The left continues to take an absolute kicking in Britain, and Wikipedia probably has to share some of the blame.

Good, bad, biased, paid or what-have-you. There's an endless supply.
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The left continues to take an absolute kicking in Britain, and Wikipedia probably has to share some of the blame.

Post by Jake Is A Sellout » Fri May 07, 2021 2:39 pm

Even a year after they dumped their Bernie Sanders type leader, and even after Covid has killed thousands, and even after Brexit hasn't gone as smoothly as promised, and even after over a decade of the right being in power, the left is defying all conventional wisdom, and still continues to take an absolute kicking at the ballot box, a kicking just as hard as that delivered in the general election a year ago.

With both new and postponed voting occurring yesterday, the left are losing local councils up and down the country, and a parliamentary seat in their traditional heartland, the north, by a huge swing.

It's not yet conclusive in Scotland, but even there, it speaks volumes that for a country that for economic reasons, absolutely loves immigration, never wanted to leave the EU, and really likes a high tax high spending government, still can't really be persuaded to go all in for the independence parties, making a clean break from the right.

So what's going on?

Well, consider the apparent reality of Britain as it is seen by Wikishits. They happily believe that the left wing media, even the tabloids, are more trustworthy than the right wing media. Reality has a left wing bias, and all that shit. They happily believe that the current Prime Minister is our equivalent of Donald Trump, and the Daily Mail is our equivalent of Fox News/National Enquirer.

It's complete and total bullshit of course, but the hard core British editors find it pretty easy to convince dumb fuck Americans that these are truisms, and so "consensus" to achieve their political objectives, is pretty easy to obtain.

Although there are some moderate right wing Americans who persist with the belief that engaging with Wikipedia is possible, moderate British right wingers are far too smart to sign up to a rigged game.

In Britain, to take that parliamentary seat for example, you only need to sway a few thousand people to change their mind, for it to represent an emphatic victory.

This is easy, in the current environment of Wikipedia. For a decade, coincidentally the exact same time the right has been in power and the left has been butthurt over it, it's been so obvious to British readers, even if they don't appreciate the precise mechanics, that Wikipedia is just total bollocks. Might as well have been written by a Guardian journalist, if not the left wing leadership itself.

It's so blatant in some articles, people are probably quite happy to suspect this isn't just a case of Wikipedia being attractive to the sort of wanker who thinks the left has all the answers, it could very well be actual corruption.

Jimmy Wales was literally on the board of The Guardian after all, until he left to launch a doomed attempt to actually somehow annihilate "fake news" entirely, which in Britain, seemed to be merely be a code word for the Daily Mail, the most widely read, and most right wing, newspaper.

This all has consequences. Nobody will deny that voters are better off when armed with objective facts and balanced opinion, but for that, we have the BBC. Wikipedia could have served that purpose too, but it chose not to. British people well understand that its print media does have a political opinion, and they factor that in.

They don't need Wikipedia being the gatekeeper of both news, and widely held opinions. They only wanted Wikipedia to do what they thought the fake news issue was all about, and prevent people adding sources which have literally been made up.

That wasn't good enough for Wikipedia, so now they're paying the price.

This is all just a theory of course, but it stands up to scrutiny. What's the alternative?

That somehow America were able to escape the nightmare of Trump/Fox populism, and we aren't?

Nonsense.

We didn't even let it get a foothold, is the reality. Nigel Farage was our Trump, and he never got a sniff of political power. We incorporated the majority of his platform into our established parties. No takeovers, no coups. Just politics.

We don't even have a Fox News, indeed, they were shut down here because they're unacceptably biased. Our National Enquirer is the Daily Star. Literally nobody takes it seriously, not even itself, it is the literal rag. (and yet it was still considered acceptable long after Wikipedia banned the Mail).

Welcome to a well regulated media, America, where free speech is possible, with conditions. Such as, don't lie. Opinion is OK. It is the cornerstone of our print media. Fascism is not. Expect to be banned for thet shit.

The average Britain is more civilised, more educated, and more open to new ideas, than the average American. It's just a fact. That is why lifelong left wing voters are actually free to consider, and they clearly have in their millions, a switch to the enemy at the polls, without the unpalatable situation of say, having to be down with voter suppression, crazy gun laws, crazy abortion laws, or having the curriculum rewritten to teach the controversy over evolution.

