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English Wikipedia drove out fringe editors over two decades
- pictureofabear 3y agoTLDR; Wikipedia's definition of "Neutral Point of View" evolved from "Providing different, attributable points of view, diverse sources, and prohibition of pejorative labels" to "statements of fact, sourcing hierarchy, and acceptance of pejorative labels." This transition was propelled by early victories in the "anti-fringe" camp, driving away members of the "pro-fringe" camp.
- MichaelZuo 3y ago> acceptance of pejorative labels What's the rationale for the 'anti-fringe' camp to intentionally lower Wikipedia's credibility? And why would Jimmy Wales et al. accept that?
- ceejayoz 3y agoI think Wikipedia's credibility is enhanced by the homeopathy article stating it's pseudoscientific rather than something mealy-mouthed like "disputed".
- dgrin91 3y agoI personally agree in the homeopathy case, but what about other cases? I generally think Wiki's NPOV is pretty good, but I'm sure there are corner cases I disagree with or they are wrong about. By stating a view as a definitive NPOV it becomes difficulty to change people's minds
- kstrauser 3y agoI'm no longer convinced that changing the minds of someone who already believes a fringe theory is generally useful or productive. The big return on investment comes from being honest about the fringe theory's status to people who haven't made up their minds. In this case, you may not talk someone out of believing in homeopathy, particularly if they've invested a lot of time or money in it. You may have better luck with people who are first hearing about homeopathy, visiting the article, and seeing that it's junk. I've seen this play out in other subjects, like global warming (there's not a real "both sides"; climate scientists nearly universally believe in it), evolution (almost no biologists believe in Creationism), chiropractic (there's no plausible mechanism of action; studies fail to show that it works for anything beyond some back pain), the "electric universe" (cosmologists universally think it's dumb), and many others. Diehards are gonna diehard. People on the fence can benefit from a solid dose of reality.
- lucubratory 3y agoTrying to figure out which of the five fringe science groups you mentioned are downvoting this comment
- LastTrain 3y agoIt is a community run site. It has warts, like anything. I can't really think of a better example of how something on the internet has been run than Wikipedia, can you? And no one is saying it is perfect.
- SV_BubbleTime 3y ago> It is a community run site. Are you sure? Why? Because they told you it is? Because you donated? Because you see the people that make edits and articles? What if it a community labor site? How would you as an outsider be able to tell the difference?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- LastTrain 3y agoAre you sure the moon's not green? Hey I've made a few edits over the years and there they are. Maybe that's just another part of the big ruse? They cleverly keep /my/ edits around? Maybe only I see them? Maybe we're all living in a simulation...
- hot_gril 3y agoI do recall getting shadowbanned from Wikipedia in middle school because I kept repeatedly creating an article about my friend, pretending he was a famous person. Indeed they made my edits only visible to me. But of course it was easy to notice that going on another IP address.
- MichaelZuo 3y agoIf even just 1 out of 10 homeopathy topics/issues/articles/etc. turn out to be mostly true, then labelling it all as 'pseudoscientific' would seem pretty silly in hindsight? I'm not quite sure what the advantage is over labelling it 'disputed'.
- nwiswell 3y ago> turn out to be mostly true Nope, it was still pseudoscientific at the time, even if it gained scientific evidence later. Wikipedia is a purveyor of facts, not of judgments, but sometimes the two are inseparable. As long as it's a fact, it's ok if it's implicitly a judgment too.
- xboxnolifes 3y agoJust because something turns out to be true doesn't make it scientific. "Science" isn't a euphemism for correct, and "Pseudoscience" isn't an euphemism for wrong, even if many use them as such. You either followed the scientific process, or you didn't.
- MichaelZuo 3y ago> Just because something turns out to be true doesn't make it scientific. Right, but how does that relate to pejorative labelling policies? i.e. If even just 20% of readers will misinterpret the label, then why go with the label instead of something like 'disputed' which has a mis-interpretation rate close to 0%?
- ceejayoz 3y ago"Disputed" is frequently misinterpeted as something like "50/50". It would not accurately reflect the real situation in the homeopathy scenario.
