Talk:Examples of Bias in Wikipedia

I think that we should call the page "Wikipedia."

Tim,

Thanks for your suggestion, but I'm inclined to disagree. "Wackypedia" conveys an important and valid point that merely calling it "Wikipedia" would not. --Aschlafly 22:54, 21 December 2006 (EST)

Man oh man! We are really beating Wikipedia up! Will N.

• Indeed. Dpbsmith 11:35, 6 January 2007 (EST)

Out of idle curiosity, is the important and valid point: "wikipedia is wacky"?

Ben

The point here is that if we want to be a credible website we should call things by their proper names. If you want to make the point that Wikipedia is waky or biased or whatever, do it in the body of the article. I think that if Wikipedia had an article on Conservapedia, but called it Conservastupidia, you would not like it, and would probably include it in your list of Wikipedia bias. --TimSvendsen 11:56, 6 January 2007 (EST)

I TOTALLY agree with Tim,

REPLYOK, Tim, you win. Go ahead and erase the "Wackypedia" references as you like.--Aschlafly 15:23, 6 January 2007 (EST)

Don't give in yet Mr. Schlafly :) I vote to definitely keep it Wackypedia. Who are we trying to appeal to here? The biased editors on Wikipedia? No, the Conservative editors elsewhere. We believe Wikipedia is wacky. Why try to sound nice? Also, why did we move all the examples of Wikipeda bias to another page? That is our view of Wikipedia. When people visit our Wikipedia page, we want them to see this. Don't put it someplace else that someone may not see it. Tim, who cares if Wikipedia puts an article up as Conservastupidia? Even if they wanted too they technically could not because of their no "personal attacks" policy. PhilipB 01:18, 8 January 2007 (EST)

Reply: If we call it "Wackypedia we hurt our own credibility. If we have a valid poit to make, we can make it without resorting to "personal attacks." (For lack of a better term) It is just acting immature to use namecalling instead of logic or truth to make our point. --TimSvendsen 10:56, 8 January 2007 (EST)

Counter: The "Wackeypedia" site is listed #2 in a Google search for "Conservapedia". But now that Wackeypedia has been omitted, many users who click on that link will be disappointed. This new piece of information may justify restoring the link. How about this: I'll redirect the link to "Wikipedia bias." Check this change out.--Aschlafly 16:58, 9 January 2007 (EST)

Gossip and vulgarity

The article states "Gossip and vulgarity are pervasive on Wikipedia."

I just tried an experiment. I clicked Wikipedia's "random article" link twenty times. I did not encounter any pages that I would describe as containing either gossip or vulgarity. I would be curious if others would try the same experiment and report their results. If you find one and are comfortable identifying which page contains the "gossip or vulgarity" do so, but of course do not if you think that the degree of vulgarity violates Conservapedia's standards.

Wikipedia's biographies, particularly of living people in the public eye, are more likely to contain unflattering material than some other sources. For example, the article on NPR news correspondent Nina Totenberg, mentions a plagiarism incident. Such biographies are usually subject to editing by many editors, and material of this sort doesn't usually stay very long unless a source is cited; in this case, a Wall Street Journal article. Dpbsmith 17:29, 7 January 2007 (EST)

Reply For starters, Wikipedia has no policy against gossip. That isn't just a matter of "editing by many editors." Gossip is not educational, and is often anti-intellectual. Look at 100 entries in the Encyclopedia Britannica and you're unlikely to see any gossip. Look at ten substantive entries in Wikipedia (other than the silly music/Hollywood/political stuff) and you're likely to see many instances of gossip. Also, I've noticed vulgar entries in Wikipedia that would never be found in a real encyclopedia, but it would violate the policy of Conservapedia to post examples here and they are not worth looking for.

Let's take your Nina Totenberg example. Here are the first five sentences:

Sentence one: Totenberg attended Boston University, and is the daughter of violinist Roman Totenberg, who is professor emeritus at Boston University and also teaches at the Longy School of Music.

Comment: why this detail about her father??? That's gossipy. The entry is about Totenberg, not her father.

