Think Progress, a progressive blog run by the Center for American Progress, today ran a story about a hired PR firm creating sock puppet accounts to clean up Wikipedia articles for the Koch brothers.
If true, this will only get messier as the Presidential election campaign 2012 heats up.
http://thinkprogress.org/2011/03/09/koch-wikipedia-sock-puppet/
On 09/03/2011 23:24, Tony Sidaway wrote:
Think Progress, a progressive blog run by the Center for American Progress, today ran a story about a hired PR firm creating sock puppet accounts to clean up Wikipedia articles for the Koch brothers.
If true, this will only get messier as the Presidential election campaign 2012 heats up.
http://thinkprogress.org/2011/03/09/koch-wikipedia-sock-puppet/
What is an "airbush"? I think we should be told.
Seriously, a blog item so poorly written proof-read is hard to treat as authoritative. [[Charles G. Koch]] does apparently need work.
Charles
On 09/03/2011 23:24, Tony Sidaway wrote:
Think Progress, a progressive blog run by the Center for American Progress, today ran a story about a hired PR firm creating sock puppet accounts to clean up Wikipedia articles for the Koch brothers.
If true, this will only get messier as the Presidential election campaign 2012 heats up.
http://thinkprogress.org/2011/03/09/koch-wikipedia-sock-puppet/
What is an "airbush"? I think we should be told.
Seriously, a blog item so poorly written proof-read is hard to treat as authoritative. [[Charles G. Koch]] does apparently need work.
Charles
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
Surely that wasn't the only reason he got banned, unless he did it following several warnings....
On 3/10/2011 7:11 AM, Fred Bauder wrote:
On 09/03/2011 23:24, Tony Sidaway wrote:
Think Progress, a progressive blog run by the Center for American Progress, today ran a story about a hired PR firm creating sock puppet accounts to clean up Wikipedia articles for the Koch brothers.
If true, this will only get messier as the Presidential election campaign 2012 heats up.
http://thinkprogress.org/2011/03/09/koch-wikipedia-sock-puppet/
What is an "airbush"? I think we should be told.
Seriously, a blog item so poorly written proof-read is hard to treat as authoritative. [[Charles G. Koch]] does apparently need work.
Charles
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
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On 10 March 2011 13:11, Fred Bauder fredbaud@fairpoint.net wrote:
What is an "airbush"? I think we should be told.
Our article "Airbrush" does not include information on the use of "airbrush" as a metaphor
Charles' point was that the article says "airbush" not "airbrush" in the headline.
On 10/03/2011 18:16, Thomas Dalton wrote:
On 10 March 2011 13:11, Fred Bauderfredbaud@fairpoint.net wrote:
What is an "airbush"? I think we should be told.
Our article "Airbrush" does not include information on the use of "airbrush" as a metaphor
Charles' point was that the article says "airbush" not "airbrush" in the headline.
There's a more serious kind of point that goes like this: the article in question being a BLP, we should very much judge the content in the light of BLP policy rather than who inserted it or edited it. What to an activist intensely interested in the subject of a BLP may seem like a whitewash may, in the light of the way we handle BLPs, be simply a scrupulous application of our criteria on referencing, due weight, salience and so on. In fact if that doesn't happen in such a contested area as US politics, something is probably wrong: we're writing an encyclopedia, after all, not operating a political seismograph tracking every little uptick of comment. That is not to excuse the activities of those who'd wish to put spin-doctor content onto the site.
In short, the way COI applies to BLPs ought to be even-handed, because the coverage we want is neutral.
Charles
On 10/03/2011 18:16, Thomas Dalton wrote:
On 10 March 2011 13:11, Fred Bauderfredbaud@fairpoint.net wrote:
What is an "airbush"? I think we should be told.
Our article "Airbrush" does not include information on the use of "airbrush" as a metaphor
Charles' point was that the article says "airbush" not "airbrush" in the headline.
There's a more serious kind of point that goes like this: the article in question being a BLP, we should very much judge the content in the light of BLP policy rather than who inserted it or edited it. What to an activist intensely interested in the subject of a BLP may seem like a whitewash may, in the light of the way we handle BLPs, be simply a scrupulous application of our criteria on referencing, due weight, salience and so on. In fact if that doesn't happen in such a contested area as US politics, something is probably wrong: we're writing an encyclopedia, after all, not operating a political seismograph tracking every little uptick of comment. That is not to excuse the activities of those who'd wish to put spin-doctor content onto the site.
