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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

by pydry 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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...

by pydry 4y ago

denton-scratch 4y 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 4y 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...