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Wikipedia bans Breitbart as a source for facts

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Re: Wikipedia bans Breitbart as a source for facts

#131

Post by User23 »

forapurpose wrote: post #97
repolfx wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That depends a lot on the topic. I've seen articles on Wikipedia that were ridiculously wrong and couldn't be corrected for some byzantine reasons. For the longest time Wikipedia claimed Bitcoin was a pyramid scheme, despite it failing to meet the criteria on Wikipedia's own page on pyramid schemes. I certainly wouldn't accept Wikipedia as correct on any topic that gets caught up in the culture wars. Unfortunately, W…

> I wouldn't say Breitbart is wildly different in accuracy to any of the rest ... because so many other outlets (like the NY Times, BBC and CNN) routinely publish things that are false as well. I have no idea where the parent gets this (no source is provided), but more generally this is a talking point, throughout history, of liars and propagandists; it's a way of excusing and normalizing their behavior. Propagandist…

That’s the thing: they’re all liars. Gell-Mann amnesia demonstrates this conclusively.

Re: Wikipedia bans Breitbart as a source for facts

#133

Post by sarcasmOrTears »

13415 wrote: post #121
ummonk wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's ridiculous how strongly people object to the idea of preserving national culture or being nativist, when so many of them turn around and focus so heavily on cultural preservation and nativism when talking about gentrification and housing policy on a local level.

That's because the people who argue most fervently for "national culture" are at the same time often strongly opposed to contemporary culture (arts, poetry, classical music, etc.) and don't produce anything of cultural value themselves, whereas the people who actually advance the culture of their country tend to be indifferent or fairly cosmopolitan (as a tendency, of course there are exceptions). Most people in the…

Not easy to produce things of value when you get thrown out for your opinion from essenyial platforms, like venues, banking services, payment providers, college campus, etc

Re: Wikipedia bans Breitbart as a source for facts

#134

Post by ceejayoz »

billysielu wrote: post #101
ceejayoz wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your textbooks are highly likely to have contained excerpts from primary sources.

thank god you know more about my education than I do.

You really want to argue that the UK educates students without a single excerpt from the Magna Carta, without a single Churchill speech, etc.? That you went through twelve years of schooling without ever being exposed to a historical figure's own words? You were never assigned a single autobiographical work to read from?

Be my guest, but good luck getting anyone to believe it.

edit: I'll just note, additionally, that you stated "nothing in a classroom is a primary source". Even if it were true that yours was an unprecedented aberration, that general statement remains untrue.

Re: Wikipedia bans Breitbart as a source for facts

#135

Post by danShumway »

pawelmurias wrote: post #22
hannob wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As is sometimes said in management theory "it was a great measure until it was made a target". Wikipedia already is a target. It has been a target of distortion almost as long as it exists. It handles these exceptionally well. Not perfect, but given how attractive Wikipedia manipulation is and how easy you'd think it is it's incredible how well it fights it off.

The underlying Wikipedia politics are horrible. Tons of crazy people fight each other using rule lawyering and other tricks.

I don't disagree at all, but between Wikipedia and StackOverflow, I'm slowly becoming suspicious that crazy, legalistic communities may actually just be really good at moderation?

For all of their faults (and there are many), Wikipedia, StackOverflow, and to a much smaller extent even Hackernews all tend to be kind of good at what they do, petty rules notwithstanding.

Although, Reddit exists too, so maybe I'm just cherry-picking examples. I don't want to fall into the same trap that people did with excusing people like Linus.

Re: Wikipedia bans Breitbart as a source for facts

#136

Post by JProthero »

pawelmurias wrote: post #22
hannob wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As is sometimes said in management theory "it was a great measure until it was made a target". Wikipedia already is a target. It has been a target of distortion almost as long as it exists. It handles these exceptionally well. Not perfect, but given how attractive Wikipedia manipulation is and how easy you'd think it is it's incredible how well it fights it off.

The underlying Wikipedia politics are horrible. Tons of crazy people fight each other using rule lawyering and other tricks.

There's a good example of what pawelmurias is referring to on the Wikipedia vote page linked in the article [1]. Here are some quotes, from two editors on opposite sides of the Breitbart argument:

"I find it incredibly hard to believe that [Editor 2] is still pushing this issue aftermore than a year and a half, and after his having narrowly escaped an indef CIR block [...]" -Editor 1

"Please review WP:ASPERSIONS, and leave me alone. Or, try again to get me banned. These types of comments add nothing to the discussion and aren't, in my opinion, proper conduct for an editor." -Editor 2

"I'm a regular RSN contributor, and you are not. [...] As for casting WP:ASPERSIONS, you should probably hold your tongue before insinuating that I am stalking you: if I recall correctly, you spent about a month following me around and delivering backhanded insults at every opportunity before being told by several admins to knock it off." -Editor 1

I usually think better of editing Wikipedia for fear of being drawn into something like this. Even the most seemingly innocuous, well-cited edits can end up getting you into trouble with someone.

I think Wikipedia is a wonderful achievement, but it often isn't pretty behind the scenes.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Not...

