My favorite example of bias introduced to Wikipedia is by some obviously religious fanatics that managed to add the big section of "Religious views" to biographies of most of famous people of science, and then misinterpret their quotes to support the view that all were religious, in a sense of "supporting/believing in the existing religions."
"Albert Einstein's religious views have been studied extensively. He said he believed in the "pantheistic" God of Baruch Spinoza, but not in a personal god, a belief he criticized." And there's no citation re "pantheistic." That is, as stated the claim appears to support the view that there were Einstein's words that mention the "pantheistic" as the most important thing of "Spinoza's" God.
If fact, the only quote, of course not cited in Wikipedia, where Einstein explicitly mentions "pantheism" is apparently:
"I'm not an atheist and I don't think I can call myself a pantheist."
The only fair description would be "he was an agnostic" and that's all. Instead, the "pantheism" is effectively promoted before, making "agnosticism" his second choice, which it wasn't. Specifically, he quotes Spinoza in order to point to the previous thinker that rejected the belief that the soul exists separately from the body. That's why he mentions him (as seen in the full quote linked above).
He was frequently quoted to declare himself agnostic, whereas he mentions Spinoza's God only in one mail.
Still, try to remove obviously lying "pantheistic" pseudo quote/promotion from Wikipedia's texts about Einstein.
And the same thing is repeated for a lot of other scientists!
I find Neil deGrasse Tyson's case is particularly amusing, where he himself corrected it multiple times only to find it changed back to "atheist" (from "agnostic").
People often have very good reasons to pick the labels they do, but those reasons are often fairly nuanced. The only way to respect that nuance is to honor the label. And you don't even have to be Neil deGrasse Tyson to run into relabelling.
Whether that relabeling is done by a Pew poll that labels you as a religious person because you attended a single religious service one year because you were curious about an unknown slice of culture, or by a friend trying to soften your image by labeling you as something they think is less offensive, it's infuriating.
I can't imagine how frustrating this has to be for someone who actually has the burden of having a voice that people are interested in hearing; when someone reduces a careful and intimate response to a fairly personal question to not only a single word, but the wrong word.
The general thrust of Wikipedia policy is that on religion, sexuality and other similar issues, self-identity trumps all.
We've had all sorts of problems with this: there was an actor a few years ago who gave an interview to a British gay magazine talking about how he was out as gay. But then the prospect of him becoming big in Hollywood came along and his agent wanted to erase this, or sort of have it fade away into ambiguity. What do you do in those kinds of circumstances?
The flip side of that is I've cleaned up horrible biographies written by people who absolutely loathe particular people without even a faint hint of neutrality.
Why can't the people be simply exactly and fully quoted instead of having something else put in their mouth?
Why can't we see Einsteins quote from 1954 in the main article about him
"The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this. These subtilised interpretations are highly manifold according to their nature and have almost nothing to do with the original text"
instead of referring to "pantheistic" "Spinoza's God" out of his letter 1929 to interpretations of which he referred also in 1954:
"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."
Even where the quotes exist (the separate article) they are intentionally shuffled to appear that he at the end it's important that he believed in "Spinoza's God" (by placing that quote after the later ones and hiding the context).
The answer is: those that win edit wars are religious, and they try to obscure his words "The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses." If the "smartest man" says that, and they do believe in God, they feel "stupid," and they simply can't accept that, facts be damned.
Still, the subject here isn't the labeling and certainly not the emotional response to it, the subject is intentional manipulation of the articles where instead of using exact quotes of people and presenting the context something opposite is written as "interpretations" which are claimed to mean "the same" by the trolls who introduce them.
It's absurd that Neil DeGrasse Tyson's (or Einstein's) full exact sentences can't be quoted in the Wikipedia article about him exactly only when it's about the contested topics.
"Tyson has argued that the concept of intelligent design thwarts the advance of scientific knowledge."
Which as far as I see he didn't say in that specific form and which can even be interpreted by ID followers as "so he said that ID is stronger than scientific knowledge" (using the meaning 2 of thwart: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/thwart "To oppose and defeat the efforts, plans, or ambitions of").
Try to change that to his message that "ID is stupid" which would be less manipulative recapitulation:
With false first presentations of Einstein as "a pantheist" and Tyson as somebody who appears to acknowledge the strength of "ID"(!) at this moment religious fanatics obviously succeeded in their manipulative influence to Wikipedia articles.
