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Ask HN: How can we fix Wikipedia?

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Re: Ask HN: How can we fix Wikipedia?

#221

Post by adhesive_wombat »

sdoering wrote: post #38

I think overall the wikipedia model has shown itself to be decently working. But (anecdata) I have my gripes with the way it handles evidence. My SO has a person (died already) in her family with a (relatively) short wikipedia entry. There are factual errors in the article. We know that, because we have original documents showing that the "facts" reportet in the entry are wrong. Due to the fact that the documents can…

This seems like something the Commons Volunteer Response Team (VRT, previously OTRS) can help with. You can send them the documents and they can vouch that they say what was claimed, but without having to publish the material against the licence.

I have used this for license confirmations, not for fact checking, but they do Biographies of Living Persons work so they might be able to help.

Re: Ask HN: How can we fix Wikipedia?

#222

Post by Mathnerd314 »

thepasswordis wrote: post #107

You need a culture that supports truth. You will not be able to do this with policy changes. For instance, this article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biden%E2%80%93Ukraine_conspira... >The Biden–Ukraine conspiracy theory is a series of unevidenced claims centered on the false allegation that while Joe Biden was vice president of the United States, he engaged in corrupt activities relating to the employment of his so…

>>The Biden–Ukraine conspiracy theory is ...

> This is not a statement of fact, but an opinion

Actually the way Wikipedia articles work, this is a definition. They are taking various articles about similar topics (in the citation link at the end), and coming up with a single topic name and its definition. Sometimes it's hard to accomplish this and you have to settle for a vague definition, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_number is defined to allow starting at 0 or at 1.

As far as the $1,000,00/yr salary, that's mentioned on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_Biden#Burisma_Holdings. But it's not relevant to the conspiracy theory so it's not mentioned there. I think you could add it, just copy the source.

Re: Ask HN: How can we fix Wikipedia?

#223

Post by _Nat_ »

phphphphp wrote: post #217
thepasswordis wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the content of the encyclopedia is meant to be a representation of objective facts, then why on earth could it matter what the race of the people writing it is? This sounds like straight up Nazi propaganda. The idea that races are so different that we literally inhabit separate realities is insane levels of bigotry.

The hyperbole isn’t helpful. As has been highlighted time and time again, Wikipedia is the work of a relatively small amount of people and there is a great deal of bias because humans suffer from bias — regardless of their intentions. “History is written by the victors” is a famous phrase a reason — facts are a representation of the information we are most confident in, not truth.

"History's written by the victors" seems like a stretch that's only kinda truth-adjacent in some situations, e.g. where one side gets wiped out and there're no third-party observers, etc.. But, it doesn't hold in most cases, e.g. in World War 1 or 2, nor basically any modern war, where most of the losing side survives and tells its stories too. Heck, in the US, some folks complain about how much the loser of the American Civil War got to push its narratives. [From StackExchange's History site](https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/5597/is-history-... ).

Anyway, critique of that quote aside, how's it relevant to Wikipedia?

Re: Ask HN: How can we fix Wikipedia?

#224

Post by phphphphp »

_Nat_ wrote: post #223
phphphphp wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hyperbole isn’t helpful. As has been highlighted time and time again, Wikipedia is the work of a relatively small amount of people and there is a great deal of bias because humans suffer from bias — regardless of their intentions. “History is written by the victors” is a famous phrase a reason — facts are a representation of the information we are most confident in, not truth.

" History's written by the victors " seems like a stretch that's only kinda truth-adjacent in some situations, e.g. where one side gets wiped out and there're no third-party observers, etc.. But, it doesn't hold in most cases, e.g. in World War 1 or 2, nor basically any modern war, where most of the losing side survives and tells its stories too. Heck, in the US, some folks complain about how much the loser of the Am…

The quote is relevant because it demonstrates that it is widely understood that history (“facts”) is not an absolute truth, but a collection of ostensibly-true pieces of information disseminated by one party.

