This is caused by how a source is deprecated. You have source deprecated by RfC, following a discussion/controversy (half of the examples probably came from the Sandy Hook edit war).

Then you have sources, the vast majority, that are de facto deprecated, hence are not on any list. If as an example, Counterpunch and AlterNet are never cited except following the 'verifiability policy', they are de facto deprecated, and if it's the case, the author never bothered researching his subject or even reading Wikipedia rules. Which would explain why thecritic is also de facto deprecated.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deprecated_sources

That thecritic article claims the listed questionable left leaning sites are heavily cited, is that not true then? Is there a way to search for this effectively?

The only page i found AlterNet cited was AlterNet itself, so i would guess no. If only the article provided sources, or at least example, but i guess it's too much to ask

To be honest, it's quite easy, wiki moderators use custom search engines to improve links (especially on heavily discussed or heavily viewed article), here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Advanced_source_sear...

if one of the engine return AlterNet or CounterPunch articles on political questions, it's probably "heavily used". If not, the author is a probably a liar, the editor certainly don't check articles and the publication is surely as worthless as AlterNet.

I checked the article again and it says the following right after the quoted part:

> An external links search shows around 2,580 [1] Wikipedia pages linking to CounterPunch, around 2,400 [2] linking to the Daily Kos, and around 1,640 [3] linking to AlterNet.

[1] https://archive.is/PWPNB

[2] https://archive.is/R19OZ

[3] https://archive.is/kNtgq

Considering how many pages there are on Wikipedia, and how many of these results are notes and talk pages, I think one can conclusively determine that these sites are in fact not "widely used" sources.

This isn't to say they're aren't questionable or shouldn't be filtered against of course (nor that they are and should be).

The problem I have with this kind of bias evaluation is fairly straightforward: what if a group of people aligned in a particular way engages in more "untrustworthy" speech than their counterparts? Follows then that a filtering that aimed to curb untrustworthy content would now be disproportionately filtering against their content in general, so now they can point at the filtering and call it biased, and even pass the smell test as far as the numbers are concerned.

Very curious things start happening when we look through lenses like these. It's very difficult to effectively discuss unfortunately too, without getting into any catfights.

> The problem I have with this kind of bias evaluation is fairly straightforward: what if a group of people aligned in a particular way engages in more "untrustworthy" speech than their counterparts?

The article takes this into account: "but a similar standard has not been applied to lower quality, left-leaning sources such as CounterPunch, AlterNet, and the Daily Kos."

That is fine, but I think it's still important to recognize this. In my initial reading, the numbers comparison stood out a lot more from the thread starter's comment than the rest for example, which is a problem if perpetuated without the rest. In a sense, mentioning the numbers in the way it was mentioned almost invites misinterpretation, I'd say.

The amount of deprecated sources doesn’t tell you anything about any bias without the number of allowed sources.

Here's the list, have a browse and try to find any that are (US) conservative and green ("generally reliable").

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Per...

There's a few economically conservative sources (Economist, WSJ, etc) but I don't think there's any politically conservative ones.

The source bias is a big problem but it goes beyond that. The various groups of people who have power within Wikipedia simply create content with their personal bias. Look at how easily Wikipedia editors throw the conspiracy theory label on everything they disagree with politically, for example.

While there is plenty of baloney on the left, like quantum consciousness and crystals etc. it isn't held up as being proudly wrong. Biden's HHS secy. wasn't a Reiki Master even if Reiki Masters are leftish. RFK Jr. is proudly a kook, regardless of how right or left he is.

It just isn't symmetrical.