No idea if the quote is accurate, but it makes sense to me. Consider the analogue: "the concept of Magick thwarts scientific progress." Or "pop culture celebtration of ignorance thwarts scientiofc progress."
It seems you're also trying to muddy the waters: a) It's not the quote (i.e. what somebody actually said or written) we discuss but the "interpretation" written by unknown or known Wikipedia troll b) The mentioned interpretation uses "the advance of scientific knowledge" not "scientific progress." Public is trained to recognize that being against the progress is bad, but the same detectors aren't triggered by "scientific knowledge" against which ID explicitly fights.
The only quote that can be properly written there in Wikipedia citing the video linked would be "Intelligent Design is philosophy of ignorance." That's what he actually said there.
The actual quote and the manipulative interpretation are by no means interchangeable.
I wasn't trying to muddy waters, I was trying to type on a phone, so I paraphrased from memory. The terms I switched are interchangable to me (anecdata).
ID absolutely does not vilify "scientific knowledge" per se. The whole point of ID is that it is a pseudoscientific rebranding of creationism, run by "Discovery Institute" that purports to find evidence for God.
To be fair, in that video he rejects the label purely on pragmatic grounds, because he doesn't have "the time, the energy" to deal with the "baggage" associated with it. His explanation of why he is not an atheist consists almost entirely of a description of the social stigma and unpleasant stereotypes associated with the word "atheist." It makes sense that people would challenge his self-labeling when he explains it in terms of a desire to avoid social bother.
It seems pertinent to note here that the opposite is true also. Many of the greatest [Western] scientist of history have been religious and/or believers in God and often have had religious support.
Galileo, Huygens, Liebniz, Kepler and Newton are the first few that spring to mind. It used to be that (some at least, I didn't do a survey) of the biography boxes included "religion" as a characteristic.
For these named at least their religious beliefs were an active and important element of their lives and places their work in perspective.
Personally I find it lacking wrt NPOV to not include that information in the biography box.
---
In response to your specifics re Einstein the cited wikipedia page includes (and included on 18 Sept the quote you claim to be missing (at least a form of it):
>"Your question [about God] is the most difficult in the world. It is not a question I can answer simply with yes or no. I am not an Atheist. I do not know if I can define myself as a Pantheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. May I not reply with a parable? The human mind, no matter how highly trained, cannot grasp the universe. We are in the position of a little child, entering a huge library whose walls are covered to the ceiling with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written those books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books, a mysterious order, which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of the human mind, even the greatest and most cultured, toward God. We see a universe marvelously arranged, obeying certain laws, but we understand the laws only dimly. Our limited minds cannot grasp the mysterious force that sways the constellations. I am fascinated by Spinoza's Pantheism. I admire even more his contributions to modern thought. Spinoza is the greatest of modern philosophers, because he is the first philosopher who deals with the soul and the body as one, not as two separate things.[19]" //
I don't think it does justice to Einstein's beliefs to say "'he was an agnostic' and that's all". For example the statement - though I've not looked at the wider context - that:
>"[...] Christianity as Jesus Christ taught it [...] is capable of curing all the social ills of humanity" Einstein "Ideas and Opinions" (1954), NY, Bonanza Books [via Wikipedia]
seems quite contrary to Bertrand Russell's position of whom it could equally be said 'he was an agnostic and that's all'.
So you are misinterpreting Einstein by modifying his sentences, the actual quote is from 1934 and together with the parts you omitted is:
"If one purges the Judaism of the Prophets and Christianity as
Jesus Christ taught it of all subsequent additions, especially
those of the priests, one is left with a teaching which is capable
of curing all the social ills of humanity."
Wikipedia at least didn't omit the parts that you do -- you omitted "If one purges the Judaism of the Prophets and" and "of all subsequent additions, especially those of the priests, one is left with a teaching" -- so you're more malicious in this occasion, intentionally omitting Einstein words which are important the parts of the whole sentence.
Completely different context. Try to purge the teaching of both from the later additions -- almost nothing would remain -- the earliest written records of Christianity are Paul's writings, and he was a main priest. The Gospels are even later written, obviously by priests too. The rest of the Bible is even later, everything written by priest. Of course, once the humanity would accept such a purge (to drop everything written by priests) it would result in much higher level of global consciousnesses and therefore curing of social ills.
And again the "Spinoza God" quote is published 1930, his 1954 response is clear "I do not believe in a personal God." and "If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it." That are his words in 1954 written by him directly, he died in 1955.