In short, the way COI applies to BLPs ought to be even-handed, because the coverage we want is neutral.
Charles
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
It is possible to provide arguments against the reliability of any source whatever. (And in the other direction, it is possible to take most sources and selectively quote them to provide evidence for support for any position whatever.) It is possible to destroy the integrity of any article by concentrating on finding weaknesses in the sourcing combined with careful use of sources that appear reliable, but are not really to the point. Even a single person doing this can work havoc, and if this is done in a concerted way, it provides ample scope for the expression of bias. The cruder forms of this technique are of course widespread in politics--they tend not to work well in Wikipedia, but slightly more sophisticated use of the method can be quite successful unless the opposition is equally determined.
Conventional advice that we can can deal with this by applying NPOV do not solve practical problems, for the question of what is neutral and what is balanced and what is fringe are always to a considerable extent matters of opinion. Neither do comments that we can deal with everything by applying BLP strictly, for not only do most articles on contemporary topics to some measure involve BLP, but in any case this simply shifts the argument to what falls within the BLP rules. If you move the goalposts, the arguments will follow. Wikipedia is written by humans, & the assumption that the individual prejudices will always cancel each other is easily falsifiable.
This has been seen outside of politics. The two currently pending requests for arbitration both deal with this type of sourcing problem as the underlying issue. In my own view, they are both tending towards inequitable resolutions.
On Fri, Mar 11, 2011 at 7:44 AM, Charles Matthews charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
On 10/03/2011 18:16, Thomas Dalton wrote:
On 10 March 2011 13:11, Fred Bauderfredbaud@fairpoint.net wrote:
What is an "airbush"? I think we should be told.
Our article "Airbrush" does not include information on the use of "airbrush" as a metaphor
Charles' point was that the article says "airbush" not "airbrush" in the headline.
There's a more serious kind of point that goes like this: the article in question being a BLP, we should very much judge the content in the light of BLP policy rather than who inserted it or edited it. What to an activist intensely interested in the subject of a BLP may seem like a whitewash may, in the light of the way we handle BLPs, be simply a scrupulous application of our criteria on referencing, due weight, salience and so on. In fact if that doesn't happen in such a contested area as US politics, something is probably wrong: we're writing an encyclopedia, after all, not operating a political seismograph tracking every little uptick of comment. That is not to excuse the activities of those who'd wish to put spin-doctor content onto the site.
In short, the way COI applies to BLPs ought to be even-handed, because the coverage we want is neutral.
Charles
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It is possible to provide arguments against the reliability of any source whatever. (And in the other direction, it is possible to take most sources and selectively quote them to provide evidence for support for any position whatever.) It is possible to destroy the integrity of any article by concentrating on finding weaknesses in the sourcing combined with careful use of sources that appear reliable, but are not really to the point. Even a single person doing this can work havoc, and if this is done in a concerted way, it provides ample scope for the expression of bias. The cruder forms of this technique are of course widespread in politics--they tend not to work well in Wikipedia, but slightly more sophisticated use of the method can be quite successful unless the opposition is equally determined.
Conventional advice that we can can deal with this by applying NPOV do not solve practical problems, for the question of what is neutral and what is balanced and what is fringe are always to a considerable extent matters of opinion. Neither do comments that we can deal with everything by applying BLP strictly, for not only do most articles on contemporary topics to some measure involve BLP, but in any case this simply shifts the argument to what falls within the BLP rules. If you move the goalposts, the arguments will follow. Wikipedia is written by humans, & the assumption that the individual prejudices will always cancel each other is easily falsifiable.
This has been seen outside of politics. The two currently pending requests for arbitration both deal with this type of sourcing problem as the underlying issue. In my own view, they are both tending towards inequitable resolutions.
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
On 14/03/2011, David Goodman dggenwp@gmail.com wrote:
It is possible to provide arguments against the reliability of any source whatever. (And in the other direction, it is possible to take most sources and selectively quote them to provide evidence for support for any position whatever.) It is possible to destroy the integrity of any article by concentrating on finding weaknesses in the sourcing combined with careful use of sources that appear reliable, but are not really to the point. Even a single person doing this can work havoc, and if this is done in a concerted way, it provides ample scope for the expression of bias.
