
Wikipedia is fixing one of the Internet’s biggest flaws - The_ed17
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/10/25/somethings-terribly-wrong-with-the-internet-and-wikipedia-might-be-able-to-fix-it/
======
stcredzero
_We might once have dreamed that the miracle of cheap, instant communication
would knit society together. The reality has been closer to the opposite._

Once again, Douglas Adams turns out to be prophetic.

 _" Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to
communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and
bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation."_

In the sentence before, he also predicted his friend Richard Dawkins' books:

 _" Most leading theologians claim that this argument is a load of dingo's
kidneys, but that didn't stop Oolon Colluphid making a small fortune when he
used it as the theme of his best-selling book, Well That About wraps It Up For
God._

[http://hitchhikers.wikia.com/wiki/Babel_Fish](http://hitchhikers.wikia.com/wiki/Babel_Fish)

~~~
ppod
It's very fashionable to suggest that social media is polarising. It's not
clear from actual research that that is true. Most people lived in an echo
chamber before social media anyway.

We live in the most peaceful time in human history. Yes, it's true that we
can't know the tail risk, but we can take some comfort that, for example, war
between two German provinces, or a North American civil war, are remote
possibilities compared with 150 years ago.

[http://pablobarbera.com/static/barbera_polarization_APSA.pdf](http://pablobarbera.com/static/barbera_polarization_APSA.pdf)

~~~
bdamm
American civil war feels quite possible at the moment. Even passing a budget
is becoming a gargantuan governmental task subject to polarization and media
trench warfare.

~~~
JeffreyKaine
Insurgency, maybe, but a full out civil war would be very very implausible at
this point. State militias are severely underpowered to launch a full on war.

~~~
stcredzero
Basically:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs)

------
bjourne
In most political topics on Wikipedia, you have a consensus because those who
do not agree with it are quickly booted.

It works like this. Most of the time most editors are polite, but sometimes
you get frustrated and are not. You might not write "fuck you ____fucking
nazi-lover! " or something extreme, but something like "your opinion is
idiotic!" or "you don't know what you're talking about here..." It happens
everyone. However, if you don't agree with the "consensus" every little
outburst will cost you much more. A newbie will be banned for much smaller
infractions than a regular.

So, if you are having an argument with someone who is a "respectable editor"
or "valuable contributor" in the community, they can and will be quite rude to
you but you must not pay back in kind because you will be banned.

There are also intricate rules governing "reverting". Reverting means you are
undoing someones changes and I can say from experience that having your edits
reverted can be frustrating. I don't know exactly what the rules are but they
seem to be effectively that the more "respectable" you are, the more you can
revert your opponents edits.

This power imbalance can be seen all over Wikipedia if you look for it. Many
articles have editors that consider themselves the "owner" of that article.
The way they have written the article is the best way and they don't see their
own NPOV violations (Wikipedia term for writing biased texts). Sometimes the
talk pages and their archives contain dozens of comments from anonymous ip
users raising issues with the article and they are all refuted by the owner.
They don't have the endurance or enough standing in the Wikipedia community to
fight so they give up and find more constructive things to spend their time
on.

~~~
daveguy
NPOV == Neutral Point of View for those wondering. Wikipedia strives for "just
the facts", but as you point out they don't have it _everywhere_. Most of the
articles are very good or at least acknowledge where there is bias that should
be resolved.

~~~
mzw_mzw
Even "just the facts" is a fallacy. Wikipedia has simply outsourced its fact-
checking to the news media, which is... well, how to put this... not very
interested in facts.

~~~
shard972
I think that's the most damning thing about the truth on Wikipedia, not that
any article can be edited by anyone but their policy of second hand sources
over primary sources.

There is reasons for doing it but when you get into certain fields it just
becomes a cluster F.

~~~
mzw_mzw
Presumably they don't want to put themselves in the business of determining if
a primary source is legitimate or if some random pseudonymous writer's
original research is accurate. Not an unreasonable desire! Except instead
they've put themselves in the business of determining if a _secondary_ source
is legitimate, which isn't fundamentally better.

