[WikiEN-l] Koch brothers articles doctored says Think Progress

[brock.weller at 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 at 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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