Posted on 11/29/2020 6:12:50 PM PST by DeweyCA
Multiple academic studies and critical analyses of Wikipedia have pointed towards the site’s left-wing bias. The findings include its content being more left-leaning than Encyclopedia Britannica and left-leaning editors being more active and partisan than right-leaning editors. Left-wing outlets have been found to be the top-cited sources and represent most citations on articles about American politicians, and right-leaning editors have at the same time been found to be six times more likely to face sanctions.
Such studies and analyses validate criticism from the site’s co-founder, Larry Sanger, who earlier this year declared Wikipedia’s neutrality policy “dead” due to left-wing bias on the site. Following are five studies and analyses demonstrating Wikipedia bias:
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
Folks don’t understand what/how Wikipedia works. I remember back in grad school being warned (class-wide) that Wikipedia is NOT a reliable source by any measure. I did use it from time-to-time to find starting points in the footnotes of some article entries.
But here’s the deal - Wikipedia is in the class of projects known as “open source”, meaning pretty much anyone can edit/contribute to their entries. Content often changes on a regular basis - and articles get changed many tines to cover or redirect facts.
And yes, the vast majority of those who actively update those articles are Leftists...
Left wing bias is everywhere.....would not be as much a problem if they were at least honest about it.
How is this news?
“meaning pretty much anyone can edit/contribute to their entries”
not so at all. select people can contribute/edit.
For instance, hardly anything negative is said in the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyndon_B._Johnson extensive page on LBJ despite LBJ biographer Dallek being cited often, and whose book Flawed Giant: Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1961-1973 provides not only positive but negative descriptions.
I don’t even trust it to tell me the cast of a movie.
Previously -- with one exception, that got immediately deleted -- I'd just contributed a few things to non-controversial articles. A few weeks ago I got involved in correcting some obvious misstatements in the Kenosha shootings article, though, and after some difficulty did get those parts improved. Several other persons saw how unfair the account was and were helping improve it too. Most of the mainstream media accounts of those shootings are terrible. I'd say the Wikipedia article is definitely better.
At least at Wikipedia you can get your foot in the door, change a few things, and some of them will stick. We can't change a story at the New York Times or Washington Post. At Wikipedia we have a chance. Until people on the right can produce a competitive alternative, I don't think we should give up on trying to write at Wikipedia (and even afterward it wouldn't hurt -- the more places that have accurate and fair articles the better).
No doubt Wikipedia is biased, but please see my previous post.
The strong builds economic security, the weak pens its destruction.
Searching for a phrase I used in the talk, I can't find it anywhere with Google. Bing and DuckDuckGo turn it up on one page -- Archive 5.
Don’t need 5 studies. Just look up anything political over there.
As I understand it, you can make a Wikipedia entry about yourself or about anything, say what you want. No fact checking.
I may be wrong. If so, tell me.
The fact checking is done by others who read the article, theoretically by everybody in the world. Over time that should lead to greater and greater accuracy, assuming good will and a lack of bias.
Of course, that can’t be assumed, and what happens with controversial topics is that people with different biases struggle to make their version prevail. Still, if you have good evidence, there’s a chance that there will be enough fair and intelligent persons participating in writing the article that your contribution will be accepted. That’s a better chance than you have with a story in the mainstream media.
One might also add that there are companies that can be hired to, and organizations that are dedicated to, slanting particular subjects.
Robert Michels — as any reader of James Burnham's finest book, The Machiavellians, knows was the author of the Iron Law of Oligarchy. This states that in any organization the permanent officials will gradually obtain such influence that its day-to-day program will increasingly reflect their interests rather than its own stated philosophy. To take a homely example, congressmen from egalitarian parties somehow end up voting for higher pay and generous expenses for congressmen. We can also catch an ironic echo of Michels's law in Stalin's title of General Secretary, as well as in the fact that powerful mandarins in the British government creep about under such deceptive pseudonyms as "Permanent Under-Secretary.” . . ..
All of which is by way of introducing a new law of my own . . .I cite as supporting evidence the ACLU, the Ford Foundation, and the Episcopal Church. The reason is, of course, that people who staff such bodies tend to be the sort who don't like private profit, business, making money, the current organization of society, and, by extension, the Western world. At which point Michels's Iron Law of Oligarchy takes over — and the rest follows.
- O'Sullivan's First Law: All organizations that are not actually right-wing will over time become left-wing.
That is correct. For that matter, any one of us could contract ourselves out to do that. It takes no special credentials to edit Wikipedia entries.
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