There was no malice I assure you. AFAICT my edit was entirely in line with what he said, as for example "as Jesus Christ taught it" already means "free of all subsequent additions" that part (for example) is just emphasis.
I read the quote as applying equally to either Judaism or Christianity but I can see how it can be intended to include both sets of teaching taken together. The only point of the quote was to show that he wasn't "simply an agnostic" in the same way that Russell was "simply an agnostic". That's it.
Can you demonstrate to me what malice I performed? Perhaps your massive axe got in the way while you were grinding it and you misread my comment.
Now you're paragraph beginning "Completely different context" absolutely does put words in to Einstein's mouth beyond that shown in the quote. Presumably you have an additional source you didn't mention that enlarges on the point made in that minute quote? A corollary of what you state is that none of the Gospels nor Epistles represent Christianity - how then did Einstein know what Jesus taught. Your interpretation makes the quote in question nonsensical.
"Christianity as Jesus Christ taught it" (object 2)
"of all subsequent additions, especially those of the priests," (of what for object 2)
(then)
"one is left with a teaching which is capable of curing all the social ills of humanity."
He didn't claim "to know what Jesus taught." He suggests the benefit to humanity in purging the teachings of all additions especially of those of the priests and prophets. That clearly means also to purge the teachings of Paul's writings and of Gospels as they were written by priests, and then of course of the rest of the Bible and everything written by Christians in the following 2000 years. In Judaism, that also means practically everything. Try it yourself. As soon as you can't believe the priests and use their interpretations you'll have to turn to the scientists or to use scientific methods yourself.
Well. Let's start with the Wikipedia version of the quote as if it were canonical.
>Nevertheless, he also expressed his belief that "if one purges the Judaism of the Prophets and Christianity as Jesus Christ taught it of all subsequent additions, especially those of the priests, one is left with a teaching which is capable of curing all the social ills of humanity."
The disjunctive arrives from the first comma and that there aren't any conjunctive prepositions linking your object1 and object2. Thus the disjunct statements combined in this form are
A) "if one purges the Judaism of the Prophets one is left with a teaching which is capable of curing all the social ills of humanity".
Wherein I'm not sure which group of prophets are antecedent here. "The prophets" in Christian theology refers to the minor prophets of the latter part of the OT.
and B) "if one purges Christianity as Jesus Christ taught it of all subsequent additions, especially those of the priests, one is left with a teaching which is capable of curing all the social ills of humanity."
As I said I accept the alternate reading that these two teaching, those arrived at through A and B, combined should instead be used to create the ultimate teaching.
However you appear to believe that he said it didn't create any teaching, it created an absence of teaching. You've heavily modified the scope of his intent without there being any indication as to how it should be modified. You say the Gospels were "written by priests" and so should be purged. Yet they are primary sources of what "Jesus Christ taught" (and indeed were not written by priests). He claims this process leaves one with an ultimate teaching. But your bowdlerised version of the methodology leaves one with nothing.
You appear to want this to say "imagine no religion" (or words to that effect), that such a thing would cure humanity of all social ills - despite this being outside of Einstein's area of genius I still can't believe he was such a fool.
Primarily the point was that based on my reading Einstein and Russell take importantly distinct positions, both agnostic. That categorising their attitudes to religion, and hence the scope of agnostic beliefs, as indistinct is unhelpful verging on disingenous. I'll hold that position for now unless you have much better arguments than you've so far put.
>Try it yourself. //
Ha. I became an atheist as a child until I realised that position is scientifically unsound. Going forward I studied philosophy, maths and physics. Then I became a Christian based on personal experiences.
Studying - and being presented as trustworthy - Haeckl and Hubble at high-school taught me not to trust someone for their reputation; neither the teachers nor the purportedly eminent scientists.
I use scientific methods which rather preclude me "turn[ing] to the scientists" who are as likely as any priest to have a bias. Ultimately I'm a pyrrhonist but practically, beyond first axioms [trustworthyness of sensedata, continuity of time dimension(s), and such] I'm a Christian as that is the empirical conclusion.
So you write a lot of text attempting to hide the fact that you are not capable of even trying to see how the Christianity would look like when purged of all additions, especially of those by priests. Paul was a priest. Authors of Gospels were priests from Jerusalem, Caeserea, Antioch, each with his own biases, who mixed different souces: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four-document_hypothesis
Do read a little of Biblical scholarship http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_studies, there are a lot of people who work to figure all that out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synoptic_problem
You're projecting. The passage gives no hints as to the opinions of Einstein on Pauline influence on Christian theology and in particular on the verity of the record of Paul's report of Jesus wrt the later named Christianity.