- MichaelZuo 3y ago> "Disputed" is frequently misinterpeted as something like "50/50". What does 50/50 mean in this context? If you mean a 50% probability of the article ultimately proving to be mostly true, then that would genuinely be the case for some small fraction of homeopathy articles?
- zozbot234 3y agoIn this case, Wikipedia's credibility is enhanced by the fact that it demands very high quality references for medical articles, and the resulting portrayal of homeopathy is a mere side effect of that. The very fact that homeopathy is a non-mainstream practice means that it's hard to find reliable references that will describe it positively.
- mike_hock 3y agoNo, its credibility is damaged by the presence of an echo chamber that can impose its viewpoint unchallenged. An article that "objectively" lays out the claims and though processes of homeopathy and then simply states that there is zero supporting evidence and no experimental setup has ever been able to establish any effect above placebo, gives much more credibility to Wikipedia because it suggests to the reader that the wording has been challenged by proponents of homeopathy, but the factual statements about the lack of evidence could not be removed on objective grounds.
- unyttigfjelltol 3y agoAnd then there's the `COVID-19 Misinformation` page[1] still pedaling the view that there is no "evidence" Covid was "accidentally leaked" from a lab. Wikipedia has a hard job to do, but this particular viewpoint is where they lost credibility on neutrality. Too many people pedaling a narrative. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_misinformation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_misinformation
- zozbot234 3y agoThis has less to do with NPOV itself and more with the need for increasingly reliable references (meaning references that are unlikely to outright make stuff up, regardless of the identifiable views they portray). If "fringe" references are a lot more likely to be actively misleading than "mainstream" ones, it stands to reason that these references will be edited out, and the fringe views that are associated with them will be less represented as a result. This also plays out in the domain of politics, where political sides with poorer quality references (loosely speaking, anything other than boring centrist politics) are less represented too.
- pcl 3y ago> This also plays out in the domain of politics, where political sides with poorer quality references (loosely speaking, anything other than boring centrist politics) are less represented too. Oh man, if only..!
- jrmg 3y agoWhere are you finding the descriptions you’re quoting? I can’t find the words ‘pejorative’ or ‘label’ anywhere in the linked article.
- pictureofabear 3y agoIt's in the figure labeled "'How Did the NPOV Rule Change' (figure 2 from the paper)". If you're searching text or reading text only, I guess you wouldn't see it.
- jrmg 3y agoThank you! I guess I will have to admit I did not examine the figures…
- _kulang 3y agoThank goodness for that
- SV_BubbleTime 3y agoLots of people are for silencing others making sure they can’t be heard, taking away a platform, because they never think they’ll find themselves on that side of it. But they will.
- The_Colonel 3y agoWell, where do you draw the line? Or should there be no line, and Wikipedia should be providing equal platform to KKK, Nazis, Flat-earthers, Shapeshifting lizard people while not making any judgement about them?
- SV_BubbleTime 3y agoI think it’s telling how you’ve been so well trained to repeat who the enemy is without any consideration of who did that to you. The real answer is real things aren’t controversial. Nonsense to enrage is also to engage.
- LordDragonfang 3y ago> the author "classif[ied] editors into the Anti-Fringe camp (AF) and the Pro-Fringe camp (PF)". The AF camp is described as "editors who were anti-conspiracy theories, anti-pseudoscience, and liberal", whereas the PF camp consists of "Editors who were more supportive of conspiracy theories, pseudoscience, and conservatism." It's interesting to see Wikipedia publication so readily admit that, rightly or wrongly, its "Neutral Point of View" considers [American] conservatism a "fringe" (implicitly, counterfactual) belief. The "politics" section further down touches on this, but doesn't actually deny it. Like I said, interesting, since it's something that I've seen conservatives whine about, but I assumed Wikipedia's official position was the "NPOV" meant politically neutral.
- lazyasciiart 3y agoThere are two mistakes in your response here. 1) "the author" is an academic who is being quoted by a writer for the Wikipedia newsletter. No "Wikipedia publication" is admitting or endorsing that definition. In fact the newsletter piece discusses several issues they have with the definition. 2) A classification system that combines multiple attributes to define a group is not a claim that all the attributes that define one group are equivalent to each other. It's a measure of correlation.