Wikipedia has to come to terms with the fact that if you claim you're making
an encyclopedia that comes with certain expectations, namely, that you've
verified the facts you are printing. They try to obfuscate this with endless
layers of rules and procedure, but that no more eliminates the need to check
facts than credit default swaps eliminated the need to pay back debt.

------
amadsen
'In a draft paper published last week, Shane Greenstein and his colleagues
Feng Zhu and Yuan Gu found that over the years, individuals who edit political
articles on Wikipedia seem to grow less biased — their contributions start to
contain noticeably fewer ideologically-charged statements.

“We thought this was quite striking,” said Greenstein, a professor at Harvard
Business School. “The most slanted Wikipedia editors tend to become more
moderate over time.”'

Uh yeah maybe because the people in question grew older? Many of them may have
joined wikipedia in their teens or early twenties and like so many others in
that age group had quite raical political views and like so many others become
more moderate as they mature and learn more about the world.

~~~
irrational
racial or radical?

~~~
mrkgnao
Both of those words have Levenshtein distance 1 from what GP wrote.

Maybe let's give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they meant the one
that doesn't sound like a type-error/makes sense and avoids outrageousness?

~~~
x3n0ph3n3
Raical has a Levenshtein distance of 2 from racial. Swapping two characters is
a deletion + insertion. You'd need to use Damerau-Levenshtein distance for
transposition to count as 1 operation.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damerau%E2%80%93Levenshtein_di...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damerau%E2%80%93Levenshtein_distance)

~~~
mrkgnao
Thank you for correcting me, now I know! :)

------
jcoffland
> By looking for these kinds of partisan idioms in Wikipedia articles, the
> Harvard researchers could determine whether the text sounded more like the
> product of a Republican or a Democrat. They were also able to document how
> the articles evolved over time.

Another explanation that fits the results of this study is that the popular
party idioms changed over time. As the old idioms were replaced by new ones
this analysis made the Wikipedia pages and editors appear to become less
biased.

~~~
Bartweiss
This seems like a serious risk, and I'd like to see how the "partisan idioms"
were collected.

"Illegal aliens" stood out to me as something I don't hear much from either
party - the fight today is generally over "illegal immigrants" versus
"undocumented immigrants". That looks like an obvious candidate for a
marginalized phrase distorting the analysis.

"Death tax" is still around, but I think there's a euphemistic treadmill thing
happening - plenty of people on the right will now say "estate tax" and expect
it to be understood as a thing they're strongly opposed to.

Finally, the example given seems to be about maturation rather than
moderation. "Turbans and terrorists" is rather un-encylopedic, and it would be
totally possible to strip it from an article even while preserving a strong
conservative bent.

I wouldn't be shocked if these results were right, but it also feels like a
sociology paper I wouldn't want to trust without a secondary analysis.

~~~
smsm42
"Turbans and terrorists" gave me a pause too. Then again, that was in 2006,
where Wikipedia was much less prominent than now, which means less editors, so
I took a look. If we look at the article at the eve of 2006 it's not "turbans
and terrorists" at all:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Afghanistan&oldid...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Afghanistan&oldid=33409879)

I mean maybe it has some bias, it's quite large so I didn't analyze it, but
it's not blatantly bad like WaPo seems to imply. I suspect they fallen the
victim of what many journalists fall victim too - concentrating on rare
exceptions like some troll putting there "turbans" for lulz and it surviving
on the site for some short time - and not on the processes that govern the
regular life of the site.

------
wallace_f
If you read this carefully, you can see something quite ironic about this
article:

The article's argument is: "Something's terribly wrong with the internet."
Evidence provided for something wrong was three pro-Trump comments about an
anti-Trump article. The article then suggests "recent research from Harvard
Business School suggests that Wikipedia has become increasingly balanced in
the course of its 15-year history."

So, the internet is biased, and people are uncivil. Wikipedia is civil and not
biased; here are some points to learn from them.