It doesn't matter one jot about _your_ argument - the point in contention is something entirely different, it is what Einstein referred to in a single line statement as the "Christianity as Jesus Christ taught it".
You wish to say that Einstein considered all the religious sources to be false, no? Then you leave Einstein saying that all that is required to cure all of humanities social ills is to teach nothing of Judaism and Christianity (all other religions would be allowed of course within this statement). Do you genuinely believe that to be first something Einstein would say and second to be true. It's laughably naive.
Your condescension does nothing to further your argument.
I'm going to end with this:
>'In an interview published by Time magazine with George Sylvester Viereck, Einstein spoke of his feelings about Christianity.[21] Viereck was a German born Nazi sympathizer who was jailed in America during World War II for being a German propagandist. At the time of the interview Einstein had been under the impression that Viereck was Jewish. Viereck began by asking Einstein if he considered himself a German or a Jew, to which Einstein responded, "It's possible to be both." Viereck moved along in the interview to ask Einstein if Jews should try to assimilate, to which Einstein replied "We Jews have been too eager to sacrifice our idiosyncrasies in order to conform."[21] Einstein was then asked to what extent he was influenced by Christianity. "As a child I received instruction both in the Bible and in the Talmud. I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene."[21] Einstein was then asked if he accepted the historical existence of Jesus, to which he replied, "Unquestionably! No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life."[21]' [ibid] //
That doesn't sound like the response of a man who is trying to say the gospels are all false. Perhaps these points represent different views at different times. But nonetheless the onus still lies with you to demonstrate your presented interpretation of the previously mentioned quote is correct.
My interpretation is of a man who categorically denied the existence of personal god, held a Newtonian belief in mechanistic causality which appears to some extent to contradict his own scientific revelations, admired Christianity as presented in the gospels but hated the later religious authorities that he saw as perverting Jesus message. A man who denied being atheist and always had a nagging feeling that there was some form of deity an author of the 'laws' that we reveal through our scientific endeavour.
And yes a person who's agnosticism was categorically divergent from that of Russell, ergo my initial comment.
Again you stick to the quotes from 1930 written by others about him. Jesus is "the personal god" to Christians, not just a human with the attractive message who doesn't resurrect. Einstein writes in his own book which he authorizes in 1949:
"I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the type of which we are conscious in ourselves. An individual who should survive his physical death is also beyond my comprehension, nor do I wish it otherwise; such notions are for the fears or absurd egoism of feeble souls."
and Einstein explicitly wrote in 1954:
"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated." (The texts written by others claiming that he was "believer" were published during his life too, just like Wikipedia does it now. The statement continues:)
"I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly." (That obviously refers both to the God of Old Testament and Jesus as Christians understand him "a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the type of which we are conscious in ourselves").
"If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."
Further on, also in 1954:
"The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this. These subtilised interpretations are highly manifold according to their nature and have almost nothing to do with the original text."
What's also interesting is the bias that appears when the same topic is covered in different languages. Take the English and Spanish articles about the Battle of Vitoria:
You don't need to be able to speak Spanish - just check out the list of the battle commanders. (And if you do speak Spanish, you can see how the description of the battle differs quite radically too...)
I'm not sure what the solution to this and the main article's problem is, though, other than vigilance.
> I'm not sure what the solution to this and the main article's problem is, though, other than vigilance.
Generally, it helps to not rely on a single point of information. The more sources and viewpoins you consider, the more accurate the picture becomes. Even reading very biased sources can help you get a clearer picture when you intersect their information with a source from the "other" side. Also, as long as you speak only one language, you will miss out a lot as the media copy from each other and there often is bias in the language itself. For example, consider how different the meaning of "liberal" has become in English and German, even though it meant the same originally. Or consider the fact that Germans tend to use faecal terms to curse while in English, sexual terms are more common. This can subtly influence the way we think about things. Generally, the easier it is to express a viewpoint in a language, the more prevalent that viewpoint becomes. For example, before the term "political correctness" was added to the English language, it was much harder to comlain about it.
I diverted a little from the original point. Considering multiple sources in multiple languages helps a lot.