Sentence two: Totenberg is the widow of the late former Sen. Floyd Haskell (D-Colo), whom she married in 1979.

Comment: That fact does not define Totenberg, and should not be the second sentence. Again, this is leading with gossip.

Sentences three and four: She married H. David Reines, a trauma physician, in 2000. On their honeymoon, he treated her for severe injuries after she was hit by a boat propeller while swimming.

Comment: This is really silly gossip at this point.

Sentence five: Totenberg began her career with the National Observer, from which she was fired for plagiarism in 1972.

Comment: That was over 30 years ago, and it exaggerates an incident concerning a couple of paragraphs. This is gossip.

One of the reasons people like Wikipedia is because it is so gossipy, without yet having the stigma of the National Enquirer. The same people would blush at the suggestion of reading the National Enquirer, which has higher standards than Wikipedia.

Disclosure: Totenberg interviewed me once on NPR. --Aschlafly 20:39, 7 January 2007 (EST)

Six degrees of separation: Nina Totenberg was a high school classmate of mine. (I knew her about well enough to say hi to her in the hallway).

The policy relating to gossip is the "verifiability policy." Gossip may be included in Wikipedia if (and only if) it has been previously published by a reliable source. Dpbsmith 21:03, 7 January 2007 (EST)

That's interesting concerning your connection to Nina Totenberg!

Gossip may well be verifiability. I don't think it is unreliability of information that makes it gossip. The National Enquirer is reviewed each week prior to publication by high-powered attorneys, but it is still rightly scorned. So why isn't Wikipedia treated in the same light? It should be.

The Totenberg entry says, "She married H. David Reines, a trauma physician, in 2000. On their honeymoon, he treated her for severe injuries after she was hit by a boat propeller while swimming." Since medical records are considered highly confidential, I'm skeptical that claim is verifiable. I clicked the "reference" for it on Wikipedia and it is a "Site Error." There are many such "references" on Wikipedia. --Aschlafly 21:24, 7 January 2007 (EST)

Comment: Is the Totenberg entry the best example of wikipedia's gossip and vulgarity? The example above is only borderline gossip-ish. The other examples of "gossip" you gave are relevant biography information. I can see why you find "gossip" prevelant throughout wikipedia.

--Ben 22:49, 7 January 2007 (EST)

Reply: It is enough to observe that Wikipedia has no policy against gossip, other than a general (and relatively new but unenforced) policy against unverified claims. Gossip is welcomed by Wikipedia and, as with the National Enquirer, helps boost popularity with the general public.

In http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Seigenthaler_Sr._Wikipedia_biography_controversy

it was a hoax that created a backlash against Wikipedia. But perhaps the real problem was how Wikipedia welcomes gossip.--Aschlafly 23:14, 7 January 2007 (EST)

Another Comment: I suppose it is worth pointing out that gossip can be true and verifiable. Such a policy does harbor some worthless (though not necessarily bad) information.

--BenjaminS 09:58, 8 January 2007 (EST)

Another Point of View You can debate whether or not Wikipedia has a gossip problem all you like. However, that is not an example of Bias, just proof of alot of useless but not biased information. --TimSvendsen 10:14, 8 January 2007 (EST)

I agree. I think the "gossip" critique has more merit to it than the "bias" critique. I'd put it something like this:

Wikipedia's openness and lack of central authority is particularly problematical in the case of biographies of living people. Many people enjoy attacking public figures whose ideology they disagree with by inserting unflattering, scandalous, or spiteful statements into an article about them. As the Seigenthaler incident shows, such statements may go uncorrected for a long time. But even when Wikipedia works in the way its advocates say it is supposed to work, the result is only that the unflattering information is presented neutrally and is an accurate representation of material that has been published by a reliable source. There is no overarching, enforced policy like the New York Times' "all the news that's fit to print."

Thus, in the case of the Nina Totenberg article, it is possible to achieve a fairly stable consensus that an early incident of copied material should carefully attribute it to the columnist that reported it, accurately summarize what the columnist said, say where the columnist said it, not editorialize by calling it "plagiarism," and should include Nina Totenberg's own statement about the incident. What is not possible in Wikipedia is to declare that the incident is irrelevant, remove it from the article, and get the removal to stick. Dpbsmith 16:56, 8 January 2007 (EST)

Examples Of Bias???

