
How to get bias into a Wikipedia article - _0vzt
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ravpapa/Tilt
======
acqq
My favorite example of bias introduced to Wikipedia is by some obviously
religious fanatics that managed to add the big section of "Religious views" to
biographies of most of famous people of science, and then misinterpret their
quotes to support the view that all were religious, in a sense of
"supporting/believing in the existing religions."

The best example, Einstein:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein's_religious_vie...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein's_religious_views)

"Albert Einstein's religious views have been studied extensively. He said he
believed in the "pantheistic" God of Baruch Spinoza, but not in a personal
god, a belief he criticized." And there's no citation re "pantheistic." That
is, as stated the claim appears to support the view that there were Einstein's
words that mention the "pantheistic" as the most important thing of
"Spinoza's" God.

If fact, the only quote, of course not cited in Wikipedia, where Einstein
explicitly mentions "pantheism" is apparently:

[http://www.einsteinandreligion.com/spinoza.html](http://www.einsteinandreligion.com/spinoza.html)

"I'm not an atheist and I don't think I can call myself a pantheist."

The only fair description would be "he was an agnostic" and that's all.
Instead, the "pantheism" is effectively promoted before, making "agnosticism"
his second choice, which it wasn't. Specifically, he quotes Spinoza in order
to point to the previous thinker that rejected the belief that the soul exists
separately from the body. That's why he mentions him (as seen in the full
quote linked above).

He was frequently quoted to declare himself agnostic, whereas he mentions
Spinoza's God only in one mail.

Still, try to remove obviously lying "pantheistic" pseudo quote/promotion from
Wikipedia's texts about Einstein.

And the same thing is repeated for a lot of other scientists!

~~~
saljam
I find Neil deGrasse Tyson's case is particularly amusing, where he himself
corrected it multiple times only to find it changed back to "atheist" (from
"agnostic").

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzSMC5rWvos](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzSMC5rWvos)
around 1:31.

~~~
dthunt
I find the labeling of people very frustrating.

People often have very good reasons to pick the labels they do, but those
reasons are often fairly nuanced. The only way to respect that nuance is to
honor the label. And you don't even have to be Neil deGrasse Tyson to run into
relabelling.

Whether that relabeling is done by a Pew poll that labels you as a religious
person because you attended a single religious service one year because you
were curious about an unknown slice of culture, or by a friend trying to
soften your image by labeling you as something they think is less offensive,
it's infuriating.

I can't imagine how frustrating this has to be for someone who actually has
the burden of having a voice that people are interested in hearing; when
someone reduces a careful and intimate response to a fairly personal question
to not only a single word, but the wrong word.

It makes me sick.

~~~
tommorris
The general thrust of Wikipedia policy is that on religion, sexuality and
other similar issues, self-identity trumps all.

We've had all sorts of problems with this: there was an actor a few years ago
who gave an interview to a British gay magazine talking about how he was out
as gay. But then the prospect of him becoming big in Hollywood came along and
his agent wanted to erase this, or sort of have it fade away into ambiguity.
What do you do in those kinds of circumstances?

The flip side of that is I've cleaned up horrible biographies written by
people who absolutely loathe particular people without even a faint hint of
neutrality.

~~~
acqq
Why can't the people be simply exactly and fully quoted instead of having
something else put in their mouth?

Why can't we see Einsteins quote from 1954 in the main article about him

"The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human
weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends.
No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this. These
subtilised interpretations are highly manifold according to their nature and
have almost nothing to do with the original text"

instead of referring to "pantheistic" "Spinoza's God" out of his letter 1929
to interpretations of which he referred also in 1954:

"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie
which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and
I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me
which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the
structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."

Even where the quotes exist (the separate article) they are intentionally
shuffled to appear that he at the end it's important that he believed in
"Spinoza's God" (by placing that quote after the later ones and hiding the
context).

The answer is: those that win edit wars are religious, and they try to obscure
his words "The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product
of human weaknesses." If the "smartest man" says that, and they do believe in
God, they feel "stupid," and they simply can't accept that, facts be damned.

------
mogrim
What's also interesting is the bias that appears when the same topic is
covered in different languages. Take the English and Spanish articles about
the Battle of Vitoria:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Vitoria](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Vitoria)

[http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batalla_de_Vitoria](http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batalla_de_Vitoria)

You don't need to be able to speak Spanish - just check out the list of the
battle commanders. (And if you do speak Spanish, you can see how the
description of the battle differs quite radically too...)

