Is the information on this page perfect? Obviously not. But this single page probably represents the best up-to-date summary of information you will find on the internet. And I can only imagine the thankless work volunteer editors put into making it coherent and readable - free from random garbage and conspiracy theories.
I guess I'm not the only one doing this, because there's this meme trend of making video edits of these articles. Pretty much captures how it feels to read them if you're into it:
For example: "Several countries which are historically neutral, such as Switzerland and Singapore have agreed to sanctions."
Clearly a misrepresentation of Swiss neutrality. The news outlets all over the world posted this and various similar claims over the last week and wiki picks it up. Some news articles even straight out tell you that Switzerland ditched its neutrality and "picked a side" in this war. It could not be more wrong. But Wikipedia doesn't care about right or wrong it just repeats what a subset of sources say even if its like in this case obviously propaganda.
This implies that Switzerland neutrality is somehow relevant while in reality it is not. It implies sanctions DESPITE neutrality.
https://www.eda.admin.ch/eda/en/fdfa/fdfa/aktuell/newsuebers...
I think what your arguing here is semantics, as opposed to something that’s “factually incorrect”.
The problem you describe is one Wikipedia suffers from. If the conventional wisdom is wrong then Wikipedia will be wrong. And it will never be the first declare the conventional wisdom was wrong, the majority needs to change their mind before it will.
It’s a downside of requiring citations to support statements. But probably unavoidable.
its literally the assignment of meaning to those words. which is really pretty close to arguing about the truth of the sentence
just to argue semantics
Either this is an entertainment piece and they can write it how they want (but it shouldn’t be mentioned on a wiki page) or it’s a news piece and should be without these kind of “suggestive but not exactly saying it” articles that blur the line between non-news and deniability thereof.
The only thing it would have cost them to not mention Switzerland’s neutrality would be clicks/money. 0% truth would have been lost writing the context properly.
Anyway the overall conclusion people get when reading the statement that neutral countries DESPITE being neural joined sanctions (picked a side/no longer neutral) and that is wrong especially in case of Switzerland.
Its not semantics its factually wrong because if there would be an attempt to connect "Swiss neutrality" to the sanctions it would be the other way around. I.e. to stay true to the concept Switzerland would have to join sanctions because other wise it could be used to circumvent the sanctions from others which then could theoretically interfere with the idea behind Swiss neutrality especially if Switzerland or companies there would profit from this.
>The problem you describe is one Wikipedia suffers from. If the conventional wisdom is wrong then Wikipedia will be wrong. And it will never be the first declare the conventional wisdom was wrong, the majority needs to change their mind before it will.
Indeed but its not just that, even if something is know (or known to be wrong) if no one in the accepted sources group actually explicitly write it out then there is no source and you can not add it to Wikipedia. The Wikipedia editors also like to write X as if it is a fact then if the is a source opposing it they write the opposition as a quote from the given author or source.
Also sanctions are not "for" picking sides but for punishing wrongdoings (in this case breaking international law) they could easily put sanction on "both" sides if appropriate, in fact there are already sanction in place because of the Swiss neutrality, Swiss companies can not sell/export military equipment to Ukraine (or Russia).
The fact that other counties can be used to circumvent sanction is false argument. Switzerland is the financial hub of Europa and could diminish the effect the sanction have. Beside that the sanctions are designed to have an effect despite possible circumvention.
And if the consensus is particularly bad on a subject and the people editing the Wikipedia page are cooperative, they'll usually be able to find a rule intepretation that allows the consensus statements not to count (for insatnce, claiming that a generally reliable source isn't reliable for this particular statement).
But wrong is still wrong and wrong is not useful. And even thou I know its wrong I have no way to fix it despite the idea of Wikipedia that anyone could correct everything. But I can't because I would need to find an article (from an accepted source) which opposes this exact claim. And even then if there are 5 sources for something that is wrong and 1 source pointing out that it is wrong, Wikipedia will at best report this as neutral as it gets which boils down to "The majority says [insert wrong statement here]". This IS neutral and in it self correct but the wrong statement is still there anyway. This is just the fundamental way how Wikipedia works.
The sanction against Russia for example are not in conflict with the neutrality principle despite the media reporting pretending that this is somehow "unexpected" or "a first" or "clearly picking a side" or even "ditching neutrality because Russia so bad". This is either the media sacrificing truth for click bait headlines or straight out propaganda but its in "Wikipedia trusted" media so Wikipedia picks that up because that what it should do.
So now you have people thinking Switzerland somehow after 200 year of being neutral sides with EU/NATO whatever against Russia. And if people point out that this is not true, people point to Wikipedia. That is the dilemma. Wikipedia doesn't say its a source for truth but people use it as such anyway.
According to Reuters:
> Switzerland has steered clear of imposing sanctions in a string of crises, including when Russia annexed Crimea in 2014. Up to now, the exception has been sanctions imposed by the U.N. Security Council, which it has to implement under international law.
So certainly it seems like they are “taking sides” here more than ever before. Seems like a change in what they consider being neutral to be.
Of course, even Russian propaganda doesn't mention it. Sending kids to die to a neighbor country because of a gas pipeline doesn't have the same ring to it. They go with some kind of motherland nonsense. It's just money. Always is.
But that's not something Wikipedia can solve, and I think they do what they can about as well as is possible. Here's a good example page of the effect, check out some of the edit wars on this page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_masks_during_the_COVID-19...
The result is a little jumbled, with some contradictory spin still lurking in sentences here and there. But for the most part the article has limited itself to an objective treatment, and done well.
