
Why Wikipedia cannot claim the earth is not flat - 0xb0
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Why_Wikipedia_cannot_claim_the_earth_is_not_flat
======
pleasecalllater
I have a couple hundreds wikipedia editions. And suddenly someone reverted my
change "because it's not like this". So I reverted to my last version,
attached links to documentation that I'm right, showed examples etc. Then the
same guy reverted that again. And then a couple of other guys came to support
him.

Then I stopped editing anything there, and I stopped treating wikipedia as a
source of any reliable information.

~~~
infodroid
You suggest you were a victim of some kind of injustice, yet there isn't
enough information to think that. You don't actually explain why your initial
change was reverted. And you don't say whether you acknowledged the reason
your changes were reverted when you reverted the page to _your_ version. If
you didn't respond to the initial feedback, this can be interpreted as
malicious behavior. And just because you "attached links to documentation that
I'm right, showed examples etc.", doesn't mean the documentation met the
necessary standards or adequately supported your change. Instead of engaging
in an editing war, you should have used the Talk page to get feedback on the
best way to push your changes through.

~~~
raverbashing
And instead of fighting willing contributors the editors should have informed
that

But for some pages it's a competition on who has the most free time and the
most willingness to navigate the bureaucracy (and none of those items implies
greater knowledge of the subject, quite the opposite)

------
jordigh
Whenever articles on Wikipedia's editing process come up, you often see
comments about adversarial edit wars, and people giving up. So, I want to
offer contrary anecdotes: my experiences editing Wikipedia have been good.

I've only ever written one article, which has gone unchallenged for over two
years now, probably because the topic is abstruse and difficult for everyone
to understand in the first place (which is why I wrote the article):

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

But I've also made minor edits here and there. For example, I removed some
fluff around the D3.js article. Also unchallenged:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=D3.js&diff=803775...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=D3.js&diff=803775247&oldid=802119604)

So, if you hear stories about how awful editing Wikipedia is, remember that it
can also be a pleasant experience.

~~~
twic
Ditto. I've made small edits to dozens of articles over the years, and it's
been painless. My carefully-referenced edit about giant Scottish worms still
stands:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%B9m#Other_fauna](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%B9m#Other_fauna)

------
jpatokal
For those untutored in the wild ways of Wikipedia, where even most admin
namespace (Wikipedia:) articles are editable by all, this is an essay and not
official Wikipedia policy.

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

------
moomin
The article for the most part ignores the actual techniques that are used to
push viewpoints across that actually work. One small one I remember. Imagine
you want people to believe X. Imagine Wikipedia currently reads.

A says X but B says not X.

You edit it to read

A says X but left-wing commentator B says not X.

The qualification "left-wing commentator" is, for the purposes of this
discussion, entirely accurate. However, the effect is that B now looks like
they're biased whilst A, with no qualifying adjectives, looks impartial.

Now consider that it's entirely possible that A is _also_ accurately described
as a "left-wing commentator" and you see why this stuff is so pernicious.

Anything about Israel/Palestine is crawling with minor edits like this.

~~~
dotancohen
Israeli here, supporter of equality among men and just rights for all.

Wikipedia is just reflecting reality here. Even in Israel, unbiased narratives
are very difficult to find from either side. This is compounded by the self-
hating Jew phenomenon [1] and the issue that many Palestinians actually
_prefer_ living in a modern, Western democracy as opposed to the kingdoms and
dictatorships which are the traditional Arab norma. So we have people on _both
sides_ arguing for _both sides_, often using subtle trickery such as weasel
words, unjustified quantifiers and adjectives, and selected elimination. Being
a technically advanced country, this spills out onto the Internet and
Wikipedia.

Personally, being involved in the situation, a _lack_ of such trickery on
Wikipedia would raise more red flags for me than its presence.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-
hating_Jew](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-hating_Jew)

~~~
umanwizard
Most Palestinians don’t really have the option of living in a Western-style
democracy, as they don’t live in Israel and haven’t been granted Israeli
citizenship. Arabs with Israeli citizenship are a small minority of
Palestinians.

~~~
dotancohen
Thank you, you are right. I erroneously used the term Palestinians to refer to
those who live in the West Bank, as those who live west of the Green Line
identify more with Israel than with the PA or formally PLO. I've never had
opportune to have a good discussion with Gaza residents, unfortunately.

