4 ms·
No, subtly different. It contains all the things, and the proper slant on those things, that activist editors want GL to be known for regardless of the actual p
by LawTalkingGuy 4y ago
No, subtly different. It contains all the things, and the proper slant on those things, that activist editors want GL to be known for regardless of the actual prevalence of people talking about that. I doubt even 1% of people who know his name know that he's involved in "gender critical" debate, let alone his views.
Further, these ideological corrections are always biased because they're based on outrage articles and nobody writes counterpoint articles in which nothing happened and nothing is wrong. "Dog does not bite man".
Nobody is going to pen a Guardian article saying "GL can tell the difference between the type of people who give birth and those who do not" because we all can and it's just not interesting. But if a few people working for Pink News and Gawker write that GL's statements are actually dog-whistles designed to stigmatize "fake women" or something, then all of a sudden 100% of the sources agree that he's committing literal violence against trans folx.
Another article was attempting to trans an 18th century person. They said "Oh, it's okay, we'll also accept reliable sources that say they weren't a trans man" as if such a source could even exist.
The point isn't his positions but that Wikipedia is a platform for activists to pick and choose which words to amplify or to amplify pushback against, and our rules for academic sources break down entirely in a culture war where new sources can be spun up in an instant. This is giving undue weight to certain elements and ignoring others.
- woodruffw 4y agoThis is a lot of defense, which is sort of irrelevant. All I've said is that Linehan's current public status and notability centers around each of the things mentioned in his Wikipedia article, which is...exactly what Wikipedia is supposed to be for. The material content of his positions isn't that important to me; only that Wikipedia doesn't conveniently omit those positions.
- LawTalkingGuy 4y agoThe problem is the undue weight given to the opinion of those who show up for editing and debating "reliable" sources, and political purity tests during these events. Self-selected editors often don't share the interests of readers of their articles. There's a no-false-balance policy which means the moon-landing-hoax theory doesn't need to get mentioned on every article related to space. Why is your view, or anti-view, important enough that it should be mentioned, such that you'd say it was omitted if it wasn't there?