Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Wikipedia co-founder laments loss of objectivity again

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We’ve had a lot of issues with Wikipedia over the years. It’s worth revisiting the fact that a founder agrees with us:

In a blog post last week, Sanger argued that Wikipedia has abandoned all neutrality in the name of avoiding what activist journalists call the “false balance” – the idea that not all opposing views of an argument should be given equal time. He goes through several pages to support his thesis, noting the rather charged language often employed.

Paul Bois, “https://www.dailywire.com/news/wikipedia-co-founder-sites-neutrality-no-longer-exists-favors-leftism” at Daily Wire

Here’s the post:

It may seem more problematic to speak of the bias of scientific articles, because many people do not want to see “unscientific” views covered in encyclopedia articles. If such articles are “biased in favor of science,” some people naturally find that to be a feature, not a bug. The problem, though, is that scientists sometimes do not agree on which theories are and are not scientific. On such issues, the “scientific point of view” and the “objective point of view” according to the Establishment might be very much opposed to neutrality. So when the Establishment seems unified on a certain view of a scientific controversy, then that is the view that is taken for granted, and often aggressively asserted, by Wikipedia.

Larry Sanger, “Wikipedia Is Badly Biased” at Larry Sanger Org

It’s not just that Wikipedia is anti-ID but the site seems to be dominated by stupid yay-hoos who can’t even disagree intelligently. One outcome is that, on many issues, one doesn’t get a good sense of what the live, interesting issues really are.

But it is amazing how many people that the Wikipedia trolls hate actually use their encyclopedia and consider it a source. Some of us have no idea why. There are lots of good sources out there, only a non-Google search away.

Also: Wikipedia erases list of climate skeptics

and

Wikipedians Diminish Another High Achiever Sympathetic To ID

Comments
Why do the social media, Wikipedia and other mass media outlet purposely undermine their own credibility by flaunting their biases and denying alternative viewpoints? It seems their progressive commitments outweigh their reason and honesty. Either that or they truly do not see their own clear biases and have come to think that belief = truth.Fasteddious
June 3, 2020
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It's nice to see more people recognizing the lack of credibility in Wiki.David P
June 2, 2020
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As with the biases of Google, FB et al, I'm not especially bothered by this bias in Wiki. The censorship isn't as bad as it's usually portrayed, and both sides are stretching things to make a point. The Wiki bias that bothers me is over-abstraction. Many articles on science and math are written almost entirely in LaTeX, so they're only comprehensible to people who are already within the tiny circle of subsubspecialists who don't need to read the article. Bumper sticker: If you can read this, you're too close to the subject.polistra
June 2, 2020
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