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I'm not so sure I go there less and less. Wikipedia is very biased and turf guarded against negative factually true information even when it meets all requirem

I'm not so sure I go there less and less. Wikipedia is very biased and turf guarded against negative factually true information even when it meets all requirements it will often be taken down automatically with no recourse. Many pages are functionally not editable because of turf guarding. Anything vaguely sociopolitical is functionally censored on it and wikipedia does nothing about it even if they don't support it.

techpineapple 1y ago
What are people regularly using Wikipedia for that the bias is that terrible? Are you exclusively looking up controversial conflicts, right wing leaders and climate change? I just have never had my everyday curiosity cross paths with only those things which are controversial by Wikipedia standards. Also I find a lot of people’s disagreements usually come down to “ok, I see that the information that I thought was censored is actually available but not in the format that I prefer” And if you’re looking for objective information about the Israel Palestine conflict you’re hardly going to get it anywhere.
LastTrain 1y ago
There is no such thing as unbiased. Maybe it simply doesn’t match your bias.
- d0mine 1y ago
  There is a difference between unintentionally introducing a bias and propaganda . The latter is a guided by professionals. It is not an accident.
  - LastTrain 1y ago
    You are accusing Wikipedia of spreading propaganda? On behalf of who?
    - antonymoose 1y ago
      Wikipedia isn’t a person. Wikipedia isn’t doing anything. Individuals and groups, be they ad-hoc formations, corporate backed, or nation-state backed routinely astroturf all corners of the internet and Wikipedia is a very big, very common target.
      - LastTrain 1y ago
        Sure but this thread is in response to a statement starting with "Wikipedia is biased".
        citizenpaul 1y ago
        I actually used the word biased in hopes of avoiding triggering someone like you by what I really meant. It is full of propaganda. Funded PR firm intentional propaganda and Wikipedia is complicit because they allow the propaganda they agree with and block the propaganda they do not agree with. No I will not waste my time researching proof for someone that is being intentionally obtuse. If you have interest you can easily find it by doing some research.
- Levitz 1y ago
  It's impossible to produce such material with a complete lack of bias, sure. I know of at least of one case in which a person publicly admits he is using Wikipedia to promote their political stances and who is right now at the center of an arbitration case in which he intends to silence opposition. This is not that.
  - LastTrain 1y ago
    People who edit Wikipedia run the gamut from those that are zealous about neutral point of view up to and including people that do it for their own selfish purposes. But lets take the zealous NPOV type. If I were to try and do that, to try my hardest to produce an article which truly takes an NPOV stance, it would still come off biased to you because you and I can't possibly share the same idea about what is neutral. Based on some peoples venom here - including charges of propaganda - I suspect you all are just reading articles written by people with a different worldview than your own. I really don't understand this sense of unfairness or even conspiracy people have about it.
    - Gareth321 1y ago
      I disagree. Reality is objective and publications all over the world like the BBC do a great job of maintaining journalistic standards. Wikipedia could ensure information is unbiased. You clearly enjoy the bias, and it conforms well to your own. If it didn't, I highly doubt I'd be hearing you defend bias with such a strange postmodernist argument.
      - LastTrain 1y ago
        You are actually agreeing with me. I'm saying it is biased, because everything is, and it is not offensive (or even avoidable) to have a bias. Ask someone in Afghanistan if the BBC is biased. BBC matches your bias I guess. It pretty well matches mine too, but that doesn't mean I don't recognize it carries one.
    - Levitz 1y ago
      I'm really at a loss on how to make this any more clear. You are looking at a case of a person LITERALLY admitting they are using it for propaganda and your reaction is "I'm sure it's actually not, it's actually neutral and it's just that it differs from your view". I'm sorry but I can only explain it to you, I can't understand it for you.
lucideer 1y ago
Firstly let me agree with both current sibling commenters: zero bias is impossible & the brand & extent of Wikipedia's biases is distinctly bad. That said, I find Wikipedia's biases predictable, avoidable (topic specific) & also very interesting as a sociological study in itself. Firstly, it reminds us of inherent bias in (mostly colonial-written) paper encyclopedia of the past. There has never been an unbiased encyclopedia written & seeing the biases fully sourced & rapidly evolving in realtime serves as an excellent crystallisation of slower processes in previous works: highlighting that many of the historical "facts" we all grew up with were ultimately fed to us by similarly biased groups. I've also come to the slow realisation that this may be a fundamentally unsolvable problem & that simply categorising it as "biased beyond repair" & continuing to handle it in that manner may be the best thing we can do.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- Levitz 1y ago
  >I've also come to the slow realisation that this may be a fundamentally unsolvable problem & that simply categorising it as "biased beyond repair" & continuing to handle it in that manner may be the best thing we can do. Is it a case of rot then? Or maybe I'm just biased, but I get the feel it wasn't always like this. It was never ideal, sure, but it used to be that I was wary of the site when checking, say, contemporary politics. Now it's a good chunk of recorded history instead.
  - lucideer 1y ago
    > I get the feel it wasn't always like this I get this feeling but in the opposite direction. The more I see it the more I come to realise I was blinder to it in the past. Many people comment on the internet ushering in an age of misinformation, but I actually see it as ushering in an age of misinformation awareness. Factchecks in legacy media were rare to nonexistent & generally not accessible to most media consumers. Information was more siloed leading to much greater acceptance of what was fed as fact without a lot of interrogation. Now, we're bombarded by such a slew of contradictions we "feel" less able to discern fact from fiction, which is disconcerting, but it's really just a broad awakening to something that's always been the case.
ragazzina 1y ago
>factually true information [...] meets all requirements [...] it will be taken down Can you make such an example?
- citizenpaul 1y ago
  No. I've found this is one of those things that people simply have to see for themselves. I'd encourage you to try to make some edits and see what happens. Its simply impossible to edit a public figures page at this point if you want an easy fail case to try.
  - wiether 1y ago
    > Its simply impossible to edit a public figures page at this point if you want an easy fail case to try. Why should a complete random be allowed to edit a public figure's page without some overview? What could they possibly edit that is relevant to this figure's page? If a public figure dies, their page will be updated in less than one hour of the announcement, so the edit is not the issue. It seems healthy to have people gatekeeping those pages, since they are not a public forum, but a common source of knowledge.
- joenot443 1y ago
  A very simple example are ongoing cases where the identity of a perpetrator has been released by smaller or local agencies but not by larger ones. There are countless, countless other examples too, I can walk you through some others if it’ll be helpful. Wikipedia doesn’t treat all sources as being equal, so even in cases where there’s no reasonable doubt towards a claim’s veracity, if the correct source hasn’t already claimed it, editors are liable to revert your edit. Obviously this is a phenomenon that occurs much more often in ongoing or politically sensitive stories. That said, it’s important for people to understand the flaws in Wikipedias method of epistemology.
  - DangitBobby 1y ago
    > Wikipedia doesn’t treat all sources as being equal, so even in cases where there’s no reasonable doubt towards a claim’s veracity, if the correct source hasn’t already claimed it, editors are liable to revert your edit. This is the right approach. If more information sources held this standard, sloppy reporting and outright lies would be very costly. Would you tell everyone very important news based on a the word of a friend who is known to stretch or invent the truth? Be a reliable source and you can participate.

