Wikipedia's “moderate yet systematic” liberal citation bias

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2023-02-04/Recent_research

by akolbe • 3 years ago

42 12 3 years ago

en.wikipedia.org

Domobran7• 3 years ago

I am not certain it is just "moderate", but it definitely exists.

Manuel_D• 3 years ago

Wikipedia's bias is more prevalent on specific pages, or collections of topics. Many pages have zero or near zero bias. You're not going to have much bias on scientific topics like, say resonant structures.

It's a lot more prone to bias on biographical topics, where senior editors can essentially suppress any negative coverage, or promote embellished facts about a person. Take a gander at the talk page of controversial articles, or more specifically the history of the talk page since talk pages themselves get pruned and censored.

akolbe2• 3 years ago

I agree. However, I would add that there's an equal risk of biographies being slanted negatively. Cf. this week's article by Russ Baker:

https://whowhatwhy.org/culture/why-we-should-be-wary-of-wiki...

Or this one about "revenge editing", published in Salon:

https://www.salon.com/2013/05/17/revenge_ego_and_the_corrupt...

As for bias, the thing with Wikipedia is that it can be incredibly patchy. Overall, in the English Wikipedia, the bias is undoubtedly slightly left of centre, but you may also have areas that swing the other way. Just yesterday, for example, a study appeared in The Journal of Holocaust Research alleging that Wikipedia's English-language coverage of Holocaust history is systematically distorted by right-wing Polish editors:

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/25785648.2023.2...

Similarly there have been allegations that nationalists and historical revisionists hold sway in the Japanese Wikipedia:

https://slate.com/technology/2021/03/japanese-wikipedia-misi...

The Croatian Wikipedia was acknowledged by the Wikimedia Foundation itself to have been in the hand of right-wing extremists for about a decade:

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Croatian_Wikipedia_Disinform...

Wikipedia is vast. The amount and direction of bias can vary from language to language, from article to article, even from paragraph to paragraph.

nhchris• 3 years ago

Your post is incredibly enlightening. This study, that looked at 30 million citations, found left-wing bias, even after controlling for news media factual reliability.

Yet media only (or mostly) report anecdotal examples of right-wing bias.

I will add, that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods & errors. —Thomas Jefferson

drak0n1c• 3 years ago

The co-founder of Wikipedia, Larry Sanger, has written on this topic repeatedly.

https://larrysanger.org/2020/05/wikipedia-is-badly-biased/

https://larrysanger.org/2022/03/why-neutrality/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0P4Cf0UCwU

orra• 3 years ago

https://larrysanger.org/2020/05/wikipedia-is-badly-biased/

Mmm, in this polemic, Larry Sanger complains that “[Wikipedians] live in a fantasy world of their own making.” Yet, in the same polemic, he believes conspiracy about the MMR vaccine, and asks for religious scripture to be treated as fact.

He says he asks for neutrality, but perhaps he is being reductive in his definition of neutrality.

mansion7• 3 years ago

WikiMedia is known to have paid "edit-thons" to edit their site.

These are grants given to organizations, primarily of a certain political bent, with the express purpose of creating and editing content. And when such grants are given out on this manner, it's hardly a surprise when the desired outcome is achieved.

ThrowawayTestr• 3 years ago

This is obvious if you've read an article on any even sightly controversial topic.

Know Your Meme is less partisan.

human• 3 years ago

If you think you hold the truth, you don’t. If you think your position is unbiased, you’re wrong. We are all flawed and ignorant humans and recognizing it is the first step to enlightenment.

egberts1• 3 years ago

For a very long time since 2004, is a real struggle to get “Deaf” to be recognized as a culture on Wikipedia.

But these Wikipedia authors seems hell-bent on medical approach and total ignorance, not to mention that Wikipedia wants their preferred but offensive “hearing-impaired” over our preferred “hard-of-hearing”.

So, a bunch of us Deaf Wikipedians still got overridden by these “Liberal” moderators wearing pink/purple hair, multi-piercing and what nots.

Even deleted my drafts under my User: folder without my permission on various Deaf things. (only Deaf History made the cut).

I’ve. since stayed clear of Wikipedia and their progressive armies.

askin4it• 3 years ago

Always a lot of drama at the Project Veritas article if you want to see their techniques in action.

Wikipedia's “moderate yet systematic” liberal citation bias

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