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Who Writes Wikipedia? (2006)

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Re: Who Writes Wikipedia? (2006)

#21

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

kick wrote: post #6

None of the comments in this submission's thread so far seem to be related to the article's content (the headline was tantalizing, but the article itself is really cool), so to try and counteract that, here's one that's directly related: As it says, Wikipedia is written by vast amounts of people. The myth that only a small number of people contribute is just that: a myth. Checking edit histories on anything but the m…

Each subject area is controlled by a relatively small number of people. There are about a dozen editors on each side of the Israeli-Palestinian issue who duke it out at each related article. There are about two dozen centrist Democrats who own most modern American politics articles. As a whole, Wikipedia may be edited by a large number of people, but if you spend any time editing any given subject area, you get to know the one or two dozen people who control it pretty quickly.

Re: Who Writes Wikipedia? (2006)

#22

Post by quanticle » 

    Wales is right about one thing, though. This fact does have enormous policy
    implications. If Wikipedia is written by occasional contributors, then 
    growing it requires making it easier and more rewarding to contribute 
    occasionally. Instead of trying to squeeze more work out of those who spend
    their life on Wikipedia, we need to broaden the base of those who 
    contribute just a little bit.
The problem is that, as a community, Wikipedia has gone out of its way to do the opposite of that. New content is often treated as "guilty until proven innocent", and it's up to the contributor to wade through Wikipedia's idiosyncratic rules and definitions in order to justify to the moderators why their edits should not be reverted or their articles deleted.

Re: Who Writes Wikipedia? (2006)

#23

Post by swebs »

woodpanel wrote: post #20
draugadrotten wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The political bias of wikipedia editors is horrible in most smaller countries. You mention Israel and Croatia. I can add Sweden. For an example, compare the wikipedia entries of the two largest parties in the Swedish parliament. One, Socialdemokraterna, starts with a blurb on how the party provides public welfare and the party slogan ("av var och en efter förmåga, åt var och en efter behov"). Compare with the second…

I can echo your concern. German wikipedia has the same troubles. That's why it's not uncommon amongst anyone I've aksed or observed to habitually fact-check a German wiki-page with a quick hop into the English version (If there is any ideological classification involved). There at least, Wikipedia's promise, that the heterogenity of writers creates informational breadth and balancedness, seems to be more kept. In con…

>The German versions often start with a political classification right away. If the classification is contested, then it stays there and just gets slighty changed into reported speech. If any counter-arguments to that classification make it into an article, then they are almost always commented, often with a counter-argument to the counter-argument from groups that created that classification in the first place, litteraly giving them the last word.

It's exactly the same in English Wikipedia for anything to do with current politics. Try reading any article about President Trump.

Re: Who Writes Wikipedia? (2006)

#24

Post by onyva »

draugadrotten wrote: post #12
onyva wrote: post #3

From my experience with trying to contribute to the Hebrew version, try contributing focusing on expanding an existing article and watch what happens. In my case there was a very strong push back even against adding links that expand on issues mentioned which imho helped to balance an obvious slant. I gave up after a while. At university of course you’re warned not to use Wikipedia, it’s not acceptable as a reference…

The political bias of wikipedia editors is horrible in most smaller countries. You mention Israel and Croatia. I can add Sweden. For an example, compare the wikipedia entries of the two largest parties in the Swedish parliament. One, Socialdemokraterna, starts with a blurb on how the party provides public welfare and the party slogan ("av var och en efter förmåga, åt var och en efter behov"). Compare with the second…

I don't think it's left vs. right in this case.

Without going into specifics, and considering the description of the process as was mentioned by the one of the commentators, the example I'm referring to was specifically a link to the academic paper from which a certain quote was paraphrased ...

I first tried to add a direct quote from the writer's paper, which was removed, and then a link to her paper, which was removed.

What they were trying to achieve is to minimize the importance of that source, by qualifying it as "some researchers claim" sort of qualifier.

It's really not about the content, but equal and balance representation of authentic and reliable sources. ie. a research paper which was already referenced. Not every "opinion" and slant is important, but preferring a paraphrase to direct quote is obviously an attempt to minimize the source.

Re: Who Writes Wikipedia? (2006)

#25

Post by moksly »

draugadrotten wrote: post #12
onyva wrote: post #3

From my experience with trying to contribute to the Hebrew version, try contributing focusing on expanding an existing article and watch what happens. In my case there was a very strong push back even against adding links that expand on issues mentioned which imho helped to balance an obvious slant. I gave up after a while. At university of course you’re warned not to use Wikipedia, it’s not acceptable as a reference…

The political bias of wikipedia editors is horrible in most smaller countries. You mention Israel and Croatia. I can add Sweden. For an example, compare the wikipedia entries of the two largest parties in the Swedish parliament. One, Socialdemokraterna, starts with a blurb on how the party provides public welfare and the party slogan ("av var och en efter förmåga, åt var och en efter behov"). Compare with the second…

Does your central parties have as many outrageous scandals as your far right party? Because if they don’t, what you say, doesn’t suggest any sort of bias.

I know in my country things are somewhat similar, and you’ll find less scandals listed on the central parties than you will for the left or right wing parties. That is mainly because the central parties don’t go around talking about how the holocaust never happened (right wing) or how violence against the police is warranted (left wing) though.

