Study finds Wikipedia influences judicial behavior • Hacker News Board

Re: Study finds Wikipedia influences judicial behavior

#71

Post by manuelabeledo » Sun, Jul 31, 2022, 6:30 PM UTC

ars wrote: post #57

exadrid wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wikipedia has a very clear pro-science and pro-reality bias, and that's a good thing. You would not want news like OAN to be cited on their.

You clearly don't edit much of Wikipedia if you think that. Their bias actually toward things that are in the news. And since the news of today is only interested in the most extreme, that's the facts you'll find on Wikipedia. Truthfully a much worse problem is that an average user cannot edit on Wikipedia. To edit on Wikipedia you need to have an obsessive personality, to constantly guard your edits and keep other e…

> Truthfully a much worse problem is that an average user cannot edit on Wikipedia. To edit on Wikipedia you need to have an obsessive personality, to constantly guard your edits and keep other editors from removing them.

This reads like something coming from the obsessive side.

Re: Study finds Wikipedia influences judicial behavior

#72

Post by chjj » Sun, Jul 31, 2022, 6:32 PM UTC

cmeacham98 wrote: post #58

phpisthebest wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it depends on the topic and section of wikipedia. If you get into the political area's of wikipeda, I think the bias of Wikipedia is pretty clear polar to that of PragerU. If you stick to the pure hard sciences (physics as an example) and non-controversial events (like an earthquake) then sure they are unbiased

Can you give an example of a wikipedia page that you think shows bias on the same level as PragerU?

This is one of the most clear examples of bias in favor of leftism that I've seen on wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_marxism

> The term "Cultural Marxism" refers to a far-right antisemitic conspiracy theory which claims that Western Marxism is the basis of continuing academic and intellectual efforts to subvert Western culture.

I feel like a lot of actual marxists would disagree with this statement. People like Antonio Gramsci, who basically laid the foundations for cultural marxism in the early 20th century.

Oddly, if you read about Antonio Gramsci on wikipedia, they all but call him a cultural marxist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Gramsci

> Gramsci is best known for his theory of cultural hegemony, which describes how the state and ruling capitalist class – the bourgeoisie – use cultural institutions to maintain power in capitalist societies.

Also, the last time I looked at the cultural marxism article, it simply said a "far-right conspiracy theory". Now they've somehow managed to roll up antisemitism in there too. Apparently it became antisemitic in just the past year or two!

Re: Study finds Wikipedia influences judicial behavior

#73

Post by ars » Sun, Jul 31, 2022, 6:38 PM UTC

manuelabeledo wrote: post #71

ars wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You clearly don't edit much of Wikipedia if you think that. Their bias actually toward things that are in the news. And since the news of today is only interested in the most extreme, that's the facts you'll find on Wikipedia. Truthfully a much worse problem is that an average user cannot edit on Wikipedia. To edit on Wikipedia you need to have an obsessive personality, to constantly guard your edits and keep other e…

> Truthfully a much worse problem is that an average user cannot edit on Wikipedia. To edit on Wikipedia you need to have an obsessive personality, to constantly guard your edits and keep other editors from removing them. This reads like something coming from the obsessive side.

I don't have patience to do any of that, and I'm mostly just gave up on editing Wikipedia.

Every once in awhile I go to try to edit something and I'm reminded again how time-consuming it is.

Re: Study finds Wikipedia influences judicial behavior

#74

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Jul 31, 2022, 6:39 PM UTC

smrtinsert wrote: post #19

helsinkiandrew wrote: post #7

This is alarming but I'm not sure the study actually finds that "Wikipedia influences judicial behavior" in the way most readers would understand that term - influencing decisions and sentence. It finds that "Getting a public Wikipedia article increased a case’s citations by more than 20 percent." That could mean judges are citing cases with wikipedia entries rather than similar cases without and their judicial behav…

Why would it be alarming. Wikipedia is a fine entry into any topic. Seeing PragerU influencing the court would be alarming.

[deleted]

Re: Study finds Wikipedia influences judicial behavior

#75

Post by edgyquant » Sun, Jul 31, 2022, 6:42 PM UTC

kitschyred wrote: post #60

phpisthebest wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it depends on the topic and section of wikipedia. If you get into the political area's of wikipeda, I think the bias of Wikipedia is pretty clear polar to that of PragerU. If you stick to the pure hard sciences (physics as an example) and non-controversial events (like an earthquake) then sure they are unbiased

> I think the bias of Wikipedia is pretty clear polar to that of PragerU As if. This article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor_genocide_question is still up despite having almost zero pertinent sources.[1] Calling that "polar" is nothing short of a stretch. At most , Wikipedia could be said to have a neo-liberal bias, an ideology upheld by both of the US' political parties, based on policies alone and not on e…

That holodomor example isn’t a good one. That article is up for, and mostly pertains to, the debate surrounding whether or not it was technically a genocide.

