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How to get bias into a Wikipedia article
- tantalor 13y agoAre 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 13y agoI 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 13y agoWhat are the alternatives to Wikipedia?
- praptak 13y agoThe 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 13y agoI 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.
- Livven 13y agoI used to check page discussions too but noticed that it's usually just a few people arguing back and forth over the same few points, leading you to believe an issue is controversial when in fact it is not – often it's just one person who keeps repeating junk in order to pollute the talk page, and if you don't know enough about the subject these things are hard, if not impossible, to spot because of the fake politeness, rationality and sources employed. The linked article also mentions this tactic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ravpapa/Tilt#Use_the_talk_page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ravpapa/Tilt#Use_the_talk_...
- ycitm 13y agohttp://www.conservapedia.com/ http://www.conservapedia.com/
- adamnemecek 13y agoFor anyone not familiar with conservapedia, keep in mind that half of the site is supposedly written as satire that the original creator is unable to recognize. It's debatable whether at that point it's still satire though.
- ninjin 13y agoWell, if anyone wants a very practical lesson on bias I can highly recommend: http://www.conservapedia.com/Conservapedia_proven_right http://www.conservapedia.com/Conservapedia_proven_right http://www.conservapedia.com/Conservapedia_proven_wrong http://www.conservapedia.com/Conservapedia_proven_wrong I sometimes wonder if someone would end up with a better world view by reading http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com
- camus 13y agosounds like a republican think tank with a web 2.0 twist...
- pella 13y agofederated wiki http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/07/wiki-inventor/ http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/07/wiki-inventor/ HN : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4199260 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4199260 from the Wired article: "The federated wiki is an attempt to solve these problems. As a starting point, he has built a new piece of software — dubbed The Smallest Federated Wiki — to demonstrate the concept. The radical idea of the wiki was to put an edit button on every page. The radical idea of the federated wiki is to put a “fork” button on every page." "The similarities between the federated wiki and GitHub are not coincidental. “The radical code sharing that’s implicit to GitHub was an inspiration,” Cunningham says."
- spion 13y agoMy alternative is Wikipedia minus humanities topics. Much cleaner.
- tommorris 13y agoNot all humanities topics are badly covered. You just need to apply common sense.
- Mikeb85 13y agoCritical thinking. Read both sides of every discussion. The truth is usually somewhere in the middle.
- tommorris 13y agoSometimes things are multidimensional. And sometimes the truth isn't in the middle.
- GabrielF00 13y agoI've been following and editing articles in this topic area for about 10 years. Not only are there factions of editors representing both sides of the issue, but there have been generations of editors who have passed through these articles.
- losethos 13y agoGod is perfectly just. God said "Oil funny, hopefully."
- thaumasiotes 13y agothis 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 13y agoIt 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 13y agoI 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 13y agoSomehow I can't shake off the feeling that this article itself has bias. So meta.
- Xylakant 13y agoIt 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 13y agoWhat 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.
- Xylakant 13y agoI know what you meant: The examples the article cites are biased - most of them stem from one side of the conflicts. The article actually discloses the authors affiliations at the end. But the techniques it shows are not only used by one side and the article never claims that they are. So in itself it is educating the reader to keep an open eye whenever they read a (wikipedia) article. It helps you to avoid biased articles from both sides and that seems to be the authors primary intention.
- James_Duval 13y agoMost 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 13y agoIt looks pro-Israel to me.
- ars 13y agoFor 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 13y agoYeah but each side will still try to edit the opposing sides point of view to ruin it.
- highace 13y agoOr they'll try and one-up each other, creating exaggeration.
- jeltz 13y agoThis is an excellent way to create false dilemmas. Often there are not two points of view but a multitude.
- jrochkind1 13y agoTalking about Israel/Palestine in particular, a book of history was actually published based on that approach: http://www.amazon.com/Side-Parallel-Histories-Israel-Palestine/dp/1595586830 http://www.amazon.com/Side-Parallel-Histories-Israel-Palesti... It is an interesting idea. You may find that book interesting.
- Tloewald 13y agoThe problem with this idea is that the truth lies somewhere in between two distorted extremes. (There's a similar problem with Common Law.) This is one of Chomsky's central points in Manufacturing Consent -- the two parties can argue over -- for example -- Obamacare, when in fact a clear majority of the US population would rather see something like the Canadian healthcare system which is both "more extreme" and off to the side of the "debate".
- mogrim 13y agoWhat'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 13y ago> 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.
- mproud 13y agoDon’t feed the trolls.
- alan_cx 13y agoAt the risk of doing so..... Are you suggesting that having a different opinion is trolling?
- DanBC 13y agoClimate 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.
- Shivetya 13y agopolitics, 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 13y agoThat is a bit too harsh. But at a minimum -- check the references on those subjects.
- glenra 13y agoYou 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)
- acqq 13y agoMy 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_views http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein's_religious_vie... "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 13y agoI 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 13y agoI 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.
- V-2 13y agoHasbara strikes again? :)
- berntb 13y agoNot Pallywood, then? :-)
- contingencies 13y agoPolitics 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 13y ago> 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/climategate-the-corruption-of-wikipedia/ http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100020515/...
- fetbaffe 13y agoSometimes 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 13y agoStep 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...
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- jrochkind1 13y agoIn 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 13y agoThanks, 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 13y agoWell, 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.
- dthunt 13y agoI 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?
- HPLovecraft 13y agohttp://cryptome.org/2012/07/gent-forum-spies.htm http://cryptome.org/2012/07/gent-forum-spies.htm
- vezzy-fnord 13y agoHonestly, 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.
- innino 13y agoIn 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 13y agos/wikipedia/any media/
- cgore 13y agoAnd this is why trying to keep to some mythical "Neutral Point of View" is impossible.
- thaumasiotes 13y ago> 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? I need to echo my sibling commenters. You can't know that. You can't know that because it is; there's no other way for text to be.
- MattGrommes 13y agoThis 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.