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Re:How Quora died by throw310822 on Saturday February 03, 2024 @12:08PM (#39242323)
A lot of Wikipedia entries have become extremely partisan, and kept that way by moderators who are deeply invested in certain narratives. I find it very disappointing that no countermeasures have been taken- afaik Wikipedia still works exactly like 20 years ago, a barebone wiki governed by a lot of obscure, complex and unstructured politics.

Granted, it might be the best possible way for an open-source encyclopedia to work. It is after all an incredible success. It's just pretty bad in some parts.

Re:How Quora died by apexalpha on Saturday February 03, 2024 @12:10PM (#39242344)
Could you point to some examples of partisan entries?
Re:How Quora died by throw310822 on Saturday February 03, 2024 @12:28PM (#39242567)
As one example, I wrote this comment a few weeks ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38974614

But to expand a bit, for example I'm annoyed at many of the entries calling their subject "conspiracy theory/ theorist". Not that conspiracy theories and their believers don't exist, but at this point it has become a highly pejorative and judgemental term to frame ideas and narratives that need to be stigmatized rather than explained. Passing judgements should not, in my view, be the primary focus of an encyclopedia entry.

Re:How Quora died by emj on Saturday February 03, 2024 @02:20PM (#39243773)
So climate change, is it surprising the thread went bonkers? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_J._Crockford

What ever I answer in this case the easiest reaction will be; for you will be to judge me and lump me together with what you cal activists, and for those activists it will me easiest to put me in the same conspiracy theorist group as you. This is not a problem with Wikipedia, this is a human problem.

While I also think that article is abysmal, it does give context what to expect from people posting stuff by her. The biggest problem with your complaint is that you are not linking to an alternative, just do a fast draft on Wikipedia remove everything that you feel is not relevant and link that. Sure it will be reverted but that is probably because you first draft will not be a good article, those are evidently very hard to write when people think so differently about something.

Re:How Quora died by mistermann on Sunday February 04, 2024 @02:45AM (#39248426)
> This is not a problem with Wikipedia, this is a human problem.

Wikipedia could be an excellent attack vector for sorting out human's heads at scale.

Re:How Quora died by logicprog on Sunday February 04, 2024 @07:50AM (#39249809)
Are any of the details that you were upset they included in her bio (e.g. that she's a contract scientist running a small business) incorrect or irrelevant? They certainly don't seem irrelevant to me, obviously they should explain what kind of scientist she is and what she does for a living — are you just mad because they happen to make her look like a less prestigious scientist and/or reliable source then you would like her to be?

Also they pretty clearly note that her doctorate in interdisciplinary studies focused on mammals as its subject, what would you have them do? Claim that her doctorate was in something it wasn't, instead of interdisciplinary studies, just to make her look better, because a doctorate in interdisciplinary studies with a focus on some particular thing is "essentially equivalent" in your mind to an actual doctorate in that thing? Or claim she focused on evolutionary biology, when not even her own blog bio claims it was about "evolutionary biology" (she implies it was about zoology or another similar field)? Why do you say evolutionary biology should be listed then? Is it just to make her sound better?

Likewise, why wouldn't the criticism section be mostly filled with what she's been criticized about the most? If most of her other work was unremarkable or solid and nobody criticized it, but she's gotten a lot of criticism for her climate change views, why wouldn't that dominate the criticism section?

And if she hasn't had much notable work outside of her business, books, dotgs, and polar bears, I'm not sure why you would expect her career or education sections to have a ton of other stuff? That's the stuff even herself bio on her blog focuses on. Like you look at the headings of her non-criticism sections and decry them as if they are obviously lacking or derogatory or something but if that's all her notable work is about, why wouldn't they be like that?

Like, your entire criticism seems at least to lack citations of why the material you are upset about shouldn't be there, and without them it really appears like you're just upset that a factual article about someone you are to some degree sympathetic with makes them look worse than you'd like.

Honestly this is my problem with a lot of people's complaints of bias. A lot of it boils down to "the facts make my side of the issue look bad, can you emphasize/deemphasize some facts for me so both sides seem equal?"

People seem to think that truly unbiased reporting makes all sides of a controversy seem equally correct and equally to have a point, but that is simply not true. Unbiased reporting is reporting the facts of the case, and if that happens to show that one side of a controversy is more correct than the others, then so be it. The job is to report the facts as best you can, and misrepresenting the facts and skewing their connotation or interpretation to make it look like a side of a controversy that doesn't have much going for it is equal to a side that has more of the facts on their side just in order to make everyone look equal would actually be biased, not the other way around. I'm not claiming the mainstream news media reports the facts of the case well, they don't, but they also fall afoul of this problem: on whatever issue the mainstream news media has decided they are going to be "impartial" on, every time they publish an article that is even slightly supportive of one side of the controversy, they feel it necessary to post an article from the other side of the controversy, even if that second article is a completely factually false, incoherent screed that has no facts or logic on its side, and treat it on supposedly equal footing in the name of impartiality. Or anytime they report on the issue they feel the need to use unnecessarily strained language to circumlocate around calling things what they actually are in order to prevent people from coming to the obvious conclusion the facts would lead them to, because that would make one side of the narrative be obviously more correct than the other, and you can't have that.