I agree that it can be very problematic, but it only really works to the extent that it's not obvious that this is happening, since if enough people dig up enough sources via normal means they will overwhelm the person or people trying to create an imbalance; because they're nearly always going to be a minority. And if the views are not in a minority, then their views are likely to be part of the NPOV anyway.
So the relativistic point of view of truth has significant limits; and that's part of why the Wikipedia works.
-- David Goodman
DGG at the enWP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:DGG http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG
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@gmail.comwrote:
On 14/03/2011, David Goodman dggenwp@gmail.com wrote:
It is possible to provide arguments against the reliability of any source whatever. (And in the other direction, it is possible to take most sources and selectively quote them to provide evidence for support for any position whatever.) It is possible to destroy the integrity of any article by concentrating on finding weaknesses in the sourcing combined with careful use of sources that appear reliable, but are not really to the point. Even a single person doing this can work havoc, and if this is done in a concerted way, it provides ample scope for the expression of bias.
I agree that it can be very problematic, but it only really works to the extent that it's not obvious that this is happening, since if enough people dig up enough sources via normal means they will overwhelm the person or people trying to create an imbalance; because they're nearly always going to be a minority. And if the views are not in a minority, then their views are likely to be part of the NPOV anyway.
So the relativistic point of view of truth has significant limits; and that's part of why the Wikipedia works.
-- David Goodman
DGG at the enWP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:DGG http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG
-- -Ian Woollard
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On Mon, 14 Mar 2011, David Goodman wrote:
It is possible to provide arguments against the reliability of any source whatever. (And in the other direction, it is possible to take most sources and selectively quote them to provide evidence for support for any position whatever.) It is possible to destroy the integrity of any article by concentrating on finding weaknesses in the sourcing combined with careful use of sources that appear reliable, but are not really to the point. Even a single person doing this can work havoc, and if this is done in a concerted way, it provides ample scope for the expression of bias. The cruder forms of this technique are of course widespread in politics--they tend not to work well in Wikipedia, but slightly more sophisticated use of the method can be quite successful unless the opposition is equally determined.
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.
On Mon, Mar 14, 2011 at 5:17 PM, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
On Mon, 14 Mar 2011, David Goodman wrote:
It is possible to provide arguments against the reliability of any source whatever. (And in the other direction, it is possible to take most sources and selectively quote them to provide evidence for support for any position whatever.) It is possible to destroy the integrity of any article by concentrating on finding weaknesses in the sourcing combined with careful use of sources that appear reliable, but are not really to the point. Even a single person doing this can work havoc, and if this is done in a concerted way, it provides ample scope for the expression of bias. The cruder forms of this technique are of course widespread in politics--they tend not to work well in Wikipedia, but slightly more sophisticated use of the method can be quite successful unless the opposition is equally determined.
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
- 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.
The Koch brothers are mostly unknown. It is a known fact that they have at
least one professional PR firm (New Media Strategies) working to monitor their Wikipedia presence. That's certainly within their rights, and can be within the Wikipedia rules. It is Ken's assertion that there are "many people highly motivated to write misrepresentations and unbalanced articles," though the evidence seems to point to there being maybe a handful of such people.
The Koch brothers are mostly unknown. It is a known fact that they have at
least one professional PR firm (New Media Strategies) working to monitor their Wikipedia presence. That's certainly within their rights, and can be within the Wikipedia rules. It is Ken's assertion that there are "many people highly motivated to write misrepresentations and unbalanced articles," though the evidence seems to point to there being maybe a handful of such people.
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, 14 Mar 2011, The Cunctator wrote:
The Koch brothers are mostly unknown. ... ... It is Ken's assertion that there are "many people highly motivated to write misrepresentations and unbalanced articles," though the evidence seems to point to there being maybe a handful of such people.
You've got to be kidding. The first page of Google results for them shows anti-Koch articles from alternet.org, Huffington Post, and Daily Kos. If you think that they are unknown to the extent that nobody would be likely to have an anti-Koch agenda, you are dead wrong; the Koch brothers are a current left-wing blog and activism target.