techpineapple 1y ago

What are people regularly using Wikipedia for that the bias is that terrible? Are you exclusively looking up controversial conflicts, right wing leaders and climate change? I just have never had my everyday curiosity cross paths with only those things which are controversial by Wikipedia standards. Also I find a lot of people’s disagreements usually come down to “ok, I see that the information that I thought was censored is actually available but not in the format that I prefer” And if you’re looking for objective information about the Israel Palestine conflict you’re hardly going to get it anywhere.

LastTrain 1y ago

There is no such thing as unbiased. Maybe it simply doesn’t match your bias.

d0mine 1y ago
There is a difference between unintentionally introducing a bias and propaganda . The latter is a guided by professionals. It is not an accident.
- LastTrain 1y ago
  You are accusing Wikipedia of spreading propaganda? On behalf of who?
  - antonymoose 1y ago
    Wikipedia isn’t a person. Wikipedia isn’t doing anything. Individuals and groups, be they ad-hoc formations, corporate backed, or nation-state backed routinely astroturf all corners of the internet and Wikipedia is a very big, very common target.
    - LastTrain 1y ago
      Sure but this thread is in response to a statement starting with "Wikipedia is biased".
      - citizenpaul 1y ago
        I actually used the word biased in hopes of avoiding triggering someone like you by what I really meant. It is full of propaganda. Funded PR firm intentional propaganda and Wikipedia is complicit because they allow the propaganda they agree with and block the propaganda they do not agree with. No I will not waste my time researching proof for someone that is being intentionally obtuse. If you have interest you can easily find it by doing some research.
Levitz 1y ago
It's impossible to produce such material with a complete lack of bias, sure. I know of at least of one case in which a person publicly admits he is using Wikipedia to promote their political stances and who is right now at the center of an arbitration case in which he intends to silence opposition. This is not that.
- LastTrain 1y ago
  People who edit Wikipedia run the gamut from those that are zealous about neutral point of view up to and including people that do it for their own selfish purposes. But lets take the zealous NPOV type. If I were to try and do that, to try my hardest to produce an article which truly takes an NPOV stance, it would still come off biased to you because you and I can't possibly share the same idea about what is neutral. Based on some peoples venom here - including charges of propaganda - I suspect you all are just reading articles written by people with a different worldview than your own. I really don't understand this sense of unfairness or even conspiracy people have about it.
  - Gareth321 1y ago
    I disagree. Reality is objective and publications all over the world like the BBC do a great job of maintaining journalistic standards. Wikipedia could ensure information is unbiased. You clearly enjoy the bias, and it conforms well to your own. If it didn't, I highly doubt I'd be hearing you defend bias with such a strange postmodernist argument.
    - LastTrain 1y ago
      You are actually agreeing with me. I'm saying it is biased, because everything is, and it is not offensive (or even avoidable) to have a bias. Ask someone in Afghanistan if the BBC is biased. BBC matches your bias I guess. It pretty well matches mine too, but that doesn't mean I don't recognize it carries one.
  - Levitz 1y ago
    I'm really at a loss on how to make this any more clear. You are looking at a case of a person LITERALLY admitting they are using it for propaganda and your reaction is "I'm sure it's actually not, it's actually neutral and it's just that it differs from your view". I'm sorry but I can only explain it to you, I can't understand it for you.

