I have noticed that Wikipedia has become pretty terrible for anything political recently. It's got a very left wing bias and doesn't come off as objective at all.
Wow, in what way? Please explain. I have mostly used wikipedia for science/tech, followed by historical. I don't understand what you mean by it having a strong political bias? If it does, then you're referencing recent events?
As a conservative, it must be frustrating for Larry Sanger to see Wikipedia focus on scientific correctness so much - Especially in the Global Warming and alternative medicine articles. Truth has a very well known liberal bias. It is hopeless to expect Wikipedia to change to balance the truth with the truthiness. Volunteers should focus on a new project such as https://www.conservapedia.com/Main_Page
I've been called a "shrill Far Leftist" and a "fascist appeaser". While labels of "liberal" and "conservative" are somewhat handy for general categorization, to label oneself is to automatically box one in with the assumptions of that label.
I am a truth seeker, and if that truth should conflict with assumptions I hold, I do my damndest to welcome that truth to the best of my abilities.
I think that a key component of intelligence is the ability to "unlearn".
That said, conservapedia is a joke to me, which is ironic because conservative comedy usually weak sauce (see Dennis Miller for further details). Writing articles that are intentionally biased whilst proclaiming to be "the truth" borders on Dunning Kruger territory.
I don't say this as a personal attack on your ethos, only on any efforts to proclaim a "truth" in service of an agenda.
Edit:
Looks like I mis-read that comment. Leaving my statement intact to own my words.
My response to you promoting conservapedia. It wasn't intended as a personal attack, and I expect you to treat my response as though it came from some rando on teh interwebs.
Edit: you read my stupid, sincere, and sloppy response to my erroneous assumptions about what you said. Sorry about that.
It's just throwing out wiki articles and stating "ah because the facts here don't line up with my extreme right wing / conspiratorial values it must be liberal bias!"
example from blog :
- The first article I thought to look at had some pretty egregious instances of bias: the Jesus article. It simply asserts, again in its own voice, that “the quest for the historical Jesus has yielded major uncertainty on the historical reliability of the Gospels and on how closely the Jesus portrayed in the Bible reflects the historical Jesus.”
What is bias about that? That is the exact opposite of bias simply stating the facts as determined though scientific process.
or another example:
- The global warming and MMR vaccine articles are examples; I hardly need to dive into these pages, since it is quite enough to say that they endorse definite positions that scientific minorities reject.
There is information on both of those pages about the minority position, but it is limited because the scientific community is pretty much in agreement on the science behind those topic. Do we need to make sure half the article on the earth is dedicated to flat earth theory to insure there is no extreme liberal globe shaped earth bias?
This is a classic example of impugning the truth by advocating for it with fallacious arguments.
Pretending that Donald Trump is not a big fat liar is just ridiculous. Even when he's telling the truth he's lying because he exaggerates everything.
But pretending that his Wikipedia article is neutral is equally ridiculous.
Here's a random example. Remember that immigrant family separation thing? What actually happened was, there was an existing policy that children were separated from their parents if their parents were in detention. Under Obama that didn't apply to many people because not many people were being detained. Then Trump started prosecuting immigration violations and the number of detentions, and therefore separations, went up.
Here's Wikipedia:
> Previous administrations had no such policy of generally separating migrant families with children.
Here's the NPR article they cite for the proposition:
> Previous administrations did not, as a general principle, separate all families crossing the U.S. border illegally.
Previous administrations did not, as a general principle, prosecute all families crossing the U.S. border illegally. The families thereby weren't separated as a general principle because the parents weren't being detained as a general principle, not because there was no separation policy when the parents were being detained.
This sort of thing is endemic. Paper over the nuance to make the other team look bad. And it's as much NPR here as it is Wikipedia, but balance would have been to find the other half of the story and put it in the article.
It's absurd to say Wikipedia is unbiased, because bias is endorsed by Wikipedia's officially stated policy! The only requirement is that the bias is copied from an off-site source.
Wikipedia endorses any well-established" news site, with no requirements that those sites cite their sources.
Wikipedia rules require peer review for academic research that is cited, but not for private commercial news operations nor NPR.
And despite how weak Wikipedia's rules are, enforcement of those rules is a farce. Anything remotely questionable is controlled by who ever manages to win control of the page, leading to articles that are mer copies of press releases and corporate websites.
Sanger claims that, in altering his early, rambling draft [1] of Wikipedia's neutral point of view policy [2], the project "no longer has an effective neutrality policy" and has endorsed an "utterly bankrupt" policy of "false balance".
However, the principle of undue weight, which is what Sanger is referring to as "false balance", was already present in the exact version of the policy which Sanger edited:
> Articles that compare views need not give minority views as much or as detailed a description as more popular views. We should not attempt to represent a dispute as if a view held by only a small minority of people deserved as much attention as a very popular view. That may be misleading as to the shape of the dispute.