On Mon, Mar 14, 2011 at 6:13 PM, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
On Mon, 14 Mar 2011, The Cunctator wrote:
The Koch brothers are mostly unknown. ... ... It is Ken's assertion that there are "many people highly motivated to write misrepresentations and unbalanced articles," though the evidence seems to point to there being maybe a handful of such people.
You've got to be kidding. The first page of Google results for them shows anti-Koch articles from alternet.org, Huffington Post, and Daily Kos. If you think that they are unknown to the extent that nobody would be likely to have an anti-Koch agenda, you are dead wrong; the Koch brothers are a current left-wing blog and activism target.
Oh, certainly, left wing blogs are attacking the Kochs. And awareness among
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.
On Mon, 14 Mar 2011, The Cunctator wrote:
Oh, certainly, left wing blogs are attacking the Kochs. And awareness among
hard-core political activists and junkies is probably pretty high.
There you go.
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.
It's true that only a certain number of people would bias a Koch article against the Koch's. It's also true that this can be said for virtually any article where there is danger of political bias. By your reasoning nobody should ever have to worry about political bias anywhere on Wikipedia.
Some people do like to believe that no outsider should ever worry about political bias on Wikipedia. If so, there's not much I can say to convince you except to point out that you have an inflated idea of how well Wikipedia works. But if there's ever any article which is a valid concern, surely the Koch article has to be one of them. It's a BLP on a subject that is routinely the target of the left; about the only way it could be worse is to be about Obama or Bush (and those are so high profile that the danger is probably less, anyway.)
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@rahul.net wrote:
On Mon, 14 Mar 2011, The Cunctator wrote:
Oh, certainly, left wing blogs are attacking the Kochs. And awareness among
hard-core political activists and junkies is probably pretty high.
There you go.
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.
It's true that only a certain number of people would bias a Koch article against the Koch's. It's also true that this can be said for virtually any article where there is danger of political bias. By your reasoning nobody should ever have to worry about political bias anywhere on Wikipedia.
Some people do like to believe that no outsider should ever worry about political bias on Wikipedia. If so, there's not much I can say to convince you except to point out that you have an inflated idea of how well Wikipedia works. But if there's ever any article which is a valid concern, surely the Koch article has to be one of them. It's a BLP on a subject that is routinely the target of the left; about the only way it could be worse is to be about Obama or Bush (and those are so high profile that the danger is probably less, anyway.)
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Which is why mild whitewashing is the standard corporate PR policy to take with Wikipedia. It's just a dialing down of the quality, a subtle way of violating NPOV by discouraging the inclusion of unhappy facts.
On Tue, Mar 15, 2011 at 6:17 PM, Ian Woollard ian.woollard@gmail.comwrote:
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@rahul.net wrote:
On Mon, 14 Mar 2011, The Cunctator wrote:
Oh, certainly, left wing blogs are attacking the Kochs. And awareness among
hard-core political activists and junkies is probably pretty high.
There you go.
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.
It's true that only a certain number of people would bias a Koch article against the Koch's. It's also true that this can be said for virtually
any
article where there is danger of political bias. By your reasoning
nobody
should ever have to worry about political bias anywhere on Wikipedia.
Some people do like to believe that no outsider should ever worry about political bias on Wikipedia. If so, there's not much I can say to
convince
you except to point out that you have an inflated idea of how well
Wikipedia
works. But if there's ever any article which is a valid concern, surely the Koch article has to be one of them. It's a BLP on a subject that is routinely the target of the left; about the only way it could be worse is to be about Obama or Bush (and those are so high profile that the danger
is
probably less, anyway.)
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
-- -Ian Woollard
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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@gmail.comwrote:
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@rahul.net wrote:
On Mon, 14 Mar 2011, The Cunctator wrote:
Oh, certainly, left wing blogs are attacking the Kochs. And awareness among
hard-core political activists and junkies is probably pretty high.
There you go.
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.
It's true that only a certain number of people would bias a Koch article against the Koch's. It's also true that this can be said for virtually
any
article where there is danger of political bias. By your reasoning
nobody
should ever have to worry about political bias anywhere on Wikipedia.
Some people do like to believe that no outsider should ever worry about political bias on Wikipedia. If so, there's not much I can say to
convince
you except to point out that you have an inflated idea of how well
Wikipedia
works. But if there's ever any article which is a valid concern, surely the Koch article has to be one of them. It's a BLP on a subject that is routinely the target of the left; about the only way it could be worse is to be about Obama or Bush (and those are so high profile that the danger
is
probably less, anyway.)