Moreover claims by health organisations like WHO can be used to prove or disprove the efficacy of masks. But this is a luxury articles that are dealing with established authorities publishing information have.
Articles on persons and social issues tend to mostly not have any such authority and the debate is mostly generated through opinion.
Are you absolutely sure you aren't just expressing the effect I noted? You got mad because a page listed facts, but not the "right" facts?
My concern was with the weightage the said fact had in the overall article. The weightage of the said issue in the summary and article, seems to far outweigh what it deserved.
I remain an avid wikipedia reader.
The editorial slant which sets the tone of the article also colours the thoughts of the reader, it is not just dissemination or omission of facts. Moreover, editors do tend to give more weightage to some sources than the other if they are reporting on the same issue.
Yes, but as I said, Wikipedia is much less bad in this respect than any other source. If I have the sources, at least I can do my own digging. With most other sources I have to assume there is information contrary to the slant that is being swept under the rug, and I won't immediately know where to find that information.
> editors do tend to give more weightage to some sources than the other if they are reporting on the same issue.
Sometimes there is good reason to do this. Some sources are more credible than others.
If editors didn't exercise judgment in selection of sources, Wikipedia would just be a disinformation playground dominated by the most energetic propagandists.
I am not saying we should trust DailyMail more than BBC. My issue is with sources where the lines are more blurry.
Say, they will not publish outright misinformation but they will definitely have a editorial stance which colours their coverage.
> If editors didn't exercise judgment in selection of sources, Wikipedia would just be a disinformation playground dominated by the most energetic propagandists
Agreed. But how do we rank which sources are better than the other. Sure, remove ones which publish outright misinformation but after that how do you rank them.
The source will be discussed in WP:NEWSORG boards, the people weighing in on the discussion will be established editors of the site. They will more likely tend to rate sources which fit their echo chambers better higher than others. The same sources will get more weightage in Wikipedia articles. When argued against, Wikipedia editors will cite it is trusted more. It is a self fulfilling loop.
This is why my original question was, is any user curated platform doomed to reach this state.
Also, I am not sure how we can verifiably prove that the editorial stance of one source is either day pro or against something, so it should be rated higher or lower, and if equal whose tone do we go with. As wiki editorialisation of news events is not preferred, you will have to go with existing editorialisation in media
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biden%E2%80%93Ukraine_conspira...
>"Almost no one is not no one, and simply the "fact" it was Hunter's laptop does not in itself establish anything improper, unless someone is upset about porn. We have no knowledge of its chain of custody. For all anyone knows, his laptop was snatched and flown to an SVR lab in Moscow for "enhancement" before being given to Rudy/Bannon. The Politico piece was not picked up by any other reliable source, it relies exclusively on an assertion by some unnamed guy whose credibility is unknown, hence it is REDFLAG and UNDUE"
After ignoring articles from the guardian, politico, the nyt just because it's supposedly not relevant. And even if it was actually hunter's laptop who care right? It has nothing to do with the article centered on the claims that it was his laptop. I think ultimately this is just unconsequential, and the hunter story does not really matter, but if you contrast it with the wiki page on the russian links with trump, the extreme selectivity in sources somehow just... disappear. Keep in mind that no one is actually contesting that the contents of the laptop are actually from hunter at this point except for Wikipedia. Even the emails have been pretty conclusively proven to be his.
The problem is that it leads to just more preaching to the choir; usually wikipedia is pretty good at neutrality in the tone of it's articles (even when those are biaised, which is normal). But with such a blatant attempt at mental gymnastics through the entire article, you end up convincing no one that the info is actually legit or credible. A lot of recent political articles end up being written in a manner much more similar to a smug RationalWiki article than to an actual encyclopedic text
Unimportant articles will draw a different crowd than more important articles. Those different groups will have different standards for sources and tone/bias.
What changes have you made to that article that were rejected / rolled back? How long have you been making edits to it?
Like many others on here, I prefer to go directly to multiple biased sources like npr, CNN, breitbart, nypost because I understand their bias and can sort through it to tease out information.
The thing that I find the most distasteful is any source that purports to be unbiased, but uses subtle language tricks to skew their readers towards a conclusion.
I find such things to be the most toxic, and avoid them.
I don't agree with the other commenters on here that argue "it's mostly good", so that makes it ok.
When there's a hidden bias, it makes it much more difficult to tease through the information to find something that resembles the truth.
Breitbart is an editorial/propaganda magazine, not a news source. Why would you go there for anything?
CNN was openly anti-Trump for the entire administration, as in, instructions were literally passed down that reporting should be slanted in such a way as to taint him.
It isn't a case of having to think they have a bias, it's a case of literally being told that bias is part of their policy.
It wasn't hard to spot, either. Their reportage during the Trump administration was absurd. You'd have headlines and first-paragraphs that were contradicted by the entire rest of the article; the headline and intro para made Trump look bad, the rest of the article begrudgingly attempted to convey the facts. It was utter nonsense.
Interesting. Do you have a link to the evidence of these instructions? I'd like to read them.
I think that label can be applied to most "news" sources these days.
To answer your question specifically though, it is because they report on events that other places don't, based on their particular bias.
>absolutely no reason other than some editors going all "nuh uh"
They're almost certainly paid to keep that content on the talk page and off the article.
Once you're in the partisan politics bubble normal procedures and safeguards break down because there are absurd amounts of money being spent.
I looked at that talk page and it's just painful.
"It isn't his laptop"
"It isn't not proven to be not his laptop"
"Even if it is his laptop, it isn't his files"
"It isn't not proven to be not his files"
Just admit that it could be genuine or it could be a disinfo campaign. Ugh.
Citation needed