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Wikipedia's “moderate yet systematic” liberal citation bias

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Re: Wikipedia's “moderate yet systematic” liberal citation bias

#12

Post by orra »

drak0n1c wrote: post #11

The co-founder of Wikipedia, Larry Sanger, has written on this topic repeatedly. https://larrysanger.org/2020/05/wikipedia-is-badly-biased/ https://larrysanger.org/2022/03/why-neutrality/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0P4Cf0UCwU

> https://larrysanger.org/2020/05/wikipedia-is-badly-biased/

Mmm, in this polemic, Larry Sanger complains that “[Wikipedians] live in a fantasy world of their own making.” Yet, in the same polemic, he believes conspiracy about the MMR vaccine, and asks for religious scripture to be treated as fact.

He says he asks for neutrality, but perhaps he is being reductive in his definition of neutrality.

Re: Wikipedia's “moderate yet systematic” liberal citation bias

#13

Post by mansion7 »

WikiMedia is known to have paid "edit-thons" to edit their site.

These are grants given to organizations, primarily of a certain political bent, with the express purpose of creating and editing content. And when such grants are given out on this manner, it's hardly a surprise when the desired outcome is achieved.

Re: Wikipedia's “moderate yet systematic” liberal citation bias

#15

Post by belorn »

mrguyorama wrote: post #10
CMdH8 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure you’re serious or not. Just in case you are, this would be a horrible position to take on the concept of truth. It would make you unaware of the fallacy of your political side. No one side has truth on their side.

An article on global warming would be described as "leftist" in the US despite accurately reflecting reality. How else would you word the fact that american conservatives reject reality in a lot of cases? Remember, a significant amount of these conservatives openly believe the earth is 6000 years old and that geology is a satanic ploy to make people doubt god.

"Breaking down polarization ratings by ORES article topic areas, "we cannot see differences among macro topics". This "general trend" was also found for the top 10 (sub-)topic areas and the top 10 Wikiprojects, although with "minor shifts [...]. For example, the topic sports has a higher conservative-leaning fraction of citations, all the while maintaining a liberal-leaning skew. The WikiProjects Politics and India are more liberal-leaning than the average, instead. Taken together, these results confirm that the overall trend towards liberal political polarization is not specific to some areas of Wikipedia, but seems to be widespread across topics and WikiProjects.""

In what way does your theory explain that sport articles should reflect a leftist world view?

Re: Wikipedia's “moderate yet systematic” liberal citation bias

#16

Post by ravenstine »

mrguyorama wrote: post #10
CMdH8 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure you’re serious or not. Just in case you are, this would be a horrible position to take on the concept of truth. It would make you unaware of the fallacy of your political side. No one side has truth on their side.

An article on global warming would be described as "leftist" in the US despite accurately reflecting reality. How else would you word the fact that american conservatives reject reality in a lot of cases? Remember, a significant amount of these conservatives openly believe the earth is 6000 years old and that geology is a satanic ploy to make people doubt god.

Many if not most of those who are liberal enough to "believe" in global warming also believe in countless other forms of dumb shit that's even more stupid than the Earth being 6,000 years old. Otherwise they would reject religion outright, or in the other case accept it as ansolute. Whatever someone believes is only loosely related to their other beliefs, science or not. Observe what people do in practice, not just listen to what they say, and you'll find lots of fake Conservatives and Orthodox Progressives.

Re: Wikipedia's “moderate yet systematic” liberal citation bias

#19

Post by egberts1 »

For a very long time since 2004, is a real struggle to get “Deaf” to be recognized as a culture on Wikipedia.

But these Wikipedia authors seems hell-bent on medical approach and total ignorance, not to mention that Wikipedia wants their preferred but offensive “hearing-impaired” over our preferred “hard-of-hearing”.

So, a bunch of us Deaf Wikipedians still got overridden by these “Liberal” moderators wearing pink/purple hair, multi-piercing and what nots.

Even deleted my drafts under my User: folder without my permission on various Deaf things. (only Deaf History made the cut).

I’ve. since stayed clear of Wikipedia and their progressive armies.

Re: Wikipedia's “moderate yet systematic” liberal citation bias

#20

Post by nhchris »

akolbe wrote: post #9
Manuel_D wrote: post #3

Wikipedia's bias is more prevalent on specific pages, or collections of topics. Many pages have zero or near zero bias. You're not going to have much bias on scientific topics like, say resonant structures. It's a lot more prone to bias on biographical topics, where senior editors can essentially suppress any negative coverage, or promote embellished facts about a person. Take a gander at the talk page of controversi…

I agree. However, I would add that there's an equal risk of biographies being slanted negatively. Cf. this week's article by Russ Baker: https://whowhatwhy.org/culture/why-we-should-be-wary-of-wiki... Or this one about "revenge editing", published in Salon: https://www.salon.com/2013/05/17/revenge_ego_and_the_corrupt... As for bias, the thing with Wikipedia is that it can be incredibly patchy. Overall, in the English…

Your post is incredibly enlightening. This study, that looked at 30 million citations, found left-wing bias, even after controlling for news media factual reliability.

Yet media only (or mostly) report anecdotal examples of right-wing bias.

I will add, that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods & errors. —Thomas Jefferson

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