Viajero wrote:
Several of us were discussing the topic on the IRC channel in December (Anthere may remember this because she was one of them) and this question came up. One person said they thought WP (EN) had a pro-Israeli bias. Another said a pro-Palestinian bias. A third said neither POV was accurately represented.
In my experience bias is not the most serious problem in the ME pages, it is ignorance. People think they know something about the subject because they have some infantile propaganda tract (or a collection of infantile web sites) and insist on copying it into WP. Of course this is related to bias, but on the other hand there have been people in WP with strong political opinions who are nevertheless valuable contributors on account of the depth of their knowledge.
Two knowledgable people with opposing biases can generally write a good article even if the road is rocky. No number of ignoramuses can write a good article regardless of their biases.
One of the surest marks of a problem editor is that they insist on filling up articles with "quotations". I plan to write more on this in the near future.
Zero.
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