- LordDragonfang 3y agoI made the mistake of stopping there to comment before finishing the article, so I've gotten several replies to this effect; You were the first, so I'll respond to yours. "Endorsing" might be too strong a word, but they're certainly highlighting it. None of the issues the article author (User:HaeB) has with the study's classification really manage to rebut it. They bring up a 2012 study (pointing out its methods were dubious) - but that was over a decade ago, and before the reforms to NPOV enforcement as the article and paper define them. The author says it may not "generalize to other countries", but that just means we're talking specifically about American "conservatism" (and "liberalism"). Likewise, there's the anecdote about applying the general principles to the Republican Houses of Congress, where anti-Trump is the fringe, but the comparison there only really holds with the implicit admission that in Wikipedian politics, non-liberals are the fringe among the people making the decisions.
- fsckboy 3y ago[and i get downvoted because even though mine is one of a diverse number of opinions, and my history as a good participant of this community mean nothing: opinion is the type of diversity that some people can't allow, here and on wikipedia] English (language not kingdom) Wikipedia has become a party organ* for whatever they call themselves, those people who took over and ruined philosophy, history, sociology, linguistics, anthropology, et al departments of universities (get rid of dead white males and anything they ever wrote!) to allow only deconstructive, post modernist, existentialist, nihilist, anti-western, socialist, personal truth and lived experience; the same people who are now battering down the gates of science and technology (remember Shut Down Tech day?) because believing there is "the right answer" to a problem is itself problematic, an expression of white privilege. Math should allow many answers depending on the student's truth and lived experience. And they shouldn't have to turn in their work "on time", that oppressive white western male notion. The same people that are marching in the streets to say that mass murder and terrorism are morally justifiable expressions of yearning for a brighter future, alongside a brighter future for women in Islam, just don't be too specific about what you mean, said the Walrus. This is not my personal original research, the "other" cofounder of wikipedia (along with The Outlaw Jimmy Wales) says the same https://nypost.com/2021/07/16/wikipedia-co-founder-says-site-is-now-propaganda-for-left-leaning-establishment/ https://nypost.com/2021/07/16/wikipedia-co-founder-says-site... Wikipedia btw raises tons of money, they are rolling in cash. Why do they keep begging you for more with interstitials? Because they have a number of woke "diversity", "equity", and "inclusion" projects they are dumping your money into. It has nothing to do with making wikipedia better. *party organ as in: The Nation, volume 180, number 9, page 173: “Modern armed forces cannot be built without heavy industry,” the People’s Daily, the central organ of the Chinese Communist Party, has remarked pointedly.
- LastTrain 3y agoHow long have you been so passionate about Wikipedia and their funding. Also, how much cash is "rolling in cash" by your estimation? Sounds like you think they have too much? Should we limit how much cash one can roll in - is that something you think you might be in to?
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- pard68 3y agoPutting aside the political portion, this seems like it could potentially lead to Wiki being "behind the times" at the least and stifling advancements at the extreme. The telescope was once fringe, and rightly so. Imagine reading that some guy had been able to see something in the sky that you can't see, you gotta trust him bro. Modern medical practice was a fringe view two hundred years ago. My point is if you hide the fringe then you either get left behind or prevent others from moving forward.
- helen___keller 3y agoI don’t think Wikipedia has that issue though. Pick the cutting edge in your field, in mine Wikipedia is reasonably well informed I think this is really only an “issue” when it comes to politics and culture wars
- SV_BubbleTime 3y ago> My point is if you hide the fringe then you either get left behind or prevent others from moving forward. Ultimately they’re OK with both because the politics justify it. It’s so obvious that as formal religion has weakened that informal religion has taken over. It’s not a bible, it’s a screen, you have faith, you think what it tells you, there are priests, you can wear the wrong thing, you do what makes you accepted in your tribe. If you didn’t see it during covid, then you extra double have a religion. All these people that mock religion - and have no idea they have their own is almost entertaining if it wasn’t so destructive. It’s wired into humans, we know it is, and then pretend it isn’t to our detriment.