To say that Wikipedia is not representative of its editors, is to say that history is not representative of the victors.

To pick an example of a group that is somewhat insular: if the majority of Wikipedia editors were Chinese, would Wikipedia look as it does today? Would Wikipedia be an equally-as-accurate reflection on the west as Wikipedia is today?

Re: Ask HN: How can we fix Wikipedia?

#225

Post by bjourne »

_Nat_ wrote: post #212
bjourne wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Dutch doctors want politicians and human rights groups to speak out and discourage the practice of male circumcision in the Netherlands because they say it is a “painful and harmful ritual,” and a violation of children’s rights. > Between 10,000 and 15,000 boys are circumcised in the Netherlands each year, mostly for religious reasons and not always with an anesthetic, according to the Royal Dutch Medical Associati…

I appreciate that you're able to show that some people hold such beliefs, but the numbers I'm finding suggest that it's still less common than beliefs in, say, 9/11-conspiracy theories. Don't get me wrong -- I appreciate that you can show that there're advocacy groups in that arena. But there're groups who advocate 9/11 conspiracy-theories, aliens, anti-vaccination, flat-Earth, mysticism, etc., so the mere existence…

I don't understand how you can compare national medical associations with 9/11-conspiracy theorists? 86% (https://nyheder.tv2.dk/samfund/2020-09-01-partier-kraever-fo...) of all Danes and 62% of all Britons (https://eachother.org.uk/uk-ban-male-infant-circumcision/), and 64% of all Swiss (https://www.thelocal.ch/20120731/majority-of-swiss-want-reli...) want to outlaw circumcision. The idea that a child's right to body autonomy takes precedence over its parents desire to have elective surgery performed on their genitals is certainly not a fringe view in many Western countries.

However, this is not about circumcision per se. My point is that Wikipedia's presentation of circumcision is a product of the article's guardians who. You can look at the article's talk page and see for yourself that plenty of people have complained about the article's slanted coverage but no one has been able to do anything about it due to the opposition of the guardians. This is how it works on almost any article about any remotely controversial topic. Just being right is not enough when you're up against an experienced editor that knows all the rules and have a vested interest in pushing a certain view.

Re: Ask HN: How can we fix Wikipedia?

#226

Post by Jiro »

alephaleph wrote: post #219
noxer wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't read it all but wasn't hard to find "mistakes" in that wiki article For example: "Several countries which are historically neutral, such as Switzerland and Singapore have agreed to sanctions." Clearly a misrepresentation of Swiss neutrality. The news outlets all over the world posted this and various similar claims over the last week and wiki picks it up. Some news articles even straight out tell you that Sw…

I don't really think it's Wikipedia's job to litigate the truthfulness of such claims -- it's about consensus, not about "truth." Assigning Wikipedia the job of deciding what is true and what is not beyond just summarizing mainstream consensus and Wikipedia ends up having to take many more political stances and the project could quickly break down.

If Wikipedia wasn't about truth, nobody would use it.

And if the consensus is particularly bad on a subject and the people editing the Wikipedia page are cooperative, they'll usually be able to find a rule intepretation that allows the consensus statements not to count (for insatnce, claiming that a generally reliable source isn't reliable for this particular statement).

Re: Ask HN: How can we fix Wikipedia?

#227

Post by jl6 »

noxer wrote: post #215
legitster wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an example, I want to point people to the page I have been spending a lot of time on as of late: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Russian_invasion_of_Ukrai... Is the information on this page perfect? Obviously not. But this single page probably represents the best up-to-date summary of information you will find on the internet. And I can only imagine the thankless work volunteer editors put into making it cohere…

I didn't read it all but wasn't hard to find "mistakes" in that wiki article For example: "Several countries which are historically neutral, such as Switzerland and Singapore have agreed to sanctions." Clearly a misrepresentation of Swiss neutrality. The news outlets all over the world posted this and various similar claims over the last week and wiki picks it up. Some news articles even straight out tell you that Sw…

Are you disputing that Switzerland is historically neutral?

