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Distortion of the history of the Holocaust on Wikipedia

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Re: Distortion of the history of the Holocaust on Wikipedia

#21

Post by quickthrowman »

akolbe wrote: post #20
quickthrowman wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[I deleted a part of this comment where I incorrectly attempted to correct the OP] I have no good ideas about how to solve this problem, I’m guessing that the smaller audience a wiki has, the more likely it is that an ideological faction will have influence on the content. The first thing that came to mind for me was making all of the other non-English wikis read-only machine translations of the English version since…

This is incorrect. The paper is about Polish editors editing the English Wikipedia.

You are correct, my apologies. I have edited my post and left a note that I was mistaken in its place.

Re: Distortion of the history of the Holocaust on Wikipedia

#22

Post by akolbe »

chx wrote: post #13

The Hungarian wikipedia being overrun by ... how to say this politely? neonazis, yes, that's a polite word, I guess, is a well known fact. I am not at all surprised this happened to the English one as well. Long ago there has been an analysis of how much better organized the "pro life" crowd was online than the "pro choice" and this is just another facet of the same: alas, it seems those on the right are playing this…

The Hungarian Wikipedia being overrun by neonazis is news to me. Are you sure you didn't mean the Croatian one?

In the Croatian case, the Wikimedia Foundation commissioned a study (a "Disinformation Assessment") that did indeed come to that conclusion.

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Croatian_Wikipedia_Disinform...

If you do have info on the Hungarian Wikipedia, a link or two would be appreciated. Thanks.

Re: Distortion of the history of the Holocaust on Wikipedia

#23

Post by anigbrowl »

dang wrote: post #12

There's probably an interesting, cautious discussion to be had about this analysis (whatever it is) but a large, open internet forum is probably incapable of having it. Still, I've replaced the title with something less baity (in keeping with the HN guidelines: " Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait "). If you comment in this thread, please make sure you're up on https://news.ycombinator…

It would certainly have been more accurate to title the article as 'Intentional distortion of holocaust history on Wikipedia' that to attribute intent to Wikipedia qua entity - though abusive & adversarial editing practices are a sufficiently well-known and documented problem on that platform that Wikipedia's nonprofit governance could reasonably be accused of negligence.

Re: Distortion of the history of the Holocaust on Wikipedia

#24

Post by akolbe »

version_five wrote: post #17
chx wrote: post #13

The Hungarian wikipedia being overrun by ... how to say this politely? neonazis, yes, that's a polite word, I guess, is a well known fact. I am not at all surprised this happened to the English one as well. Long ago there has been an analysis of how much better organized the "pro life" crowd was online than the "pro choice" and this is just another facet of the same: alas, it seems those on the right are playing this…

> it seems those on the right are playing this better I'm sure many would disagree with this, personally I find the idea of the right dominating (English) wikipedia laughable. But that's a pointless discussion. I think the takeaway should be there is no such thing as neutral media - one man's "neutral" perspective is another's far $political_direction. It's similar to "fact checking". Reality outside of the hard scie…

There's another discussion here currently, concerning another academic study concluding that Wikipedia has a "moderate yet systematic" liberal citation bias:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34744696

Basically I agree. Generally speaking the English Wikipedia skews slightly left. However, Wikipedia is so vast that the direction and intensity of bias can vary from topic to topic even in the English Wikipedia. (For example, I once came across a whole bevy of articles singing the praises of the Kazakh government.) It all depends on who is most interested in the articles and most motivated to edit them.

Re: Distortion of the history of the Holocaust on Wikipedia

#25

Post by dang »

anigbrowl wrote: post #23
dang wrote: post #12

There's probably an interesting, cautious discussion to be had about this analysis (whatever it is) but a large, open internet forum is probably incapable of having it. Still, I've replaced the title with something less baity (in keeping with the HN guidelines: " Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait "). If you comment in this thread, please make sure you're up on https://news.ycombinator…

It would certainly have been more accurate to title the article as 'Intentional distortion of holocaust history on Wikipedia' that to attribute intent to Wikipedia qua entity - though abusive & adversarial editing practices are a sufficiently well-known and documented problem on that platform that Wikipedia's nonprofit governance could reasonably be accused of negligence.

If there's a better i.e. more accurate and neutral title, I'd be happy to use it as long as isn't baity, but making accusations about intentional distortion is too baity (that's why I took that out).

Edit: this is a tangent, but it's also a weak claim since if you say something about someone's intent, they can just say "no it wasn't" and act like they refuted you. I finally learned not to do that about HN comments after experiencing this many times.

Edit 2: I changed the edited title from "Wikipedia editors and the history of the holocaust" to something that's closer to the actual title and better represents it.