- ska 3y agoThere is an important difference between "leading edge" and "fringe", in this context. Most useful stuff comes from the leading edge. Occasionally from the fringe, but the SNR there is terrible. Either way though, by the time you want it written up in an encyclopedia it's been sorted out if it's useful for something. If you just write up everything, you'll be drowning in half-baked ideas and crackpot theories, the net damage to the value of the place far outweighs any positives.
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- letmevoteplease 3y agoHere is a quote from the COVID-19 lab leak theory article[1] as an example of how Wikipedia's NPOV policy is implemented. I'll let it speak for itself. "The lab leak theory is informed by racist undercurrents, and has resulted in anti-Chinese sentiment. [...] While the proposed scenarios are theoretically subject to evidence-based investigation, it is not clear than any can can be sufficiently falsified to placate lab leak supporters, and they are fed by pseudoscientific and conspiratorial thinking." [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_lab_leak_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_lab_leak_theory
- lucubratory 3y agoThat's a really good way to handle it. I don't know where the brain worms are from exactly, but I've seen people who don't otherwise have rocks for brains going full-on "All the scientists are wrong, I'm just asking questions, leaked from a Chinese lab!" about this specific conspiracy theory. I get there's a nationalism aspect, but that's no excuse to throw your brain out the window. Edit: It is weird that on a pretty technical forum there are a bunch of people here who don't know anything about virology disagreeing with the overwhelming scientific consensus in the field, based on overtly conspiratorial thinking (e.g. "Look at the connections, this can't be a coincidence, this man leaked the truth and they silenced him" etc etc). You don't get to scientific consensus on something through a conspiracy. I wonder what the people replying with conspiracy theories think about climate change.
- SV_BubbleTime 3y ago> That's a really good way to handle it. Oh you were serious? Yea I guess I don’t get where anyone would get all that nonsense from. It’s nothing more than a coincidence that the first people that got sick worked in and around China’s only level4 bio lab, that the NIH was confirmed to 1-degree indirectly funding gain of function research on sars coronaviruses… then after the virus was out the Chinese government came in to prevent access to that facility and it’s data. I mean… how racist do you have to be to give any credit to the conspiracy theory that it didn’t come from a wet market near that lab?
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- mandmandam 3y agoSounds good, until you try to find an anti-war media source that isn't labeled 'fringe'. Both liberal and conservative US media sources love war, and profit from it. Alternate views don't get a look in, not in politics, and not in media. The most graphic recent example of this might be the population's 65% support for a ceasefire in Gaza - completely unrepresented in media and the executive. Pro-war media, corporate media, whether "liberal" or "conservative" both look rabid and bloodthirsty to the rest of the world. The NYT and WaPo, Fox ABC CNN CBS, even NPR have cheer-lead us into expensive atrocity after expensive atrocity. Wikipedia have enabled them and censored dissenting views, openly, even clapping themselves on the back for it. They've red- and black-listed every anti-war outlet. "The last good place on the internet" my arse.
- hot_gril 3y agoI'm skeptical of mainstream media's reporting on wars, and I've actually found a lot of facts exposed on Wikipedia that might've been covered up as "treasonous" because they don't support the US's side. More so than in other English sources.
- 0xDEF 3y agoDo you even read NYT, WaPo, and CNN? They have all been very good at showing things from the Palestinian side and how much people in Gaza are suffering. It's absolutely unhinged to put them in the same category as Fox News.
- mandmandam 3y agoNYT WaPo and CNN all cheerlead us into wars in the middle east, same as Fox. They were slightly more subtle about it, but it was still obvious to anyone outside America's fucked up Overton window. They're absolutely in the same category as Fox - corporate pro-war pro-fossil fuel anti-union entertainment propaganda, masked as news. Outside the narrow window of 'acceptable' debate they're essentially indistinguishable. CNN and the NYT are covering the atrocities and war crimes in Palestine a little better than Fox. Sure. But do you know how many journalists have been fired from those companies, and from the Guardian and the BBC as well, for simply voicing mild support for Palestine? And how many more journalists have resigned, citing fucked up editorial policy? It's simply gaslighting to say that these mouthpieces are "very good" on Palestine's suffering. It's offensively ignorant.
