4 ms·

> I think most casual users of Wikipedia massively underestimate the percentage of articles that are edited mostly in the interest of pushing a point of view fo

by rodgerd 13y ago

> I think most casual users of Wikipedia massively underestimate the percentage of articles that are edited mostly in the interest of pushing a point of view for commercial or ideological reasons. Yup. I read a dicsussion recently around an article about Piers Anthony's obsession with pedophilia in his fiction, and a number of people were surprised none of the controversy around e.g. his scenes with 5 year olds havign sex with adults was mantioned on Wikipedia. It's buried behind a couple of layers of Talk pages of course, likewise the whitewashing of Eric Raymond's. Wikipedia is easy for obsessive rule-lawyers to show the information they want to show.

debacle 13y ago
What's so bad about Eric Raymond?
belorn 13y ago
Like with any such claims, I opened up a tor-browser and looked if the claim can be supported by sources. Demanding sources, is the one rule that Wikipedia can never drop, in the same way that HN can't drop rules against spam. If HN became a cesspool of spam, HN would die. If Wikipedia dropped the requirement for sources, it would die. Checking the wikipedia talk page of Piers Anthony, not a single editor is brining a source to the discussion. A google search gave a hasty reference in a respectable article (http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/amazon-defends-pulls-self-published-pedophilia-e-book/ http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/amazon-defends-pulls-self-pub...), a newspaper columnists article (http://litreactor.com/columns/themes-of-pedophilia-in-the-works-of-piers-anthony http://litreactor.com/columns/themes-of-pedophilia-in-the-wo...), and a bunch unverifiable blog posts. So... its a fair chance to include such statement if someone used those sources to support such edit. Without any sources however, any such edit should not be on wikipedia. If you want to complain about whitewashing, please leave out discussions where a bunch of opinionated people are simply voicing their opinions but can't be bothered to do a simple google search.

by rodgerd 13y ago

debacle 13y ago

What's so bad about Eric Raymond?

belorn 13y ago

Like with any such claims, I opened up a tor-browser and looked if the claim can be supported by sources. Demanding sources, is the one rule that Wikipedia can never drop, in the same way that HN can't drop rules against spam. If HN became a cesspool of spam, HN would die. If Wikipedia dropped the requirement for sources, it would die. Checking the wikipedia talk page of Piers Anthony, not a single editor is brining a source to the discussion. A google search gave a hasty reference in a respectable article (http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/amazon-defends-pulls-self-published-pedophilia-e-book/ http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/amazon-defends-pulls-self-pub...), a newspaper columnists article (http://litreactor.com/columns/themes-of-pedophilia-in-the-works-of-piers-anthony http://litreactor.com/columns/themes-of-pedophilia-in-the-wo...), and a bunch unverifiable blog posts. So... its a fair chance to include such statement if someone used those sources to support such edit. Without any sources however, any such edit should not be on wikipedia. If you want to complain about whitewashing, please leave out discussions where a bunch of opinionated people are simply voicing their opinions but can't be bothered to do a simple google search.