Many of the entries in this article are examples of bias but some of them are just reasons why Wikipedia is not a very good website. Nos 3, 6, 7, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 16 and 18 are not examples of bias.

Beating Out Wackypedia

Hey me and Andrew were discussing, if we want to beat out the amount of entries that Wackypedia has, we have to really pick it up and start putting alot of post up. We need approx. 274 for 10 years and we just get to 1,000,100. Thats if they dont put up anymore post. We need to get out to others cause we cant do this by ourselves. If we are going to do this all by ourselves, each of us has to do at least 5 entries a day, that is everyone in the class. Just wanted to alert the community. We need to grow. Thats all folks! Will N.

Will, thanks for the encouragement. More postings are helpful, most of all to the person who is posting the information. He learns and won't forget that material for a long time. That said, the vast majority of postings on Wikipedia is silly trivial or worse, lacking in any real value. I bet 90% of Wikipedia could be removed without hardly anyone even noticing or caring. --Aschlafly 16:50, 19 January 2007 (EST)

Well, you already have more articles than the Scots Wikipedia, anyway. Dpbsmith 19:58, 19 January 2007 (EST)

Another thought:

Do you expect the growth of a project like Wikipedia or Conservapedia to occur at a constant rate? ("274 articles per day for 10 years?") Or do you expect it to be an example of a geometric progression?

If Conservapedia has 3,000 articles and grows at 70 articles per day, that means that it grows by 2.3% every day. I don't think it will really keep doing this, but let's suppose it did. My calculations show that 1.023³¹, that is 1.023 multiplied by itself thirty-one times, is 2.02. That means that the number of articles would double every month.

If the number of articles in Conservapedia were to double every month, how long would it take to reach a million? Dpbsmith 06:55, 20 January 2007 (EST)

• I think that our focus should be not on the number of pages, but on the quality of the pages. The number of possible useful, high quality pages is finite. We do not need to have a million pages if half of them are going to be controversial or useless. It is much better to have less pages and maintain our high quality standards. SharonS 07:53, 20 January 2007 (EST)

I agree with you Sharon, but disagree at the same time. We can make higher quality pages (which I have already seen us do), but lets make alot of them. Cant hurt us. It will only make us better. More pages, and higher quality. Thats what we should do. We have alot of pages (considering how long we have been around), but they are of a high quality. We need to keep doing this. On google if u punch in Online Encyclipideia, ours is not in the first 5 pages. We need to get more publicity. This is done by: 1. More terms and higher quality; 2. Sharing it with others. Thats all we can do for now. If there is anything else, add on to the list. Will N.

As a way of placing more information on Conservapedia and encouraging more posting by others, I've just added links to Conservapedia by other websites and posted my American History Lecture One.--Aschlafly 20:29, 20 January 2007 (EST)

...but Conservapedia does!

The article currently says:

21. Wikipedia's article about the late Senator John Tower includes this choice bit of gossip: "Senator Tower married Lila Burt Cummings in 1977. John and Lila Tower were divorced in 1987, and she died thereafter. As the embittered Lila lay near death from cancer, she refused to accept flowers sent to her by John Tower, according to Tower's former assistant Ken Towery." No real encyclopedia would print such silly gossip.

I have to point out that as I write this, there are currently two online self-described "encyclopedias" containing this item: Wikipedia and Conservapedia. I'm not sure how you can best deal with this particular Catch-22.

