Wikipedia's political bias problem

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CrowsNest
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Re: Wikipedia's political bias problem

Post by CrowsNest » Sat Feb 16, 2019 4:07 am

Wow, we don't even have to specuate, Tony has previously been kind enough to confirm his opinion of whether Wikipedia needs an article about Dice, much less now fair and balanced it is, is inextricably linked to how Dice reacts to what it says about him. Specifically, the warped logic that since Dice is a bad man, he would obviously be mad at Wikipedia labelling him a bad man, and therefore that would be evidence Wikipedia is fairly and accurately portraying him as a bad man.
Keep generally coverage in the New York Times, The Guardian, BBC, and books published by reputable publishers indicates notability. It’s small coverage, but coverage in major outlets isn’t exactly the same as your local paper, and there’s enough of it here that we shouldn’t be deleting the article (which would amount to a white wash as Dice hates it because it fairly and accurately portrays him.) TonyBallioni (talk) 18:39, 29 September 2018 (UTC)
It seems obvious that someone who, according to many Wikipedians, is one of those people who positions themselves as the debunker of the lying mainstream media, would be only too happy to have Wikipedia calling him a bad person, and they would simply want them to include alongside that, sufficient contextual information, like subscriber counts and book titles.

If Tony et al are motivated more by what pisses Dice off, rather than fair and accurate portrayal, everything they are saying and doing to justify the current article, all the games and double-speak, all makes sense.

It is, of course, a basic Wikipedia principle that fair and accurate coverage of a living person's career or beliefs is only possible if that person is genuinely, proveably, notable, as in they have received "significant" and "in depth" coverage. If that was the case, the article would not look remotely like the thin gruel it does now.

Here's an example of what sort of coverage there is out there of Dice.....
conservative commentator and occasional conspiracy theorist Mark Dice
...and if the goal really was to reflect the sources, in full, accurately and fairly, rather than do whatever you can think of doing to piss Dice off, it is most curious how those first four words seem not to have made it through the Wikipedia curation process, either literally as words on the page, or representative in the entirety of the work.

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Re: Wikipedia's political bias problem

Post by sashi » Wed Feb 20, 2019 12:52 pm

I decided to see if I could point out the politically motivated edits to Tulsi Gabbard's BLP without being summarily shot. Unsurprisingly, this got under both Snoog & MrX 's skin. I haven't been banned yet, though I did dare provide evidence of their tag-teaming to multiply their political resonance. I guess with a DGAF attitude one could say it's amusing to observe how a political positions part of a BLP is being used to highlight LGBT positions not taken by a US representative at any time since her election to the House of Representatives. (Apparently when she was 17, she helped her Mom & Dad though, so she must be pilloried at length for that.)

Some of the Snoog's edits on Syria have been remarkably bad (transparently repeating exactly the same sentences twice per paragraph, so the reader really, really gets it). The fix being in on en.wp, I won't bother taking them to a drama board. However, insofar as others are complaining about manipulation of other BLPs on Snoog's talk page (much less serious from what I saw), it might be well to post it here so others are aware of the rule-gaming and rules-violations (always relatively marginal because they know what they can just get away with) on Tulsi Gabbard's page, which could be added to a larger case. Of course, all of it will be stale by Thursday. ^^

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Re: Wikipedia's political bias problem

Post by Dysklyver » Wed Feb 20, 2019 2:36 pm

Uh you should probably avoid editing pages related to current 2020 presidential candidates. If you value your wikilife that is. :?

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Re: Wikipedia's political bias problem

Post by sashi » Sun Feb 24, 2019 8:42 pm

Yeah, you're right. I decided to bail from the SnooX show just before Dan the Plumber was revealed to a be a big bad sock. :lol:

By an odd twist of happenstance, I had just written to T. Canens to have my last-remaining AE sanction lifted (in order to put in a nice friendly word for Atsme), when Mr. X prosecuting someone at AE for reverting the said Dan, who—apparently—plumbs AND socks, popped up on my watchlist. ^^

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Re: Wikipedia's political bias problem

Post by CrowsNest » Sun Mar 03, 2019 1:00 pm

It's become almost normal see this kind of comment on the Wikipedia Administrator's noticeboard......
I was going to start List of crimes committed in the United States by citizens but I realized that List of crimes committed in the United States by Donald Trump and his relatives, cronies, appointees and associates alone would be longer than List of crimes committed in the United States by illegal aliens so I'll just do that instead. EEng 00:16, 3 March 2019 (UTC)
As we have documented, the person saying it is basically the de facto Wikipedia court jester, protected by the all-powerful Queen of Wikipedia, Bishonen, and he is rather known for these lame attempts at injecting humour to the site.

Presumably because his jokes don't get nearly enough visibility when made in his own user space, ironically due to his deliberate choice to keep it so large it won't load on most devices (seriously, don't even try without serious computing power), he seeks out higher profile Wikipedia stages and audiences like this.

But even if it wasn't this dick, even if they were just a regular editor with no celebrity status or protection at all, the Wikipedia Administrators would still have reacted the way they did here, namely to say nothing, just let the comment stand as if it is a perfectly helpful and legitimate contribution in the middle of a debate about what to do with someone who might actually be making a serious effort to skew Wikipedia content by creating and doggedly defending lists like that.

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Re: Wikipedia's political bias problem

Post by Graaf Statler » Sun Mar 03, 2019 1:45 pm

Wikipedia and neutral political base, that's a good joke! Wikipedia is one of the most consulted websites in the world, isn't it? And millions and millions people are helping to create it if I may believe WMf.