"Shit" isn't uncommon, though. It seems to me that English-language cursing is pretty broad-spectrum. For the toe-stubbing situation, for instance, you have the scatological ("Shit!"), the religious ("Christ!", "Damn!"), the sexual ("Fuck!"), the anatomical ("Arse!", at least in the UK; I don't think "ass" is used that way in the US), the weird-hybrid-between-sexual-and-religious-and-ethnic-minority-abuse ("Bugger!"; look its etymology up some time).
Also a fair point, it was interesting to read "An Army At Dawn" by Rick Atkinson: generally most of the books on WWII that I'd read were by British authors, and there was a definite change of viewpoint (or bias) when reading an American author.
> I'm not sure what the solution to this and the main article's problem is, though, other than vigilance.
People with a mission to tell The Truth have a lot more patience and determination than a bunch of regular wikipedia editors.
Burn out happens a lot, and part of the reason is the constant bickering around every single edit to an article for years. Some edits are inconsequential, but poke the wikipedians making or defending those edits as biased and you're helping your biases stay. Goad and provoke those wikipedians and you get to disrupt ANI pages as well. (Luckily, most WP editors realise the hot button topics and tread carefully; leaving us with megabytes of meta discussion over -, --, --- etc.)
I guess WP could employ a small core of people to edit the articles, using a carefully crafted selection of sources; and to deal with propagandists. They'd be trained to use troll-defeating tactics and conflict resolution.
> People with a mission to tell The Truth have a lot more patience and determination
The Truth™ is usually biased. I'm not sure if that's what you wanted to express with your comment, but it's exactly those people who want to get out the(ir) truth who have the most patience and determination.
The current way certainly isn't working, and has left some areas of Wikipedia devoid of editors willing to put in the effort required to keep editing in the face of determined trolling.
Why would you consider this bias? Every country has its own viewpoint on history. The details of the American war for Independence are hardly interesting for every other country.
Spanish historians know more about spanish battle commanders.
Because it quite patently is. The English language article about the battle makes little mention of any Spanish contribution, and portrays it as basically Wellington and the British vs. the French; the Spanish article highlights the Spanish contribution, almost describing the battle as a Spanish victory with some help from the other allied forces. My gut feeling is that the English language article is more reliable - it includes a numerical breakdown of the allied army which (if correct) shows the relative unimportance of the Spanish contribution, the map of the battle shows the commanders were all British, etc. But of course, I'm English, and I bring my own bias to the table...
A good question, and one for a historian to answer - not me! The example I picked shows bias, but as I stated earlier I'm unsure as to which article is closer to the truth.
Just for the record, though, the English article includes 9 citations, including a primary source (Wellington's notes), while the Spanish article mentions 4 history books (and 3 novels and a comic) yet doesn't specifically cite them in the text. Again, I suspect the English article is probably more accurate, but as use of citations is also a characteristic of fraudulent scientific papers this difference certainly isn't a completely dependable indicator.
Theoretically you're right, and for a subject such as mathematics you may even be correct in many cases. But in practise (as my example shows) you're wrong.
this is at best a sub-point of the main article, but it's one that I find particularly chilling: if you want people to believe something, the easiest way to accomplish that is to lie to them. From the article:
"""
It is important to know, though, that in the battle over reliable sources anything goes - lying, trickery, the basest chicanery. Jaakobou complained that Peace Now - a group devoted to researching the expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank - had made up a citation from a government report on the West Bank settlement of Mitzpe Ha'ai that appeared on the group's website. "I went ahead and checked their claim that an official report requested by the Prime Minister stated something on Mitzpe Ha'ai. The Mitzpe was not mentioned in the original," he wrote in the discussion on the Reliable sources noticeboard. When someone pointed out the section and page where the settlement was mentioned, he claimed that the mention did not include the specific information that was included in the article. When the original passage was quoted in its entirety, he still didn't give up; he claimed that the addition of a satellite photo of the settlement on the web page made the citation unreliable ("citing the content to Peace Now is problematic, since they add their own words and images to wiki-reliable information").
The point is: never give up. If you don't win this time, maybe you will win next time.
"""
It does seem familiar. Almost as though the news recently may have featured a government somewhere somehow lying being called on the lie and then repeating this cycle a few times. </sarcasm>
I hope that these types of tricks start getting taught in schools so that young people learn to recognise them at an earlier age. More important than analysing Moby Dick.