The irony is that the article itself is no shining beacon of neutrality
because it provides an anti-Trump and anti-alt right narrative. Any right-
leaning comments must be fixed by editors, but left-leaning comments 'fix
themselves over time.'

Instead of the article making a sound argument for neutrality, it does nothing
of the sort.

Disclaimer: criticism of the DNC, media and Clinton != support for Trump. I do
not support Trump.

This article is masterfully written, but it's not very pure in its intentions.

------
throwaway420
Look at the utter contempt that the Washington Post is displaying for free
individuals here. They refer to comments sections, where actual human beings
who are not paid and bought for by corporate interests get to voice their
opinions, as cesspools. What arrogance on their part!

Yeah, you'll see some ugly comments on all kinds of social media once in a
while, but seeing an uncouth phrase or three is absolutely nothing compared to
the WAR PROPAGANDA on behalf of the military industrial complex that leads to
the deaths of thousands and thousands. So yeah, I'll take the cesspool of a
comment section where I might see some truth every time over bought and paid
for presstitutes, which we all know as absolute and undeniable fact now from
Wikileaks.

~~~
jedimastert
I reeealy can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not[1]

[1][https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Poe's_law](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Poe's_law)

~~~
gravypod
Would you like to refute their statements or provide your own view point? If
not then there isn't much of a reason to think that the parent isn't correct
in his analysis of the situation.

~~~
Eupolemos
There is no analysis in OP's post, he just states opinions.

I value quality in comments, which is one of the reasons I come to Hacker
News. It is not a waste of my time. Reading comments on Facebook or any
newspaper usually is.

Wikipedia isn't a waste either, mired in a Yahoo Answers low quality answers.
That is why I donate.

Creating quality interaction isn't easy on the internet - I admire every
success.

Shitposting in the comment-section of a newspaper or indeed Hacker News isn't
"free speech", it is just disruptive and destructive.

When governments and corporations engage in bullshit (in the Harry Frankfurt
sense) programs to disrupt public discourse, the answer isn't to yell and
scream in the comment sections - that only helps them, in fact. The answer is
to insist on solid arguments against their gish-gallops and red herrings.

------
redthrowaway
Never thought I'd see WP talk pages held up as an example of civility. They
certainly weren't when I was there. AN/I, ArbCom, flame wars a plenty.

~~~
FireBeyond
And the civility is definitely oftentimes a facade thereof.

Quoting rules, policies, passive aggressive civility was the norm, rather than
sincere attempts at compromise.

~~~
Analemma_
Seriously. I gave up editing Wikipedia a long time ago after one too many of
my good-faith edits were reverted by some random busybody citing WP:OMGWTFBBQ.
It was done in an ostensibly polite way but the passive-aggressive "fuck you,
go away" was very clear. I eventually just gave up because it wasn't very
important to me, but I don't think that model can successfully transfer to
society writ large.

~~~
EazyC
I had the very same exact experience. It is astounding to me that there are no
legitimate competitors to Wikipedia at all after 15 years. It's funny how
social networking is such a competitive space from facebook --> instagram -->
snapchat etc but it's still just Wikipedia --> Wikipedia --> Wikipedia

~~~
oblio
What money is there to be made from an online encyclopedia? Selling ads? :)

~~~
notahacker
There's a few people doing this with Wikipedia content anyway, of course, not
to mention the content farms geared towards search queries, which just makes
the competitive space for a _raise VC-capital to invest a lot of time and
effort into making an ad-supported traditional encyclopedia that 's actually
good_ seem even less attractive

------
mrcactu5
_The Internet is dotted with cesspools, also known as comments sections_

Comments sections are also extremely REVEALING... It seems we are getting a
theory of why public opinion is so moderate -- it's not just one opinion. It's
half of people expressing one view, the other half expressing another view.
The version on Wikipedia is effectively the average between the two.