You are right that the Christian and Muslim citizens of the West Bank (I'll
just say Palestinians in interest of brevity) do _not_ enjoy the full benefits
of citizenship, and are in fact treated poorly by the state compared to their
Jewish neighbors. I'm one of their Jewish neighbors (I live in the West Bank)
and we see it daily. However, these people (from what they tell me) do
recognize that even with Israeli-imposed curfews e.g. on Yom Kippor, and
restricted rights compared to Jews, they still live better than their brothers
in Jordan and other Arab states. They drink cleaner water, have better job
security, better health care, better education, better chances to improve the
livelyhood of their children, and so many other advantages compared to
Jordanian, Syrian, or Egyptians. This is coming from them, as I always take an
opportunity to ask.

Of course, I would love to see them enjoy the same rights as I do. I don't see
them as competition, rather I believe that we both flourish together when we
cooperate. But even without all the benefits of a Western-style democracy that
the government _could_ provide to them, they still prefer that government to
the alternatives that they see right next door.

------
Analemma_
The key point to remember is that Wikiepedia's goal is "verifiability, _not_
truth". With that one fact they neatly sidestep a lot of the arguments from
cranks and whatnot about including this or that fringe view out of a
commitment to "truth". Truth isn't their goal: Wikipedia is meant to be an
accumulation of best-guess knowledge at the current time. It may seem like a
lower goal, but that's all any encyclopedia was ever supposed to be.

~~~
1ris
Given that almost all sources that constitute verifiability will happily copy
and paste anything that is in wikipedia, it is arbitrary what is verifiable.

If is long enouh in there it will never get out.

[https://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/how-a-raccoon-
became...](https://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/how-a-raccoon-became-an-
aardvark)

~~~
jabretti
It's possible nowadays with a bit of effort to create entirely new "facts" via
a one-two shuffle between news sources and Wikipedia.

First, you publish an article on some news source, asserting the fact.

Then you update Wikipedia with that fact, citing your own article.

Other news sources check Wikipedia, find your new fact, and incorporate it
into their own articles. Now you have a bunch of extra sources for your
Wikipedia article.

~~~
merlincorey
This is called Circular Reporting[1].

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_reporting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_reporting)

~~~
AstralStorm
And the requisite xkcd joke, in which it is called citogenesis. (Not to be
confused with cytogenesis.)

[https://m.xkcd.com/978/](https://m.xkcd.com/978/)

~~~
falcor84
And, of course, this then made its way to Wikipedia too:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_citogenesis_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_citogenesis_incidents)

------
qubex
Recently I corrected a spelling mistake on the Talk page of a subject (
_Punyi_ , China's “Last Emperor"). My change was reverted and I was given a
stern warning by a moderator that this kind of behaviour is not acceptable.

I really appreciate Wikipedia, I love the ideal, and I respect it as a source
of knowledge, and I respect the community... but some behaviours are really
bizarre.

~~~
ben_w
The talk pages are a fine example of holding a hammer and treating everything
as a nail. That anyone can edit a page makes it _usable_ as a discussion
board, but because _anyone_ can edit _everyone else’s_ comments, there is a
need to enforce the extra layer of rules you just described.

Would be much better if talk pages acted like actual chat boards.

~~~
amelius
Reading this, I'm amazed that Wikipedia functions _at all_.

~~~
alt2501
Agreed. The article also made me think a little too... I mean there must be
some seriously... Um, dedicated, people out there working on this stuff, and
somehow it trundles along, and the end result is pretty damn good. Life I
guess.

------
idrios
This was really interesting and I feel like I learned a bit more about how to
deal with unreasonable people on the internet (and maybe recognize if I'm
being unreasonable myself?)

> ...even if there is a slim chance beliefs on the margin may eventually gain
> wide consensus (as happened with the proposals of the round Earth in Archaic
> Periods and continental drift before the mechanism of plate tectonics...)

After reading this line, I'm curious how this article would read with an
example that was once a fringe theory that ultimately _did_ gain widespread
consensus.

~~~
colejohnson66
I was taught in elementary school (college age now) that people thought the
Earth was flat until Columbus came alone to prove everyone wrong. That false
statement that has some widespread consensus. My parents were taught it also.

~~~
vidarh
That one is a particularly weird one, given that there are so many _obvious
and well known_ examples to counter it.