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
-- -Ian Woollard
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
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.
Actually, the editor was rather amateurish. I have some doubt this was professional work by his firm that was paid for.
Fred
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@gmail.com wrote:
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@gmail.com wrote:
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@rahul.net wrote:
On Mon, 14 Mar 2011, The Cunctator wrote:
Oh, certainly, left wing blogs are attacking the Kochs. And awareness among
hard-core political activists and junkies is probably pretty high.
There you go.
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.
It's true that only a certain number of people would bias a Koch
article
against the Koch's. It's also true that this can be said for virtually
any
article where there is danger of political bias. By your reasoning
nobody
should ever have to worry about political bias anywhere on Wikipedia.
Some people do like to believe that no outsider should ever worry about political bias on Wikipedia. If so, there's not much I can say to
convince
you except to point out that you have an inflated idea of how well
Wikipedia
works. But if there's ever any article which is a valid concern, surely the Koch article has to be one of them. It's a BLP on a subject that is routinely the target of the left; about the only way it could be worse
is
to be about Obama or Bush (and those are so high profile that the
danger
is
probably less, anyway.)
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On Tue, 15 Mar 2011, Will Beback wrote:
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.
Getting rid of bias is not an action movie. You don't try to give the other side a fighting chance. Professionals versus amateurs is perfectly legitimate if they really are trying to stop the amateurs from introducing bias. And of course the assumption "they may say they're getting rid of bias but they really want to add bias and they're lying about it" is just an assumption.
We went over the same thing with CAMERA. A target of the left wing decided to try removing bias against their side from Wikipedia and was treated like they were trying to introduce it instead, with the main reasoning being "they couldn't possibly really want to remove bias, after all, they're too organized, and anyone who likes the cause that they like must be biased anyway. Besides, Wikipedia has no bias, so nobody could really want to remove it". CAMERA did make a few missteps (trying to become admins, for instance), but that's far from all they were blamed for.
On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 1:22 PM, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
On Tue, 15 Mar 2011, Will Beback wrote:
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.
Getting rid of bias is not an action movie. You don't try to give the other side a fighting chance. Professionals versus amateurs is perfectly legitimate if they really are trying to stop the amateurs from introducing bias. And of course the assumption "they may say they're getting rid of bias but they really want to add bias and they're lying about it" is just an assumption.
We went over the same thing with CAMERA. A target of the left wing decided to try removing bias against their side from Wikipedia and was treated like they were trying to introduce it instead, with the main reasoning being "they couldn't possibly really want to remove bias, after all, they're too organized, and anyone who likes the cause that they like must be biased anyway. Besides, Wikipedia has no bias, so nobody could really want to remove it". CAMERA did make a few missteps (trying to become admins, for instance), but that's far from all they were blamed for.
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.
On Wed, 16 Mar 2011, George Herbert wrote:
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.
*If* someone was organizing a group to push bias, they'd have an unfair advantage against others without such a group. But is that what they're doing?
Or are you just assuming "they say they're trying to stop bias, but they *must* really be trying to push bias, because they're too organized, and their opinions show they're evil, and besides, Wikipedia has no bias anyway"? The Kochs are one of the biggest left-wing targets around. (So is Israel.) They have plenty of reason to be legitimately concerned with bias against them. If someone claims to be stopping bias, saying "they're here to create it instead" is blatantly non-AGF unless you have some reason for that belief other than "they can't really mean it".
On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 7:15 PM, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
On Wed, 16 Mar 2011, George Herbert wrote:
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.
*If* someone was organizing a group to push bias, they'd have an unfair advantage against others without such a group. But is that what they're doing?
Or are you just assuming "they say they're trying to stop bias, but they *must* really be trying to push bias, because they're too organized, and their opinions show they're evil, and besides, Wikipedia has no bias anyway"? The Kochs are one of the biggest left-wing targets around. (So is Israel.) They have plenty of reason to be legitimately concerned with bias against them. If someone claims to be stopping bias, saying "they're here to create it instead" is blatantly non-AGF unless you have some reason for that belief other than "they can't really mean it".
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.
On Wed, 16 Mar 2011, George Herbert wrote:
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.