The history sections of wikipedia document this process in action. A lot of
the things I look at are pretty dead but I am often impressed when a crappy
wikipedia page and a few months later the page has really excellent
discussion:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagorean_triple](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagorean_triple)
and
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagorean_theorem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagorean_theorem)

------
basch
Most of the debate on wikipedia is regarding which rules to apply soasto
prevent people from submitting edits.

~~~
crooked-v
For my part, I stopped contributing long ago because every single edit attempt
I made, including simple stuff like fixing punctuation, would inevitably get
reverted by a bot or an overprotective editor within the next day or two.

~~~
cooper12
If every single edit you made was reverted, maybe they weren't really
constructive edits? Just food for thought.

> If you run into an asshole in the morning, you ran into an asshole. If you
> run into assholes all day, you're the asshole. - Raylan Givens, Justified

On a more serious note, I always hear people complaining about getting
reverted. What they don't realize is that, often, their edits really are just
bad. Here's some of the stuff I have to revert daily:

* Test edits/gibberish

* Vandalism

* Original research [0]

* Changing stuff to match their variety of English [1]

* Making the grammar worse, or going against the Manual of Style [2]

* Improper tone [3]

* No edit summary giving a rationale for the edit

A lot of the time, the changes people make are just arbitrary or don't improve
the article. If you ever feel you were improperly reverted though, you can
always bring it up on the talk page.

[0]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research)

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Nati...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#National_varieties_of_English)

[2]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style)

[3]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Writing_better_artic...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Writing_better_articles#Tone)

~~~
mason240
Considering this very common experience had by people trying to contribute, I
think your saying applies more to the "full time" entrenched editors, who are
acting as wall of assholes blocking a wider group of contributors.

Also, that saying has been around alot longer than Justified.

~~~
cooper12
I mean I just gave you the reasoning of entrenched editors, they're just not
often good edits. These complaints come from people who think that Wikipedia
is obliged to take any of their edits just because they took the time to hit
the submit button. Wikipedia has policies and standards to uphold and people
would complain if we went the other way and accepted all garbage people felt
necessary to dump on the site. Also, the people who bring up these accusations
never list the articles they were reverted on. Show me some of these edits
improperly reverted and I'll personally help reinstate them or explain what
was wrong with them.

------
empath75
> Go to any article and visit the “talk” tab. More often than not, you'll find
> a somewhat orderly debate, even on contentious topics like Hillary Clinton's
> e-mails or Donald Trump's sexual abuse allegations.

Oh, for the really good talk sections, you need to look at anything vaguely
related to Macedonia:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Alexander_the_Great](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Alexander_the_Great)

~~~
FireBeyond
What about Palestine and Israeli foreign relations, if you want orderly
debate?

------
vonklaus
I don't think the "internet's biggest flaw" is that it allows for free,
unmoderated speech.

> What’s even more interesting is that Wikipedia seems to exert a moderating
> influence on its contributors.

This is a great concept, but usually is horrible in practice. It says that
wikipedia was partisan and quite left, and has since become more balanced.
However, this illustrates a positive outcome of a dangerous potential. This
model works much worse for less authoritative sites, but I personally do not
believe wikipedia should moderate based on anything other than "truth".
Regardless, this is extremely subjective and difficult to do. I think it is
working at wikipedia (compared to other places) and am optimistic, but I have
seen this go wrong so many times.

------
MollyR
After all the replication failures, poor statistics, and more in the social
sciences. I am skeptical of this.

------
hardwaresofton
Am I the only one that actually finds immense value in the comments sections
of different sites on the internet? Obviously there's some sifting to do
(inflammatory comments that are meant to be nothing but inflammatory should
just be ignored), but I come to the internet to interact with people, not just
seek out knowledge. I find things like hn (or reddit) hivemind immensely
fascinating, almost like a shared consciousness.

I like the comments sections. I often go there for a chuckle, or to see what
other people think. Yeah, some people use that opportunity to troll, or say
hurtful things or whatever, but that's what the world is, I'd rather never
forget that. I also don't want everyone to mellow to the same position and
then everyone holds the same (possibly wrong) position forever, that sounds
like a bland existence.

Free discourse is not a flaw, it's a feature.

------
maxt
This is why I quite admire initiatives like Hypothesis[1] where we can
annotate the web by overlaying an abstraction on top of it which can give a
page more depth and context.

Similar projects like the Genius web annotator[2] tries to achieve the same.

It doesn't mean the commenters (or annotators) will be any less mean, but it
certainly is preferable to a Disqus widget dangling on the end of a page, or
the default Wordpress commenting engine which allows seemingly _anyone_ to
comment regardless of whether they signed up or not.

[1]: [http://hypothes.is/](http://hypothes.is/)

[2]: [https://genius.com/web-annotator](https://genius.com/web-annotator)