Re: Distortion of the history of the Holocaust on Wikipedia

#26

Post by 988747 »

gambiting wrote: post #16

Well, considering that currently in Poland it's literally illegal to even suggest Poles have commited any crimes linked with the holocaust, this doesn't surprise me in the slightest. One of the most shameful things about this country for me personally.

No, it is not illegal, who told you that? There are Polish historians working on documenting everything that happened during the World War II, no one restricts them in any way.

Re: Distortion of the history of the Holocaust on Wikipedia

#27

Post by gambiting »

988747 wrote: post #26
gambiting wrote: post #16

Well, considering that currently in Poland it's literally illegal to even suggest Poles have commited any crimes linked with the holocaust, this doesn't surprise me in the slightest. One of the most shameful things about this country for me personally.

No, it is not illegal, who told you that? There are Polish historians working on documenting everything that happened during the World War II, no one restricts them in any way.

It's literally in the linked article. But if you prefer a different source: https://www.google.com/amp/s/time.com/5128341/poland-holocau...

>>no one restricts them in any way.

Yes, because scientific research is explicitly excluded from that law.

Re: Distortion of the history of the Holocaust on Wikipedia

#28

Post by akolbe »

988747 wrote: post #26
gambiting wrote: post #16

Well, considering that currently in Poland it's literally illegal to even suggest Poles have commited any crimes linked with the holocaust, this doesn't surprise me in the slightest. One of the most shameful things about this country for me personally.

No, it is not illegal, who told you that? There are Polish historians working on documenting everything that happened during the World War II, no one restricts them in any way.

I think they were referring to this:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-44627129

When Poland made it a criminal offence this year to accuse it of complicity in Nazi war crimes, there was an outcry in Europe, Israel and the US.

Anyone found guilty could face up to three years in jail.

Five months later, the right-wing prime minister has moved to change the law to decriminalise the offence, describing it as a "correction".

An amendment to the Holocaust law was quickly backed by the lower house of parliament and now moves to the Senate.

The law had been intended to "defend the good name of Poland" but from now on it would be a civil, not a criminal offence, the head of prime minister's office, Michal Dworczyk, told public radio.

Re: Distortion of the history of the Holocaust on Wikipedia

#29

Post by jmolinski »

gambiting wrote: post #16

Well, considering that currently in Poland it's literally illegal to even suggest Poles have commited any crimes linked with the holocaust, this doesn't surprise me in the slightest. One of the most shameful things about this country for me personally.

(disclosure: I'm Polish)

This is not true.

The legal act that regulates it[0] says (only relevant parts)

""" Article 1: This act regulates

1) recording, collecting, developing, maintaining, making available and publishing documents of the state security authorities, obtained and collected from July 22, 1944 to July 31, 1990, as well as Third Reich and USSR security authorities, regarding:

a) crimes committed against persons of Polish nationality or Polish citizens of other nationalities in the period from November 8, 1917 to July 31, 1990: - Nazi crimes, - communist crimes, - crimes of Ukrainian nationalists and members of Ukrainian formations collaborating with the German Third Reich, - other crimes constituting crimes against peace, humanity or war crimes,

[...]

Article 55: Whoever publicly and contrary to facts denies the crimes referred to in Article 1, point 1, shall be subject to a fine or imprisonment for up to 3 years. The sentence shall be made public. """

(art and research is exempt from this law)

So it is illegal to deny Holocaust or to attribute the responsibility for it to Poland or the Polish nation or to say that the death camps linked to Holocaust were Polish or operated by Poland.

It is legal to suggest or just simply say (as it is documented by the Institute of National Remembrance - a Polish state research institute) that there were individual Polish citizens that collaborated with Nazis and took part in committing Nazi crimes.

[0] https://sip.lex.pl/akty-prawne/dzu-dziennik-ustaw/instytut-p...

Re: Distortion of the history of the Holocaust on Wikipedia

#30

Post by anigbrowl »

dang wrote: post #25
anigbrowl wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would certainly have been more accurate to title the article as 'Intentional distortion of holocaust history on Wikipedia' that to attribute intent to Wikipedia qua entity - though abusive & adversarial editing practices are a sufficiently well-known and documented problem on that platform that Wikipedia's nonprofit governance could reasonably be accused of negligence.

If there's a better i.e. more accurate and neutral title, I'd be happy to use it as long as isn't baity, but making accusations about intentional distortion is too baity (that's why I took that out). Edit: this is a tangent, but it's also a weak claim since if you say something about someone's intent, they can just say "no it wasn't" and act like they refuted you. I finally learned not to do that about HN comments af…

Oh, I was just ruminating on the original title of the article rather than commenting on your selection. Sorry for the confusion.
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