lucideer 1y ago

Firstly let me agree with both current sibling commenters: zero bias is impossible & the brand & extent of Wikipedia's biases is distinctly bad. That said, I find Wikipedia's biases predictable, avoidable (topic specific) & also very interesting as a sociological study in itself. Firstly, it reminds us of inherent bias in (mostly colonial-written) paper encyclopedia of the past. There has never been an unbiased encyclopedia written & seeing the biases fully sourced & rapidly evolving in realtime serves as an excellent crystallisation of slower processes in previous works: highlighting that many of the historical "facts" we all grew up with were ultimately fed to us by similarly biased groups. I've also come to the slow realisation that this may be a fundamentally unsolvable problem & that simply categorising it as "biased beyond repair" & continuing to handle it in that manner may be the best thing we can do.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
Levitz 1y ago
>I've also come to the slow realisation that this may be a fundamentally unsolvable problem & that simply categorising it as "biased beyond repair" & continuing to handle it in that manner may be the best thing we can do. Is it a case of rot then? Or maybe I'm just biased, but I get the feel it wasn't always like this. It was never ideal, sure, but it used to be that I was wary of the site when checking, say, contemporary politics. Now it's a good chunk of recorded history instead.
- lucideer 1y ago
  > I get the feel it wasn't always like this I get this feeling but in the opposite direction. The more I see it the more I come to realise I was blinder to it in the past. Many people comment on the internet ushering in an age of misinformation, but I actually see it as ushering in an age of misinformation awareness. Factchecks in legacy media were rare to nonexistent & generally not accessible to most media consumers. Information was more siloed leading to much greater acceptance of what was fed as fact without a lot of interrogation. Now, we're bombarded by such a slew of contradictions we "feel" less able to discern fact from fiction, which is disconcerting, but it's really just a broad awakening to something that's always been the case.

ragazzina 1y ago

>factually true information [...] meets all requirements [...] it will be taken down Can you make such an example?

citizenpaul 1y ago
No. I've found this is one of those things that people simply have to see for themselves. I'd encourage you to try to make some edits and see what happens. Its simply impossible to edit a public figures page at this point if you want an easy fail case to try.
- wiether 1y ago
  > Its simply impossible to edit a public figures page at this point if you want an easy fail case to try. Why should a complete random be allowed to edit a public figure's page without some overview? What could they possibly edit that is relevant to this figure's page? If a public figure dies, their page will be updated in less than one hour of the announcement, so the edit is not the issue. It seems healthy to have people gatekeeping those pages, since they are not a public forum, but a common source of knowledge.
joenot443 1y ago
A very simple example are ongoing cases where the identity of a perpetrator has been released by smaller or local agencies but not by larger ones. There are countless, countless other examples too, I can walk you through some others if it’ll be helpful. Wikipedia doesn’t treat all sources as being equal, so even in cases where there’s no reasonable doubt towards a claim’s veracity, if the correct source hasn’t already claimed it, editors are liable to revert your edit. Obviously this is a phenomenon that occurs much more often in ongoing or politically sensitive stories. That said, it’s important for people to understand the flaws in Wikipedias method of epistemology.
- DangitBobby 1y ago
  > Wikipedia doesn’t treat all sources as being equal, so even in cases where there’s no reasonable doubt towards a claim’s veracity, if the correct source hasn’t already claimed it, editors are liable to revert your edit. This is the right approach. If more information sources held this standard, sloppy reporting and outright lies would be very costly. Would you tell everyone very important news based on a the word of a friend who is known to stretch or invent the truth? Be a reliable source and you can participate.