Here is an interesting article by David Swindle of Front Page, about Wikipedia's problems with biographies of living persons. Swindle sees it in terms of a persistent left wing bias.
I won't pretend to agree with everything he says--it is not helpful to compare Michael Moore to Ann Coulter or Keith Olbermann to Glenn Beck. The gist of the article has merit, though. I think he makes some reasonable points about the biographies of Noam Chomsky and that deceased poster child for youth rebellion, Che Guevara.
http://frontpagemag.com/2011/08/23/how-the-left-conquered-wikipedia-part-1/
It's always sad to see this cast as a left/right thing - or "Wikipedia has a liberal bias". We equally have huge problems with right wing agenda's on some articles. And most of the BLP issues aren't related to politics, but to all manner of "sides" (sexuality,political,ethnic,historical and those are the non-trivial examples).
Biographies are a mess; we have detailed criticism of fairly non-notable people who've done nothing except piss off the wrong person once or twice. And we have others who are so beloved of their followers that trying to write any fair criticism is like pounding a brick wall.
With a lemon.
Tom
On 23 August 2011 12:11, Tony Sidaway tonysidaway@gmail.com wrote:
Here is an interesting article by David Swindle of Front Page, about Wikipedia's problems with biographies of living persons. Swindle sees it in terms of a persistent left wing bias.
I won't pretend to agree with everything he says--it is not helpful to compare Michael Moore to Ann Coulter or Keith Olbermann to Glenn Beck. The gist of the article has merit, though. I think he makes some reasonable points about the biographies of Noam Chomsky and that deceased poster child for youth rebellion, Che Guevara.
http://frontpagemag.com/2011/08/23/how-the-left-conquered-wikipedia-part-1/ _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
It's always sad to see this cast as a left/right thing - or "Wikipedia has a liberal bias". We equally have huge problems with right wing agenda's on some articles. And most of the BLP issues aren't related to politics, but to all manner of "sides" (sexuality,political,ethnic,historical and those are the non-trivial examples).
Biographies are a mess; we have detailed criticism of fairly non-notable people who've done nothing except piss off the wrong person once or twice. And we have others who are so beloved of their followers that trying to write any fair criticism is like pounding a brick wall.
With a lemon.
Tom
Our problems come more from the left than the right, but that is partly due to the extremely low quality of editing from the right.
Fred
Hmm nice that he's not entirely relying on the Siegenthaler incident and has quoted something beyond 2007. But his reliance on a 2009 Daily Mail story about 20,000 editors vetting changes via flagged revisions http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1208941/Free-edit-Wikipedia-appoints... Does leave me wondering how much he really understands the pedia, and whether perhaps he gives preferential treatment to sources he agrees with over those he doesn't. Core to his critique is the idea that highly active editors who do most edits must perforce be leftwing, which rather misses the point that the fixers of typos and reverters of vandalism are not necessarily the editors who add all the content.
I for one have no problem with the idea that Conservapedia will often be to the right of us, or Liberapedia to the left http://liberapedia.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page Now a thoughtful critique that compared us to both of those and also to reality would be interesting, but a Conservative criticising us for being less Conservative than Conservapedia.... It would be worrying if we didn't seem relatively Liberal compared to them.
As for the Che Guevara article, as well as detailing his marital infidelities it describes him as "feared for his brutality and ruthlessness" and details why. It also recounts an incident of him killing someone in cold blood. Economic incompetence "Whatever the merits or demerits of Guevara’s economic principles, his programs were unsuccessful.[130]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Che_Guevara#cite_note-Kellner63-129 Guevara's program of "moral incentives" for workers caused a rapid drop in productivity and a rapid rise in absenteeism". Lastly an overly confrontational attitude that failed to engage the Bolivians. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Che_Guevara Multiple separate and sourced criticisms that to my mind make this far more balanced than David Swindle claims.
WSC
On 23 August 2011 12:11, Tony Sidaway tonysidaway@gmail.com wrote:
Here is an interesting article by David Swindle of Front Page, about Wikipedia's problems with biographies of living persons. Swindle sees it in terms of a persistent left wing bias.