Well, lets have a closer look here.

In the first place, voting about a political banner about something Wikipedia doesn't affect direct, because there is a exception for Wikipedia, and copyvio is not allowed in Europe and can even be a crime is trying to get influence in European politics without a good reason.
But, lets again have a closer look. As far as I can see about 70-80 random people are voting there of all that brave wikipedians, and only a few people are motivating why and involved in the many discussions.
But, they make the decision if there will be a banner, and what the content of that banner will be. And we are speaking about a normal, democratic proces in the EP where are always winers and losers and is a lot of discussion. That is American politic the same, it is nothing extraordinaire. Sometimes as a private person you like the results at the end and sometimes not.

How can these way of writing a encyclopaedia lead to a neutral political bias. Special if some wikipedians are spreading tons of disinformation as safe your copyright and call your MEP. Calling your MEP, to tell him or her what!
To tell them you are a complete wrong informed wiki puddinhead who is a part of a complete insane astroturfing game of Roooommmiiaaneee=>Wikimedia, Mdd, Dimi and the rest of the complete puddinheads, with the warm support of the total wrong informed Maher, Wales and Heilman?. Well, that will impress your MEP!

How can this puddinheads and wikifools ever, ever fight against fake news, claiming they are the fucktcheckers of this world, or evenstart to think of a neutral political bias! They himself have not even te slightest idea what a neutral political bias is! They think Rand and the Pirate Party is a neutral political bias, it is in one word redicilees!

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Re: Wikipedia's political bias problem

Post by CrowsNest » Tue May 28, 2019 1:58 pm

A Wikipedia Administrator.....
It's common knowledge that the American Politics topic area has many editors whose editorial positions tend to consistently favor one political ideology or another. Close enough RfCs in the topic area and you'll notice that certain groups of editors almost always end up on the same side with each other. Ask all these people to individually rank all the other editors on a "right" vs. "left" spectrum and the results would be highly correlated with the same editors consistently showing up on the "right" and "left" sides, although with some disagreement about where the "center" is located. Calling these people "civil POV pushers" or "tendentious editors" may be a bit harsh, but for the sake of conciseness let's use the term "tendentious editors". Normally these tendentious editors roughly balance each other out, with content disputes and RfCs being largely settled by the positions and arguments of the "swing voters".

.....

Awilley (talk) 13:25, 27 May 2019 (UTC)
This is a more realistic description of the Wikipedia "consensus building" than has recently been claimed in the media (competing groups battling each other until they arrive at a 'compromise' version of wording).

It makes me laugh to think that it used to be the case, and indeed is still official Wikipedia policy, that a model editor is someone who is so careful to ensure they are editing neutrally, adopting practices such as writing for the enemy, that it should be absolutely impossible to discern their personal politics from a review of their edits. People whose bias is obvious are by default POV pushing, and if they are experienced editors who should know better but refuse to change their ways after attempts to educate and then warn, they are to be shown the door.

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Re: Wikipedia's political bias problem

Post by CrowsNest » Tue May 28, 2019 2:18 pm

In the North West constituency of the UK's European Parliament election held this past week, Tommy Robinson finished eighth, with 2.2%, whereas Change UK finished seventh, on 2.7.%

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Wes ... nstituency)

On Wikipedia, the portrayal of the scale and significance of these respective results will differ partly because of inherent media bias, but it will be way more attributable to the inherent biases of the Wikipedia editor base itself.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tommy_Robinson_(activist)&oldid=899056519
Robinson was defeated in the election with a mere 2.2% of the vote, widely described as "humiliating" in the media.
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Change_UK&oldid=899197932
[Change UK] won no seats in the European elections.

:roll:

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Re: Wikipedia's political bias problem

Post by CrowsNest » Fri Oct 04, 2019 1:52 pm

If a Wikipedia Administrator as popular and powerful as Guy Chapman is this clueless about how go to about ensuring neutrality on a collaborative website, you know the whole thing is just a giant waste of time.....
......I guess what I am saying is that you're not helping your cause by berating those who fail to take the "obviously correct" side. In the same way that the best article writing involves putting yourself in the shoes of the opposition, you'll probably have a lot more success if you remember that we're just folks. I can't explain to a Brexiteer why Brexit is a catastrophically stupid idea, and I can't get them to explain to me what, exactly, the EU does that makes their lives miserable enough to suffer a huge drop in GDP and the loss of free movement. So in general I don't try.......Guy (help!) 21:53, 2 October 2019 (UTC)
The unassailable intransigence of the EU's ideology on their core Freedoms (and presentation of these as "Freedoms" was of course deliberate by the architects), is of course a main plank of Brexiteer's desire to Brexit.

Seems a bit insulting even to ordinary "folk" to imply they're incapable of even understanding why some people (52% of an entire population) might disagree these so called Freedoms have been universally beneficial, or least beneficial to the national interest.

It's not like there isn't a significant amount of literature that makes the case Freedom of Movement was of questionable value to a Member State in the position of the UK. Some even say its whole hearted full speed ahead adoption (not remotely required by the EU) was nothing but a political ploy to get and keep Tony Blair in power. But they're just being biased, right?

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Re: Wikipedia's political bias problem

Post by sashi » Sat Mar 07, 2020 11:37 pm

Well, it would seem that since Oct 04, 2019, Wikipedia's political bias problem has gone away!

:mrgreen:

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