> Sightings in northern Mexico and the southern United States have been verified as canids afflicted by mange.[2] According to biologists and wildlife management officials, the chupacabra is an urban legend.[3]
And then you go to the article for horses and...hmmm, no citations referencing articles written by those who argue horses aren't real. Oh, so nobody's ever seen something they thought was a horse but actually wasn't? Why won't Wikipedia present both sides? Why is the existence of horses taken for granted?
Larry Sanger apparently co-founded Wikipedia but I've somehow never heard of him before. Not sure how that escaped me.
He's apparently famously critical of Wikipedia. The majority of this article seems to complain about giving facts undue prominence over a "balance" of viewpoints.
What's the opposing viewpoint to the truth? Lies?
(And his political bias really shows. The Obama article is too positive. The Trump article is too negative. The article about abortion doesn't say how evil it is. And the global warming and vaccine pages don't report enough on "minority viewpoints". It's amazing how consistent the beliefs of the far-right are.)
From my non-expert perspective, Wikipedia is doing a surprisingly good job. Even this article actually gives me confidence.
Yep. I was hoping this would be about e.g. Wikipedia silencing any mention of that one rich guy who married his own daughter and other cases where Wikipedia is not holding to its stated policies, but the examples in this article only seemed to validate the notion that Wikipedia might actually be neutral.
They exist on far more than just less popular topics. You just never see them. Anything even slightly right of center tends to get censored for hate speech.
I don't know how to put this nicely, but i would not say "a neutral point of view" is synonymous with "the center of the Overton window in the United States".
Any self-moderated online forum will eventually skew to the standards of those invest the most time in that forum. You can't expect otherwise really.
I also take issue with Sangers pointing out that scholars wouldn't phrase something in a certain way, or make a certain claim. There's no claim that Wikipedia has scholarly credentials, quite the opposite in fact.
If you're using Wikipedia for anything but a blurb or jumping-off point on a given topic, then the joke is on you to be honest. It's certainly nothing worth getting wound up about.
This article is insane right-wing propaganda, and if it were written by any other person, would not be appropriate for Hacker News. The only reason it makes sense here is that the fact that the author believes this nonsense is noteworthy (and alarming).
"Neutral" does not mean "every opinion is taken seriously." The opinions that this article claims that Wikipedia is "biased" against are obviously and factually false, and in most cases actively dangerous to human lives, Western democracy, and/or the continuation of the human race.
>The global warming and MMR vaccine articles are examples; I hardly need to dive into these pages, since it is quite enough to say that they endorse definite positions that scientific minorities reject.
There is no credible scientific presence, even a minority, that believes that anthropogenic climate change is not a real and present threat, or that vaccinations cause any serious harm. Those are crackpot conspiracy theories. It would be non-neutral - and dangerous both to Wikipedia's credibility and to human lives - to treat them otherwise.
>The Barack Obama article completely fails to mention... Benghazi
...but there is a link to "the Benghazi attack" in the infobox
>AP phone records scandal
...but there is a subsection about "Government mass surveillance", which links to a larger article.
>or, of course, the developing “Obamagate” story in which Obama was personally involved in surveilling Donald Trump
...because nobody, not even Donald Trump, can explain what "Obamagate" supposedly is. All it appears to mean is "Obama was bad". The idea that it's specifically tied to surveillance of the Trump campaign - which was completely justified by the numerous and court-proven connections between that organization and Russian intelligence - is a a fabrication of this particular article.
>Wikipedia frequently asserts, in its own voice, that many of Trump’s statements are “false.” Well, perhaps they are. But even if they are, it is not exactly neutral for an encyclopedia article to say so, especially without attribution.
That's not how it works. Trump lies. He lies blatantly, and often. He claims things that are obviously false, and he does so with an unbelievable frequency. A large fraction of the things he says in public are either factually false or total nonsense. To say anything else would be incomprehensibly biased in the other direction.
> A large fraction of the things he says in public are either factually false or total nonsense. To say anything else would be incomprehensibly biased in the other direction.
The point is that it's not for Wikipedia to say that a person lies. Instead, it needs to point to specific factual instances and quote experts when bringing the idea together.
You're right, an article that simply said "Donald Trump is the 45th President of the United States, a far-right-wing conspiracy nut, and a habitual liar" would be, while accurate, not particularly useful. But obviously that's not what it actually says. Let's take a look, shall we?
Here are the occurrences of the word "false" in Wikipedia's page on Trump, as of today, excluding where it's clearly quoting a claim by a third party without Wikipedia appearing to support that claim (e.g., "the suit [against Trump University] alleged that the company made false statements and defrauded consumers"). The words "lying" and "lie" do not appear in the body of the article.
> Trump has made many false or misleading statements during his campaign and presidency. The statements have been documented by fact-checkers, and the media have widely described the phenomenon as unprecedented in American politics.
This is in the intro paragraph. It's not locally cited, but it's a summary of the article to come; there's an exhaustively referenced section later.
>Journalist Jonathan Greenberg reported in April 2018 that Trump, using a pseudonym "John Barron", called him in 1984 to falsely assert that he owned "in excess of ninety percent" of the Trump family's business...
Citation for the conversation provided, and the fact in question is trivially checkable.