Our voting constituencies are drawn up by independent commission. And the next rebalancing is actually expected to favour the right, to factor in increased population in left wing areas, so that gives you some idea of how much the left are falling behind.

Maybe America will recover from its Trump nightmare, and maybe it won't. It certainly seems like it might cost it trillions of dollars, and still won't fix any of your baked in problems. You're going to forever live in fear of Trump II.

Those paying close attention, might have noticed by now, that Wikipedia not only didn't stop Trump's rise to power, it probably hastened it.

There's a reason for that. The same reason that lies behind the fact Britain didn't suffer the same fate.

It's properly ironic, because we're both suffering largley the same issues that are driving these tumultuous times at the ballot box.

I have never been more satisfied to know that Wikipedia's biased bullshit, like the Daily Mail ban, is having absolutely no effect on British society. Literarally none. And not because we're not reading Wikipedia, because we are, obviously.

Our response from seeing how biased it is, was obviously different to the Amercian right. Since we have a functioning democracy, we never had the need to turn to a nightmare, in order to free us from the choking yoke of the smug left. We simply had to vote for the party of Churchill and Thatcher. No biggie.

The facts support the right's long held opinions. Never was it more obvious that the EU is a closed shop, a political rather than economic union, than in the wake of Brexit and the pandemic. Never was it more obvious that a big spending high tax government can't do much if it's ideologically opposed to the free market. And never has it been more obvious that it is only by electing strong right wing governments, do you have the luxury of using state aid and economic levers for strategic advantage.

The left are in disarray. This year they took the strategic decision to not really stand on any kind of policy platform at all, other than attacking the right, with naturally, every single attack giving full prominence in The Guardian. Didn't work. Not even close.

Their Wikipedia advertised platform does include the usual suspects, such as wanting to scrap higher education tuition fees, but even though this was costed by the Fiscal Studies Institute to cost £8b, which is a fucking big chuck of money in UK budget terms, Wikipedia contains no information about where this money comes from. Apart from of course, "an increase in income tax for the top 5% of earners and an end to tax avoidance by corporations." Labour has never ever won an election on such obvious unwillingness to actually show their working. Doesn't matter to Wikipedia. Still shovelling the same shit.

It's not that the British people don't care if their leaders lie, cheat or feather their own nest. But they do expect there to be a credible alternative to vote for. And we can usually tell how much of an attack against the Prime Minister or top Cabinet members is made up of actual facts, and how much is desperate spin. And it is increasingly the case, that the left's attacks are more smear and opportunism, than a genuine moral stance.

Some issues are too important also. The Prime Minister literally lied to the Queen, as proven in our highest court, but voters don't give a shit. Why? Because he did so for the greater good. The lie was aimed at preventing the left from further stringing out their attempt to frustrate, water down and delay Brexit. The very thing that finally got them their absolute kicking last year, finally breaking the political deadlock.

Policy matters. Lots of people died here due to the lack of PPE, not due to a lack of nurses, or even that nurses aren't paid as much as the left thinks they should be. There is a government report sitting on a shelf from only a few years ago, that said, the pandemic risk is real, so we need to stockpile PPE. Never got discussed, because all available parliamentary time was spent in their attempts to delay, frustrate and wwater down, Brexit.

You can read all about this stuff in the British media, taking in both the left and right opinion, alongside the objective facts. Not so much on Wikipedia, due to their filtering and gate keeping.

Wikipedia is the realm of openly biased gatekeepers like Administrator Ritchie333. During this period, he busied himself not ensuring fair play in Brexit articles, but by actually writing Wikipedia attack articles against the Mail. Easy to do when Wikipedia happily considers The Guardian an unbiased source, even when talking about a rival newspaper. That is the face of Wikipedia bias.

Ritchie Swann, of Faversham, Kent. It's a middling area of the country, with some nice areas and some downtrodden areas. Not too far from the town where a Labour shadow minister thought it was a good idea to take a picture of a white van flying an England flag parked in someone's drive, as a not so subtle hint that Brexit voters are racists, so why not vote Labour? No, they said. In their millions. I guarantee Ritchie hasn't got the bottle to drink a pint in a rough pub down there. Would stick out a mile, looking exactly like what he probably is.

People remember that shit. They may not be able to fully articulate it, how it all works, but in the back of their mind, they kind of know Wikipedia's open tolerance for left wing bias played some part in not only delaying Brexit, but getting people killed from Covid.

