Talk:Examples of Bias in Wikipedia

Unprotected by User:Ed Poor

Archives

Religious affiliation of Wikipedians

I edited several wikipedian user templates so that templates identifying one with religion a or atheism etc. will result in you being put in that category for example several atheist wikipedian user templates now put the user in the category Category:Atheist Wikipedians, if he/she puts the template on their userpage, revealing our current estimated amount of atheist/ and others is greatly underestimated there is 1722 atheist Wikipedians of which 17 are objectivist. Also we forgot agnostics there is 515 of them numbering about as much as the christian sample of wikipedia alone. There should be a part on the picture where it reveals the sample size. that means there is 2222 atheist or agnostics out of our sample wow! Way more than the sample for christians Please update the picture showing religious affiliation of Wikipedians--Java7837 16:22, 28 February 2008 (EST)

Actually, I'd like to know where that graph came from in the first place. It was put there by Wahrheit, but I've not seen any explanation of where the figures came from. Unless Wahrheit can explain that, I think the graph should be removed as possibly bogus. And by the way, the graph does include agnostics, and how does 515 outnumber mean "about as much as" 789, the figure shown for Christians? Philip J. Rayment 21:32, 28 February 2008 (EST)

As there has been no explanation of the origin or basis of that graph, I will remove it as I suggested above. Philip J. Rayment 19:25, 10 March 2008 (EDT)

"Wikipedia has been called the National Enquirer of the Internet:[1]"

I'm removing this claim because the source is very flimsy. An inactive blog written by a self proclaimed "eccentric" isn't a powerful enough position to put such a quote in the banner. Qc 18:57, 9 March 2008 (EDT)

Graph: Number of people claiming a faith = 2179; Number of atheists = 1508.

Is it just me, or are there more people of faith on wikipedia than atheists?

The graph shows that the number of people claiming a faith = 2179 whilst the number of atheists = 1508.

That's 60% believes, versus 40% disbelieves.

Is wikipedia in fact "faithist"?

It makes me wonder if we have any statistics regarding the number of atheists on Conserapedia versus the numbers from the faith groups?

I really hope that Conservapedia (unlike wikipedia) is not bias to any one faith group.

It would be a sorry day for "The Trustworthy Encyclopaedia" if it was dominated by any one faith group; would that be health, surely we wouldn’t want any one group’s view to dominate the others …

Well lets hope not ...

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Qgobo (talk)

Conservapedia is a conservative Christian resource primarily, I believe. That is the main viewpoint espoused, and I think the stated purpose.--TomMoore 23:07, 9 March 2008 (EDT)

Tom, isn't that rather the point, wikipedia isn't a "Christian resource primarily", and thus it should be allowed to express a view other than the one seen here. If bias means subscribing to primarily one doctrine, then wikipedia is less bias than conservapedia. Wouldn't a better title for this page be "Where and how Wikipedia differs from Conservapedia"? However, perhaps your broader point is that no one here is receptive to my point of view so I should gently move on. Qgobo 23:51, 9 March 2008 (EDT)

Faith is a uniquely Christian concept. It is being used incorrectly above.--Aschlafly 23:10, 9 March 2008 (EDT)

Jews, Hindus, Muslims would be interested to know that. --KimSell 10:22, 10 March 2008 (EDT)

Aschlafly - please read "people of faith" in the above comments to mean "non-atheists". —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Qgobo (talk)

That's a meaningless category. It's like making a category of all voters whose last name begins with "A". They disagree among themselves.--Aschlafly 00:03, 10 March 2008 (EDT)

Not true - this article is about how atheists bias wikipedia. Thus, comparison with the group “Non-atheist” is not arbitrary selection at all. It is the logical selection of the group of people on wikipedia who are not atheists i.e. the opposite group to the atheist group.

I believe what you really dislike about my point is that christians have been lumped-in with the other faith groups! If this is your point then forget the atheist and focus on the “non-christians” on wikipedia as a group, then you can see the christians are sorely out-numbered and that wikipedia is blatantly anti-christian website (despite being the largest faith {non- atheists} group on it).