Re: Ask HN: How can we fix Wikipedia?

#228

Post by noxer »

alephaleph wrote: post #219
noxer wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't read it all but wasn't hard to find "mistakes" in that wiki article For example: "Several countries which are historically neutral, such as Switzerland and Singapore have agreed to sanctions." Clearly a misrepresentation of Swiss neutrality. The news outlets all over the world posted this and various similar claims over the last week and wiki picks it up. Some news articles even straight out tell you that Sw…

I don't really think it's Wikipedia's job to litigate the truthfulness of such claims -- it's about consensus, not about "truth." Assigning Wikipedia the job of deciding what is true and what is not beyond just summarizing mainstream consensus and Wikipedia ends up having to take many more political stances and the project could quickly break down.

I didn't say its Wikipedia fault or that they did anything other than what they claim to do "pick up the stuff form other places".

But wrong is still wrong and wrong is not useful. And even thou I know its wrong I have no way to fix it despite the idea of Wikipedia that anyone could correct everything. But I can't because I would need to find an article (from an accepted source) which opposes this exact claim. And even then if there are 5 sources for something that is wrong and 1 source pointing out that it is wrong, Wikipedia will at best report this as neutral as it gets which boils down to "The majority says [insert wrong statement here]". This IS neutral and in it self correct but the wrong statement is still there anyway. This is just the fundamental way how Wikipedia works.

Re: Ask HN: How can we fix Wikipedia?

#229

Post by _Nat_ »

phphphphp wrote: post #224
_Nat_ wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" History's written by the victors " seems like a stretch that's only kinda truth-adjacent in some situations, e.g. where one side gets wiped out and there're no third-party observers, etc.. But, it doesn't hold in most cases, e.g. in World War 1 or 2, nor basically any modern war, where most of the losing side survives and tells its stories too. Heck, in the US, some folks complain about how much the loser of the Am…

The quote is relevant because it demonstrates that it is widely understood that history (“facts”) is not an absolute truth, but a collection of ostensibly-true pieces of information disseminated by one party. To say that Wikipedia is not representative of its editors, is to say that history is not representative of the victors. To pick an example of a group that is somewhat insular: if the majority of Wikipedia edito…

> To pick an example of a group that is somewhat insular: if the majority of Wikipedia editors were Chinese, would Wikipedia look as it does today? Would Wikipedia be an equally-as-accurate reflection on the west as Wikipedia is today?

There's a Chinese Wikipedia site: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Wikipedia

However, even the English-Wikipedia's articles on China are likely to be disproportionately influenced by Chinese posters, even if they're a minority of the overall contribution-base.

That said, what's the potential relevance here? Is this purely about articles on politics, or..?

Re: Ask HN: How can we fix Wikipedia?

#230

Post by Jiro »

claytongulick wrote: post #122
mardifoufs wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a good example of an amazingly bad article with the worst type of wiki lawyering on the talk page. It basically still has the same conclusion in the lead as when it was originally created, and most of the claims/leaks against Hunter were considered "false"/dinsinfo... But now that those laptop leaks were either confirmed by different reputable sources, it more or less indirectly calls most of the claims true…

The only thing this sort of obvious political bias does is discredit Wikipedia and push readers to less reputable sites for information. Like many others on here, I prefer to go directly to multiple biased sources like npr, CNN, breitbart, nypost because I understand their bias and can sort through it to tease out information. The thing that I find the most distasteful is any source that purports to be unbiased, but…

It is mostly good, but the bad parts aren't evenly distributed. There are a couple specific categories of articles where Wikipedia can be bad. Anything political involving people on the Internet is guaranteed to produce a good or bad article depending mostly on which people on the Internet manage to edit the Wikipedia article. Anything political at all from the past couple of years beyond bare facts like "was this person convicted in court", for the same reasons. There's also subjects that not a lot of people care about, which can be good or bad depending on how competent the 1 or 2 people who edit the article are.
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