Loss of Neutrality at Wikipedia

[Michael]

I'm going to put this thing about wikipedia here. It's an article from one of its founders, Larry Sanger, about its loss of neutrality, which has been a complaint for several years.

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

He provides some prominent examples in the articles about Presidents Trump & Obama and ends with this:

It is time for Wikipedia to come clean and admit that it has abandoned NPOV (i.e., neutrality as a policy). At the very least they should admit that that they have redefined the term in a way that makes it utterly incompatible with its original notion of neutrality, which is the ordinary and common one.4 It might be better to embrace a “credibility” policy and admit that their notion of what is credible does, in fact, bias them against conservatism, traditional religiosity, and minority perspectives on science and medicine—to say nothing of many other topics on which Wikipedia has biases.

Of course, Wikipedians are unlikely to make any such change; they live in a fantasy world of their own making.5

The world would be better served by an independent and decentralized encyclopedia network, such as I proposed with the Encyclosphere. We will certainly develop such a network, but if it is to remain fully independent of all governmental and big corporate interests, funds are naturally scarce and it will take time.

[origami_itto]

Doesn't the intellectual dark web have it's own factopedia?

[Peacedog]

I can't say Wikipedia was ever really neutral.

Anything remotely embarrassing to big name celebrities in their prime, or leading members of Democratic politics, were routinely edited out of bios unless completely overwhelming. Likewise, anyone right of Che Guevara could be endlessly slandered and Wikipedia wouldn't do a thing about it.

I've used them for looking up sources on mainstream medical/pharmaceutical information and they are generally correct.

Outside of that, I routinely use Wikipedia as an example of why people should publish in hardcopy as well as e-format. Pro-censorship narrative directing authoritarians like Wikipedia can "edit" whatever you've written into something completely different and you have nothing you can do about it. With hardcopy, people have to actively track down what you've written and burn it.

[Michael]

Doesn't the intellectual dark web have it's own factopedia?

No idea bout that (essentially left-wing) group's version, but there is something new created by Vox Day, a right-winger, called infogalactic. It's got a pretty solid article on The Shining.

Outside of that, I routinely use Wikipedia as an example of why people should publish in hardcopy as well as e-format. Pro-censorship narrative directing authoritarians like Wikipedia can "edit" whatever you've written into something completely different and you have nothing you can do about it. With hardcopy, people have to actively track down what you've written and burn it.

I used to appreciate wiki because you could look up something in Chinese or English, then switch to the other language for a very thorough translation. The unpredictability of not knowing when the Great Firewall of China was or was not blocking a particular article, or the site in general, added a kind of lottery element to the searching.

Wiki is still good for getting reference info. on films when you don't want to deal with imdb having become yet another web site that obscures and makes it difficult to access the info. you want, when compared to how it was before the corporate buyout.

[Trick]

Wikipedia is no longer accessible here, initially I was annoyed but ok with it now. Anyway, the Chinese wasn’t impressed when I could show them that my dad has a small wikipage,..so good it’s gone