Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2018-03-29/In the media
The media on Wikipedia's workings: the good and not-so-good
Wikipedia wars
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) recently reported on the "Wikipedia wars" in which they say fringe views "outstrip Wikipedia's capacity to police its content". The article is very critical of Wikipedia, saying "the free encyclopedia's openness and anonymity leave it vulnerable to manipulation by neo-Nazis, white nationalists and racist academics seeking a wider audience for extreme views". The Wiki community's own User:Doug Weller is quoted in the article as saying that the nature of Wikipedia leaves it very susceptible to manipulation by the alt-right and others. The report also quotes Magnus Hansen (User:Maunus) who says the encyclopedia's policies are "more oriented toward conduct than content", making it "hard to get users blocked or restricted for consistently providing ideologically skewed content". The journal Intelligence was held up as a demonstration of a questionable source for theories that made it into Wikipedia's article "History of the race and intelligence controversy". According to the SPLC article, POV-pushing racialist academics and others win battles by wearing a skin of academic neutrality and wearing down others in "tedious and frustrating debates or tie up administrators in endless rounds of mediation". In addition, SPLC says that false weight is given to fringe theories; the specific example of overrepresentation of Pioneer Fund theories was given. Other problems cited included the use of sockpuppets and meatpuppets to "win" the Wikipedia content war and content forks to preserve fringe content in the face of deletion.
Copying from Wikipedia
In what is seeming to sound like a broken record, plagiarism from Wikipedia has been reported yet again. This time around, lawmakers from Okayama Prefecture in Japan submitted reports about their recent trip to the United States that had passages copied from Japanese Wikipedia. Of the "13 reports, 11 were more than half identical" The Mainichi reported. The lawmakers did not deny the allegations, saying, "As a general rule, when writing reports, we weave together publicly available facts, and it's permissible for us to quote other sources. There are no explicit rules on writing up the reports, and so there are no problems with rule violations."
In brief
- Wikipedia Zero ends: TechCrunch and Engadget were among the news organizations reporting that the Wikimedia Foundation ended their Wikipedia Zero project.
- Humanity in a Picture: Wired reported on the struggle of Wikipedia editors to find the perfect image representative of all humanity on the page of a Human. They eventually picked the image shown. The article praises the editors for their efforts to account for biases – and to encapsulate the human race in one photo.
- How the page on a gun was taken over: The Verge contends that the Wikipedia article "AR-15 style rifle" has been taken over by gun enthusiasts, who are working in WikiProject Firearms to keep any mention of mass shootings off the page. Editor's note – the page was moved from "Modern sporting rifle" on February 24, and is move-locked.
- A uniquely Swedish idea: The Economist writes about an edit-a-thon run in collaboration with Wikimedia by Swedish diplomats in 54 embassies on International Women's Day. Further information: Wikipedia:Meetup/NYC/WikiGap.
- On editathons: The Las Vegas Sun commented that since 2013 "more than 7,000 people have created or improved more than 11,000 Wikipedia articles in a series of annual [sic] events with outposts around the globe."
- AI editors?: The Register mentioned that Google Brain has created artificial intelligence capable of editing with reasonable skill. Has the day come when AI will replace editors on Wikipedia? Not yet. But maybe we should start working on attribution policy for AI-generated article content just in case.
