed photo available, but it's simply wrong to use this article as evidence of some sort of "partisanship on Wikipedia". If anything it is an example of bias towards incumbents, who get professional taxpayer-funded public domain portraits that are easy to drop into Wikipedia pages. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&type=protect&page=Mark+Ronchetti https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&type=... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mark_Ronchetti&action=history https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mark_Ronchetti&ac...
- jimbob45 4y ago?? I see him as having had a different picture as of this [0] edit (several years ago). The filename (MarkRonchettiNM.png) is a different filename than the current one, leading me to believe that the file was simply taken off the Wikipedia servers and redlinked. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mark_Ronchetti&oldid=960630202 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mark_Ronchetti&ol...
- dpifke 4y agoFile history says it was deleted due to the uploader not having rights to it: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:MarkRonchettiNM.png https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:MarkRonchettiNM.png Most likely it was taken down due to a notice from the copyright holder: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Volunteer_Response_Team https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Volunteer_Respons...
- barnbuilder 4y agoApologies, I did not see that image in the article's history. I assume it lacked a free license as the other commenter mentioned. Interestingly, the current image on that article appears to also not be legitimately freely licensed. It is a screen shot of a Youtube video uploaded by a resort in New Mexico. The uploader[0] gives no indication on their user profile that they are affiliated with the resort, while putting a Creative Commons license on the screenshot that the Youtube page makes no indication of. The uploader is also now suspended on all Wikimedia projects for abusively using multiple accounts, and their main account[1] has on their talk page lots of records of deleted political-oriented images with many instances of inaccurate licensing and poor quality. (If someone has a Wikipedia account it would be nice to flag the image on Ronchetti's page for deletion!) All this to say, Wikipedia's editing process can by its nature be pretty messy and often produce some suboptimal results, until such time as someone comes along and fixes it. This should not be confused with a concerted effort by the people running the project itself. [0] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Melvingatez34 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Melvingatez34 [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Over9000edits https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Over9000edits
- dpifke 4y agoFor anyone following along (unlikely), press@markronchetti.com replied with a photo and asked me to upload it for them (sigh). I did so here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mark_Ronchetti_Headshot.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mark_Ronchetti_Heads... ...and requested they complete the license authorizing its use: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Email_templates https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Email_templates I'm giving it about 50/50 odds they'll fill out the form and the photo will stay up, but at least I tried. I agree with the other posters who point out that this is a bit of an unfair advantage for incumbents (who have government-sponsored public domain photos available for use). It'd be an awesome thing for volunteers to try to help with, by reaching out to less tech-saavy campaigns as I've done here. I've been to New Mexico maybe 4-5 times in my life and have basically zero stake in this race, but I guess duty calls[0]. ;) [0] https://xkcd.com/386/ https://xkcd.com/386/
- willcipriano 4y agoHere's one[0]. > The Hunter Biden laptop controversy involves a laptop computer that conservative media outlets claimed without evidence had belonged to Hunter Biden. They further stated that the laptop had been dropped off but never collected.by an unknown individual at the Wilmington, Delaware repair shop of a blind proprietor in April 2019. Three paragraphs saying it's all made up, you can't trust the NY Post's reporting, it's probably just Russian propaganda and then it finishes with: > In March 2022, The New York Times reported it had authenticated some emails "from a cache of files that appears to have come from a laptop abandoned by Mr. Biden in a Delaware repair shop."[10][11] Also in March, The Washington Post reported that two security experts authenticated thousands of the 129,000 emails, though the vast majority of the laptop contents, including most of its emails, could not be authenticated.[12] Among the emails that The Washington Post was able to authenticate was the Pozharskyi email that formed the basis of the New York Post's original article. [0]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_Biden_laptop_controversy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_Biden_laptop_controve...
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- lupire 4y agoThe opposing candidate has a public domain photo published by the US government, her employer. The challenger does not, and does not have a Press Kit on his campaign page, despite having already run a full campaign 2 years ago.