I think similar types of tricks are taught in many U.S. school systems, but only as they apply to commercials. It would be great if critical thinking skills, in general, were taught. Schools would have to walk a fine line, though. Just as others pointed out bias in this article, parents and other "interested parties" would point out bias in the school's teaching - articles chosen for critical analysis, results of the analysis, the teacher's (perceived) bias. These battles are constantly fought at the textbook level: historical interpetation, too much/not enough multi-culturalism, evolution vs. creationism. ..
Besides, what you describe can't really be tested on a standardized, fill-in-the-bubble test. And to the extent that it can, there would be endless arguments about the correct answer.
Great suggestion, but hard to implement pragmatically.
It is very hard to determine if you are saying that Jaaakobou is dishonest, or of his opponents are. (It seems to switch at the end when the photos are mentioned.)
Which I suppose is all part of the fun of political debate...
The article makes it clear that Jaakobou is dishonest (which is a different concept from Jaakobou actually being dishonest, but if the part I quoted is true, I'm satisfied that he is). In the original there is formatting that was stripped out by my copy-paste into a hacker news comment. Finally, as I parse it, the text "citing the content to Peace Now is problematic [...]" is a statement that the article attributes to Jaakobou, not a claim by the author.
It certainly does and it never claims otherwise. However, even though it shows examples that are biased mostly to one side it points out and describes the techniques used to create the bias, so you're free to use the knowledge gained to help yourself recognize the other sides attempts at creating a bias.
What I meant is that it points out biased articles in a way that itself is biased. To be more specific, it seems to have a pretty strong pro-Israeli bias.
I know what you meant: The examples the article cites are biased - most of them stem from one side of the conflicts. The article actually discloses the authors affiliations at the end. But the techniques it shows are not only used by one side and the article never claims that they are. So in itself it is educating the reader to keep an open eye whenever they read a (wikipedia) article. It helps you to avoid biased articles from both sides and that seems to be the authors primary intention.
That is a pretty useless^H^H^H^H^H^H^H subjective statement. The author is clearly trying to alternate between examples for pro Israeli and pro Palestinian bias.
Well the user's name is Rav Papa, who is a well known Jewish roman-era scholar, which is one tactic he doesn't mention, press all your advantages, usernames are a great way to show fain to be one side but really be the other.
Lol, I wish you had looked at my comment history before you had said that. ( I too have been outed as a JUDEENRAT).
Personally I think he was attempting to be impartial though towards the end it became apparent that he was more pro-BDS than peace (now you know how I feel about this).
You are talking about bias in the "article level". There could possibly be a "topic-level" bias in the article, that is, if one side is currently winning the edit war, and the author (belonging to the other side) tries to spoil that by exposing the tricks used by his opponents. Heck, he could even be trying to conceal his "topic-level" bias by intentionally displaying "article-level" bias in the opposite direction.
Disclaimer: I'm only talking about a possibility. I'm not familiar with this topic. And BTW, I'd say this article is fine if it only has "article-level" bias.
Of course. I wonder if he'll (or is it bias to say he?) follow her own advice.
Rules of etiquette
Much has already been written on the subject of wikietiquette, and behaviors that are considered disruptive. As a propagandist, your only concern in this area should be not to get topic-banned. Remember that your objective is not to convince anyone of the rightness of your way. This is an impossible task and therefore a waste of time. Opposing editors will never be convinced by your arguments, and the best you can hope for is to get them neutralized by goading them into a gross violation of civility, about which you can then complain at Wikipedia:Arbitration enforcement. But even this is unlikely and risky, as the other players on the article talk page are probably just as savvy as you.
Editing styles of propagandists range from feigned extreme politeness (Jaakobou) to sarcasm and baiting (Supreme Deliciousness). This is largely a matter of personal preference, and really makes no difference to the end result.
There are, however, two principles that you should follow.
Don't budge
Compromise is for wimps. You have a message to deliver; don't let others force you into compromise.
Don't give up
If at first you don't prevail, you may decide to step out of the fray for a while. But always come back. Wikipedia editors come and go, but your cause is eternal. Follow Jaakobou's example: He was losing the battle for his biased lead at Gideon Levy, so he stepped out of the talk page before consensus could be reached. Without him (but with others more compromising), agreement was reached on the text of the article. Nine months later, Jaakobou returned and tried to reintroduce the same lead that had been rejected. When I said that there was a consensus on the wording of the article, Jaakobou protested that he was not part of that consensus and had never agreed with the wording of the lead as it stood. He was absolutely right - he ducked out at just the right moment, thus preserving his right to return and fight again. and again. and again...
