Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2021-02-28/In the media

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• How ironic that the people complaining about Wikipedia's "left-wing bias" do so from a very pro-american and anti-left wing perspective. They also usually only cite American political articles as examples of Wikipedia's supposed bias. Believe it or not, politics EXIST outside of the United States. X-Editor (talk) 22:49, 28 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It's also an easy excuse by Wikipedia to avoid answering claims of bias on American political topics, as we just saw. Sir Joseph ^(talk) 23:09, 28 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The Fox News article's accusation was discussed on the talk page of the Communism article and the consensus seemed to be that Fox's arguments were biased nonsense and that they completely ignored basic Wikipedia rules when accusing us of a bias. Don't fall for their nonsense, It's just conservatives playing the victim. I don't deny that there are bias problems when it comes to Wikipedia, but one of those problems sure as hell isn't that we're biased against conservatives. X-Editor (talk) 04:48, 1 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

They are also the same people who claim that social media is biased against them, despite all of the reliable evidence showing the exact opposite is true. If that's the case, which it is, then why should we trust them when they say the same about us? X-Editor (talk) 04:59, 1 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

True, politics does exist outside of the USA, but here in India as well, it is the conservatives who are babbling about Wikipedia's "bias". I have a theory that it is those who support authoritarianism regardless of their ideology and country, who are babbling. 45.251.33.136 (talk) 13:23, 1 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• There certainly are bias problems in the American politics sector. That said, seeing the Daily Mail, Fox News, and The Washington Times accusing us of political bias is like the color black calling the kettle black. -Indy beetle (talk) 00:03, 1 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/02/24/wikipedias-political-science-coverage-is-biased-i-tried-fix-it/ is another source, and your point isn't valid, because their whole point is that Wiki is bias to the left, so of course right sites will mention it. Sir Joseph ^(talk) 00:50, 1 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I made two points. One, yes we have a bias problem. Two, the aforementioned publications have an even worse bias problem. I think those points still stand. -Indy beetle (talk) 01:23, 1 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The Washington Post article doesn't say anything about us being biased against conservatives, which is the particular claim made against us by the Fox News article. X-Editor (talk) 05:09, 1 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• I find many discussions of bias to be way off. They start with the assumption that they *know* the truth. But we almost *never know the complete truth*. What we need is something fairly easy to measure, assuming opinions on what is the truth of an issue can be fairly easily quantified. So say the issue is the truth of the sentence "Barrack Obama was a great president". I might score the truth of that statement as, say 80 out of 100. Others might rate it much higher, say 99. Still others might score it much lower, say 3. After getting scores from a given population you can then find the median and declare that "unbiased" for the given population. Unbiased here doesn't mean the truth. In fact the person holding that view might be a complete ignoramus and a dunderhead. Also the meaning of "unbiased" will change over time and across age groups and geography. The unbiased position on Wikipedia, in this conception will likely be completely different from the unbiased position in the US, and is certainly different from the unbiased position among Fox viewers. Smallbones

_(smalltalk) 01:00, 1 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Well said. X-Editor (talk) 05:01, 1 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

— Newslinger talk 02:13, 1 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Oh great. Larry's officially an idiot. -Indy beetle (talk) 02:55, 1 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Either that, or he's sold his soul to the devil aka the far-right (except that Faust gains knowledge and worldly pleasures while Sanger gains the ability to naturally behave like an idiot). 45.251.33.136 (talk) 13:49, 1 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Who would win, the Ayn Rand reader Jimbo or the "my friends are Qpeople" Larry? -Gouleg🛋️ (Stalk • Hound) 14:49, 1 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Chad Jimbo vs. Virgin Sanger. X-Editor (talk) 20:42, 1 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Anytime a news source quotes Larry Sanger like he's an authority on Wikipedia being "biased" my eyes roll so far back into my skull that I think I'm going to tear my optic nerves. Hemiauchenia (talk) 02:59, 1 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

A real news source would never quote Sanger (unless they also quoted Wales or someone who disagreed with Sanger to make their news article show both sides of the story). 45.251.33.136 (talk) 13:49, 1 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Sanger fell down alt-right pipeline and has lost it completely. It's really sad to see people fall victim to the pipeline, especially our co-founder, but It's never too late to get out of the pipeline either. X-Editor (talk) 05:06, 1 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