~~~
DonaldFisk
Ted Nelson thought of this idea (annotating hypertext) for use in his Xanadu
hypertext project, decades before the World Wide Web existed.

------
exstudent2
First sentence:

> The Internet is dotted with cesspools, also known as comments sections.

Comment sections are the only thing keeping a check on publications like the
Washington Post. Whether they're on-site or off-site (like what you're reading
now on HN), they're invaluable. Sure, not all of the audience with an opinion
will be politically correct, but I value the commentary of a piece as much or
more as the piece itself. Especially when it's something purely opinion based
like this one.

------
abalashov
The main skill—in short supply—that Wikipedia fosters is to look at things
from varying points of view, through a kind of detached pseudoprofessionalism.

Because the function of Wikipedia is to exhibit different viewpoints (where
applicable) rather than to convince anyone of them, it's much easier to step
into a relativistic, descriptive mindset, rather than a prescriptive one.

------
thesz
If I may weigh in, the "cocoon" that is so scorned by many, is a feature.

It allows people to actually _get things done_. It allows them to spend less
thought on the topics that are not concerned them in their day lives and spend
more on their... day lives!

Basically, if you want people to go out of their cocoons, make their life
easier. Otherwise, the fight is futile.

~~~
woodchuck64
> It allows them to spend less thought on the topics that are not concerned
> them in their day lives and spend more on their... day lives!

This works as long as the cocoon is perfectly insulated. But it isn't, as
elections show. The political process basically cuts through the cocoon like a
predatory wasp-- assuming there is at least one candidate or law that is
incompatible with insulated beliefs. And then all that saved energy is wasted
on moral warfare against the invaders.

Cocoons are always bad in a non-homogeneous society.

~~~
norea-armozel
Or maybe people should be free to associate as they wish? This seems to be the
hardest concept for fellow Americans to grasp because it seems to be a growing
(parasitically so) notion that we have to be friends to strangers who actively
oppose to who we are or our interests. I don't want to force someone who
thinks I'm a sinner for being bi and trans to be my friend nor do I want to be
a friend to such a person. Nor should they or I have to endure each other's
company beyond what's necessary to get a task done in public. If that's
putting up a cocoon I'm not sure how civilization will get along then when
every social interaction turns into a virtual duel. I'd rather just put up
with fake courtesy than force someone into a fight with me or vice versa.
Toleration is a better lubricant for social order than is constant challenges
to deeply held beliefs.

~~~
woodchuck64
> Toleration is a better lubricant for social order than is constant
> challenges to deeply held beliefs.

Sure, but "cocoons" breed intolerance by magnifying the fears and insecurities
of the group. Maybe if you have balanced, open, secure people, blocking
information doesn't hurt, but those people are not only rare, they tend to go
out of their way for new information. They don't willingly slam the door on
new streams of information so it seems their "cocoons" if they exist at all
have fairly thin walls.

------
stirner
A centrist argument is not necessarily correct. There are many more dimensions
to ideology than the left/right spectrum.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation)

~~~
fulafel
Also, a position in the middle of the two US parties usually quite right-
leaning in the global context and hardly a good benchmark for neutrality
outside the Washington Post.

------
tangerine_beet
I'm wondering how popular media sites could apply to their comments sections
some of the things Wikipedia is doing. For example, imagine commenters divided
into two opposing camps over a controversial issue discussed in a news report.
A separate discussion is organized to create a report on the issue using the
Wikipedia process and rules. Any commenter can contribute, and it is guided by
(perhaps volunteer) editors. Such reports then get aggregated in a separate
section of the site...

