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Comment by denton-scratch | Hacker News Reader

I second the call that WP is web done right. Yes, of course there's bias; it's not possible to produce bias-free content, and WP's particularly bad in the fields of politics and history, and really any field where facts aren't settled and feelings are strong.

Enter critical thinking. If you dig just a little (e.g. read the talk pages and the edit histories), you can soon learn that some topic has been taken over by POV-pushers and is unreliable. Anything to do with Israel/Palestine/West Bank is unreliable; the boss is a zionist, and so are a lot of the senior staff, so it's not surprising. But WP is a million times better than the web that search engines expose.

Incidentally, I usually search using DDG. But DDG seems to hate Wikipedia; WP results usually don't show up on DDG until page 2. Google surfaces WP results on page 1, if not at the top of the resultset.

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> Anything to do with Israel/Palestine/West Bank is unreliable; the boss is a zionist, and so are a lot of the senior staff, so it's not surprising. But WP is a million times better than the web that search engines expose.

Is there good evidence for this claim? Evidence is useful, especially for these claims of general bias.

On the contrary, in general Wikipedia's content is likely biased against Israel when considering its general overall political preferences / bias.

> 5 Studies Find Wikipedia Bias

> Five studies, including two from Harvard researchers, have found a left-wing bias at Wikipedia:

> * A Harvard study found Wikipedia articles are more left-wing than Encyclopedia Britannica.

> * Another paper from the same Harvard researchers found left-wing editors are more active and partisan on the site.

> * A 2018 analysis found top-cited news outlets on Wikipedia are mainly left-wing.

> * Another analysis using AllSides Media Bias Ratings™ found that pages on American politicians cite mostly left-wing news outlets.

> * American academics found conservative editors are 6 times more likely to be sanctioned in Wikipedia policy enforcement.

From: https://www.allsides.com/blog/wikipedia-biased

I find it interesting that your way of proving anti-Zionist sentiment is to demonstrate that there are quantifiably more leftist editors on Wikipedia. That does not demonstrate your thesis of anti-Israeli bias. Plenty of people who at least claim to be leftists are profuse in their support of Israel.

Neither should it surprise that a scholarly endeavor for bored young people on the internet tends to tilt leftward: there is a big education differential between political poles, and a strong demographic tilt based on age. To put it in a nutshell: if boomers spent their time writing citations instead of pounding out all-caps screeds about ivermectin in the comments sections of local newspapers, there would be a more robust wikipedia contingent.

> I find it interesting that your way of proving anti-Zionist sentiment is to demonstrate that there are quantifiably more leftist editors on Wikipedia. That does not demonstrate your thesis of anti-Israeli bias. Plenty of people who at least claim to be leftists are profuse in their support of Israel.

It’s not definitive proof of anti-Israel bias - it is, however, evidence. As opposed to the unsubstantiated assertion I responded to.

Evidence of what? A leftward slant in Wikipedia, if you believe the conclusion of these studies (or the summaries of them - I haven’t read them all). And it's easy to see that such a slant would broadly coincide with somewhat less support - though far from zero support - for Israel in 2022 and the past couple decades.

I’m not sure how leftward the slant is. It could be slight. It could also not be relevant in specific areas (such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict). I didn’t exhaustively research the topic (nor did I believe Wikipedia had any specific leftward slant before today.) If you find anything useful, please share your findings - happy to read!

“Quantifiably more leftist editors on Wikipedia” isn’t a good summary of the headlines of those 5 studies.

To your other point, number of editors matter - and the Israel-antagonists presumably outnumber the Israel-supporters - but it’s far from the only thing that matters. To name a few more things that make an editor more or less influential: the number of edits made, the prominence of their edits (for example if it is in the introduction vs elsewhere in an article), the degree to which the edits are neutral vs slanted, and the relative power they have as editors.

> As opposed to the unsubstantiated assertion I responded to.

I'm not going to try to substantiate it; if you're not already aware that Wikimedia is owned and run by a self-confessed Zionist, you can look it up for yourself. I don't engage with the Zionists on Wikipedia; it's a waste of time, you can't win. Some Zionist admin will come along and declare that you lost the dispute. I'm not inclined to take up arms here either; it's against the rules, and anyway, in matters of this sort, you can't defeat your adversary by producing evidence or substantiation. This is an issue that people on both sides are strongly emotionally engaged in.

> Anything to do with Israel/Palestine/West Bank is unreliable [and in favor of Israel]

This is the claim that needs substantiation, not that a key Wikipedia person supports Zionism or identifies as a Zionist, or that various employees or volunteers support Israel. Those other claims don't seem significant.

The opposite is also true - that various volunteers are antagonistic towards Israel. It's also likely that some employees are antagonistic towards Israel. You can find plenty of people's experiences discussing the same pattern you describe but with different political views - some antagonistic admin coming along and declaring that you lost the dispute.

Various "bosses" at Wikipedia have different views, ideologies and identities. Given that, what on Wikipedia can be trusted, and what can't be? What's special about views towards Israel?

Evidence is useful, but when viewing people as "adversaries", and if trying to "defeat" them in general, the game is already diminished or lost - for most everyone involved. Little productive conversation can occur.

> This is an issue that people on both sides are strongly emotionally engaged in.

Yes. But that is true of many issues in the world.

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