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Re: Wikipedia's political bias problem

Posted: Wed May 02, 2018 1:28 am
by ericbarbour
hyatt wrote:While researching everyone's favorite Wikipedia controversy I noticed that Zack Exley, who co-founded the Democratic Party's New Organizing Institute, oversaw a large expansion of the Wikimedia Foundation staff. How many of these new hires were from Exley's group of PR operatives? This could explain Wikipedia's political bias problem.

Some of it possibly. Not all -- the leftist, pro-libertarian, pro-Israel and other biases date back to the early 2000s and depend on the content being discussed. Remember that MONGO is still in there reverting vandalism (despite not being an admin anymore) and watching his precious articles about 9/11 conspiracies and national parks. He's about as right-wing as Wikipedia gets. Once you bullshit your way into the "club" it's for life. Like the Mob.

Does anyone remember the Timothy Sandole/Stanton Foundation scandal from 2014?
Exley was slightly involved in that ugly mess--which was almost totally ignored by the media.
http://wikipediocracy.com/forum/viewtop ... =23&t=4229

Exley was also partly involved in the SOPA blackout of 2012.

From the "paid editing" part of the book wiki:
WMF fundraising officer, Zach Exley, operates a company called "New Organizing Institute" on the side. New Organizing Institute has a Wikipedia article. Which was written by an undeclared SPA called "Mstemp" in 2011, which did nothing else on Wikipedia. Exley's partner Judith Freeman also edited the institute's article. Freeman's own Wikipedia article was also created by an undeclared SPA, "Carteroni". Exley created his own Wikipedia bio in 2006, long before the WMF hired him in 2010. Exley's dodgy history as a Democratic political operative (he was the creator of the misleading parody website gwbush.com, before the 2004 Presidential election, which was accused of being a dirty trick by Republicans) is not mentioned in any Wikimedia Foundation materials, only in Exley's Wikipedia bio.

Re: Wikipedia's political bias problem

Posted: Wed May 02, 2018 10:13 pm
by ericbarbour
Want to see another mess involving political crap? Look at the articles about the Basque group ETA. Today a news item said the notoriously-violent separatists had published a letter saying they were "formally disbanding", whatever that means. (Political extremist groups often have a habit of dying and then coming back to life, thanks to a new generation of bigots and maniacs taking over the name; see what happened to the "original" KKK in the 1940s and since then.)

In the histories of the ETA articles you won't find many actual Basques or Spaniards. You WILL find names familiar from the IRA and "British Isles" squabbles, people who knew little or nothing about Basque politics: "One Night In Hackney", O Fenian, Vintagekits, and others. Why? Because the ETA had friendly relations with the IRA, apparently. A mess of assorted cranks can be seen in this area, in fact. One of the few actual Basques in the area, Sugaar, bailed out of Wikipedia in 2009 because of their ongoing problems with paid editing. The Basque Wikiproject is a nearly-dead wreck.

https://xtools.wmflabs.org/articleinfo/ ... tist_group)

Re: Wikipedia's political bias problem

Posted: Sat May 19, 2018 12:52 am
by CrowsNest
A key player in Wikipedia's political games has just lost his shit, after a pretty clear attempt to get under the skin of an opponent backfired.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... =841737260

For future reference Wikipedians, if someone is compiling a shit list of diffs and they aren't even sure which venue they are going to post it to, let alone an approximate timescale of when they plan to submit, that's a pretty clear sign the page is not being used to prepare a complaint at all, but merely anger/frighten/depress an opponent.

They people who do shit like this aren't stupid or remotely inexperienced, so if they pretend not to be able to follow this logic, you know they be taking you for a ride.

1. If the supposed complaint looks like it's going to feature 20+ diffs and an hour's worth of reading, then it quite obviously isn't going to be accepted at AN/I.

2. If the supposed complaint doesn't focus on a single editor and a single issue currently subject to sanctions, then quite obviously the complaint is not being prepared for AE.

3. If the supposed complaint is simply a laundry list of diffs of alleged but as yet unprosecuted crimes, then quite obviously it will not be accepted by ArbCom as a case ripe for their attention.

Re: Wikipedia's political bias problem

Posted: Sat May 19, 2018 7:26 am
by sashi
MrX wrote:he even goes as far as to edit my talk pages post in violation of WP:TPG here, and later here in what appears to be a calculated effort to WP:HARASS, and violation of his 1RR.

source

:cry: Now that sounds like a serious pile of crime upon crime. We should look into what this "here #1" is all about !!

It appears the edit was made:

  • to remove a contributor's name from a talk page header (MoS)
  • to transform clear canvassing of the like-minded into an RfC for the wider community (adding it to RFC/pol).

What about the here #2 which apparently violates the special rule that his adversary has been condemned to contribute with his hands tied behind his back?

Hmm... MrX would have us believe that it's much simpler to have a talk page header that says;
Seeking consensus to restore content challenged by _____=== <!--Name removed by request-->
than to have one that says
Seeking consensus to restore challenged content


MrX really needs to learn basic text-editing so that he can store his "evidence" outside of the "encyclopedia". (For example, he could go to his attack page, view, copy & save the source page as HTML).

Three seconds of work and lo! all the links still work, even if he doesn't have Wikipedia stored on his computer!

