
Wikipedia and the Wisdom of Polarized Crowds - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/issue/70/variables/wikipedia-and-the-wisdom-of-polarized-crowds
======
ComputerGuru
One of the reasons I still frequent Hacker News is because there is a very
similar dynamic at play here on topics where informed dissent can bring about
greater awareness and lead to chinks in the hive mind. I think the common
thread is the appeal to authority, and the willingness to admit you've been
"out-sourced" in your stance, whether you're with or against the majority. Of
course there are always those threads that won't die or those individuals that
just keep rehashing the same point, oblivious to the lack of scientific
reasoning or rigor to the arguments, but you learn to spot those pretty
quickly.

~~~
claudiawerner
What kind of bad science rehashed points are you talking about specifically,
which appear on HN?

~~~
mhuffman
There are plenty of items that pop up on HN that get the almonds activated.
Basically anything that has non-conclusive scientific proof and also some
component of ideology gets drama churned up. Here is a short list of examples:

\- IQ, and how much of it is biological

\- Actual differences between biological sexes

\- Anything related to government fiscal or monetary policy

\- The extent (or even existence) of privilege for sexes or races

\- If software should be free

\- If software can be "stolen"

\- Whether it is right or wrong for people to give up so much of their privacy
to FANG

\- ... and so on.

~~~
hhs
I wonder how these would be interpreted with the author's point that:

"Liberal readers preferred basic science (physics, astronomy, zoology), while
conservatives went for applied and commercial science (criminology, medicine,
geophysics). 'It seems like conservatives are happy to draw on science
associated with economic growth—that’s what they want from science,' Evans
said. “Science is more like Star Trek for liberals: traveling through worlds,
searching for new meanings, searching for yourself.'"

I'm curious how these examples would be categorized: when going down the list,
how would a "liberal" and "conservative" group, in general, think about each
example; as basic science or as applied/commercial science?

~~~
asdffdsa
That's interesting, I consider myself more or less conservative, but really
enjoy basic sciences/fields like physics, math, philosophy etc

~~~
hhs
Yeah, I'm curious in the way that the author defines these terms. Did they
take into account fluidity of situations as you relate to? Because I'm sure
there are many groups out there just like this. And what are the boundaries to
these definitions?

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austincheney
The article title is misleading. It is about the wisdom of diversity in well
refined arguments. People tend to magnify their stupidity and ignorance in
groups to achieve confirmation bias as the beginning of the article eludes.

~~~
jessriedel
Maybe you mistakenly interpreted "polarized crowds" in the title to mean that
a crowd that is extreme in one direction? In fact, it actually does mean
"polarized" in the sense that the crowd contains both poles.

~~~
austincheney
I focused more on the word _crowd_ than _polarized_ and I stand by my previous
comment.

------
hirundo
> If you have these different ideologies, it’s associated with different
> filters on the world, different intakes of information, and so when it comes
> to constructing reference knowledge on an encyclopedic web page that’s
> supposed to thoroughly characterize an area, you do a much better job
> because you have a lot more information that’s attended to by this
> ideologically diverse group.

It's worth noting that this doesn't just apply to groups. There is such a
thing as an ideologically diverse individual. See for example the Ideological
Turing Test [1]. If an individual can successfully apply the filters of
diverse ideologies, they at least have the potential to swap out those filters
and apply them to their scientific judgments.

Perhaps we should should systematically apply and score such tests to
scientists and use the results as additional data with which to evaluate their
work. True, ideologically homogeneous people could learn just enough about
their opponents' views to score well on such a test. But even cynically
pursued, learning to do that would train them to have those diverse lenses in
their toolkit, making them easier to apply and consider.

[1]
[https://www.econlib.org/archives/2011/06/the_ideological.htm...](https://www.econlib.org/archives/2011/06/the_ideological.html)

~~~
abathur
Link in parent is dead; looks like correct is:
[https://www.econlib.org/archives/2011/06/the_ideological.htm...](https://www.econlib.org/archives/2011/06/the_ideological.html)

------
roenxi
This article inspired me to go and compare the Barack Obama and Donald Trump
Wikipedia pages. It is layering subjectivity on top of subjectivity, but the
treatment of Trump does seem pretty fair and the talk page goes into
excruciating detail on any number of topics. The result being an excellent job
done of finding references and characterising the situation with a careful and
mature perspective.

I hadn't thought about it in that light before, but the highly partisan nature
of the Trump Presidency does seem to have resulted in a level of quality that
neither group of partisans would be able to achieve alone. Very encouraging
what good editorial policy can do.

~~~
zone411
That's not a representative example - those are extremely high profile pages
(maybe the highest). Wiki pages for less-known polarizing figures are far
below that standard.

~~~
roenxi
A sample size of 1 is not overwhelming evidence, it is true, but the page
being high profile is a point in favour not against the argument. But if
polerization did reduce quality, I'd expect to see evidence of it on Trump's
wiki page. That doesn't seem to be the case.

Wiki pages for less-known figures being to a lower standard is consistent with
the idea that popular interest + little consensus => high quality, rather than
an alternative such as general consensus on topic => high quality.

~~~
zone411
The edits to most popular pages will be most scrutinized. Obama's and Trump's
talk pages have the most revisions out of all Wikipedia articles [1] and are
second and third most viewed [2], so they are the hardest articles to edit in
a way that won't have hundreds of eyes on them right away. The Wikimedia
Foundation gets $100 mil in revenue per year and having these two pages look
non-neutral would be awful for their fundraising. I think it's just that
extremely high interest => usually high quality and polarizing topics have
lower quality than average. The consensus was never established on some quite
popular controversial articles e.g. [3] and this is heavily criticized by one
side of the argument [4].

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Database_reports/Pag...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Database_reports/Pages_with_the_most_revisions)

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

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

[4][https://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/9l30zj/how_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/9l30zj/how_i_joined_gamergate_a_wikipedia_gatekeeping/)

~~~
burfog
That is hardly neutral.

Right in the second full paragraph, Trump's page turns nasty. The fourth full
paragraph is nasty too. OK, seen enough...

Over on Obama's page, every one of the intro paragraphs is nice. I also note
the large section on religion that does not even acknowledge that famous
interview in which he slipped up and said "my Muslim faith".

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jayd16
In the book study mentioned at the beginning of the article, how is causality
proven such that politics guides scientific interest and not the other way
around? Isn't it a more natural conclusion that your politics is formed by the
media you consume?

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ggm
Wikipedia toxicity and edit wars?

~~~
mirimir
Sadly enough.

TFA states:

> On the contrary, they showed politically diverse editor teams on Wikipedia
> put out better entries—articles with higher accuracy or completeness—than
> uniformly liberal or conservative or moderate teams.

The problem is that many of Wikipedia's editor teams are not politically
diverse. And some, based on my limited experience, seem totally nonfunctional
and dominated by trolls.

Maybe polarization does generate high-quality articles about popular topics.
But for topics that aren't so broadly polular, toxicity and edit wars seem
more likely.

------
known
Wikipedia is the version of past events that people have decided to agree
upon.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
Where _people, version,_ and _agreed upon_ are, or can be, dynamic.

To wit, Wikipedia allows us to _view history_ , view / participate in _talk_ ,
and even _edit_ an entry.

Indeed, for any sufficiently complex topic, it would seem to me, there is
ongoing and lively debate, or at least discussion. Perhaps even new evidence
from time to time.