And this is precisely the policy which he proceeds to argue against! According to Sanger, the article on Barack Obama should focus more on the various short-lived media scandals and conspiracy theories surrounding his presidency, and articles on vaccines and global warming should focus more on their detractors.
Of course, this is nonsense. The only thing that really changed in Wikipedia's policy was the abandonment of the clearly flawed principle that neutrality could be established by "presenting all points of view" on a topic. To understand how that policy is flawed, one need merely consider what would mean for topics with a single, simple consensus view and many fringe theories surrounding them, like Egyptian pyramids. To present every point of view about the pyramids (that they were built by or for aliens, or that their shape or arrangement has mystical powers... etc) alongside well-established scientific consensus (that they were built by Egyptians as royal tombs) would lend inappropriate weight to those points of view.
In this example the argument is made that all statements should be treated equally, but the argument is also made that the weight and intentions of statements matters more. I'd argue that's true given that public figures and people in general walk back their statements after being called out. It doesn't mean they don't mean the original statement. So in the search for truth the most honest and supported position is the evidence presented on Trump's racism. Which is sourced.
So I'm not following on how that's a good example of 'bias' unless there's something specific I'm missing.
The way most candidates should handle something like this, is to put out a book. Then reporter's questions can be addressed by saying, "Well, I wrote a book about it last year, and apologized for my past behavior, you can read the details there."
The problem with that is Kamala Harris didn't know what political position she needed to have last year. Last year's book might have needed to be a complete apology for her stance as tough on crime or it might have needed to be trumping her strong record. Only the events of the last year have made it clear exactly what position she wants to take.
and thus the ghost writer industry turned to statistics to predict the tide of their topics for their esteemed hosts, whilst wall street made bets on which book ending would make it to final print.
I think wikipedia is basically in a no-win situation on this. Is Harris' connections to Steve Mnuchin important? I don't know. I know a republican would tell you yes and a democrat would probably tell you no. Hell, a Republican might well tell you that it's an important fact about Harris' career whilst simultaneously not recognising that it's probably an important fact that should reflect very poorly on Steve Mnuchin who is currently serving a Republican president. I can see you could make an argument for either frankly - sweetheart deals are a problem and so is special treatment. Also she was a DA for 7 years and AG for 6 years and frankly it would be a miracle if she didn't have a few controversial decisions or dealt with some well known people. You could see a mirror of this article about her using her office to target a republican. I can certainly say the quote from the article seems to be leading - I know the article wants to imply that Harris' decision not to prosecute Mnuchin is linked to his donation to her campaign. I don't find that compelling and I certainly think its pushing a biased agenda.
Personally I would like to see Wikipedia take a step back in these political situations, draw clear lines about what should be in articles and draw those lines in such a way as to minimise the pay off for editorialising. You could for example, minimise her CV to literally just which jobs she had and when, and then you could have a separate article for the Attorney General of California, where specific instances can be documented.
Aside from the specifics of the political squabble, an elected official (Harris) has far more to lose from "bad associations" than an appointed official (Mnuchin) who is accountable to no one except his boss.
I agree that this is a difficult position for Wikipedia to be in, but I don’t think the solution is to simply scrub posts of most of their content. The reality is, for better or worse, that Wikipedia will be the first (or perhaps only) stop for many voters researching political candidates. If a voter can’t even determine the basic characteristics of a candidate’s political identity (there’s a pretty wide gulf between the profile of a “tough-on-crime” prosecutor or AG and a “progressive reformer,” for ex.) from Wikipedia’s entry on that candidate, Wikipedia will provide very limited utility to them.
At the end of the day, a wiki (or any UGC system) is only as good as the admins who have the final say on what is published.
As good a Wikipedia is, it's dangerous for it to be the only "legitimate" one. Thanks to the open license, there should be many forks by people striving to do better or with a different editorial tilt (without needing to all the way to fringe like Conservapedia and even Rationalwiki.) Even Uncyclopedia deserves some competition.
27 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 63.3 ms ] threadI am a truth seeker, and if that truth should conflict with assumptions I hold, I do my damndest to welcome that truth to the best of my abilities.
I think that a key component of intelligence is the ability to "unlearn".
That said, conservapedia is a joke to me, which is ironic because conservative comedy usually weak sauce (see Dennis Miller for further details). Writing articles that are intentionally biased whilst proclaiming to be "the truth" borders on Dunning Kruger territory.
I don't say this as a personal attack on your ethos, only on any efforts to proclaim a "truth" in service of an agenda.
Edit:
Looks like I mis-read that comment. Leaving my statement intact to own my words.
My response to you promoting conservapedia. It wasn't intended as a personal attack, and I expect you to treat my response as though it came from some rando on teh interwebs.