Re:How Quora died by throw310822 on Sunday February 04, 2024 @09:13AM (#39250328)
Ok, can you explain what is a contract scientist as opposed to a scientist? Susan Crockford on her blog defines herself as "a zoologist with 40 years of experience" and "former adjunct professor at the University of Victoria"- that sounds like a scientist to me, without any need for further qualifiers.

She also has a consulting company that specialises in identifying bone fragments of North American fish, birds and mammals- the clients are mostly universities, museums and park/ forest services. I don't see references on the company's page about searching in "the scat of wild animals for ... items", which seems at one time very specific and vague. Curious choice. (*)

More, just on the lede: "she is a blogger"- no, she also runs a blog, as many scientists do. "her blog posts on polar bear biology which are unsupported ..."- imprecise, we don't yet know what those posts are about- and yet we already know that they're "unsupported by the consensus". Ah, by the way- this is just wrong: consensus is not a support for anything- you might go with or against the consensus, certainly not look for its support.

The "Early life and education" section fails to mention the title of her doctorate thesis, but instead dedicates half of its seven lines to a completely out-of-context, minute controversy about what one "Lars Olof Bjorn" thinks of one line of one article by her in 2009.

Career section "Business" ends (after two lines) with the following sentence (again, at the same time very precise and vague): "Since the start of her career, she has worked primarily through paid contracts for specific work on a variety of topics". What is it even supposed to mean? You know, that would also apply to me. "Paid contracts" indeed, for "specific work" on "a variety of topics".

In the "Books" section, only one book is cited (Google gives me 5 or 6) and again, half of the space is dedicated to the criticism from a single person.

The "Polar bears" section is basically entirely dedicated to a controversy- and still we don't know anything about what Susan Crockford claims about polar bears, why she does it, what are her points, how does she go against the "consensus". Nothing.

I'll stop here. A cursory read is enough to understand that there has been no attempt whatsoever to approach this subject with a minimum of detachment- the entry almost reads like a parody, or a satirical piece. If you don't see it, I'm sorry, think it's a problem.

* If I can pinpoint what feels wrong with these statements, is the constant oscillation between extremely vague ("a small business", "other items", "known for posts about polar bear biology") and curiously precise ("contract scientist", "in the scat of wildlife", "gained her interest in elementary school") etc.

Re:How Quora died by wonderfulcloud on Saturday February 03, 2024 @02:24PM (#39243814)
Essentially any issue that relates to politics or geopolitics tends to have a strong left wing bias, as if it is written from the perspective of the left wing against the right wing.
Re:How Quora died by Angostura on Saturday February 03, 2024 @05:54PM (#39245603)
Or, your Overton window has shifted.
Re:How Quora died by Karellen on Saturday February 03, 2024 @05:59PM (#39245642)
Then again, reality has a well-known liberal bias.

;-)

Re:How Quora died by kikokikokiko on Saturday February 03, 2024 @06:28PM (#39245844)
Statistics tend to be reaaallly conservative then. That's why they should always be avoided when looking at demographics, or else reality would look bad you know.
Re:How Quora died by Apocryphon on Saturday February 03, 2024 @07:13PM (#39246111)
Actually, numbers run on a libertarian-communitarian spectrum
Re:How Quora died by ffgjgf1 on Saturday February 03, 2024 @09:46PM (#39247054)
So it would be centrist/moderate then, certainly not leftwing?
Re:How Quora died by function_seven on Saturday February 03, 2024 @10:08PM (#39247159)
Not if the Overton Window is out of whack. Reality could conceivably be to the left or to the right of what we consider the extremes.

What we label as “centrist” isn’t guaranteed to be the “actual” center of reality’s spectrum of ideology.

Re:How Quora died by johnnyanmac on Saturday February 03, 2024 @11:24PM (#39247600)
At least, the internet does. Providing labor el gratis apparently goes against their purview, after all. But they sure will complain about free labor
Re:How Quora died by edgyquant on Sunday February 04, 2024 @01:32AM (#39248104)
Not saying you do, but that certain folks believe this shows just how deep the capture of mainstream media and education by the left goes.
Re:How Quora died by wonderfulcloud on Sunday February 04, 2024 @11:59AM (#39251960)
The majority of the world is conservative. Technically the majority of the US is conservative.
Re:How Quora died by asveikau on Sunday February 04, 2024 @01:20PM (#39252815)
There are not really left wing people in US politics. Democrats are center-right. Some of that is the legacy of Bill Clinton and "triangulation".
Re:How Quora died by Aeolun on Saturday February 03, 2024 @08:17PM (#39246548)
Perhaps unsurprisingly left wing people feel more like being unpaid editors on Wikipedia.

Right wing people are too busy earning them sweet, sweet dollars.

Re:How Quora died by google234123 on Monday February 05, 2024 @05:14AM (#39259406)
This is a funny one - the editors have blocked the Mavels movie from being called a “bomb” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Marvels
Re:How Quora died by DarkUranium on Tuesday February 06, 2024 @09:22AM (#39274442)
I've noticed anything copyleft-related will have edits in favour of not copyleft (e.g. MIT-style licensing) reverted, even if the pro-copyleft arguments are patently false in that case, or otherwise biased (e.g. mentioning specifically copyleft, but not alternatives).

This is typically done in under the guise of notability ("GPL/copyleft is notable, other alternatives aren't").