> Fact-checking organizations have denounced Trump for making a record number of false statements compared to other candidates.
Three citation links provided.
> At least four major publications... have pointed out lies or falsehoods in his campaign statements
Multiple citations provided, with a quote from the LATimes in the page body ("Never in modern presidential politics has a major candidate made false statements as routinely as Trump has.")
> Throughout his presidency, he has repeatedly and falsely characterized the economy as the best in American history.
Citation to WaPo fact-checker provided. That the economy in 2016-2018 is not in any way other than SPY highs the best in American history should not be controversial.
> As president, Trump has falsely claimed he saved the coverage of pre-existing conditions provided by ACA, while his administration declined to challenge a lawsuit that would eliminate it.
Citation link to Politifact provided. It would also have been an option to cite Trump's own Twitter feed here.
> Trump falsely asserted that his administration was merely following the law [in separating families at the border].
Many citations provided, with a (cited) explanation that Trump explicitly ended a previous policy which "had made exceptions for families with children."
> falsely claiming "Anybody that wants a test can get a test [for COVID-19]," even though availability of tests was severely limited.
Multiple citations provided for the statement having been made, and for it obviously being a lie.
> False statements
Section header, with a link to a separate (also extensively sourced) article.
> As president, Trump has frequently made false statements in public speeches and remarks.
Three citations to NYTimes and LATimes fact-checkers.
> His falsehoods have also become a distinctive part of his political identity.
Citation is to a New Yorker analysis article, which is a bit odd, but that article is itself well-sourced. In any case, this is not a particularly controversial statement - that the things he says are false is well established in context; that those statements are part of his identity is something he'd probably agree with.
> In September 2016, he acknowledged that Obama was born in the U.S. and falsely claimed the rumors had been started by Hillary Clinton during her 2008 presidential campaign.
Citation to NYTimes provided for the fact that he said it. No citation should be necessary for the fact that Hillary Clinton did not start the birther conspiracy theory (which has its own Wikipedia article).
> Many of the assertions he tweeted have been proven false.
This is in a brief section specifically about his Twitter use, so it's not a non-sequitor. Citations provided to NYTimes, WaPo, Chicago Tribune fact-checkers.
> Cohen said he had made the false statements on behalf of Trump
Citation provided, and this is in respect to statements that Cohen pled under oath to be lies.
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...and that's it. With one potential exception, every time that Wikipedia says in its own voice that Trump (or one of his associate) lies, it is well-sourced, specific, and pertinent. No need for concern trolling.
Wikipedia could of course instead say "Trump said X" without pointing out that X is ludicrously and dangerously false, but that would be a lie by omission, and Wikipedia would be less valuable as a source of information for it.
> Wikipedia frequently asserts, in its own voice, that many of Trump’s statements are “false.” Well, perhaps they are. But even if they are, it is not exactly neutral for an encyclopedia article to say so
Reporting the fact that someone has lied, in this case repeatedly, is neutral. And the author not liking that Wikipedia reports those facts is not evidence of Wikipedia’s bias.
There are plenty of faults with the site’s moderation but this is not an example of them.
Being legally allowed to do something doesn't make it morally or ethically okay. Wikipedia is not absolved from criticism just because they aren't breaking the law.
I think this article is silly, but I'm responding to you in a more general sense.
The problem is that Wikipedia masquerades and is portrayed as though it’s just an online encyclopaedia that can be trusted by one and all.
Most HN readers know otherwise and have a pinch of salt on hand if they use it but your average high school student isn’t going to be aware of the systemic flaws of Wikipedia and I doubt their teachers do either.
Why was this post flagged? It’s really sad that the common theme in HN is anti-censorship but at the same time most of the base heavily disapproves of content that doesn’t fit their ideologies or narratives.
Sanger has some really great ideas, apparently. From his linked ballotpedia article on neutrality:
> "A disputed topic is treated neutrally if each viewpoint about it is not asserted but rather presented (1) as sympathetically as possible, bearing in mind that other, competing views must be represented as well, and (2) with an equitable amount of space being allotted to each, whatever that might be."
Because, yes, we should definitely give as much space to viewpoints that the earth is flat as to those that say the earth is round.
I think an article is treated neutrally when the person I agree with screams a lot and throws furniture at the dissenters until they curl into a submissive fetal position on the floor and admit they have lived hollow fruitless lives.
I assume Sanger will update whatever lies you’ve referenced to spend equal time on my perspective.
You should definitely mention it, and fully describe the belief without editorializing. If you don’t, it’s difficult to justify calling it an “encyclopedia”.
Why is the article so negative here?
They describe it as a "legendary creature". Uh-huh.
Meanwhile, on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horse ...no mentions of horses possibly being other things. Why? What are they hiding?
> Sightings in northern Mexico and the southern United States have been verified as canids afflicted by mange.[2] According to biologists and wildlife management officials, the chupacabra is an urban legend.[3]
And then you go to the article for horses and...hmmm, no citations referencing articles written by those who argue horses aren't real. Oh, so nobody's ever seen something they thought was a horse but actually wasn't? Why won't Wikipedia present both sides? Why is the existence of horses taken for granted?
It's shameless censorship, and it won't stand.