I don't even understand your answer as an answer, since it's so full of qualifications. Do you think that they (either the Koch's or CAMERA) were/are really trying to add bias and that their protestations that they want to remove it are lies? (And if you do *not* believe this, then why all the talk which assumes that they're adding bias, contrary to what they said?) Do you think that they're sincere about wanting to remove bias but they don't understand what bias is? Do you think they're sincere and know what it is, but you don't think their methods will work?
And how exactly is being too good at doing something "subverting" it?
That does work. People demonstrate that every day, even on the worst of hostile topics.
Wikipedia's system manifestly does not work in a lot of places. Why should removal of bias be the one place where Wikipedia is perfection?
'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@rahul.net wrote:
On Wed, 16 Mar 2011, George Herbert wrote:
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.
I don't even understand your answer as an answer, since it's so full of qualifications. Do you think that they (either the Koch's or CAMERA) were/are really trying to add bias and that their protestations that they want to remove it are lies? (And if you do *not* believe this, then why all the talk which assumes that they're adding bias, contrary to what they said?) Do you think that they're sincere about wanting to remove bias but they don't understand what bias is? Do you think they're sincere and know what it is, but you don't think their methods will work?
And how exactly is being too good at doing something "subverting" it?
That does work. People demonstrate that every day, even on the worst of hostile topics.
Wikipedia's system manifestly does not work in a lot of places. Why should removal of bias be the one place where Wikipedia is perfection?
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'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.
In this particular case, other than some clumsy meatpuppeting which rang all the alarm bells, nothing was done in secret. The editor declared his interest in his first edit.
Fred
Did he say he was working for Koch's PR firm?
On Fri, Mar 18, 2011 at 2:19 PM, Fred Bauder fredbaud@fairpoint.net wrote:
'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.
In this particular case, other than some clumsy meatpuppeting which rang all the alarm bells, nothing was done in secret. The editor declared his interest in his first edit.
Fred
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Did he say he was working for Koch's PR firm?
No, and it is still not clear if that was his assignment from the firm. I've left a note on his user talk page asking him to clarify this if he returns to editing.
Fred
On Fri, Mar 18, 2011 at 2:19 PM, Fred Bauder fredbaud@fairpoint.net wrote:
'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.
In this particular case, other than some clumsy meatpuppeting which rang all the alarm bells, nothing was done in secret. The editor declared his interest in his first edit.
Fred
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On 18 March 2011 20:11, Fred Bauder fredbaud@fairpoint.net wrote:
Did he say he was working for Koch's PR firm?
No, and it is still not clear if that was his assignment from the firm. I've left a note on his user talk page asking him to clarify this if he returns to editing.
Fred
Why bother? It's not as if a "no" would be remotely credible.
After the confrontation between Derrick Coetzee and the National Portrait Gallery, I thought people would enjoy this irony.
I wandered on to this page of theirs on John Michael Wright:
http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/person.php?search=sa&LinkID=mp0... &role=art&wPage=0
Hm, that description of Wright sounds familiar I though. Unsurprising really, since *I* wrote it.
It is taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Michael_Wright which is mainly my work.
Of course, the only note on the page is C National Portrait Gallery, London 2011. No mention of Wikipedia on CC licence unless I've missed it.
Which means, they are engaged in intellectual theft. Or have I missed something?
Can I sue them? And they seem to have taken other work from Wikipedia. I wonder if this is quite deliberate.
Scott
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.
Firms, organizations, or even individuals with PR budgets in the millions, or passionate, but sane, supporters can and do much better than that.
Fred
On Tue, 15 Mar 2011, Ian Woollard wrote:
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.
Yeah, that Siegenthaler thing was corrected in a few hours. And the Brian Peppers one was deleted immediately.
Believing that there is no such thing as a biased article on Wikipedia is an excessively optimistic point of view. It doesn't take a conspiracy; it just takes a group of editors willing to push the bias through, and maybe an admin or two willing to look the other way because it's not worth the trouble (also see: spoiler warnings). I suppose you could call anything which involves more than one editor a "conspiracy", but it's not a conspiracy in the sense of backroom meetings and evil plans to deliberately mess things up.
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.
I certainly wouldn't treat any blog entry too seriously. I merely wanted to announce the official beginning of the Wikipedia US Election 2012 season!