I'm not sure what the solution to this and the main article's problem is,
though, other than vigilance.

~~~
Hermel
> I'm not sure what the solution to this and the main article's problem is,
> though, other than vigilance.

Generally, it helps to not rely on a single point of information. The more
sources and viewpoins you consider, the more accurate the picture becomes.
Even reading very biased sources can help you get a clearer picture when you
intersect their information with a source from the "other" side. Also, as long
as you speak only one language, you will miss out a lot as the media copy from
each other and there often is bias in the language itself. For example,
consider how different the meaning of "liberal" has become in English and
German, even though it meant the same originally. Or consider the fact that
Germans tend to use faecal terms to curse while in English, sexual terms are
more common. This can subtly influence the way we think about things.
Generally, the easier it is to express a viewpoint in a language, the more
prevalent that viewpoint becomes. For example, before the term "political
correctness" was added to the English language, it was much harder to comlain
about it.

I diverted a little from the original point. Considering multiple sources in
multiple languages helps a lot.

~~~
mogrim
> Or consider the fact that Germans tend to use faecal terms to curse while in
> English, sexual terms are more common.

Bullshit.

:)

(But I fully agree with the rest of what you say).

~~~
judk
> tend.

"Bullshit" is vulgar slang, not cursing. You don't yell "Bullshit" when you
stub your toe.

~~~
gjm11
"Shit" isn't uncommon, though. It seems to me that English-language cursing is
pretty broad-spectrum. For the toe-stubbing situation, for instance, you have
the scatological ("Shit!"), the religious ("Christ!", "Damn!"), the sexual
("Fuck!"), the anatomical ("Arse!", at least in the UK; I don't think "ass" is
used that way in the US), the weird-hybrid-between-sexual-and-religious-and-
ethnic-minority-abuse ("Bugger!"; look its etymology up some time).

Personally, I usually just say "ow".

~~~
mogrim
And let's not forget a personal favourite: "You fucking piece of shit!", which
nicely spans the faecal/sexual linguistic divide.

------
thaumasiotes
this is at best a sub-point of the main article, but it's one that I find
particularly chilling: if you want people to believe something, the easiest
way to accomplish that is to lie to them. From the article:

""" It is important to know, though, that in the battle over reliable sources
anything goes - lying, trickery, the basest chicanery. Jaakobou complained
that Peace Now - a group devoted to researching the expansion of Jewish
settlements in the West Bank - had made up a citation from a government report
on the West Bank settlement of Mitzpe Ha'ai that appeared on the group's
website. "I went ahead and checked their claim that an official report
requested by the Prime Minister stated something on Mitzpe Ha'ai. The Mitzpe
was not mentioned in the original," he wrote in the discussion on the Reliable
sources noticeboard. When someone pointed out the section and page where the
settlement was mentioned, he claimed that the mention did not include the
specific information that was included in the article. When the original
passage was quoted in its entirety, he still didn't give up; he claimed that
the addition of a satellite photo of the settlement on the web page made the
citation unreliable ("citing the content to Peace Now is problematic, since
they add their own words and images to wiki-reliable information").

The point is: never give up. If you don't win this time, maybe you will win
next time. """

~~~
adaml_623
It does seem familiar. Almost as though the news recently may have featured a
government somewhere somehow lying being called on the lie and then repeating
this cycle a few times. </sarcasm>

I hope that these types of tricks start getting taught in schools so that
young people learn to recognise them at an earlier age. More important than
analysing Moby Dick.

~~~
RougeFemme
I think similar types of tricks are taught in many U.S. school systems, but
only as they apply to commercials. It would be great if critical thinking
skills, in general, were taught. Schools would have to walk a fine line,
though. Just as others pointed out bias in this article, parents and other
"interested parties" would point out bias in the school's teaching - articles
chosen for critical analysis, results of the analysis, the teacher's
(perceived) bias. These battles are constantly fought at the textbook level:
historical interpetation, too much/not enough multi-culturalism, evolution vs.
creationism. ..

Besides, what you describe can't really be tested on a standardized, fill-in-
the-bubble test. And to the extent that it can, there would be endless
arguments about the correct answer.

Great suggestion, but hard to implement pragmatically.

------
adamnemecek
Somehow I can't shake off the feeling that this article itself has bias. So
meta.