I won't pretend to agree with everything he says--it is not helpful to compare Michael Moore to Ann Coulter or Keith Olbermann to Glenn Beck. The gist of the article has merit, though. I think he makes some reasonable points about the biographies of Noam Chomsky and that deceased poster child for youth rebellion, Che Guevara.
http://frontpagemag.com/2011/08/23/how-the-left-conquered-wikipedia-part-1/ _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On Tue, 23 Aug 2011, WereSpielChequers wrote:
As for the Che Guevara article, as well as detailing his marital infidelities it describes him as "feared for his brutality and ruthlessness" and details why.
The complaint isn't that it says nothing bad whatsoever about him, it's more like a complaint about undue weight.
On Tue, Aug 23, 2011 at 13:58, WereSpielChequers werespielchequers@gmail.com wrote:
Hmm nice that he's not entirely relying on the Siegenthaler incident and has quoted something beyond 2007. But his reliance on a 2009 Daily Mail story about 20,000 editors vetting changes via flagged revisions http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1208941/Free-edit-Wikipedia-appoints...
Yes, during the pending changes trial, Reviewer status was basically being given out along with Rollback. The idea that there was some kind of political motivation behind it is insane. Yes, more experienced users with things like Rollback or Reviewer rights tend to run the site, but that might be because those people are selected for their ability to competently manage the site and those who are incompetent, don't. That may be wishful thinking.
On 23/08/2011 12:11, Tony Sidaway wrote:
Here is an interesting article by David Swindle of Front Page, about Wikipedia's problems with biographies of living persons. Swindle sees it in terms of a persistent left wing bias.
I won't pretend to agree with everything he says--it is not helpful to compare Michael Moore to Ann Coulter or Keith Olbermann to Glenn Beck. The gist of the article has merit, though. I think he makes some reasonable points about the biographies of Noam Chomsky and that deceased poster child for youth rebellion, Che Guevara.
http://frontpagemag.com/2011/08/23/how-the-left-conquered-wikipedia-part-1/ _
But "bias" of the kind he works with is a really unhelpful concept for us, in practice: especially when trivialised by being "metricated". The usual issues being whether particular kinds of material are "overstated" or "understated" (given neutral use of language), we should aim in BLPs to be slightly "understated". Whether it is fair to judge us on BLPs of people who practically make a career out of courting controversy, I don't know. For those who professionally seek attention, it is easiest of all to make mountains out of molehills when that should be vice versa.
Charles
For those who professionally seek attention,
You know; rather than political bias, or political editing, this is probably the root cause of problems in the specific articles he highlights.
Not that I'd call it "their own damn fault", but they are in those situations deliberately.
Tom
On Tue, 23 Aug 2011, Charles Matthews wrote:
But "bias" of the kind he works with is a really unhelpful concept for us, in practice: especially when trivialised by being "metricated".
What other way is there to claim bias than being "metricated"? Is he just supposed to give his subjective opinion, or just complain that a particular thing is being left out of the article?
Well rather than quote some percentage figures you could take the tack I did with the Che Guevara article and actually look at what negative things were covered. The sort of percentage system that Swindle used is highly misleading, nine sentences about why someone came to believe something followed by one sentence that says "but when he tried his ideas out they didn't work" does not give you a 90% positive article.
Looking at his comparison of Coulter and More based on the relative size of their "Controversy" sections, even a cursory look at the rest of the Michael More article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Moore#Career sees coverage of him dropping out of university, being fired from a job and an unsourced negative sentence that I've just removed. Size of controversy section is really not a good metric for comparing BLPs.
But going back to Che Guevara I think it is worth reading http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Che_Guevara#Using_Humberto_Fontova Our preference for reliable sources does make it difficult to cite certain other sources, and I can see how that leads Mr Swindle to consider Conservapedia an alternative. As someone who has held in my hand two million year old stone tools I think I'll stick with Wikipedia, but yes for anyone who thinks we don't need to worry about Greenland melting because "if the Ice caps melt more water will flow harmlessly off the edge of the earth" there is indeed Conservapedia.
Regards
WSC
On 23 August 2011 19:54, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
On Tue, 23 Aug 2011, Charles Matthews wrote:
But "bias" of the kind he works with is a really unhelpful concept for us, in practice: especially when trivialised by being "metricated".
What other way is there to claim bias than being "metricated"? Is he just supposed to give his subjective opinion, or just complain that a particular thing is being left out of the article?
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On 23/08/2011 19:54, Ken Arromdee wrote:
On Tue, 23 Aug 2011, Charles Matthews wrote:
But "bias" of the kind he works with is a really unhelpful concept for us, in practice: especially when trivialised by being "metricated".