Also, if you do not view the “other faith groups” as proper “faith groups” why are they even on your chart? Why not have “christians vs atheist” or “christians vs non-christians” . Either of these would seem more logical based on your statements above. - Qgobo 00:33, 10 March 2008 (EDT)

The meaning of "faith" is something on which I disagree with Andy. So my answer is that you can't divide the groups into "faith" and "non-faith". They all have faith: Atheists have faith that God doesn't exist.

Further, the group "non-Atheist" is just as arbitrary as "non-Christian", "non-Muslim", "non-Jewish", etc.

The claim that "wikipedia is less bias[ed] than conservapedia" is a very doubtful one, given that it treats the atheistic view of origins as fact and the biblical view as pseudoscience.

Qgobo's comment that we don't want the encyclopedia dominated by one faith falsely presumes that the one faith is not the correct one.

Philip J. Rayment 01:27, 10 March 2008 (EDT)

Very well put, Philip, without conceding your broader definition of faith. Your observation is insightful given your broader definition.--Aschlafly 08:52, 10 March 2008 (EDT)

People for the American Way

Granted that Wikipedia does not use the word "liberal" when describing People for the American Way, but it also does not use the word "conservative" when describing the National Right to Life Committee. Wikipedia's conservative bias perhaps? Blinkadyblink 23:33, 9 March 2008 (EDT)

That does look biased. Good catch, except realize Wikipedia editors think "conservative" is pejorative term.--Aschlafly 23:45, 9 March 2008 (EDT)

Good thing this site shows it's better by not simply inverting that. Barikada 01:28, 10 March 2008 (EDT)

Why some of these problems don't count

Biases such as a lack of Biography on conservatives, here is the soltion. ADD THEM! An expert (presumably a conservative) has to write the article. There are more bios on Liberals because there are more people writing about them. Seperating to another website will not encourage what you believe to be true! It means that conservatives and Liberals stay wrong about things. Go and add the Bio, don't write it here!

Number 50. Dismisses the banner saying that an article doesn't represent a world view, and you argue that there is no world view. By your own admission, there is no one view that represents all people of the world. Due to this, it would be necessary to tell people when something is Western centric, or American Centric. An article on Gun law, for example, could not be reliable from an American view because (unlike many countries) guns are supported in the constitution. 50 isa contradiction.

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Margheritapizza (talk)

No, you're wrong. Adding a biography on a conservative can result in its deletion or redirect by the Wikipedia police, even though Wikipedia has thousands of entries about obscure liberals.--Aschlafly 12:12, 10 March 2008 (EDT)

WP: Sexist?

Wh...what? How does that prove anything? Then again, it IS pretty much on-par with the rest of the petty claims on the page... Barikada 17:12, 10 March 2008 (EDT)

Reversion

I looked up WPs Hamas article, and it describes them as a militant organization, with the rider that the US state dept etc etc as per the linked claim. 10px Fox (talk|contribs) 18:40, 12 March 2008 (EDT)

Partially true; to quote the article: "Hamas was created in 1987 by the terrorist Sheikh Ahmed Yassin." More to the point, Wikipedia's article on Al-Qaeda directly calls it a terrorist organization with no peddle-footing around. Therefore, the cited quote is still false in that it specifically says Wikipedia does not call Al-Qaeda a terrorist organization. The quote is false and should be removed. Deweyman 23:05, 12 March 2008 (EDT)

Scratch that. The "Hamas was created in 1987 by the terrorist Sheikh Ahmed Yassin" quote was just added by an IP address today and could possibly be reverted. However, the Isreali Media quote is still wrong due to the Al-Qaeda issue, as much as I agree of Wikipedia's bias. Deweyman 23:13, 12 March 2008 (EDT)

I removed the article again today. If someone were to look up Wikipedia's Al-Qaeda article and discover that we were perpetuating false information, it would damage our credibility. The truth alone is an incredibly strong case against Wikipedia, so we don't need to give anyone reason to believe otherwise. Deweyman 22:04, 16 March 2008 (EDT)

You deleted an accurate quotation of an observation that is substantially true. In the Al-Qaeda entry on Wikipedia that you cite as a counter-example, Wikipedia uses the term "militant" repeatedly to describe the organization and only uses the term "terrorist" in the context of official government descriptions of the organization.--Aschlafly 22:54, 16 March 2008 (EDT)