~~~
Xylakant
It certainly does and it never claims otherwise. However, even though it shows
examples that are biased mostly to one side it points out and describes the
techniques used to create the bias, so you're free to use the knowledge gained
to help yourself recognize the other sides attempts at creating a bias.

~~~
adamnemecek
What I meant is that it points out biased articles in a way that itself is
biased. To be more specific, it seems to have a pretty strong pro-Israeli
bias.

~~~
James_Duval
Most of the article seemed to be defending Gideon Levy
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gideon_Levy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gideon_Levy)),
so I don't think it has a pro-Israeli bias.

~~~
Cyph0n
It looks pro-Israel to me.

~~~
thomasz
That is a pretty useless^H^H^H^H^H^H^H subjective statement. The author is
clearly trying to alternate between examples for pro Israeli and pro
Palestinian bias.

~~~
vxNsr
Well the user's name is Rav Papa, who is a well known Jewish roman-era
scholar, which is one tactic he doesn't mention, press all your advantages,
usernames are a great way to show fain to be one side but really be the other.

~~~
thomasz
Well, I wasn't aware. Now that we know about his evil ethnicity, we can stop
talking about his article and finally condemn the filthy Jew.

~~~
vxNsr
Lol, I wish you had looked at my comment history before you had said that. ( I
too have been outed as a JUDEENRAT).

Personally I think he was attempting to be impartial though towards the end it
became apparent that he was more pro-BDS than peace (now you know how I feel
about this).

------
dthunt
I ran into my first experience with this sort of thing while looking into
Mormon initiation rites on wikipedia. I certainly understand why Mormons may
be interested in keeping initiation secrets off of wikipedia, but wikipedia
has no interest in censoring that information. And yet, at least the last time
I checked, I had a very hard time finding that in part because of the mess of
articles I ran across and the reshuffling of articles.

Is there an easy way to search for deleted articles and read the discussion
history for them?

------
fetbaffe
Sometimes I feel that I don't spend my time on earth in an optimal way. Then I
read about people living their life by doing editing wars over a salad(!).
Life is not that bad actually when I think about it.

------
antocv
Step 1, add a talk page about "How to add bias into Wikipedia" discussing bias
from a very pro-Israeli point of view.

Seed distrust, misinformation and be obvious that this article is biased, make
no attempt to hide it, this blatant display will despite the reader knowing
about it, build trust in the article and writer. Its magnificent. Use this
trust to point out the negative sides of the Arabs in the Arab-Israeli
conflict. Step back and watch as the readers take your/the Israeli side, as
the trust built from exposing bias is still valid as previously mentioned. Go
Israel. There is no Israel lobby in USA, but there is an Arab one. Its called
an Israeli salad not Arab salad. And so on...

~~~
jrochkind1
In the OP, the first example he used was of 'pro-palestinian propagandists',
which made me think like you, but as I read more, most of his examples are
actually of misdeeds by 'pro-Israel' propagandists.

I suspect he's actually partial to the Palestinian side, actually, although he
tried to use examples from both partisan sides to paint a general picture of
propaganda on wikipedia.

(Disclosure: I personally believe that Israeli policies and practices toward
Palestinians constitute apartheid.)

~~~
eitland
Thanks, this might be a perfect example.

GP is not the only one in this thread to have this opinion.

Now that this has been brought to light, can everyone who was about to comment
please take your own biases up for review?

Being on the "right" side doesn't mean you can skip careful reading and
critical thought, does it?

~~~
jrochkind1
Well, um, of course not, especially since you need that careful reading and
critical thought to identify the propaganda the 'other' side is trying to
embed in wikipedia. Naturally.

------
contingencies
Politics on Wikipedia is terrible. IMHO there are certainly organized covert
groups (commercial and military) who are editing it on behalf of governments
(and corporations) already. Basically it's a war of attrition, and those with
resources win. It's very sad, looking at the spirit that Wikipedia emerged
from.

In short, as Einstein said: _Nationalism is an infantile disease; the measles
of mankind._ IMHO the OP needs to grow up and broaden their perspective. By
distributing such rants (s)he is attracting interest in the deliberate abuse
of Wikipedia for partisan goals, which is not in its spirit. It's not
something to be proud of.

~~~
glenra
> IMHO there are certainly organized covert groups (commercial and military)
> who are editing it on behalf of governments (and corporations) already.

Yep. Though in your list of groups/causes you forgot "environmental". For
example, there's the saga of William M. Connolley, described in part here:

[http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100020515/...](http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100020515/climategate-
the-corruption-of-wikipedia/)

------
innino
In a way it's quite terrifying to consider the possibilities of bias in
Wikipedia. After all, if you're not an expert on a particular subject, how are
you to know that even an article which seems neutral in content and tone isn't
subtly selecting for and emphasising a certain portrayal of its subject?
Tricky stuff.