So he's a moderate supporter? Nardog (talk) 21:02, 1 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• Quoting Albert Einstein (or someone who attributed the following quote to Einstein) on Sanger (vaguely as I don't remember the exact wording): There are only two things without limits: the universe, and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about whether the universe has its limits. 45.251.33.136 (talk) 13:23, 1 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Sanger was discussed at the Fringe Theories noticeboard last summer. His Twitter feed these days is retweets of "stolen election" propaganda, support for Rand Paul's transphobic remarks, boosting Zero Hedge, whining about Kermit the Frog being "cancelled", calling Naomi Wolf "one of the good gals", etc. I stopped scrolling when I got to Trump is the only president to have been acquitted twice of utterly ridiculous charges brought by a corrupt Establishment [1]. Not only is he a crank, he's a boring crank. XOR'easter (talk) 20:03, 1 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Oh god, he's transphobic too. X-Editor (talk) 20:41, 1 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• The story Lena is entertaining and thought-provoking – thanks for the link. Note that the author supposes that a Wikipedia article of 2075 will not have any obvious sources or citations – presumably the fact-checking has been automated using brain scans of suitable gnomes. See also: our article Lenna, which inspired the story's title. Andrew🐉(talk) 13:57, 1 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• I find it funny when a conservative blames leftists for getting their way because they "work harder" than conservatives. Perhaps if conservatives just worked harder online, and pulled themselves up by their lan cables, they would succeed. Some have already started their own "Conservapedia" in response, but it's a shadow of Wikipedia and it seems they will not be satisfied until they control the narrative on all platforms. I'd suggest the Washington Times make the first move by examining their own partisan news bias. I suspect it would be similar to what this article alleges but in the opposite direction. Ottawajin (talk) 04:14, 2 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Gentrification captures part of what's going on in OSM, but doesn't really get to the root of it (although it provides a convenient, time-worn narrative so that everyone knows which side to line up on). OSM has been very effectively gatekept for years, not just in favor of individuals over corporations, but in favor of a very artisanal style of mapping. If you're biking around your neighborhood with a GPS and a Go-Pro, you're doing it "right". Any other approach? You're an "armchair mapper" and a second-class citizen. This has some advantages (experts can't pop out of a narrow silo and impose an impractical tagging scheme on everyone else), but it also condemns OSM to an ontology that's perpetually in flux, because fixation of any part on it would infringe on the local mapper's sacred right to tag things as he or she thinks best. In addition to corporate mapping and the issue of attribution, there's been a certain amount of agita simmering since 2019 over the role of iD, which is by far the predominant editor used on OSM. It has preset support for any number of tags, so developer choices in that regard will strongly influence the tagging used by new mappers, and hence the "facts on the ground" of what tags are actually used in OSM. That's shifted the balance of power to control tagging towards iD developers and away from active local mappers with social capital, and has been bitterly resented. Ultimately, I suspect the gatekeeping is going to collapse simply because OSM has set expectations that can't be delivered under the artisanal model. It can create an extremely rich map, but it can't scale to reliably deliver that richness across the entire map. I think eventually the pragmatic goal of "We want a super-detailed map of the world", backed as it is by both corporations and the map consumer in general, is going to roll over the "and it must be lovingly hand-built by individuals on the ground" part of the OSM philosophy. Choess (talk) 06:30, 2 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• This is the first I heard that Commons actually hosted child pornography. I remember back in the day Sanger making that claim, & the resulting uproar (documented here), but when all was said & done, no one ever found exploitive pictures or videos of children that were clearly created for sexual purposes. In other words, I've yet to see any constructive criticism from Sanger concerning Wikipedia since he left. He appears to be unhappy that Wikipedia has thrived without him, & bashes it at every chance. (Not to say Wikipedia doesn't have its faults, but so far Sanger has managed to fail to identify even one of them.) -- llywrch (talk) 21:43, 2 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. If Sanger complained about Wikipedia's actual faults, such as systemic bias and gender bias, then I'd be much more willing to give his criticism a chance. X-Editor (talk) 04:53, 3 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

"Lena" was very interesting and quite fascinating.--3family6 (Talk to me | See what I have done) 21:09, 3 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• "Over the years [Larry Sanger] has made a few good points". That's a very generous statement. Kaldari (talk) 22:32, 6 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]