On 13/03/07, Matthew Brown <morven(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 3/13/07, Oldak Quill <oldakquill(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
I don't think it helps to assume that anyone
who believes that
corporate donation would bias Wikipedia's coverage of that corporation
also believes that "Wikipedia is in on the take". Bias works more
subtly than that. After all, it is a serious problem now despite our
thousands of well-intentioned editors.
We do, indeed, have to be careful that we do not cover those who like
Wikipedia better than those who don't like it, including especially
those cases where the like includes assistance.
Quite. I imagine a large corporate donation would be well publicised
within Wikipedia. The article for that corporate donor will inevitably
be seen by many editors and will likely be much improved. Is this a
situation we want?
Take another scenario. There's a Criticism section in an article about
a company. For one of the criticism, only a single reference in the
mainstream press can be found (say to the Globe and Mail). Users
discuss whether such a criticism should be included since no secondary
verification can be done. Are the editors more likely to omit that
criticism if they think of the company favourably? [I'm not asking
whether the inclusion of that criticism is right or not, I'm simply
demonstrating the kind of bias that may start creeping in.]
--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill(a)gmail.com)