They would have much more credibility if they were to have equal representation from both sides of the political spectrum, and also include equally represented opposing views in articles for controversial subjects.
> They would have much more credibility if they were to have equal representation from both sides of the political spectrum, and also include equally represented opposing views in articles for controversial subjects.
"Both sides probably have some good points" or "the truth is likely somewhere in the middle" are guidelines that are wrong often enough that they're not very useful.
Indeed, when one side argues for dialogue, human rights, cooperation, peace and maybe a bit of socialism, and the other side argues for kicking immigrants, building an ethno-state where anything manufactured on foreign soil is heavily taxed, and the poor are left to starve to death, the middle ground really isn't the right answer. Middle grounds are rarely conducive to any intellectually honest discussion and this can clearly be seen in American politics: where the GOP has been sliding more and more into the right, the Democrats have followed, trying to capture the moderate Republicans that don't agree with the new "extreme" GOP.
There aren't only "two sides", as much as American conditioning may have you believe. And if you want true representativity, you get problems like this: https://youtu.be/cjuGCJJUGsg?t=182
> They would have much more credibility if they were to have equal representation from both sides of the political spectrum
Politics does not only consist of "two sides", framing it like that is a very US-centric way of going about it.
Btw; Anybody who thinks Wikipedia is biased on politics should really take a stroll trough the self-declared conservative opposite to Wikipedia; Conservapedia, which features some of the most delusional content I've seen on the web.
>They would have much more credibility if they were to have equal representation from both sides of the political spectrum, and also include equally represented opposing views in articles for controversial subjects.
Would you expand on who, exactly these "both sides" might be?
In the US, the "sides" are a center-right party (the Democratic Party) and a far-right party (the Republican Party). Focusing on two right-wing parties isn't "equal representation."
In a broader context, "equal representation" would include the far left (Anarchists, hard-core Communists, left Libertarians like myself, etc.) the center (Social Democrats, US Democratic Party, UK Tories, etc.) and the far right (US Republican Party, the Polish Prawo i Sprawiedliwość , French National Front, Hungary's Fidesz, actual Nazis, etc.)
There are examples of parties from the broader political spectrum in most countries, including the US (Green Party, American Socialist Party, American Nazi Party, etc.). Ignoring them is one of the issues with the US's two party system.
Pretending that the major US political parties represent the breadth of the political spectrum is self-delusion at best, and willful deception at worst.
I think the root problem is that Wikipedia was created by a couple of Objectivists and they projected that philosophy (belief in a universal Reason) onto its structure.
Randians essentially believe there is only one correct opinion (i.e. that which is true according to universal Reason) and every bona fide Objectivist will (eventually) arrive at that same opinion. Otherwise, they must be misguided by ideology or something. Therefore let's make sure only Reasonable content lands on Wikipedia.
The real world doesn't work like that.
Wikipedia would be better served if it presented data in the format "According to X, Y is true" and make no a priori claims about veracity. Right now, Wikipedia is all "Y is true" with the implicit assumption that it is backed by a so-called "reliable source", which results in horribly biased and misinformational coverage of many sensitive topics.
If you want to discard everything said by CGTN or RT or NYT, fine, but let's put that decision into the user's hands (literally, with cookie-based content filtering) rather than authoritarianly deciding what is best for them.
I feel like the line between Wikipedia and Objectivism is a bit of a stretch.
The key Objectivist principles are that are relevant to Wikipedia — realism and rationalism — are hardly the controversial parts of Objectivist philosophy. Moreover, they seem like appropriate a priori beliefs for an encyclopedia, given that the entire point of an encyclopedia is to be an accurate reference of objects and events in the real world.
I do however agree that the problem of trust and sourcing is a huge issue for Wikipedia, and speaks to a larger problem in epistemology that as our collective knowledge grows, we have to rely more and more on trust and appeals to authority, since most of that knowledge consists of things that you or I can’t easily go verify.
I was going to propose that perhaps Wikipedia should just tighten up their definitions of “trusted sources” rather than throwing out a priori notions of truth, but that would just be appealing to a different authority. Maybe that’s the best we can hope for, though?
> The key Objectivist principles are that are relevant to Wikipedia — realism and rationalism — are hardly the controversial parts of Objectivist philosophy.
On the contrary, I think the belief in a universal Reason is the root what makes it a ridiculous ideology. Way to go putting a postmodern veneer on Plato.
> Randians essentially believe there is only one correct opinion (i.e. that which is true according to universal Reason) and every bona fide Objectivist will (eventually) arrive at that same opinion. Otherwise, they must be misguided by ideology or something.
This is one of the big unspoken rules of HN also don't you think? I'm curious to see if anyone else engages with this one, because I think the reason-as-Truth framework is nearly pervasive and actively policed here.