Case in point, Dante's Divine Comedy (EDIT: Which the linked article does
mention at the end) - completed 1320 - contains a very explicit description of
the earth being round, complete with describing time differences due to the
sun rising and setting at different times (Purgatory explicitly mentions that
at the same time there is sunset in Jerusalem, midnight over the Ganges, and
sunrise in Purgatory which he placed as a physical place on the opposite side
of the earth), and how the stars would be different on different sides of the
earth.

It'd be one thing if the evidence was all obscure, but somehow this myth
managed to take hold despite the fact that one of the most famous literary
works in history counters it (I guess that tells us something about how few
people actually _read_ the classics as opposed to just read _about_ them).

(there are of course many other, and earlier, sources of evidence refuting
this myth, but Dante provides one of the clearest and most explicit and, most
importantly, famous ones)

------
pmontra
About the origin of the flat Earth myth:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_flat_Earth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_flat_Earth)

Tldr, it's from the end of 19th century.

~~~
PaulRobinson
No, that's not what that article is about.

It's not about the misconception that the Earth is flat. It's about the myth
that medieval Europeans believed the Earth is flat. That's not the same thing.

~~~
coldtea
Perhaps you didn't read the parent's link?

It too is about the "the myth that medieval Europeans believed the Earth is
flat" and not about "the misconception that the Earth is flat".

It's just that it's called the "flat Earth myth" (instead of "flat Earth
belief in the middle ages myth").

~~~
PaulRobinson
TPA is a Wikipedia explanation about why Wikipedia can not argue the earth is
not flat.

The linked article I was replying about was done so in the context that the
Earth is flat is a 19th century myth. I was explaining the article they were
linking to was not related to the same subject.

~~~
coldtea
The parent didn't say his link was about the same subject (to the original
article).

They just added the information that the belief that the middle ages believed
the earth is flat is recent-ish.

His "Tl;dr" was meant to be for the link he provided, not the original
article.

------
libeclipse
Well Wikipedia can claim that the speed of light is around 3x10^8 ms^-1.
Wikipedia can claim that gravity exists, and that fish live in the sea.

The fact that the earth is an oblate spheroid is a scientific fact with just
as much certainty as the other claims are.

Being neutrality minded doesn't mean you can't outright dismiss _false_
beliefs.

~~~
aidenn0
This article assumes the reader is aware that the earth is not flat. It uses
the example of arguments in favor of the view the earth is flat to expose the
inherent problems with arguments of that form, so that editors who are faced
with less obvious truths can recognize such specious arguments.

------
jopsen
unrelated but fun:

I once chatted to an Uber driver who insisted the Earth was flat. I told him
the reason helicopters doesn't spin around the Earth is that they are within
the atmosphere which spins with the Earth. He hadn't really considered that
explanation before...

It as a light hearted discussion, I thought the encounter fun :) After the
2016 election Americans doesn't surprise me as much any more..

~~~
icebraining
_I told him the reason helicopters doesn 't spin around the Earth is that they
are within the atmosphere which spins with the Earth._

Isn't the actual reason simple inertia? They were already spinning with the
Earth, unless there's a force canceling that, they'll just keep going.

~~~
Tiksi
The inertia of the atmosphere. The inertia of the helicopter probably wouldn't
be enough to fly in the 1000mph winds if the atmosphere wasn't moving with the
earth.

------
nathan_f77
I like the thought experiment of what Wikipedia might have been like in
ancient times. It would have been amazing to read tweets and internet comments
from Galileo, Shakespeare, and Jesus.

It also makes you wonder about the distant future. I wonder if this comment
will still be on the internet 2000 years from now, and if any human will read
it. I'm pretty sure an AI will read it in the near future, if not right now.

~~~
samfriedman
This topic is explored somewhat in the (excellent) puzzle video game "The
Talos Principle". Without spoiling much, the game world contains many
instances of archived Internet discussion, including some self-aware posts as
to the permanence of the users' thoughts long into the future.

------
InclinedPlane
Wikipedia is like a stereotypical corporation with a bloated layer of
micromanaging and mediocre middle managers (accidentally alliterative). It
doesn't mean that good work can't be done, but it is certainly a massive drag
on productivity and effectiveness.

------
jorgec
Pleasing everybody is the fast way to please nobody.