Yes but the point of view of the bias is very interesting -- I'm guessing it's from a liberal/left-leaning Israeli, i.e. someone who is caught in the middle of two warring factions who take no prisoners.
Every article in the world is biased. Wikipedia is of course,but what is interesting in Wikipedia is not the articles themself, it is the discussions and debates.
Let's not even talk about TV, TV pure is evil. Internet is at least what we make of it. TV is a propaguanda machine that shapes and controls the world.
I ran into my first experience with this sort of thing while looking into Mormon initiation rites on wikipedia. I certainly understand why Mormons may be interested in keeping initiation secrets off of wikipedia, but wikipedia has no interest in censoring that information. And yet, at least the last time I checked, I had a very hard time finding that in part because of the mess of articles I ran across and the reshuffling of articles.
Is there an easy way to search for deleted articles and read the discussion history for them?
Sometimes I feel that I don't spend my time on earth in an optimal way. Then I read about people living their life by doing editing wars over a salad(!). Life is not that bad actually when I think about it.
Step 1, add a talk page about "How to add bias into Wikipedia" discussing bias from a very pro-Israeli point of view.
Seed distrust, misinformation and be obvious that this article is biased, make no attempt to hide it, this blatant display will despite the reader knowing about it, build trust in the article and writer. Its magnificent. Use this trust to point out the negative sides of the Arabs in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Step back and watch as the readers take your/the Israeli side, as the trust built from exposing bias is still valid as previously mentioned. Go Israel. There is no Israel lobby in USA, but there is an Arab one. Its called an Israeli salad not Arab salad. And so on...
In the OP, the first example he used was of 'pro-palestinian propagandists', which made me think like you, but as I read more, most of his examples are actually of misdeeds by 'pro-Israel' propagandists.
I suspect he's actually partial to the Palestinian side, actually, although he tried to use examples from both partisan sides to paint a general picture of propaganda on wikipedia.
(Disclosure: I personally believe that Israeli policies and practices toward Palestinians constitute apartheid.)
Well, um, of course not, especially since you need that careful reading and critical thought to identify the propaganda the 'other' side is trying to embed in wikipedia. Naturally.
Politics on Wikipedia is terrible. IMHO there are certainly organized covert groups (commercial and military) who are editing it on behalf of governments (and corporations) already. Basically it's a war of attrition, and those with resources win. It's very sad, looking at the spirit that Wikipedia emerged from.
In short, as Einstein said: Nationalism is an infantile disease; the measles of mankind. IMHO the OP needs to grow up and broaden their perspective. By distributing such rants (s)he is attracting interest in the deliberate abuse of Wikipedia for partisan goals, which is not in its spirit. It's not something to be proud of.
In a way it's quite terrifying to consider the possibilities of bias in Wikipedia. After all, if you're not an expert on a particular subject, how are you to know that even an article which seems neutral in content and tone isn't subtly selecting for and emphasising a certain portrayal of its subject? Tricky stuff.
> After all, if you're not an expert on a particular subject, how are you to know that even an article which seems neutral in content and tone isn't subtly selecting for and emphasising a certain portrayal of its subject?
I need to echo my sibling commenters. You can't know that. You can't know that because it is; there's no other way for text to be.
politics, Middle East, and environment, are three areas I only go to Wikipedia for dates of occurrence and names of those involved. All the rest related I assume is biased.
Need to look up a song and artist, anime character, or what years a car was available, I am pretty much going to trust what I read there, not so with much else anymore.
You also need to look at the discussion page to (a) see what points of view are being deliberately excluded by the biased editors, (b) find references to data on the other side.
(At least you need to do that on climate/environment - I've never looked into middle east)
I think it is irrelevant which side is making a bias into Wikipedia (everyone has a bias and the author of the essay is no exception). What is important is that such bias is made into Wikipedia and we need to be aware of, or careful about them. I guess proponents of alternatives to Wikipedia have something to say about them.
The best alternative to Wikipedia is Wikipedia plus a dose of healthy distrust for the content therein. Look up the edit history, check page discussions, verify the references. Do the homework and you should be safe.
If I look up, say, resistor colour codes, a car or TV show, the the info Im looking of is as good as fact. The colour codes are correct, the car specs should be pretty much correct, and the general TV info is correct.