I took the liberty of rewording item 21 so that it does not directly retell the story. Dpbsmith 14:08, 26 January 2007 (EST)

P. S. There are two questions to be asked about this item: a) is it appropriate for an encyclopedia, and b) is it accurate? Looking only at the second question, I see that Wikipedia gives no source for the item, and a few quick searches on the Web and in Google Books don't immediately turn one up. I've marked the item in Wikipedia as needing a source, identified the editor who inserted the item, and left a note on his Talk page saying "I don't hold much admiration for Senator Tower, but an item like this really needs a good source citation." If a source citation isn't provided I'll remove the item, and if nobody finds a source, my removal of the item will probably stick. Dpbsmith 09:59, 26 January 2007 (EST)

P. P. S. The New York Times obituary for John Tower spells her name "Lilla," not "Lila," as the Wikipedia article did until a few minutes ago when I fixed it. The Times obituary does not mention the flower-rejection story, but does judge it appropriate to devote two of the article's twenty-one paragraphs to the topic "Bitter divorce in 1987," which is not irrelevant to his career since it says his wife's allegations "probably cost him the Pentagon post...." Dpbsmith 10:23, 26 January 2007 (EST)

P. P. P. S. As it happens I was able to find a source for the story myself, a newspaper article by Towery himself, so I added the source to Wikipedia's article. I expanded the quotation, because Towery's point was to illustrate Tower's civility toward his ex-wife. I added a note on the Wikipedia talk page saying I wasn't sure the incident needed to be in the article and asking for comment. Dpbsmith 14:08, 26 January 2007 (EST)

Move this page?

This page is no longer purley devoted to examples of Wikipedia's bias; I propose that we move it to "Reasons not to use Wikipedia". This title more accurately describes the page content.

Any thoughts on why we may want to keep the title as it is?

--BenjaminS 12:08, 26 January 2007 (EST)

Ben Franklin

How old was Ben Franklin when he was still a deist? To dismiss his conviction as "youthful" sounds like you are questioning the his maturiy-- implying that he was to naiive know any better and that he quickly turned from deism as soon as he gained experience. Unless this is strictly true I would requests removal of the adjective.

--BenjaminS 09:56, 29 January 2007 (EST)

I don't see how it matters how "youthful" Franklin was when he accepted and then abandoned deism, though I welcome someone else researching this.

Reply: Exactly my point! While doesn't matter how "youthful" he was (he may have not been youthfull at all), it does leave a false impression.

--BenjaminS 15:58, 29 January 2007 (EST)

Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington

I reverted back the edits that deleted the detailed description of how Conservapedia was censored by Wikipedia. Illustrating the mindset of the editors in control of Wikipedia is informative and interesting. --Aschlafly 15:11, 29 January 2007 (EST)

Reply: Unfortunately this example does not illustrate the mindset of Wikipedia editors. It shows that conservapedia is shallow-- citing the strange username of an editor as evidence of their bias; is there an inherent liberal bias in the use of a pen-name? Arguments such as this are diluting the good arguments against wikipedia and killing conservapedia's credibility.

--BenjaminS 15:58, 29 January 2007 (EST)

• Isn't "Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington" a literary reference? P. G. Wodehouse? Saki? Dpbsmith 16:32, 29 January 2007 (EST) Not quite, it's J. K. Rowling... he's in the Harry Potter novels. Dpbsmith 16:34, 29 January 2007 (EST)
  • Exactly. I was just coming on to say that. We have our own here at Conservapedia. We have a user called "Gothmog". --TimSvendsen 16:53, 29 January 2007 (EST)

REPLY But "Gothmog" does not exercise super-user privileges here and censor entire entries.--Aschlafly 17:06, 29 January 2007 (EST)

Reply The name of a user does not matter. Just because one of Wikipedia's editors happens to be a fan of the Harry Potter Book Series does not mean that he has some kind of bias. I think that you are just upset that the article on Conservapedia got deleted. (the merits of its deletion are debatable) The name of the editor is meaningless. --TimSvendsen 17:34, 29 January 2007 (EST)

Keep the thing up... it's perfectly acceptable. Who cares if people think we're shallow? PhilipB 17:52, 29 January 2007 (EST)

The point is that the name of an editor does not in any way' show that there is bias in wikipedia. --TimSvendsen 17:57, 29 January 2007 (EST)

Comment The main reason why this should be deleted is that it waters down the good arguments against wikipedia; this page has be come tedious and boring. Out of curiosity, why are the names "Gothmog" and "Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington" inappropriate for editors' use?