Next he could post it to the web, to a domain that he owns, showing that he was prepared to stand behind his complaints with his real name like an adult. :twisted:

Re: Wikipedia's political bias problem

Posted: Sat May 26, 2018 12:15 pm
by CrowsNest
:lol:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... _Wikipedia

This is hilarious. Why is it Wikipedians are absolutely incapable of being intellectually honest, even when they are nominally discussing a page which deals with their capacity for intellectual honesty?

Now, it's perfectly arguable that if all that reliable sources really have to say about the ideological bias of Wikipedia is that it isn't a thing, then sure, you can cite WP:NPOV to say it doesn't merit an article. It doesn't help them with the issues I opened this thread with, but it makes sense on some level. It is an intellectually honest, arguable position.

That unfortunately isn't enough for these freaks. Look how many of them are happy to approach this exercise on the obviously false basis that there are in fact no acceptable sources which can be used to write about ideological bias on Wikipedia at all, or there are not enough to write a cohesive encyclopedic narrative.

You are lying your fucking asses off, and it is obvious. Breathtakingly obvious. If it is possible for someone to write an academic literature review of a subject, and that is essentially what the article looks like currently, then the only real barrier to having a Wikipedia article on the topic, is the reason I gave.

This isn't rocket science, certainly not for people who want the world to think they are intelligent and objective enough to write an encyclopedia. The inescapable conclusion is that these lies have only one purpose - to obscure what is known even in reliable sources, about Wikipedia and bias.

The bigger the lie, the less likely it is you will actually find the editor delivering it comes across as an unbiased recorder of history, either in their speech or their edits. You can't escape reality Wikipediots, you can only hope people don't notice what you're doing. Good luck with that.

Re: Wikipedia's political bias problem

Posted: Sat May 26, 2018 4:32 pm
by AndrewForson
One of the entertaining little sideshows on Wikipedia is watching Wikipedians violating their own self-proclaimed rules when it comes to their own cult. The "reliable sources" which they would cheerfully use to write a hatchet job about some other rival institution are suddenly not to be used when they say nasty things about their own precious project because they just know it isn't like that.

It never seems to occur to them that if someone using their own crowd-sourcing magic to write an article about something they do know about turns out to be, in their estimation, All Wrong, that the articles written using the same magic about the things they don't know about will be All Wrong too. In short, they admit by their own comments in this discussion that their so-called encyclopaedia does not and cannot work.

Re: Wikipedia's political bias problem

Posted: Mon May 28, 2018 1:18 pm
by CrowsNest
Long time Wikipedia Administrator TParis, 12:06, 28 May 2018 (UTC).......
I was at the WikiConference in San Diego during the 2016 Presidential Debates and 95% of the room was shouting obscenities during the debate (a debate that the hosts had put on the screens despite my objections) and resulted in several Wikipedians feeling attacked and that they were in the middle of a hostile group despite Wikipedia's "Safe Space" policy. Long story short, that entire room was very open with their hostility toward Donald Trump and some of them have sat on Arbcom and voted on the American politics case. Others continue to edit that topic area.
When this sort of thing is considered normal behaviour at one of the cult's prestige events, it really is hard to believe that when they put on their edit-Wikipedia pants, they are genuinely capable of keeping their biases in check and ensuring NPOV is sacrosanct.

Re: Wikipedia's political bias problem

Posted: Mon May 28, 2018 3:47 pm
by AndrewForson
An interesting contrast between the apparently similar cases of Philip Cross/George Galloway and JzG/Brian Martin.

Cross is banned from writing about George Galloway because their off-wiki dispute means there is obviously a conflict of interest. JzG is not banned from writing about Martin because their off-wiki dispute means there is obviously no conflict of interest.

Re: Wikipedia's political bias problem

Posted: Mon May 28, 2018 7:10 pm
by CrowsNest
AndrewForson wrote:An interesting contrast between the apparently similar cases of Philip Cross/George Galloway and JzG/Brian Martin.

Cross is banned from writing about George Galloway because their off-wiki dispute means there is obviously a conflict of interest. JzG is not banned from writing about Martin because their off-wiki dispute means there is obviously no conflict of interest.
All the more hilarious for the sight of the very policy he was violating being quoted right in the middle of the report. Didn't make a blind bit of difference. It was a landslide before, and a landslide after. This is what Wikipedia is all about. Not one person even attempted to be clever or smart, they just flat out said, there is no issue here. It's like they have no idea other people can read this utter nonsense. Chuck in a blatant personal attack directed at the BLP, and you have Wikipedia governance in a nutshell. Moronic, inconsistent, unethical, hypocritical, tone deaf, all wrapped in a sesame seed bun. It is always hilarious to observe these people implying they are smart, that they are somehow the equal of professionals, whose actual job it is to distill knowledge and manage a workforce. Incidents like this make it easy to visualise Wikipedians as people who eat dirt. a.k.a toddlers. Would you give a toddler power over your life? Would you let yourself be associated with toddlers as if you have a common cause? Sadly for Wikipedia, most sensible people say no.

Re: Wikipedia's political bias problem

Posted: Mon May 28, 2018 8:23 pm
by ericbarbour
FWIW the Cross affair was a massive shitstorm on Twitter that ended up in "mainstream media". Primary thread:

https://www.wikipediasucks.co/forum/vie ... f=19&t=619