And so, here we are. There's not much about the direction Britain is going now, that is of much concern to the average Daily Mail reader. People who would be quite unhappy to live in America, whether that was under Biden or Trump II.

The left here are pissed, but they would be they first to admit, they've got no real clue how to fight back. They're splintering into factions and infighting, which obviously does nobody any good in a winner takes all system. Because in reality, as much as he has shared a pint with them at Wikimeetups, other than their Wikipedia addiction, in real terms, Ritchie Swann has got fuck all in common with either a wealthy London student or a salt of the Earth northern plasterer.

One of those demographsics has jumped ship, in a big way, and there is talk it is growing permanent. A complete realignment of UK politics.

Our democracy is working. Our free press is working. The more credible party, the one doing more to give agency to the people, especially over the one big issue of our times, is in power. And for the foreseeable future. The left are doing what they always do, and blaming it on everyone but their own stupidity.

If you can believe it, a Guardian columnist two days ago even suggested that what the left needed to do to win that seat, is to actually double down on Bernie-nomics. Offer a real, transformative, socialist agenda.

Really? Look at the results, and see the folly. The very people that dumb fuck is assuming would have turned back to the left in that seat, are the very people who have jumped two footed, for the right. Why? Transformative policy. A Freeport. New jobs. Rebalancing the economy. An effective Covid vaccine. No return to the EU. Not calling them stupid racists.

Could all be lies, a pipe dream, doomed to failure. But they are being given the chance.

But to Wikipedia, it's that metropolitan middle class (to Americans, that means reasonably comfortable in the UK) fuckwit whose opinion has to be included on a Wikipedia article. The counterpoint, which would naturally come from the Mail, because even the Times/Telegraph will struggle to tell you what really matters to these people, the real working class of Britain. The people most closely comparable to those linked to Trump voters in Pennsylvania and Michigan. The counterpoint is banned from Wikipedia. Banned. Not discouraged, not relegated to a brief mention. Literally banned.

Jimmy Wales, fuckwit that he is, genuinely believes that if the Mail prints the words of the British Prime Minister, as an exclusive, words chosen to echo these concerns, that would be included in Wikipedia, per "ignore all rules". He's wrong, perhaps knowingly lying. The Mail is banned.

Banned.

Not even Fox is banned on Wikipedia, for political opinion. The fuck?

Who engineered this situation then? Only a handful of savvy British Wikipedia insiders, is the truth. David Gerard. Guy Chapman. Senior Wikipedia editors.

The very people who are probably quite upset at the day's election results. Assuming as they always have been, that if they can capture Wikipedia, they can control what is deemed both truth and reasonable opinion, and therefore affect the literal political future of an entire country.

Epic fail.

Happily, it has only ever proven to be entertaining.

Britain is run by Nazis and supported by a propaganda machine, or so say Chapman and Gerard.

Delusional.

There's a reason pricks like this have endless hours in the day to devote to Wikipedia.

They're utterly unemployable.

But they will persist. Chapman and Gerard are highly trusted in Teh Community. Untouchable really. Certainly under no threat from Wikipediocracy, who happily roll out the red carpet to the tiny amount of Wikipedia people, the fabled ArbCom, actually tasked with monitoring these two for abuses of power and privilege. Tasked with stopping them from lying. They happily suck the dick of a metropolitan elite wanker like NewYorkBrad, hosting any musing he wishes to offer, while never daring to ask him why he keeps giving Chapman a free pass when he is occasionally brought before his esteemed court.

And so, eat it, Wikishits. And eat it, Wikipediocracy, since now is a fitting time to say I've never noticed so much as a cunt hair's difference between their opinions on these matters, and that of the wikishitz. Which is understandable, given it is nothing but a forum run for senior Wikipedia editors. Ritchie333 feels totally at home there. And so he should. They're his people. Fantasists, for whom facts are inconvenient. As in, it's a fact Jess Wade is no feminist hero, she is a sloppy hasty and occasional fraudster of an editor, who is only adding to the mountain of poorly written articles on Wikipedia.

Democracy works. A free press works. Fact based debate is healthy. Such as, it's a fact the Wikipedia editor who proposed banning the Daily Mail, literally used fake statistics to support it, and Wikipedia did fuck all about it. Why? Because it's people like Ritchie333 and NewYorkBrad who are given the power to do something about it.

