4 ms·

I'd much rather have one that tried to be objective, than just one that embraces their bias. The later one will always be terrible at reporting. The former at l

I'd much rather have one that tried to be objective, than just one that embraces their bias. The later one will always be terrible at reporting. The former at least has a chance of being good. Seriously, the bar is not exactly high. Start with telling me where and when something happen, make a time line if it's a series of events. Tell me who is involved. Don't dress it in flowery language, make it as simple as possible, make it a list if you can. Do proper follow ups, not just event based reporting (i.e. tell me why the airplane crashed when the report is out, don't waste too much time with "we don't know anything, but here is a picture of smoke"). And of course list your sources (i.e. don't report on science paper without even linking it). So far Wikipedia is the only one that gets somewhat close to this ideal. Almost everything else is just attention seeking clickbait.

denton-scratch 3y ago
> So far Wikipedia is the only one that gets somewhat close to this ideal. Wikipedia now has this expectation that any claim that's at all surprising or interesting should be cited to "reliable sources". I don't entirely agree with WP's notion of what sources are to be considered reliable, but at least the policy is out there, and can be debated. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources This citation policy wasn't always there, and it has made a huge difference. For example, anyone can come along and remove surprising statements from articles if they aren't supported by a reliable source. That in turn means that if you find a statement surprising, you can go and check the source.
pydry 3y ago
I used to think this but increasingly I think it's a fool's errand. Wikipedia might have been like that in the past but it's long been corrupted. E.g. see the Philip Cross affair. For a while on the Ukraine war I tried to find unbiased commentary and news but I think it was basically impossible. The best I could find after looking all over was stitching together stories from sources who were biased to one side but still at least somewhat committed to the truth.
- denton-scratch 3y ago
  > For a while on the Ukraine war I tried to find unbiased commentary There's no hope of finding unbiased commentary on a war that's happening NOW. Even the history of wars that happened 1,000 years ago are hopelessly muddied by contemporary political agendas. As far as Wikipedia is concerned, history is one of the areas that's least trustworthy; lots of history articles have teams of gatekeepers. It can help to read the talk pages (and the archives of the talk pages) to find out what's been disputed. The fact that you can do that, and also inspect the entire edit history, really does make Wikipedia head and shoulders better than any other information resource, provided you read it with due scepticism.
- alephaleph 3y ago
  FWIW I was unaware of the Philip Cross thing, but after digging into it it appears that Wikipedia's arbitration committee imposed an indefinite ban on him from editing any page regarding modern British politics [1] and that after he was found repeatedly violating it, that was upgraded to an indefinite block [2]. Not exculpatory, but at the very least evidence that Wikipedia is capable of taking issues of editor bias seriously and not sweeping it under the rug. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/BLP_issues_on_British_politics_articles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Philip_Cross#Blocked_indefinitely_(1st_year_AE) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Philip_Cross#Blocked...

denton-scratch 3y ago

> So far Wikipedia is the only one that gets somewhat close to this ideal. Wikipedia now has this expectation that any claim that's at all surprising or interesting should be cited to "reliable sources". I don't entirely agree with WP's notion of what sources are to be considered reliable, but at least the policy is out there, and can be debated. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources This citation policy wasn't always there, and it has made a huge difference. For example, anyone can come along and remove surprising statements from articles if they aren't supported by a reliable source. That in turn means that if you find a statement surprising, you can go and check the source.

pydry 3y ago

I used to think this but increasingly I think it's a fool's errand. Wikipedia might have been like that in the past but it's long been corrupted. E.g. see the Philip Cross affair. For a while on the Ukraine war I tried to find unbiased commentary and news but I think it was basically impossible. The best I could find after looking all over was stitching together stories from sources who were biased to one side but still at least somewhat committed to the truth.

denton-scratch 3y ago
> For a while on the Ukraine war I tried to find unbiased commentary There's no hope of finding unbiased commentary on a war that's happening NOW. Even the history of wars that happened 1,000 years ago are hopelessly muddied by contemporary political agendas. As far as Wikipedia is concerned, history is one of the areas that's least trustworthy; lots of history articles have teams of gatekeepers. It can help to read the talk pages (and the archives of the talk pages) to find out what's been disputed. The fact that you can do that, and also inspect the entire edit history, really does make Wikipedia head and shoulders better than any other information resource, provided you read it with due scepticism.
alephaleph 3y ago
FWIW I was unaware of the Philip Cross thing, but after digging into it it appears that Wikipedia's arbitration committee imposed an indefinite ban on him from editing any page regarding modern British politics [1] and that after he was found repeatedly violating it, that was upgraded to an indefinite block [2]. Not exculpatory, but at the very least evidence that Wikipedia is capable of taking issues of editor bias seriously and not sweeping it under the rug. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/BLP_issues_on_British_politics_articles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Philip_Cross#Blocked_indefinitely_(1st_year_AE) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Philip_Cross#Blocked...