Re: Wikipedia bans Breitbart as a source for facts

#137

Post by CM30 »

pavlov wrote: post #3

For all their flaws, Wikipedia is one of the few web information sources that are globally accepted as more or less correct. Everybody has something they hate about Wikipedia, but the general gist is that they're more or less credible. Alternative encyclopedic efforts are totally fringe and/or money-making scams like Everipedia. With this in mind, perhaps social media companies should piggyback on Wikipedia's reputat…

Eh, I'm not sure I'd agree with that. Many people treat Wikipedia as credible for most topics, but wherever there's a controversy (especially a political one), at least one side of it will probably be skeptical of Wikipedia's coverage of said controversy.

I'm also not a fan of using Wikipedia's criteria for valid sources on social media sites becuase it's not really an accurate measure. It's very much biased in favour of well resourced outlets at the expense of niche or freelance ones, despite what others in the field consider credible. For example, if you're looking for information about the next Pokemon game, what do you consider a reliable source? Something like Serebii.net, or something like Kotaku?

In the gaming field and media, the former is more reliable since they've built up a reputation in their field as an accurate source for information, whereas the latter isn't terrible, but is mostly reposted stories with less vigorous fact checking none the less. On Wikipedia however, they think the latter is more accurate, since it uses paid writers with a more professional layout and real name identification front and centre, which distorts the coverage a bit.

I basically commented a bit more about this in my article here:

https://artplusmarketing.com/trust-is-what-makes-a-source-re...

Re: Wikipedia bans Breitbart as a source for facts

#138

Post by sago »

repolfx wrote: post #124
sago wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For the longest time Wikipedia claimed Bitcoin was a pyramid scheme [citation needed] Checked the entire edit history of the article with wiki blame. The phrase 'Pyramid scheme' I could find has been added four times. The first two referred to a specific bitcoin-based third-party scam, which was removed in 2012 when the scam was old news. The second two refer to the multiply-cited opinion of prominent economists, a…

Sorry, I was mis-remembering, Wikipedia claimed it was a ponzi scheme. The rest still applies. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=196238.0 I'd note that this: The second two refer to the multiply-cited opinion of prominent economists, and are presented with disagreement doesn't make any difference to my opinion. Who cares if they're economists? Either something meets a definition or it doesn't. That is far cry f…

> For the longest time Wikipedia claimed Bitcoin was a pyramid scheme

> Wikipedia claimed it was a ponzi scheme. The rest still applies.

It was added to a list of Ponzi schemes with the qualification "Bitcoin has been called a Ponzi scheme" and a citation to an article on April 11, 2013. It was deleted on May 7 that year, in the very next edit to touch it.

Your characterisation seems to me tendentious in the extreme.

> Who cares if they're economists?

Anyone who understands that knowledge is not syntactic, and that expertise trumps word lawyering.

> Quit with the ad hominem.

I apologise if you felt it was so. Nothing I said referred to any personal quality of you or anyone else. It was intended as purely an attack on the argument you made. The opposite of ad hominem.

> The journalists at all these places feel strongly that it's OK to mislead people if it's in support of the 'right' cause.

[citation needed]

Re: Wikipedia bans Breitbart as a source for facts

#139

Post by AnthonyMouse »

virtuabhi wrote: post #110
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Would nationalists deport all the people of European ancestry and give the land back to it's original inhabitants? You are obviously trolling, but I'll answer you anyway. Nationalism (especially in the US where the two overlap much less than in other places) refers to citizenship rather than ethnicity. Nobody is suggesting deporting US-born ethnic Africans. So why have borders? It's so you can have programs that he…

> The culture in Silicon Valley is exactly the same as the one in Beijing? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGJ5cZnoodY > The one in Alabama is identical to Russia? https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/russian-than-democrat-shir...

Shenzhen isn't Beijing and Ohio isn't Alabama. Also, the idea that the culture in Shenzhen and Silicon Valley are identical remains ridiculous (try promoting anti-censorship technology in each place), and the shirts are obviously meant to be taken in same way that "better dead than red" doesn't mean you wish you were dead.

Re: Wikipedia bans Breitbart as a source for facts

#140

Post by mythrwy »

mythrwy wrote: post #87

If sources which occasionally play lose with facts or spin are to be banned from Wikipedia some mainstream news outlets should probably go as well. Not a fan of Breitbart, but this reeks of political preference. Wiki should be above this kind of thing but apparently isn't, which speaks to it's own credibility.

Really curious about the downvotes (which I don't care about the votes, just what it means).

Do they mean "Breitbart is much much less credible than all other news outlets (except maybe Infowars) so they deserve this!"

Or do they mean, "Yes, but leftism is the correct point of view, they told me so in college, so they deserve this block!"

Or do they mean "We've been trying really hard to resurrect major media as a legitimate source for believable propaganda and don't like your insinuation there!"

Or something else I haven't thought of?

Because from where I sit, Breitbart, the grand total of 3 times I visited it seemed a bit extreme and one sided, but in reporting not any further from what one might consider "accurate" than many biased mainstream news outlets (comments section excluded, that was indeed a circus).

Did I miss something?

Not really a person of strong political persuasions but big tech shoving brave new world down everyone's throats isn't really my thing either. Plus I doubt it will work. I guess I prefer the dumb pipes model but once people are involved that goes out the window? Any way to tone that down?

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