Wikipedia Sucks!

The article "Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections" is a very peculiar article. It has over 500 citations, but, as far as I can tell, only ONE scholarly citation.

The one scholarly citation sharply criticizes the narrative that has been promulgated by the popular media & by the US intelligence agencies.

WP's sourcing policy is pretty clear: academic sources are the most reliable, and should be given the most weight.

So I decided to run an experiment.

I thought to myself "I bet if I find a dozen scholarly sources on the topic, the NPC drones on Wikipedia will do something, anything, in order to prevent them from being added to the article".

I was right.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Russ ... ic_sources

They are doing everything, including personal insinuations, goalpost-shifting, and asserting random half-baked political opinions, in order to make sure that NO scholarly material appears in the article.

One of the highlights so far: a promiment editor (Valjean) actually said, unironically "The real experts are the intelligence community, and we document their findings, as described in myriad RS and government and congressional investigations."

So, it's official - Wikipedia regards anonymous CIA ghouls as a more reliable source than published scholarly works.

I've long suspected that Wikipedia has a very strange relationship with US intelligence, but this is some of the most concrete evidence I've seen so far.

I'm not surprised. Are you?

I guess it all depends on whether these are decent scholarly sources.

It also obviously depends on what counts as infereference. AFAIK nobody hacked the voting machines or blackmailed any key election figures. And I doubt there's sufficient illegitimate sources of money out there to make a dent in the already obscene sums spent entirely legally.

What seems to be meant by interference is the state sponsored manipulation of the social media space. To that I say HA HA. America both invented social media and raised generations of Americans too stupid to tell the difference between reality and stupidity. So blaming Russia is a bit rich.

I think the persistence of the interference claims is simply that most Americans just can't accept that American democracy has been a sham since the 80's, as the media and campaigns found themselves in a vicious cycle of negativity and partizanship. Voters were soon sick of it. Lost all faith.

Politically active Americans would much prefer the very satisfying explanation that the total collapse of legitimacy that occurred in 2016, and is being repeated now, has some external reason.

It can't have been America. Not the shining beacon on the hill. Not the greatest democracy in the world.

It was, you dumb bastards. It was all you. It came from your schools, from your internet, from your dinner tables, from the very things that Make America. Your warped interpretations of Free Speech, and by extension, Freedom.

The scholarship will simply have found this to be the most persuasive reason, not interference.

It's unpalatable to ordinary Americans, particularly woke types, hence why you can now see these dumb bastards saying the intelligence agencies are reliable sources of the truth. As if somehow they don't have a vested interest in building a narrative here. Or even just an insanely bad record in general. Osama and WMD.

It's hilarious to the rest of the western world, that some Americans genuinely seem to think the whole Trump campaign was an orchestrated Russian plot.

Couldn't have happened anywhere else in the developed world from our perspective. Some things are just quintessentially American. Like a slab of butter wrapped in bacon, deep fired and then rolled in sugar, being called breakfast.

Kraken wrote: ↑

Thu May 02, 2024 7:38 pm

I guess it all depends on whether these are decent scholarly sources.

In real life, yes, but Wikipedia makes it pretty clear: ""Reliable scholarship – Material such as an article, book, monograph, or research paper that has been vetted by the scholarly community is regarded as reliable, where the material has been published in reputable peer-reviewed sources or by well-regarded academic presses."

So, if the sources were published by an academic press or in a scholarly journal, they are reliable by definition. Arguing otherwise is the definition of tendentious editing.

There is no way around it, but it's funny to see them try. The may just try to ban me from the project, to make sure that scholarly works on Russian interference/Russiagate never see the light of day. In fact, I assume that this is the plan, if none of their goalpost-shifting works.

Good analysis of the state of American society, Kraken, I agree with you.

Oh wow.

Politics is not a science. You're treating these books as if they are scientific research, which is indeed "vetted by the scholarly community" and must pass "peer-review". These books are nothing like that. They are not "vetted by the scholarly community" as they are political POV, not scientific research. They are the author's own political views, and, as pushers of Russian disinformation, they are highly inaccurate. That's why their views are at odds with all mainstream RS. The real experts are the intelligence community, and we document their findings, as described in myriad RS and government and congressional investigations. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 16:51, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

For a start, Christ knows what the American education system calls it, but in the UK this scholarly discipline is literally called POLITICAL SCIENCE.....

https://www.thecompleteuniversityguide. ... al-science

What fucking peer review does the average American news report receive these days?

Your network news anchors are so incapable of containing their own politics views they literally cry on air.

And if politics is not a science in the sense there can be an agreed set of facts and a robust conclusion drawn, why the fuck would you even care what a "congressional investigation" concluded?

What an absolute buffoon.

Kraken wrote: ↑

Thu May 02, 2024 7:56 pm

Oh wow.

Politics is not a science. You're treating these books as if they are scientific research, which is indeed "vetted by the scholarly community" and must pass "peer-review". These books are nothing like that. They are not "vetted by the scholarly community" as they are political POV, not scientific research. They are the author's own political views, and, as pushers of Russian disinformation, they are highly inaccurate. That's why their views are at odds with all mainstream RS. The real experts are the intelligence community, and we document their findings, as described in myriad RS and government and congressional investigations. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 16:51, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

For a start, Christ knows what the American education system calls it, but in the UK this scholarly discipline is literally called POLITICAL SCIENCE.....

https://www.thecompleteuniversityguide. ... al-science

What fucking peer review does the average American news report receive these days?

Your network news anchors are so incapable of containing their own politics views they literally cry on air.

And if politics is not a science in the sense there can be an agreed set of facts and a robust conclusion drawn, why the fuck would you even care what a "congressional investigation" concluded?

What an absolute buffoon.

You're not wrong. I thought about pointing out that the science of politics is literally called "political science", and that it, along with the "social sciences" engage in both quantitative and qualitative research, all of which is, by definition, scholarly.

But I know I'm skating on thin ice here by daring to push back against the Wikipedia hive-mind narrative, so I'm trying to keep the snark to a minimum - I know they are waiting for an excuse to ban me - Valjean insinuated that a topic ban might be appropriate for me at the beginning of the thread.

Common sense and a careful reading of Wikipedia policy both tell us that scholarly sources are preferable to "pop news" sources, and the article is currently based exclusively on pop news. Most political scholars that I know regard outlets like Buzzfeed and the Rachel Maddow Show to be entertainment for the masses, not serious sources of information.