Wikipedia self selects leftists for positions of power.

So you might as well be asking Turkeys to vote for Christmas, than ask it to clean house.

Larry Sanger had it right. He literally wrote the policy on how to achieve neutrality. He saw how it was gradually morphed, he saw who gradually took over at Wikipedia, the lunatics who took charge of the asylum. Larry used to be respected by Wikipediocracy, but not for that. Only for the fact he was an inconvenience to Jimmy Wales, who wanted sole credit for creating Wikipedia. Now Larry's gone crazy kookoo, the cowards of Wikipediocracy will be too afraid to even admit that he once got it right on this important matter, lest they suffer the ultimate fate on the left, and be cancelled.

Too hard for Wikipedia, to try and follow their own policies, and actually ban people who lie to the community to get their own way. Even if they're left wingers. Too hard for Wikipediocracy, to call it out.

Do the right thing. I know, it's hard, but it is rewarding. You might even attain real power.

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Re: The left continues to take an absolute kicking in Britain, and Wikipedia probably has to share some of the blame.

Post by ericbarbour » Fri May 07, 2021 11:42 pm

Jake Is A Sellout wrote:
Fri May 07, 2021 2:39 pm
Well, consider the apparent reality of Britain as it is seen by Wikishits. They happily believe that the left wing media, even the tabloids, are more trustworthy than the right wing media. Reality has a left wing bias, and all that shit. They happily believe that the current Prime Minister is our equivalent of Donald Trump, and the Daily Mail is our equivalent of Fox News/National Enquirer.
Personally I think Boris is a cartoon character and the DM is just a sub-average UK national outlet. You don't see Wikiasses bitching about links to The Sun, do you? They also tolerate Times links even though Murdoch has owned it for 40 years. They are quite inconsistent about their political ragefest.

Also: the early history of WP and Wikimedia UK is studded with Labour or Liberal Democrat supporters. Most of them are drilled into Wikipedia's flesh like ticks, specifically to attack the Conservatives and UKIP. It would take a while to assemble a decently-inclusive list.

But just off the top of my head;

Labourites
David Boothroyd/Sam Blacketer, Colonel Warden/Andrew Davidson, the lovely and sexy Poetlister, the epically-annoying Will Boddy

Lib Dems
Chris Keating, James Forrester, Oliver Keyes, Richard Symonds, and of course that legendary nitwit Jonathan "WereSpielChequers" Cardy.

Note that some of the rottenest people in the "Wikipedia Revolution" are members of one of those two parties. At least two of them (Boothroyd and Cardy) are party operatives and/or have held elected positions under the party. If a Tory operative managed to gain adminship and they found out, said Tory would be forced out VERY quickly. Funny how that "works".

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Re: The left continues to take an absolute kicking in Britain, and Wikipedia probably has to share some of the blame.

Post by Jake Is A Sellout » Sat May 08, 2021 1:26 am

ericbarbour wrote:
Fri May 07, 2021 11:42 pm
Personally I think Boris is a cartoon character and the DM is just a sub-average UK national outlet. You don't see Wikiasses bitching about links to The Sun, do you? They also tolerate Times links even though Murdoch has owned it for 40 years. They are quite inconsistent about their political ragefest.
Oh no, you've got that all wrong.

They're perfectly consistent.

For Wikipedia, the threat posed by the Mail is because it falls right in between the largely non-issue of The Sun (widely perceived as unreliable) and the unassailable target of The Times (widely recognised as a newspaper of record).

The Wikishits are enraged that the Mail is widely seen as a proper newspaper, and was thus used widely on Wikipedia as a source. It's far from being average, let alone sub-average, hence its use in all topic areas, not just politics and celebrity title tattle.

The wikishits wanted it to be seen as more unreliable than The Sun, and for a time there, once they had achieved their objective and lied their asses off to get this ban, that was its literal status. They only much later realised how stupid they looked, and begrudgingly started to apply this Mail specific classification of "depreciated" to other obviously unreliable sources.

You should perhaps ponder just how much of what you think you know about the Mail, probably comes from Wikipedia propaganda, in one way or another. It's a proper newspaper, with full topic coverage and several USPs, which all explain why it is widely read, award winning, and highly influential. The likes of the Times and Sun by comparison can only tick some of those boxes, not all.

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