What other way is there to claim bias than being "metricated"? Is he just supposed to give his subjective opinion, or just complain that a particular thing is being left out of the article?
You know, "bias" might mean that there is an editorial policy. This is what we usually mean when talking loosely about newspapers, for example: that they deliberately place themselves in positions on political spectra. (I don't think that left-right is the unique way to look at it - for example The Economist is surely a free-market publication but it had little time for Dubya.) Or it might mean types of self-censorship (the French press ignoring politicians' sex lives) or the opposite (tabloid prurience).
We would find all these things problematic in our own articles, and they are all qualitative. The tabloid thing is to slur together "the public interest" with "things the public are interested in".
For BLPs we try not to do that; while being uncensored we are supposed to cater for "the general reader" while not including excessive amounts of material that is of interest only to those concerned to boost or dent reputations. To answer the point made: what is "excess" in these cases isn't a matter of numerical rule of thumb. There is a perfectly good test, allied to one of the criteria used for COI: exactly who would be interested in the stuff? That does involve drawing the line, for example, between US politics mavens and the rest of us, but that is worth doing (and those who are too close shouldn't be doing it, cf. COI again). The historians have to get this right at some higher level, and the point at issue is really whether our failure in some cases to anticipate their criteria is "bias" or just honest mistakes.
Charles
On 23 August 2011 12:11, Tony Sidaway tonysidaway@gmail.com wrote:
Here is an interesting article by David Swindle of Front Page, about Wikipedia's problems with biographies of living persons. Swindle sees it in terms of a persistent left wing bias.
...
http://frontpagemag.com/2011/08/23/how-the-left-conquered-wikipedia-part-1/
For completeness, here is part 2 of David Swindle's series:
http://frontpagemag.com/2011/09/01/how-the-left-conquered-wikipedia-part-ii-...
Here he focuses on what he thinks are "three unwritten rules that pervade the treatment of most leftists on Wikipedia."
He summarises them as follows
[1] Quote feeble critics only so they can be rebutted. [2] Give the Benefit of the Doubt to the Jew-Haters. [3] Leave out the Embarrassing ‘Personal Life’ details.
As examples he cites the biographies of Al Gore, Al Sharpton and Morris Dees, The first two will need no introduction, but the latter of these was the relatively less well known founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center.
He touches on some issues. We could probably quite easily counter them with examples of right wing or conservative material that gets POV bombed.
Some of the bio's he is stretching the issue to be sure; perhaps more analysis of events in these peoples life could be recorded (and certainly those articles seem to require some reorganisation), but they don't really whitewash anything. They are perhaps trying to be *neutral* and maybe going a little too far. (Is this guy of a strong political persuasion, I get that impression...)
The only really major problem he raises is Ismus, that needs a look at.
Tom
On 1 September 2011 18:51, Tony Sidaway tonysidaway@gmail.com wrote:
On 23 August 2011 12:11, Tony Sidaway tonysidaway@gmail.com wrote:
Here is an interesting article by David Swindle of Front Page, about Wikipedia's problems with biographies of living persons. Swindle sees it
in
terms of a persistent left wing bias.
...
http://frontpagemag.com/2011/08/23/how-the-left-conquered-wikipedia-part-1/
For completeness, here is part 2 of David Swindle's series:
http://frontpagemag.com/2011/09/01/how-the-left-conquered-wikipedia-part-ii-...
Here he focuses on what he thinks are "three unwritten rules that pervade the treatment of most leftists on Wikipedia."
He summarises them as follows
[1] Quote feeble critics only so they can be rebutted. [2] Give the Benefit of the Doubt to the Jew-Haters. [3] Leave out the Embarrassing ‘Personal Life’ details.
As examples he cites the biographies of Al Gore, Al Sharpton and Morris Dees, The first two will need no introduction, but the latter of these was the relatively less well known founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center.
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
I suppose I feel that some of his basic points do apply across the wiki, when applied to articles that have been taken into ownership. A recent rather disturbing case made some waves in Conservative (British Conservative, that is) newspapers and magazines. One editor had been systematically pruning criticism from a political columnist's biography and inserting denigration into the biographies of those who had criticised him.
It would be unwise to deny that our editing system makes us vulnerable to such bad actors. I have no reason to believe that there is a particular bias to the resulting drift, but if there were it might arise from the demographics of the project making it harder to prevail malicious or otherwise biased editing on some articles rather than others.