If I know Im delving in to something opinion based, for example, political or general history, I treat it as a starting point.
Problem comes when the subject falls in tot he middle, for example looking up a person. Some of I I assume to be correct like date of birth, home town, etc. Or at least its probably as correct as anywhere else. But often trivial type thing turn out to be little more than folk lore. But, if that matters, its very wise to look for something the person's own pages, if they exist. Or at least google the claim to see if its likely to have weight.
So, I think its fair to think some subject are likely to be acceptable as fact, other not so much.
Part of me thinks there should be a separation between things that can be seen as fact, and things that are likely to contain some sort of bias. No idea how that can reasonably be achieved though.
I used to check page discussions too but noticed that it's usually just a few people arguing back and forth over the same few points, leading you to believe an issue is controversial when in fact it is not – often it's just one person who keeps repeating junk in order to pollute the talk page, and if you don't know enough about the subject these things are hard, if not impossible, to spot because of the fake politeness, rationality and sources employed. The linked article also mentions this tactic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ravpapa/Tilt#Use_the_talk_...
from the Wired article:
"The federated wiki is an attempt to solve these problems. As a starting point, he has built a new piece of software — dubbed The Smallest Federated Wiki — to demonstrate the concept. The radical idea of the wiki was to put an edit button on every page. The radical idea of the federated wiki is to put a “fork” button on every page."
"The similarities between the federated wiki and GitHub are not coincidental. “The radical code sharing that’s implicit to GitHub was an inspiration,” Cunningham says."
For anyone not familiar with conservapedia, keep in mind that half of the site is supposedly written as satire that the original creator is unable to recognize.
It's debatable whether at that point it's still satire though.
I've been following and editing articles in this topic area for about 10 years. Not only are there factions of editors representing both sides of the issue, but there have been generations of editors who have passed through these articles.
Honestly, the whole "neutral point of view", despite being a universal Wikipedia rule, is most prominent in the English one.
If you go read some of the Balkan Wikipedias, you'll have blatant nationalist propaganda and completely contradictory viewpoints. What one wiki will decry as chauvinism, another calls national identity. Most blatant is the propaganda in the Macedonian Wikipedia.
This is great. I'm honestly going to go over this with my 11 year old to complement the section of her Language Arts class on the media and advertising. Lots of great things to learn to watch out for in the news and general media, not just in Wikipedia.
The problem with this idea is that the truth lies somewhere in between two distorted extremes. (There's a similar problem with Common Law.) This is one of Chomsky's central points in Manufacturing Consent -- the two parties can argue over -- for example -- Obamacare, when in fact a clear majority of the US population would rather see something like the Canadian healthcare system which is both "more extreme" and off to the side of the "debate".
Indeed. If an article is an edit war, just split it into two articles or sections "Criticism" "Interpretation B". Admins put the hammer on editors who destroy instead of produce". Repeat as needed. We have the technology.
Climate change denialists or homeopaths or intelligent design proponents are not trolls, but the effect is pretty much the same.
You can generate megabytes of meta discussion by sticking to a fringe viewpoint and exploiting the weird wiki culture. At that point it doesn't matter if you sincerely believe the nonsense or if you're just doing it for shits and giggles.
The best example, Einstein:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein's_religious_vie...
"Albert Einstein's religious views have been studied extensively. He said he believed in the "pantheistic" God of Baruch Spinoza, but not in a personal god, a belief he criticized." And there's no citation re "pantheistic." That is, as stated the claim appears to support the view that there were Einstein's words that mention the "pantheistic" as the most important thing of "Spinoza's" God.
If fact, the only quote, of course not cited in Wikipedia, where Einstein explicitly mentions "pantheism" is apparently:
http://www.einsteinandreligion.com/spinoza.html
"I'm not an atheist and I don't think I can call myself a pantheist."
The only fair description would be "he was an agnostic" and that's all. Instead, the "pantheism" is effectively promoted before, making "agnosticism" his second choice, which it wasn't. Specifically, he quotes Spinoza in order to point to the previous thinker that rejected the belief that the soul exists separately from the body. That's why he mentions him (as seen in the full quote linked above).
He was frequently quoted to declare himself agnostic, whereas he mentions Spinoza's God only in one mail.
Still, try to remove obviously lying "pantheistic" pseudo quote/promotion from Wikipedia's texts about Einstein.
And the same thing is repeated for a lot of other scientists!