- explaininjs 3y agoTake RFK Jr's opening sentence: > Robert Francis Kennedy Jr. (born January 17, 1954), also known by his initials as RFK Jr. and the nickname Bobby, is an American environmental lawyer and writer who promotes anti-vaccine misinformation and public health conspiracy theories. That's the #1 most important thing to be known about him, Wikipedia? Compare to the opening paragraph on Stalin: > Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was a Soviet revolutionary and politician who was the leader of the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1922–1952) and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union (1941–1953). Initially governing the country as part of a collective leadership, he consolidated power to become a dictator by the 1930s. Ideologically adhering to the Leninist interpretation of Marxism, he formalised these ideas as Marxism–Leninism, while his own policies are called Stalinism. Or Mao: > Mao Zedong was a Chinese politician, Marxist theorist, military strategist, poet, and revolutionary who was the founder of the People's Republic of China (PRC). He led the country from its establishment in 1949 until his death in 1976, while also serving as the chairman of the Chinese Communist Party during that time. His theories, military strategies and policies are known as Maoism.
- nateglims 3y agoWhat’s wrong with the RFK Jr entry?
- explaininjs 3y agoThe term "misinformation" is editorial bias, unfit for an encyclopedia. As is "conspiracy theory". And yet you'll note the two biggest murderers in history have no such annotations tacked on to their views.
- rootusrootus 3y agoEach of the others has decades to draw from when creating a summary. What else is RFK Jr known for if not for his anti-vaccine views? It seems pretty accurate to make that a major part of any summary about him. Otherwise the only notable thing is that he's a Kennedy. Is there any term more accurate than 'misinformation' for what he says? When a claim is not even slightly supported with hard evidence, and is in fact heavily contradicted, it's fair to label it for what it is.
- type0 3y agoThe biggest problem with Wikipedia is that it ignores a lot of factual scientific publications that wiki-editors are unable to comprehend and then blindly trusts "notable" sources published in junky paper articles while those papers regularly caught outright lying in their articles.
- _ugfj 3y agoThe English Wikipedia might (or might not) have achieved this but certainly the Croatian and Polish were caught to be heavily influenced by right wing extremists, the Hungarian was not yet because no one gives a damn. But my recipe of adding anything to Wikipedia still stands, I adopted it from an article added by Hungarian nationalists: while you must source things, the quality of the source is not checked. So take an obscure book, obviously not in English and claim your fact comes from it. No one will try to dig up a small run German book decades or even hundreds of years old to verify. Or will be able to. The thing is, the people Wikipedia successfully did drive out are actual experts -- or rather they never came. The no credentials are accepted policy makes sure the experts stay away in droves. Imagine someone putting in decades of work to gain expertise in a field being told they need to argue with a neckbeard with too much time on their hands. No thanks.
- The_Colonel 3y ago> while you must source things, the quality of the source is not checked. So take an obscure book, obviously not in English and claim your fact comes from it Agreed, this is a problem esp. on smaller Wikipedias. > The no credentials are accepted policy makes sure the experts stay away in droves. Perhaps partially true, but without this policy there would be basically no Wikipedia. There are projects requiring credentials like Citizendium where experts don't have to fear being bothered by neckbeards, but they're basically dead.
- chx 3y agoYou need to apply this sensibly: if a subject matter expect challenges a source that needs to carry more weight than a rando dragging any random crap into wikipedia. Have a process etc. I am not asking for experts to be given free reign -- what they add should be sourced etc but they need to be able to apply checks.
- The_Colonel 3y agoI worked on one of the non-english Wikipedias for a couple of years, and it kinda worked like that. There were subject-matter experts (often people who had their own Wikipedia pages for their scientific work) and their opinions carried (informally) higher weight than those of randos. Wikipedia isn't completely anonymous in the sense that people contributing to a similar area know each other (not personally) and will often defer to a person with clearly higher qualifications. That doesn't mean the system is perfect and there are cases where it doesn't work out well. But it's not really true that on Wikipedia, an opinion of a rando is taken as equal of an established authority in the field.