~~~
judk
s/wikipedia/any media/

~~~
cgore
And this is why trying to keep to some mythical "Neutral Point of View" is
impossible.

------
Shivetya
politics, Middle East, and environment, are three areas I only go to Wikipedia
for dates of occurrence and names of those involved. All the rest related I
assume is biased.

Need to look up a song and artist, anime character, or what years a car was
available, I am pretty much going to trust what I read there, not so with much
else anymore.

~~~
berntb
That is a bit too harsh. But at a minimum -- check the references on those
subjects.

~~~
glenra
You also need to look at the discussion page to (a) see what points of view
are being deliberately excluded by the biased editors, (b) find references to
data on the other side.

(At least you need to do that on climate/environment - I've never looked into
middle east)

------
tantalor
Are these biases made on both side of the edit war? Some of these articles
seem to have pro-Israel bias and others anti-Israel.

~~~
lifthrasiir
I think it is irrelevant which side is making a bias into Wikipedia (everyone
has a bias and the author of the essay is no exception). What is important is
that such bias is made into Wikipedia and we need to be aware of, or careful
about them. I guess proponents of alternatives to Wikipedia have something to
say about them.

~~~
wereHamster
What are the alternatives to Wikipedia?

~~~
praptak
The best alternative to Wikipedia is Wikipedia plus a dose of healthy distrust
for the content therein. Look up the edit history, check page discussions,
verify the references. Do the homework and you should be safe.

~~~
alan_cx
I think that depends on the subject.

If I look up, say, resistor colour codes, a car or TV show, the the info Im
looking of is as good as fact. The colour codes are correct, the car specs
should be pretty much correct, and the general TV info is correct.

If I know Im delving in to something opinion based, for example, political or
general history, I treat it as a starting point.

Problem comes when the subject falls in tot he middle, for example looking up
a person. Some of I I assume to be correct like date of birth, home town, etc.
Or at least its probably as correct as anywhere else. But often trivial type
thing turn out to be little more than folk lore. But, if that matters, its
very wise to look for something the person's own pages, if they exist. Or at
least google the claim to see if its likely to have weight.

So, I think its fair to think some subject are likely to be acceptable as
fact, other not so much.

Part of me thinks there should be a separation between things that can be seen
as fact, and things that are likely to contain some sort of bias. No idea how
that can reasonably be achieved though.

------
vezzy-fnord
Honestly, the whole "neutral point of view", despite being a universal
Wikipedia rule, is most prominent in the English one.

If you go read some of the Balkan Wikipedias, you'll have blatant nationalist
propaganda and completely contradictory viewpoints. What one wiki will decry
as chauvinism, another calls national identity. Most blatant is the propaganda
in the Macedonian Wikipedia.

------
HPLovecraft
[http://cryptome.org/2012/07/gent-forum-
spies.htm](http://cryptome.org/2012/07/gent-forum-spies.htm)

------
MattGrommes
This is great. I'm honestly going to go over this with my 11 year old to
complement the section of her Language Arts class on the media and
advertising. Lots of great things to learn to watch out for in the news and
general media, not just in Wikipedia.

------
ars
For a long while now I've thought that some articles should simply stop trying
to be perfectly neutral.

Just have two sections in the article: Each clearly biased in a different
direction (maybe use colors and do it per paragraph).

Historically newspapers used to do that, each paper was clearly biased a
certain way and you knew that when reading it.

Insist on accuracy of course, but the slant in the way something is written
can matter a lot even if completely accurate.

~~~
adaml_623
Yeah but each side will still try to edit the opposing sides point of view to
ruin it.

~~~
highace
Or they'll try and one-up each other, creating exaggeration.

------
V-2
Hasbara strikes again? :)

~~~
berntb
Not Pallywood, then? :-)

------
mproud
Don’t feed the trolls.

~~~
alan_cx
At the risk of doing so.....

Are you suggesting that having a different opinion is trolling?

~~~
DanBC
Climate change denialists or homeopaths or intelligent design proponents are
not trolls, but the effect is pretty much the same.

You can generate megabytes of meta discussion by sticking to a fringe
viewpoint and exploiting the weird wiki culture. At that point it doesn't
matter if you sincerely believe the nonsense or if you're just doing it for
shits and giggles.