Re: Study finds Wikipedia influences judicial behavior

#76

Post by notRobot » Sun, Jul 31, 2022, 7:01 PM UTC

kemitchell wrote: post #61

pyuser583 wrote: post #51

A while ago the Oxford English Dictionary wrote a letter to the US Supreme Court asking them not use the OED as an authority. They said the OED definitions are based on imperfect collections of common use, and aren’t “right” or “wrong”. They also said the OED often uses SCOTUS decisions as a source, which creates an incestuous link.

Really interesting. I searched for this online, but couldn't find it. Might you have a link handy? Much appreciated!

Not exactly what you're looking for, but a super interesting article from 2013 from the Oxford University Press's Blog:

The highest dictionary in the land? https://blog.oup.com/2013/06/scotus-marriage-definition-dict...

Re: Study finds Wikipedia influences judicial behavior

#77

Post by MichaelCollins » Sun, Jul 31, 2022, 7:03 PM UTC

roenxi wrote: post #40

helsinkiandrew wrote: post #7

This is alarming but I'm not sure the study actually finds that "Wikipedia influences judicial behavior" in the way most readers would understand that term - influencing decisions and sentence. It finds that "Getting a public Wikipedia article increased a case’s citations by more than 20 percent." That could mean judges are citing cases with wikipedia entries rather than similar cases without and their judicial behav…

It isn't that obvious that this is alarming. What are we alarmed about? The point of judges is that they make judgements. The citing of other law is just to try and keep some consistency between the judgements to make them predictable. In theory they could even give out inconsistent judgements and that would also be workable, it just happens that it usually means something bad is happening because judges aren't natur…

The part that concerns ('alarm' implies surprise) me is the confirmation that activist wikipedians have levers and knobs to play with that impact court decisions.

And if Wikipedia does, you can bet Google does too.

Re: Study finds Wikipedia influences judicial behavior

#78

Post by MichaelCollins » Sun, Jul 31, 2022, 7:04 PM UTC

cmeacham98 wrote: post #42

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretending Wikipedia isn't also, is silly. This week's nonsense with the definition of 'recession' is proof enough of that. If you want to argue magnitude, you've already conceded what Wikipedia is (and I don't deny PragerU is what you claim it is).

Wikipedia is not perfectly unbiased, but if you honestly believe it is even comparable to PragerU you should seriously talk to someone about your biases and perception of the world. There are left-wing equivalents of PragerU (ex: the Gravel Institute) that are just as far away from Wikipedia as PragerU is.

The method of this study was to deliberately construct a bias on wikipedia, which the researchers were able to successfully pull off with measurable effect.

Re: Study finds Wikipedia influences judicial behavior

#79

Post by tediousdemise » Sun, Jul 31, 2022, 7:32 PM UTC

Knowledge influences behavior? No way, I don't believe it.

Say I want to learn how to do a backflip. I do a quick search, find an instructional video, and nope the fuck out because of how dangerous and difficult it seems to perform. A prime example of knowledge that influenced my behavior.

Pointless study since this is just common sense. So much time and money is wasted in science just so that people can make a name for themselves or get a promotion.

Re: Study finds Wikipedia influences judicial behavior

#80

Post by TechBro8615 » Sun, Jul 31, 2022, 7:36 PM UTC

It doesn’t seem unreasonable to extrapolate this finding to other areas of society where a small percentage of people write their opinions and then a much larger percent of people read them, eventually shaping aggregate opinion independently of any opinion held predominantly by “lurkers.”

How many elections have been shaped by 4chan, Reddit, and Facebook comments? There have been a few studies on this, eg in 2016 [0] and 2018 [1] which found results that probably will not shock you.

Personally, this might be confirmation/proximity bias, but I believe the effect of small internet communities is severely underestimated by the public and political consultants. This is an area that needs a lot more study, not so that we can stop it, but so we can raise public awareness of how memes spread and give people the tools to think critically without falling into the self-reinforcing cognitive traps that arise from filtering information with poor heuristics.

[0] https://arxiv.org/abs/1610.03452

[1] https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.12512v1