The Biases of Wikipedia and Moderators Today

> Wikipedia frequently asserts, in its own voice, that many of Trump’s statements are “false.” Well, perhaps they are. But even if they are, it is not exactly neutral for an encyclopedia article to say so

Reporting the fact that someone has lied, in this case repeatedly, is neutral. And the author not liking that Wikipedia reports those facts is not evidence of Wikipedia’s bias.

There are plenty of faults with the site’s moderation but this is not an example of them.

Speaking of Wikipedia, here's an article highly relevant to this thesis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

I don't know how to put this nicely, but i would not say "a neutral point of view" is synonymous with "the center of the Overton window in the United States".

Larry Sanger apparently co-founded Wikipedia but I've somehow never heard of him before. Not sure how that escaped me.

He's apparently famously critical of Wikipedia. The majority of this article seems to complain about giving facts undue prominence over a "balance" of viewpoints.

What's the opposing viewpoint to the truth? Lies?

(And his political bias really shows. The Obama article is too positive. The Trump article is too negative. The article about abortion doesn't say how evil it is. And the global warming and vaccine pages don't report enough on "minority viewpoints". It's amazing how consistent the beliefs of the far-right are.)

From my non-expert perspective, Wikipedia is doing a surprisingly good job. Even this article actually gives me confidence.

This article is insane right-wing propaganda, and if it were written by any other person, would not be appropriate for Hacker News. The only reason it makes sense here is that the fact that the author believes this nonsense is noteworthy (and alarming).

"Neutral" does not mean "every opinion is taken seriously." The opinions that this article claims that Wikipedia is "biased" against are obviously and factually false, and in most cases actively dangerous to human lives, Western democracy, and/or the continuation of the human race.

>The global warming and MMR vaccine articles are examples; I hardly need to dive into these pages, since it is quite enough to say that they endorse definite positions that scientific minorities reject.

There is no credible scientific presence, even a minority, that believes that anthropogenic climate change is not a real and present threat, or that vaccinations cause any serious harm. Those are crackpot conspiracy theories. It would be non-neutral - and dangerous both to Wikipedia's credibility and to human lives - to treat them otherwise.

>The Barack Obama article completely fails to mention... Benghazi

...but there is a link to "the Benghazi attack" in the infobox

>AP phone records scandal

...but there is a subsection about "Government mass surveillance", which links to a larger article.

>or, of course, the developing “Obamagate” story in which Obama was personally involved in surveilling Donald Trump

...because nobody, not even Donald Trump, can explain what "Obamagate" supposedly is. All it appears to mean is "Obama was bad". The idea that it's specifically tied to surveillance of the Trump campaign - which was completely justified by the numerous and court-proven connections between that organization and Russian intelligence - is a a fabrication of this particular article.

>Wikipedia frequently asserts, in its own voice, that many of Trump’s statements are “false.” Well, perhaps they are. But even if they are, it is not exactly neutral for an encyclopedia article to say so, especially without attribution.

That's not how it works. Trump lies. He lies blatantly, and often. He claims things that are obviously false, and he does so with an unbelievable frequency. A large fraction of the things he says in public are either factually false or total nonsense. To say anything else would be incomprehensibly biased in the other direction.