Re: Who Writes Wikipedia? (2006)

#26

Post by sien »

onyva wrote: post #3

From my experience with trying to contribute to the Hebrew version, try contributing focusing on expanding an existing article and watch what happens. In my case there was a very strong push back even against adding links that expand on issues mentioned which imho helped to balance an obvious slant. I gave up after a while. At university of course you’re warned not to use Wikipedia, it’s not acceptable as a reference…

This was pretty similar to my experience trying to add up to date participation numbers to Australian sport.

There is a big survey done in Australia, the Ausplay survey:

https://www.clearinghouseforsport.gov.au/research/smi/auspla...

They have extensive tables on adult participation.

Two editors would not let this data into the sport in Australia article. The reason was fairly obvious, it shows that soccer/football is the most played team sport in Australia. Roy Morgan, a statistical agency also had similar figures.

There was much time spent in the talk pages spent asking these two what would be acceptable for quoting these sporting statistics. The answer was nothing.

If you can't get fairly unobjectionable material like that into wikipedia what else is being blocked?

Re: Who Writes Wikipedia? (2006)

#27

Post by Proziam »

draugadrotten wrote: post #12
onyva wrote: post #3

From my experience with trying to contribute to the Hebrew version, try contributing focusing on expanding an existing article and watch what happens. In my case there was a very strong push back even against adding links that expand on issues mentioned which imho helped to balance an obvious slant. I gave up after a while. At university of course you’re warned not to use Wikipedia, it’s not acceptable as a reference…

The political bias of wikipedia editors is horrible in most smaller countries. You mention Israel and Croatia. I can add Sweden. For an example, compare the wikipedia entries of the two largest parties in the Swedish parliament. One, Socialdemokraterna, starts with a blurb on how the party provides public welfare and the party slogan ("av var och en efter förmåga, åt var och en efter behov"). Compare with the second…

Almost all social platforms on the internet have a left-leaning tilt because, at least partially, the left (historically) organizes much better than the right does. This is one of those "well duh" statements once it's said out loud, considering the left's entire platform is about unification and social issues in most countries. That said, there are signs that point to a change in that recently (the second amendment rallies and sanctuaries around the US as examples).

This is extremely visible on Reddit, to the point that even moderates on the left can find it exhausting.

Re: Who Writes Wikipedia? (2006)

#28

Post by Proziam »

moksly wrote: post #25
draugadrotten wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The political bias of wikipedia editors is horrible in most smaller countries. You mention Israel and Croatia. I can add Sweden. For an example, compare the wikipedia entries of the two largest parties in the Swedish parliament. One, Socialdemokraterna, starts with a blurb on how the party provides public welfare and the party slogan ("av var och en efter förmåga, åt var och en efter behov"). Compare with the second…

Does your central parties have as many outrageous scandals as your far right party? Because if they don’t, what you say, doesn’t suggest any sort of bias. I know in my country things are somewhat similar, and you’ll find less scandals listed on the central parties than you will for the left or right wing parties. That is mainly because the central parties don’t go around talking about how the holocaust never happened…

Scandals from one party or the other are rarely covered equally in the news of any country. The US is not alone in the divisiveness of our politics, nor in the lack of unbiased reporting.

Re: Who Writes Wikipedia? (2006)

#29

Post by watwut »

moksly wrote: post #25
draugadrotten wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The political bias of wikipedia editors is horrible in most smaller countries. You mention Israel and Croatia. I can add Sweden. For an example, compare the wikipedia entries of the two largest parties in the Swedish parliament. One, Socialdemokraterna, starts with a blurb on how the party provides public welfare and the party slogan ("av var och en efter förmåga, åt var och en efter behov"). Compare with the second…

Does your central parties have as many outrageous scandals as your far right party? Because if they don’t, what you say, doesn’t suggest any sort of bias. I know in my country things are somewhat similar, and you’ll find less scandals listed on the central parties than you will for the left or right wing parties. That is mainly because the central parties don’t go around talking about how the holocaust never happened…

The centrism bias should be considered bias too. The "truth is in the middle" or "both sides must be the same" is quite often just not true - in politics, work and personal life.

Re: Who Writes Wikipedia? (2006)

#30

Post by dexen »

draugadrotten wrote: post #12
onyva wrote: post #3

From my experience with trying to contribute to the Hebrew version, try contributing focusing on expanding an existing article and watch what happens. In my case there was a very strong push back even against adding links that expand on issues mentioned which imho helped to balance an obvious slant. I gave up after a while. At university of course you’re warned not to use Wikipedia, it’s not acceptable as a reference…

The political bias of wikipedia editors is horrible in most smaller countries. You mention Israel and Croatia. I can add Sweden. For an example, compare the wikipedia entries of the two largest parties in the Swedish parliament. One, Socialdemokraterna, starts with a blurb on how the party provides public welfare and the party slogan ("av var och en efter förmåga, åt var och en efter behov"). Compare with the second…

>The political bias of wikipedia editors

There is the problem of sourcing. Per the Wikipedia's policies[0], any contributions must be grounded in reliable sources, which in case of recent events boils down to big name news publications. Given that most of the big name media seems to gravitate towards either progressive, or socialist views, the contributions are likely to end up with a derived slant.

The other aspect is notable in cases of a conflict between the netizens (or generally the consumers) and the media[1], where Wikipedia is self-bound to side with the media's reporting on themselves. As far as I can tell, Wikipedia has no provision for resolution of this conflict of interest.

--

[0] "If no reliable sources can be found on a topic, Wikipedia should not have an article on it", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources

[1] terribly sorry about bringing up the specter of echo Tnzretngr pbagebirefl | rot13 in 2020

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