--BenjaminS 18:04, 29 January 2007 (EST)

REPLY: Censorship by an anonymous person is bad enough. But it is even worse when the censorship is by someone displaying a silly description of himself. It's not just his name that is silly, it is also how he describes himself. Another editor on Wikipedia displayed his praise of Chairman Mao on his website. Let's be candid about juvenile and liberal the Wikipedia editors are. They are nothing like real encyclopedia editors, or even the general public. --Aschlafly 18:13, 29 January 2007 (EST)

Reply He does not describe himself. And choosing a name from a novel is not necessarily juvenile and definitly not liberal. Also, it doesn't really matter what someone puts on their user page. I assume that admins are chosen based on their contributions to the website, and that is fair whatever their user name is --TimSvendsen 18:25, 29 January 2007 (EST)

Alot of the sections on this page are not really examples of bias. maybe the page should be split int 2 pages, one for examples of bias, and one for other reasons not to use Wikipedia. --TimSvendsen 18:28, 29 January 2007 (EST)

REPLY The reader can be the judge of bias. Personally, and I'm sure many would agree with me, I feel that someone who names himself after a character in a children's book (a book to which many Christians object, by the way), and also calls himself "Nearly Headless Nick", is not likely to be an informed, fair judge of someone else's work. Of course you're free to disagree with my conclusion, but censoring this information so that others would be unable to draw their own conclusions is unjustified. --Aschlafly 19:25, 29 January 2007 (EST)

• Well said Mr Schlafly... PhilipB 19:38, 29 January 2007 (EST)

Reply Nearly Headless Nick is the same character in the books as Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington. someone who names themself after a character in a book, is not more or less likely to be an "informed, fair judge of someone else's work" then anyone else. It is a logical fallacy to assume that an editor is bad just because you do not like their name. They do not give out admin priveledges at wikipedia arbitrarily, they are based on (correct me if I am wrong) the contributions of the user who wants to be an admin. It is not "censoring" to remove information from a list to which it does not belong. The user names of wikipedia editors is not usefull information, and does not need to be on Conservapedia. --TimSvendsen 19:42, 29 January 2007 (EST)

REPLYTim, you seem to be saying that the pseudonyms of users is NEVER useful information. But how about the name "poison pen" that invaded our site until I blocked it? How about the name "Antichrist"? Surely many names are indicative of the views of the users. What someone calls himself may tell us a great deal. Choosing a silly name from a Harry Potter novel increases the likelihood that the editor has views more like other Harry Potter readers than, for example, daily Bible readers. The Harry Potter name also suggests that the editor may be less than 16 years old. This is far from conclusive, but the probabilities do shift based on this information. Give the facts and let the reader draw his own interpretations. --Aschlafly 22:58, 29 January 2007 (EST)

REPLY Obviously a name like "antichrist" would be usefull information. It would say that the user was against christianity. I am saying that in this case the username is not very usefull, and clearly not an example of bias. What do you think are the views of harry potter readers? do you have any reason to believe that readers of Harry Potter generaly share the same views? What makes you think that this user isn't a daily Bible reader? Are you saying that most readers of Harry Potter are under the age of 16? Are you saying that people under 16 are not capable of being editors. Anyone who wants to know the facts about Wikipedia editors can look on Wikipedia itself. This is an unsubstantiated attack on an editor because of his username. If Wikipedia started attacking Conservapedia in a similar manner you would be up in arms about it. You would post it on the list of examples of Wikipedia Bias. --TimSvendsen 23:38, 29 January 2007 (EST)

FURTHER REPLY Many Harry Potter fans are under 12 years old. And if an adult editor is naming himself after a silly Harry Potter figure, then that is also worth knowing. If an editor deleting pages on Wikipedia called himself "Winnie the Pooh" or the "Easter Bunny" then that would raise some concerns. Does Wikipedia have an age limit on editors? Does Wikipedia have a requirement that editors be informed, or be objective, or even take their responsibilities seriously? It is startling that an editor having power to delete entire entries in Wikipedia names himself after a silly Harry Potter figure. By the way, I do doubt that editor has an informed understanding of the Bible, and I also doubt he even cares. --Aschlafly 02:39, 30 January 2007 (EST)