Edit: you read my stupid, sincere, and sloppy response to my erroneous assumptions about what you said. Sorry about that.
And going back to re-read the comment I replied to I see that I did indeed incorrectly parse that comment. I stand corrected in that regard.
Thank you for your input.
It's just throwing out wiki articles and stating "ah because the facts here don't line up with my extreme right wing / conspiratorial values it must be liberal bias!"
example from blog : - The first article I thought to look at had some pretty egregious instances of bias: the Jesus article. It simply asserts, again in its own voice, that “the quest for the historical Jesus has yielded major uncertainty on the historical reliability of the Gospels and on how closely the Jesus portrayed in the Bible reflects the historical Jesus.”
What is bias about that? That is the exact opposite of bias simply stating the facts as determined though scientific process.
or another example: - The global warming and MMR vaccine articles are examples; I hardly need to dive into these pages, since it is quite enough to say that they endorse definite positions that scientific minorities reject.
There is information on both of those pages about the minority position, but it is limited because the scientific community is pretty much in agreement on the science behind those topic. Do we need to make sure half the article on the earth is dedicated to flat earth theory to insure there is no extreme liberal globe shaped earth bias?
Pretending that Donald Trump is not a big fat liar is just ridiculous. Even when he's telling the truth he's lying because he exaggerates everything.
But pretending that his Wikipedia article is neutral is equally ridiculous.
Here's a random example. Remember that immigrant family separation thing? What actually happened was, there was an existing policy that children were separated from their parents if their parents were in detention. Under Obama that didn't apply to many people because not many people were being detained. Then Trump started prosecuting immigration violations and the number of detentions, and therefore separations, went up.
Here's Wikipedia:
> Previous administrations had no such policy of generally separating migrant families with children.
Here's the NPR article they cite for the proposition:
> Previous administrations did not, as a general principle, separate all families crossing the U.S. border illegally.
Previous administrations did not, as a general principle, prosecute all families crossing the U.S. border illegally. The families thereby weren't separated as a general principle because the parents weren't being detained as a general principle, not because there was no separation policy when the parents were being detained.
This sort of thing is endemic. Paper over the nuance to make the other team look bad. And it's as much NPR here as it is Wikipedia, but balance would have been to find the other half of the story and put it in the article.
Wikipedia endorses any well-established" news site, with no requirements that those sites cite their sources.
Wikipedia rules require peer review for academic research that is cited, but not for private commercial news operations nor NPR.
And despite how weak Wikipedia's rules are, enforcement of those rules is a farce. Anything remotely questionable is controlled by who ever manages to win control of the page, leading to articles that are mer copies of press releases and corporate websites.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources
Sanger claims that, in altering his early, rambling draft [1] of Wikipedia's neutral point of view policy [2], the project "no longer has an effective neutrality policy" and has endorsed an "utterly bankrupt" policy of "false balance".
However, the principle of undue weight, which is what Sanger is referring to as "false balance", was already present in the exact version of the policy which Sanger edited:
> Articles that compare views need not give minority views as much or as detailed a description as more popular views. We should not attempt to represent a dispute as if a view held by only a small minority of people deserved as much attention as a very popular view. That may be misleading as to the shape of the dispute.
And this is precisely the policy which he proceeds to argue against! According to Sanger, the article on Barack Obama should focus more on the various short-lived media scandals and conspiracy theories surrounding his presidency, and articles on vaccines and global warming should focus more on their detractors.
Of course, this is nonsense. The only thing that really changed in Wikipedia's policy was the abandonment of the clearly flawed principle that neutrality could be established by "presenting all points of view" on a topic. To understand how that policy is flawed, one need merely consider what would mean for topics with a single, simple consensus view and many fringe theories surrounding them, like Egyptian pyramids. To present every point of view about the pyramids (that they were built by or for aliens, or that their shape or arrangement has mystical powers... etc) alongside well-established scientific consensus (that they were built by Egyptians as royal tombs) would lend inappropriate weight to those points of view.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Neutral...
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_vie...
If you have specific points then that may be discussable, but making grand general statements like that doesnt yield any productive discussion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Racial_views_of_Donald_Tr...
So I'm not following on how that's a good example of 'bias' unless there's something specific I'm missing.
Personally I would like to see Wikipedia take a step back in these political situations, draw clear lines about what should be in articles and draw those lines in such a way as to minimise the pay off for editorialising. You could for example, minimise her CV to literally just which jobs she had and when, and then you could have a separate article for the Attorney General of California, where specific instances can be documented.
As good a Wikipedia is, it's dangerous for it to be the only "legitimate" one. Thanks to the open license, there should be many forks by people striving to do better or with a different editorial tilt (without needing to all the way to fringe like Conservapedia and even Rationalwiki.) Even Uncyclopedia deserves some competition.