Could something like this actually 1) create value for the media by engaging
users and generating content 2) elevate the discourse between readers and 3)
actually make the media less biased over time as it is repeatedly called out
for partisan slant in its editorial and reporting?

------
jimmaswell
There's a subreddit of people who think Wikipedia operates with large-scale
bias by the administration.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiInAction/](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiInAction/)

------
omouse
>In a draft paper published last week, Shane Greenstein and his colleagues
Feng Zhu and Yuan Gu found that over the years, individuals who edit political
articles on Wikipedia seem to grow less biased — their contributions start to
contain noticeably fewer ideologically-charged statements.

This seems obvious: as you are exposed to more points of view, you start to
develop your own nuanced view of the world. At a certain point you feel okay
with reading FOX News because you would like to see how other people think and
it trains you to see the logical fallacies and biases.

------
kristofferR
The title of this piece makes no sense. How are the talk pages on Wikipedia
supposedly going to fix the vicious comment sections on the internet?

------
drxyzzy
The internet is a large, evolving cognitive system. Present information flow,
riddled as it is with disinformation, faulty reasoning, and category errors,
might be comparable to disorganization in the minds of individual creatures
during early development.

------
clusmore
I think one of the interesting consequences of the echo chamber that social
networks create is that everybody thinks they are in the majority. For
example, if you view the comments on political pages, you'll often see
conflicting claims that "the majority of people think X". I think each person
making these claims genuinely feel that they are in the majority because their
echo chamber distorts the proportion of supporting voices, and then you see
comments like "who are all these people who voted for Y?"

Edit to add: I think the problem is not only that people don't see views other
than their own, but that they become unaware that other views even exist.

------
zer0gravity
This article is hardly about Wikipedia. You can feel the electoral smell from
a mile away.

~~~
SloughFeg
It's the washington post. What else would you expect from them?

------
dsfyu404ed
It's possible that highly biased editors drifting toward center is just
another instance of "a lie repeated often enough becomes the truth" where the
lie is the opposing ideology that one must read in order to edit.

------
yarrel
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikilawyering](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikilawyering)

------
kseifried
This is why for CVE's assigned via the Distributed Weakness Filing (DWF)
Project I require a copy of the artifact, the reality is your website might go
away, or get lost at sea, or deleted, or whatever. For information supporting
CVE identifiers it's a super huge pain in the ass when the website/document
disappears.

------
artcodedata
The search for an unique , single truth is the mentality that destroy ancient
ruins and burn books, no matter if it's coming from Wikipedia, Trump
supporters or BLM all of them are valid. And that's Wikipedia's biggest flaw,
their system can only handle one version of truth. A more complex system would
be able to handle more than one version of the truth.

------
pixelbill
Why have there been so many washingtonpost articles lately? Pretty annoying to
those who don't want to deal with paywalls to get their news.

~~~
teh_klev
When all else fails (web link, incognito), learn to archive.is:

[http://archive.is/Wh2iM](http://archive.is/Wh2iM)

------
matthewmorgan
'Don't take refuge in the false security of consensus, and the feeling that
whatever you think you're bound to be OK, because you're safely in the moral
majority.' \--Christopher Hitchens

Well worth a watch imho
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4hqFvXm57M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4hqFvXm57M)

------
webwanderings
The real problem with the comments on the Internet, is of logistics of huge
number, and lack of human ability to process them at scale. Just look at any
of the popular HN threads. You cannot expect anyone to be reading all the
comments when they show up in large numbers under one thread. The rest of
everything else is secondary.

