Our article "Airbrush" does not include information on the use of "airbrush" as a metaphor, although it has a section on the technique as used to retouch photographs. In this context airbushing the Koch brothers article, emphasizing the positive and de-emphasizing the negative, would produce the kind of pablum point of view editors would like to serve us up about other controversial figures and practices. I'm surprised to see that our Wiktionary article also does not treat airbrush as a metaphor. See https://secure.wikimedia.org/wiktionary/en/wiki/airbrush We understand it well, it is point of view editing. Airbrushing has a connotation of doing so carefully and subtly. I'm afraid this editor failed in that respect; he seems to have been quite bold, announcing his conflict of interest in his first edit. He is now banned, and I cannot say there was not a good basis for that, but he was hardly subtle. And a good deal of what he did was on the talk page of the articles, which is what we ask. Fred

On 10 March 2011 13:11, Fred Bauder <fredbaud(a)fairpoint.net> wrote: Charles' point was that the article says "airbush" not "airbrush" in the headline.

I've been looking into this. Much of the uproar was based on this section on a talk page: Talk:Political_activities_of_the_Koch_family#Time_for_a_deletion_debate Which is where the alleged socks show up and seem to be piling on. The problem is that not much checked out. However MBMadmirer was never unblocked. The only basis he could be blocked on, in my opinion, is Wikipedia:Conflict_of_interest#Blocks and I'm not sure he actually engaged in behavior that was disruptive enough to actually justify that. Fred Bauder

In the arbitration cases I was in involved with that were similar I made heavy use of the formulation, "editorial judgment" which requires editors to be responsible and to use some sophistication rather than buying into "for the question of what is neutral and what is balanced and what is fringe are always to a considerable extent matters of opinion." In other words, to act in much the same way a professional editor does; be a hero... Where this falls down is in cases like the Kochs, or indeed in the case of macaroni and cheese; these are not burning issues which command intense attention by skilled editors. Anyone who votes against their own interests or eats food that is not good for them gets what they deserve; WP:BEANS "Don't be an idiot" is not a viable policy formulation for Wikipedia or in life. Fred

Of course, if an interested minority party has effectively infinite money, they can start to tip the scales. On Mon, Mar 14, 2011 at 4:13 PM, Ian Woollard <ian.woollard(a)gmail.com>wrote;wrote:

On Mon, 14 Mar 2011, David Goodman wrote: This works both ways, though. You describe how an attempt to introduce bias can be painted as a genuine fix. But it also works the other way: a genuine fix can be painted as an attempt to introduce bias. And it's basically the same method: selectively quoting, finding weaknesses in the sources (this time the sources used by the fixer instead of the sources used by the article), etc. I know the Koch brothers are unpopular among a vocal segment of the political spectrum, and especially on the Internet. This means we should be very careful when claiming that they are trying to introduce bias, when they only claim to be fixing imbalance--the fact that they are so widely hated means that 1) there are many people highly motivated to write misrepresentations and unbalanced articles, making this concern legitimate 2) the claims that they are "really" trying to introduce bias may themselves be introduced by people with bias, using the exact same techniques against them that they claim are being used for them. I'm reminded of the CAMERA incident. If there's anyone with a bigger target painted on them than the Koch brothers, it's Israel. And Wikipedia basically listened to a pro-Palestinian group and completely accepted their spin about CAMERA.

The article "Political activities of the Koch family" does not show that much activity. I don't know much about them, but they don't seem to sneak around saying one thing and doing something else; that cuts way down on the uproar. Fred

On Mon, Mar 14, 2011 at 6:13 PM, Ken Arromdee <arromdee(a)rahul.net> wrote: hard-core political activists and junkies is probably pretty high. But we're talking a very small percentage of the US population. There are only a few thousand regular editors on en.wp. There really aren't that many people who edit Wikipedia. And [[David H. Koch]] for example is semi-protected. So we're talking about a handful of editors. There are big differences between the hypothetical potential pool of people capable of editing Wikipedia, the pool of people interested in doing so, the people with the experience and ability to do so effectively, etc.

The thing is, it takes a conspiracy within the Wikipedia's rank and file to bias an article significantly over a long period; otherwise normal editing and then RFCs and so forth will tend sort it out. If it remains sufficiently inaccurate then the target will kick up a big fuss; initially within the Wikipedia, and then other places like Wikipedia Review and eventually in the press. The more people that look at the bias, the less sustainable the position of the conspiracy becomes. On 15/03/2011, Ken Arromdee <arromdee(a)rahul.net> wrote: -- -Ian Woollard

The article doesn't say that a conspiracy within Wikipedia tried to bias articles. It says that a prominent industrialist and political contributor paid professional writers to alter Wikipedia articles to change the descriptions of his involvement in a political movement. It's a situation where organized professionals are working against unorganized amateurs. If it takes conspiracies within Wikipedia to counteract that kind of influence then we perhaps need more of them. On Tue, Mar 15, 2011 at 3:17 PM, Ian Woollard <ian.woollard(a)gmail.com>wrote;wrote:

I think cases like this need to be handled publicly and transparently when there is obviously a deliberate PR campaign or a concerted effort to bias an article one way or another. When this happens the articles could receive some sort of notice box similar to the npov and disputed box, but designed specifically to identify targets of political, nationalist, religious, or PR spin campaigns - and designed NOT to be removed except through process. This notice should caution readers that any particular version of the page is likely to contain bias despite our best efforts, encourage the examination of historical versions of the page and link to a discussion of why it is so tagged - basically a very strong and persistent version of COI notices usually found on the talk page. This has three major benefits. It makes it less likely readers will take the article at face value, it makes it easier to tell which articles require special scrutiny when RC patrolling, and it discourages the behavior by publicly taking notice of it.? On Mar 15, 2011 6:41 PM, "Will Beback" <will.beback.1(a)gmail.com> wrote: so, article is danger

On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 1:22 PM, Ken Arromdee <arromdee(a)rahul.net> wrote: I disagree with this. Our key problem here isn't bias - we all know there's bias, we all know we're all biased. It's unfair advantages. Someone sockpuppeting and stacking on consensus and !votes is an unfair advantage for their viewpoint and biases. Someone organizing an off-wiki organized group intended to push on-wiki bias one way or the other is an unfair advantage for their viewpoint and biases. A corporation paying someone to spend time pushing on-wiki bias is an unfair advantage for their viewpoint and biases. I believe that our organizational core value here is balanced eventualism - If we are able to keep the playing field level, individual biases will over time even out and articles will on the average more closely approach neutral coverage. As far as I know, there wasn't an off-wiki organized Palestinian campaign before, during, or after CAMERA's run. Maybe I'm just missing something, but I didn't see one. There are a lot of on-wiki partisans. They largely balanced out before. I know why CAMERA thought there was a problem. And I have some sympathy for their objections. But they sought to clandestinely gain unfair advantage. Ultimately, that's nothing short of an assault on the community and its method of random walk gently closer to perfection. We can't have that. What we have instead is functionally an oligarchy of the active and interested and politically (in the social interactions and online communications sophistication sense) capable. That is certainly not an even slice of society writ large, but the slice lines up reasonably well with western common values (less Republicans, more liberal, more libertarian than "average", and much (!) more male). Everyone knows these things. Generally we're able to balance around them. What CAMERA was doing wasn't working around one of those community participation biases. It's not defensible that way. -- -george william herbert george.herbert(a)gmail.com

On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 7:15 PM, Ken Arromdee <arromdee(a)rahul.net> wrote: Generically, no. I assume there is no intrinsic higher truth in the universe. Neutral point of view is what the collection of humans editing WP (and its readers using it) believe to be balanced. I believe that the system we're supposed to be using here works - It shouldn't, but it does. There are ways to work within the system, including handling "the system"s inherent biases as "the system" isn't truly totally middle-of-humanity-viewpoints balanced. Organizing offsite - paid, or collaborative in secret, or whatnot - is throwing the system aside in the interests of winning. That's not OK. Wikipedia's community ideological bias accepted, it is entirely possible for right-wing and republican editors to be constructively engaged here. THF has come and gone a couple of times as his available time and life situation changed but last I checked he was constructively representing that side of things as effectively as anyone else. There are plenty of Israeli and Jewish editors, and I don't have any evidence that Palestinians / Arabs outnumber them on-wiki (though a fair number of far left wing editors align there, yes). It's not perfect, but it's balanceable. It's sometimes broken, but SOFIXIT - within the system, not by introducing a new external entity trying to subvert it. That does work. People demonstrate that every day, even on the worst of hostile topics. -- -george william herbert george.herbert(a)gmail.com

'Being really good at it' is subversion when they aren't actually really good at it, they just disregard the rules. I wont speak for George, but yes, doing it in secret makes me think they *are* adding bias. If this is upstanding, good work, they would do it in view with open communication. Transparency breeds accountability. And yes, wikipedia is actually rather good at reducing bias. To quote an open source axiom, with enough eyes all bugs are shallow. More editors and ease of editing keeps things working toward reality most times. Reality is not the gray fallacy though, just because someone says something doesnt make it true. We are an encyclopedia, and that mission involves being factually accurate. To give a random example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_the_Earth doesn't put forward any 6,000 year fantasies in the lede. -Brock On Thu, Mar 17, 2011 at 8:50 AM, Ken Arromdee <arromdee(a)rahul.net> wrote:

Did he say he was working for Koch's PR firm? On Fri, Mar 18, 2011 at 2:19 PM, Fred Bauder <fredbaud(a)fairpoint.net> wrote:

On 18 March 2011 20:11, Fred Bauder <fredbaud(a)fairpoint.net> wrote: Why bother? It's not as if a "no" would be remotely credible. -- geni

Firms, organizations, or even individuals with PR budgets in the millions, or passionate, but sane, supporters can and do much better than that. Fred

The Koch Brothers have been I agree mostly unknown, but they're working on that, as are their adversaries. Since the affair in Madison, I don't think they can be called unknown any more. This is the way the parties are preparing the ground for 2012. For the GOP And their supporters it's a decapitation strategy: stop donations to Democrats, stop likely Democrats registering to vote, and make it more difficult for Democrats to vote. For the Democrats, the strategy is simpler: just get the middle class angry enough to vote its interests in large numbers. Rightly or wrongly, a lot of articles about semi-involved individuals are likely to become part of that battleground.