Discuss this story
Our future AI overlords
Wikipedia already has a policy in place that, if it doesn't already address the majority of concerns about AI-assisted or entirely AI-created content, would still be an excellent starting place: Wikipedia:Bot policy. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 19:59, 29 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The "Bryan Dunsheng" guy in the comments of the SPLC article seems to have a... um... problematic history. lo prenu .katmakrofan. (talk) 01:58, 30 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I was surprised at the depth of the SPLC story. Wikipedia criticism stories are usually more hyperbole than substance, but this author seems to have done their homework and it was a legitimately insightful article. Kaldari (talk) 17:44, 30 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I really enjoyed the Wired article on the how the photograph that appears in the Human infobox came to be. Thank you for sharing – Ianblair23 (talk) 04:48, 31 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
WP, targeted by SPLC
After reading SPLC's article, what I found most disconcerting 🚩🚩 was their comment about WP's perceived vulnerability and its juxtaposition to the comment by our own Doug Weller: I'm of the mind that any extremist view, regardless of one's political or religious affiliation, can be problematic but our 3 core content policies serve as a preventative. What exactly is rightwing populism, and why was it singled out? I've also noticed that any RS that tends to lean right, even a little, is automatically considered by some to be unreliable whereas left-leaning sources are automatically considered reliable, regardless of context or bias; and yes, there is clearly a double standard. I also saw nothing in the SPLC article about alt-left vandalism and bias, so are we to assume the left can do no wrong and the only bias that exists in WP is "right-wing bias"? 🚩🚩
WP doesn't "police" it's content, and SPLC's assumption of an works both ways, so why does that article target only the right? Who exactly determines what constitutes a "fringe perspective"? That sounds more like what happens in "censored police states"...NOT in an encyclopedia that rejects censorship and is dedicated to freely sharing knowledge from a WP:NPOV. We review articles and collaborate to achieve NPOV, we don't "police" anything. WP must never lose sight of its mission, which is NOT to WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS, WP:SOAPBOX, or WP:ADVOCACY. In fact, our BLP, NPOV, OR and V policies are forthright, and while there may be a few ambiguities here and there, we've always managed to work through them. On the other hand, SPLC is a social justice advocacy that uses "litigation, education, and other forms of advocacy" to achieve their goals of "equal justice and equal opportunity"; a worthy cause indeed, but I wonder why SPLC decided to target WP? Was there a particular article that got their attention? Isn't it ironic that they would express their concerns over outside influences on WP content while they attempt to influence WP content?
WP is not about promoting worthy causes, so I'm a bit confused over what SPLC hopes to accomplish by revealing some of the pitfalls we encounter as editors. I doubt many will deny that litigation is a scary and expensive process that is best avoided, (hell, just the thought of being drug to AN/I, AE or ArbCom has a chilling effect), so I can only imagine how it must feel to find oneself hounded by or confronted by a large pool of lawyers with seemingly unlimited resources, who have all of a sudden determined for whatever reason that you're a racist, or you support a fringe ideology, or the church you once attended is a hate group, or you're pushing a view they've determined to be harmful to society. SPLC has become a formidable power, and as history has demonstrated time and again, "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Let's hope that isn't the case here. When I read statements like "ideologically skewed content", and "manipulation by the alt-right and others", I usually step back and try to figure out exactly what such terminology means. Without diffs for support, how can one know the intended context? What on earth does "manipulation by the alt-right and others" actually mean? Who are others, and how does one come to know it's manipulation when we AFG? Whose POV determines that it's manipulation? Is it simply a matter of a liberal POV vs a conservative POV? Who says one is right and the other is wrong?
SPLC itself has not been free of controversy, especially considering some of the individuals/groups on their list of "Hate and Extremism"...like Ben Carson for example, which they eventually retracted. While I believe that advocating love for all humanity is a commendable and worthy cause, it is neither WP's obligation nor responsibility to advocate for or against it. Above all, I draw the line when hate and separatism are used as the means to justify the end. Atsme📞📧 20:39, 31 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Edit break
It was investigative reporting, and quite spot on, when it comes to racialists and fringe science. It was not Wikipedia being "targeted by SPLC". The latter sounds too much like a conspiracy theory. K.e.coffman (talk) 23:27, 1 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Investigative reporting, K.e? Are you referring to this NYTimes article? Oh, wait...that piece in the NYTimes article wasn't included. Perhaps you're referring to the journalistic opinions that were cherrypicked from certain RS that best fit the Racial views of Donald Trump (which are actually the views of everyone else and how they perceive his racial views)? Are you referring to this Fox News article (forgive me for using what some consider profanity) and the 2005 Obama-Farrakhan photo? Oh, wait - that info wasn't included in the article, either. Hmmm...my apologies...what investigative reporting are you referring to? Let's see...should we go back in time to 1994? Interesting how that article doesn't quite corroborate with this article, or numerous other articles of late...but of course none of that matters as it pertains to the WP article about the Racial_views_of_Donald_Trump#Reactions by the Congressional Black Caucusarticle, right? Anyone who needs more RS, left or right leaning, can obtain them at the TP of that article, and form their own opinions. Oh, and please, if you get a chance, let me know how many center-right or even center RS are cited. Atsme📞📧 00:23, 2 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]TechCrunch story removed
No idea why TechCrunch pulled their article on the end of Wikipedia Zero, but it's archived here. Adrian J. Hunter(talk•contribs) 07:07, 4 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]