------
fulafel
It's disingenious to apply a methodology designed to find out "republican" and
"democratic" positions to Wikipedia, and then draw conclusions about how
objectively biased the content is, especially since the center in US politics
is so right-leaning in the global context.

~~~
Eupolemos
Indeed, but their method is clearly stated and very easy to understand, so the
reader can take the conclusion with an appropriate grain of salt.

------
cooper12
As a Wikipedia editor, I think this can mostly be attested to the site's
policy on maintaining a neutral point of view. [0] Over time you learn to
watch out for certain words [1] and you can sniff out things that were copied
verbatim or written in a improper tone. In terms of discussions, personal
attacks are discouraged [2] and there's a strong focus on providing reliable
sources, [3] so discussion often shifts to discussing those instead. Off-topic
discussion is also commonly removed [4] and there are avenues for dispute
resolution. [5] Of course you'll still find plenty of heated disputes and some
biased articles, but the project is a work in progress after all. I think the
most important factor is that there are people of different viewpoints willing
to work together to integrate them in a way to best give weight to them rather
than creating content forks. (this is why conservapedia is doing so bad) [6]
You can't fix bias by creating an echo chamber or pretending it isn't there,
but rather by keeping an open mind and welcoming those who think differently.

[0]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_vie...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view)

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Word...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Words_to_watch)

[2]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_personal_attacks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_personal_attacks)

[3]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Identifying_reliable...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Identifying_reliable_sources)

[4]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Talk_page_guidelines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Talk_page_guidelines)

[5]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Dispute_resolution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Dispute_resolution)

[6]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Content_forking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Content_forking)

~~~
schoen
As a counterpoint, here Wikipedia's discussion on why NPOV is hard or maybe
unattainable:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Why_Wikipedia_is_not...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Why_Wikipedia_is_not_so_great#NPOVness_.28non-
bias.29)

I think the NPOV policy has been great for Wikipedia and contributes to many
positive outcomes, but I often think Wikipedians are too sanguine that they
can recognize and/or achieve it, and about the scope of the "neutrality"
they're actually working towards. One reason for that is the other policies on
reliable sources and undue weight, which means Wikipedia will usually appear
to be NPOV when it reflects the attention and approaches given to something by
media and academic scholarship that are readily accessible to Wikipedia
editors.

While that might be _more_ neutral than any available alternative, it's still
going to reflect tons of biases found in the underlying sources and in the
editors' ability to select and access them. I've been thinking of trying to
describe some examples, maybe deliberately including points of view that I
don't hold or agree with instead of those that I do. :-)

