It's a good thing that our thoughts and deeds are so pure that we have become entitled to purify the thoughts and deeds of others. _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>

This mailing list is usually positive, but we need to talk about something rotten. I was linked to this Meta RfC by my Russian colleague: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Administrator_abuse_on… The author and commentators, with notable evidence, allege that admins and editors on Croatian Wikipedia are biased in favour of far-right denialist talking points, especially in regards to World War II, and use their rights to continue this type of deal. From my further readings, the problems in Croatian Wikipedia exist for a long time with the same participating actors. This RfC exists for 2 years already without any signs of notice from the WMF or Meta stewards, all while nothing is changing and the local press is continuing to report about this (maybe authors should get American coverage to get any support, though). What exactly is the course of action on this and what has already been done in regards to this by Meta stewards or WMF? Editors have tried to sound their alarms via different means: https://en.wikipedia.org/?oldid=857974834#2013_controversy_about_right-wing… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jimbo_Wales/Archive_231#On_the_stat… Support of extremist viewpoints should be the most pressing issue for Wikimedians, as we must recognise that our articles have consequences, and unabashed defence of Nazis in Wikipedia in one of the official languages of the EU is a big deal. I personally had to organise with others before to remove genuine jihadist view points from being reported as facts in one of Wikipedias (successfully), in the last year I also had to report to one steward that admin in one Wikipedia was deleting all (seemingly not bad) content in regards to LGBT without any explanation (unsuccessfully). Every time significant institutional bias towards non-neutral and harmful view points goes unnoticed, we poison our readers, especially students, and discourage other people from constructive contribution in our projects. Perhaps, on the larger point, it is good to talk about some kind of committee akin to CoCC that would safely enforce the founding principles of our projects, if these issues go unnoticed so much. I hope that something will be done with this eventually. Oleg _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>

History does not require a judge. It's the storiography to be judge. Here the problem is to give relevance to some sources and to neglect (completely) others. If a single not neutral source is considered as the Holy Bible, the same pillars of Wikipedia are infringed. Kind regards On Mon, 26 Nov 2018, 14:06 Dennis During &lt;dcduring(a)gmail.com wrote: as _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>

It is important that any wiki process be applied fairly. In this case I think the Croatian wiki cannot be the first to have a new process applied. I hope that the process that Gerard recommends has been validated in some way that meets with broad, nearly universal approval. On Tue, Nov 27, 2018 at 12:37 PM Gerard Meijssen &lt;gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: -- Dennis C. During _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>

Who is the judge? Are we going to join Facebook, Google, Twitter, et al as the new press barons?

It is important that any wiki process be applied fairly. In this case I think the Croatian wiki cannot be the first to have a new process applied.

Why not test-run the process on my favorite project - or yours? We should get started. I am skeptical of the quality of judgment without a foundation of facts. At Wiktionary we have two main definition evaluation processes, one dependent on citations to which interpretative judgment is applies. IMO this process works very well. The other depends on opinion, votes, supported by whatever facts or authority or bluster (my specialty) advocates bring to bear. That process, though adequate, is not as satisfactory. Gerard Meijssen has suggested a faith-based process. If it is almost ready to go, let it be validated and put to use. On Tue, Nov 27, 2018, 16:45 Benjamin Lees &lt;emufarmers(a)gmail.com wrote: wrote: wrote: I _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>

My cellphone spellchecker substituted "faith" for "fact". I was trying to encourage the use of your approach. On Wed, Nov 28, 2018, 06:43 Gerard Meijssen &lt;gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com wrote: include When favourite undermines facts. et judgments. https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, I _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>

I don't clearly understand Gerard what is your idea. Do you want to measure NPOV by calculating how often the sources are used after somehow marking them to belong to one or another group of political, religous or other type of POV? And when you find that one group of them are more often cited than the others, this is a symptom of systematic bias of given Wikimedia project? Well that might be quite misleading because the issue is the honesty and context of using sources. For example: One can write an article about any controversial topic using equal number of sources supporting opposite POVs, but the text can still be quite biased: "According to unfaithful bastard X [source X] the true is A. But, according to honourable and widely recognized expert Y [source Y] A it is not true, but the true is B." I don't believe in any kind of automated method of measuring NPOV. NPOV is very complex issue needed human judgment. You can't avoid it. śr., 28 lis 2018 o 12:43 Gerard Meijssen &lt;gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com&gt; napisał(a): include When favourite undermines facts. et judgments. https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, I -- Tomek "Polimerek" Ganicz http://pl.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Polimerek http://www.ganicz.pl/poli/ _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>

Vast majority of sources in controversial topics are usually biased. There are topics where there is in fact no any non-biased sources. And - coming back to my previous example, having knowledge how automatic method o bias measurement works it is very easy to bully it: "According to unfaithful bastard X [source X1][source X2][source X3] the true is A. But, according to honorable and widely recognized expert Y [source Y] A it is not true, but the true is B." This sentence is quite obviously biased towards B POV, but automatic measurement of sources will tell you that there is bias towards A POV. And this is very simple, primitive example of bias. People usually tend to do it in much more subtle way. Sometimes one short, completely unsourced sentence at the end of very long article with hundreds of citations can completely ruin NPOV... Or imagine that you write article about a bishop - quite naturally most sources will be religious POV - which does not necessarily mean that the article is biased as it might contain only basic facts of that person retrieved from official church sources. Then - following this example - in Polish Wikipedia - we have probably articles about all living bishops from major christian denomination. But if you would want to "prove" that Polish Wikipedia has pro-roman-catholic POV you can easily show that we have 162 articles about roman-catholic Polish bishops and only 12 about orthodox bishops. And the numbers of citations is more or less probably of the same proportion. Why? Simply because we have in Poland 162 catholic bishops and 12 orthodox. Wikipedia cannot change it obviously ;-) czw., 6 gru 2018 o 02:19 Dennis During &lt;dcduring(a)gmail.com&gt; napisał(a): be wrote: marking using still true, almost dcduring(a)gmail.com&gt; Twitter, dcduring(a)gmail.com&gt; this process ?subject=unsubscribe> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, -- Tomek "Polimerek" Ganicz http://pl.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Polimerek http://www.ganicz.pl/poli/ _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>