------
known
There is a huge difference between "Verified by volunteers" and "Verified by
volunteers with vested interests"

------
jimsmart
Gotta love this final sentence of the whole piece:

"[...] However, this essay uses the flat earth as a metaphor for explaining
Wikipedia policy, not to describe any authentic historical controversy."

— Very clever! (and also quite amusing ;)

------
klampah
i do not think Wikipedia takes a stance on anything and tries to stay neutral
but present the case for ideas on many fronts but is dependent on the writer
as well.

~~~
qubex
I think a stance needs to be taken on certain issues. For example, spelling
and grammar are famously well within the domain of ignoramuses demanding that
their mistakes and errors be taken as “valid alternatives”, but they cannot
be. This kind of stuff, in my mind, should be the same.

~~~
zdkl
1) You are _always_ someone else's ignoramus 2) It's tough to draw the line on
what is acceptable as "enforced opinion" and what isn't. I find the true-
neutral alignment of wikipedia much more sound from a public service
perspective. I mean they don' hide it, and don't claim to be 100% up to date
or accurate.

------
jabretti
This is fine as far as flat Earthism goes, but flat Earthism is a ridiculous
outlier even among ridiculous fringe theories.

By making your prototypical example of a dubious minority opinion the flat
Earth theory, I think you risk falling into bad mental habits. If you go round
thinking "people who disagree with me on subject X are just like flat
Earthers" then you're doing both them and yourself a disservice -- yourself
because no matter who you are it's certain that on some issues it's _you_ who
are wrong.

What I'm saying is that flat Earth is a bad example because it maps poorly
onto just about any other real-world disagreement.

~~~
phnofive
It's an extreme example, and therefore does invite a tendency to easily
dismiss non-mainstream thought, but that's intentional within Wikipedia.

The 'how to reply' sections make it clear what most fringe theories try to
rely on to convince editors, but Wikipedia is not a place for convincing - it
is a catalog of what's currently, broadly accepted.

~~~
jabretti
>Wikipedia is not a place for convincing - it is a catalog of what's
currently, broadly accepted.

That's true, and it should be the case. But how do we distinguish between
"that which is currently broadly accepted" and "that which is currently the
leading theory but other theories are also quite widely accepted" and "that
which is probably the leading theory, by a narrow margin, but then again might
not be, because nobody does polls on this stuff, so we're basically just going
by what wikipedia editors reckon"?

What, for instance, should we do if 80% of people believe theory A and 20% of
people believe theory B? (Suppose this is one of those rare cases where we're
fortunate enough to have actual polls).

~~~
cooper12
You present both, as long the 20% one is actually represented by reliable
sources, and then you balance the article appropriately. There're quite a few
subjects on Wikipedia for which there is yet no scholarly consensus but
different viewpoints exist.

------
jankotek
But Wikipedia does claim that earth is not flat, it calls it a "myth" and
"pseudoscientific":

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

I just wish they would apply the same approach to marxism and related
ideologies. So far it is called "scientific". LOL

~~~
robin_reala
(Don’t feed the trolls, but…) an ideology is not a science but a set of
choices. They’re not verifiable in the way that “the earth isn’t flat” is.

------
GrumpyNl
The fact that this page exists and people pay attention to is, is insane.
There has a lot to be gained by education.

------
labster
If Wikipedia thinks the Earth is flat, I didn't realize that a neutral point
of view was moving, relative to the Earth, so close to the speed of light.

~~~
PaulRobinson
Wikipedia does not think the Earth is flat.

------
vita17
The earth isn’t flat. It’s not round either. Nor is it spherical. But we
shouldn’t give up trying to describe its shape because no model will be
sufficient. Rather, the earth can be thought of as flat, as round, as
spherical, as elipsoidal, etc. The problem with flat earthers isn’t that they
believe the earth is flat. Eveyone believes this. It’s that they approach
knowlege as a fundamentalist taking the plain meaning of things without nuance
or context.

~~~
yathern
EDIT: Sorry I came off very grumpy, I apologize. I'll rephrase.

I think nuance isn't so much the issue here as much as it is mistaking the map
for the territory. A flat earth model has it's uses. Primarily for human-scale
travel and mapping. But the topology of a sphere is inarguably far better than
a flat plane. And if someone was to make the same mistake with a spherical
model, they'd get a lot further before things break down.