I think one highlight is that if a point of view is now a minority view or
extremely unfamiliar in middle-class English-speaking communities, paying a
lot of attention to it on enwiki will be considered undue weight because
editors can correctly describe the status of the view as marginal. But that
point of view might be more correct or extremely important from some other
perspective, even though reading an encyclopedia that gave more weight to it
would be jarring for many readers and they might find it less useful overall.
(It might also be a _majority_ view in some other social classes, cultures, or
language communities whose views aren't expressed in reliable sources that
many Wikipedians can access, understand, or defend as reliable sources.)

~~~
cooper12
I agree that true neutrality is likely impossible. For starters, Wikipedia is
only as biased as its sources and like you said "media and academic
scholarship". It's this attribute that lets us readily say that vaccines don't
cause autism, but that will also prevent it from assimilating new
breakthroughs or ideas until they are readily accepted. (In other words,
Wikipedia is not The Truth) FUTON bias is a problem in a lot of areas [0] but
there are tons of articles that use offline sources. As for your last point,
you might find this essay [1] interesting in that we often assume too much to
be a given, and Wikipedia definitely suffers from an anglophone bias, but
that's why multilingual editors are important to bring those sources to the
fore. Fringe theories [2] are an interesting subject that I think should be
discussed more, but I do find the current approach sensible. Thanks for the
interesting counterpoints.

[0]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FUTON_bias](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FUTON_bias)

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:You_do_need_to_cite_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:You_do_need_to_cite_that_the_sky_is_blue)

[2]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Fringe_theories](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Fringe_theories)

------
notliketherest
Has anyone read the comments section below a DrudgeReport linked article? Oh
my god you will lose your faith in humanity.

------
devheart
Use Infogalactic instead.

------
pastProlog
From 1933 to 1953, the Democratic party held the presidency in the United
States. Twenty years out of power is said to have been one of the factors
leading to McCarthyism. McCarthy called it "20 years of treason" (then once he
started fighting Eisenhower he started talking about 21 years of treason).
Republicans began accusing the entire Democratic establishment of being KGB
spies. The head of the John Birch Society thought this was a foregone
conclusion, he wrote a book about how the Republican establishment including
Eisenhower were all KGB spies.

This cold war paranoia and political shift is all over Wikipedia. The faintest
accusation of someone back then is all over their Wikipedia article. Much of
the Democratic and liberal establishment from 1932-1952 is said to be Soviet
spies on Wikipedia, and as far as I know, 100% of people who had questions
about the Cold war. I don't know one liberal from that period who was more
skeptical of the Cold war than Truman (who launched the Truman Doctrine in
March 1947, then became involved in the Korean war) who is _not_ accused of
being a Soviet spy.

I wish I could remember the whole list. The article for journalist I. F.
Stone. The article for treasury official Harry Dexter White. Commerce
department official and later author Harry Magdoff. Lieutenant Colonel Duncan
Lee who had the misfortune of being acquainted with the kooky, flighty
Elizabeth Bentley. In the light of all of these, the article for secretary of
state Dean Acheson all but accuses him of being pro-communist.

The "China hands" like Owen Lattimore (being accused of being an agent of the
Chinese wouldn't do, so he was accused of being a Soviet agent). John S.
Service who had the misfortune to be assigned to the Dixie Mission while
working for the Foreign Service. Actually the article on China hand Theodore
H. White manages to have been relatively unscathed by the crazies.

I'm sure there were some Russian spies in the US in the 1940s, and some
American spies in Russia. Wikipedia still has this McCarthyist idea spread out
over the high officials of that time were all KGB spies. Forget about anyone
to the left of the 1947 Truman Doctrine to fight the Greek left, they're
almost automatically concluded to be communist spies.

Then it's proffered that Venona proves all these people as spies. But Venona
has code names, not names. Venona says something like "Agent TREE met us in
Central Park in May 8, 1948". As so-and-so lived in New York in 1948, the
editors use that fact to link a codename to a name. Venona is said to prove
every accusation, but it does not. Most of the people who it does seem to
confirm were European emigrees and people in the communist party orbit. Not
the liberal WASPs in the Democratic establishment who are accused of being
Soviet spies.

The Wikipedia articles on various Democratic officials in the 1930s and 1940s
are really nuts. Even a neutral article like the Theodore White one has to
mention that he was suspected to be a communist spy at one time.

------
triplesec
I'm not sure your single variable alternative explanation of this effect
warrants such a dismissive tone to the hypothesis in the article. Using such
rhetoric is Truthy, by being plausible and socially and rhetorically effective
without being backed up by any research or even data. Claiming you have
greater expertise through attempted ridicule of the original is not a valid
argument. Such a rhetorical tactic likely has a fallacy named after it. (Any
debaters here cars to chime in? )

What are your justifications for your beliefs, and how are they superior to
those in the article?

~~~
sctb
We detached this subthread from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12790032](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12790032)
and marked it off-topic.

~~~
DanBC
Why did you do that? HN tries hard to avoid middle-brow dismissal, which GP
was.

~~~
triplesec
I agree, but I can see how HN may want to keep the conversation as it turned
out below away from disrupting the thread; I think the thread did get
derailed. For anyone confused here's the comment the GGP was detached from:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12790032](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12790032)

------
libeclipse
Apparently AMP prevents the Google trick of being able to bypass paywalls. Can
someone post the gist of the article here?

~~~
iamatworknow
Researchers studied the changes to Wikipedia articles and found that in the
course of these article's edits the political tone and biases tended to
converge toward neutral over time.

~~~
losteverything
And the flaw was how comments have gone downhill.

But really, what is the internet's flaw? No live human body present?

------
sickbeard
sorry I can't take someone/entity seriously when they claim the internet's
biggest flaw is shit-posting, or free expression as I call it.

