Comment by timr | Hacker News Reader

Comment by timr | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Recently I did a deep dive on some minor historical event in the 1800s that I won't bother to go into detail here, except to say that it has been claimed by an activist editor who has made it a personal mission to re-frame the event as an example of "westerners" committing sexual violence against helpless "easterners".

While certainly this kind of story is common throughout history, in this case, there's absolutely no documentary evidence of the event, and what little evidence exists points in the other direction. This is not just the weight of evidence -- it's what all current historical experts believe. It's what all major encyclopedias say about the event. Nonetheless, the Wikipedia editor clings to a bad reference (in an extremely biased book) that makes an off-hand assertion. This assertion, in turn, is sourced with only a single citation to a 1960s-era historical novel that a) didn't actually support what the author claims, and b) essentially made up signficant details of the event in question, based on popular movies and rumors of the time. It's garbage all the way down.

Nevertheless, anyone who edits this article to reflect accurate current knowledge is immediately embroiled in a war with the editor, because unfortunately, there's no "trusted source" that says the opposite of the bad citation. And so the lie remains. To fight this battle would require escalating the issue and possibly getting the editor removed. Who has time?

Again, this is a minor historical event that nobody cares about, and you still cannot trust it as a source. I have seen enough things like this across Wikipedia that I no longer trust it for anything that might intersect with modern political opinions.

More generally, if there are two incompatible versions of an article to be had and editors can't write a neutral article (could have various reasons) initially the largest group "wins" which may be overruled by so called established editors which at times works out even worse. If the topic is actively propagandized or insulting to one or more people the thing may drag out for years.

Yes, exactly. I think it should be obvious [1] to anyone that Wikipedia is unreliable for extremely contentious subjects or modern politics. But if you point to those as examples of editorial bias, you get mired in of-the-moment political bickering. The reason I raise this example is to show that even in a boring area that should be unrelated to modern politics, you still see the rot.

[1] "should be" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in this sentence. Unfortunately, too many people have had their higher reasoning centers liquified by partisanship, and cannot acknowledge inconvenient facts even when they're blatant.

Are other encyclopedias or sources of information less or more likely to fall prey to this kind of bias?

Maybe in Wikipedia it's just more open, so you notice it more?

I've also noticed bias, especially in anything political (or that admits different political or ideological interpretations, such as history). However, I think you have one thing backwards: the more obscure and niche a topic is, the more likely you'll find it biased, since it has fewer editors looking at it.

---

Edit: reply to breezybottom, as I'm rate-limited:

> Encyclopedias in general are not primary sources, and should never be cited.

Note this is not what I'm arguing. I mentioned Wikipedia as a source of information, which it is, not as a primary source to be cited.

Plainly less. It’s not a question.

Every source has bias, but wikipedia has the additional problem that anyone with a torch to burn, regardless of experience or knowledge, can become a dictator for the content on a topic.

Say what you will about encyclopedias, but they generally farm their writing work out to subject-matter experts, and at least try to be neutral in their editing.

> I think you have one thing backwards: the more obscure and niche a topic is, the more likely you'll find it biased, since it has fewer editors looking at it.

Maybe, but the point remains: this bias has fully permeated wikipedia.

Encyclopedias in general are not primary sources, and should never be cited.

Many people cite TikTok as their reference material :-)

> Are other encyclopedias or sources of information less or more likely to fall prey to this kind of bias?

I think it's less likely, because other encyclopedias are written by paid professionals (or at least some cohesive group whose reliability you can evaluate).

> Maybe in Wikipedia it's just more open, so you notice it more?

I think it's more likely on Wikipedia, because no one there is getting paid, so you have to ask yourself, what's their motivation for doing so much work? Sure you have the altruistic gnomes, just laboring to do a good, fair job for its own sake. But you also have people with an axe to grind, propagandists, and other obsessives, and they contribute to basically propagandize their POV. The dumbest ones get banned, but the smarter ones learn to twist the rules and use things like slow long-term persistence to get their way.

An example would be a minority view on something. Even experts may strongly disagree if it should be included.

> a single citation to a 1960s-era historical novel

People get annoyed when I say "The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair is a novel, as is "The Grapes of Wrath" by Steinbeck, and are not appropriate as a historical reference (outside of being a literary cite).

This was less bad than that (a rigorously researched novel), but yes, the same basic idea. The fundamental problem with that kind of narrative non-fiction is that you don’t know what you’re citing - is it the fiction part, or the non-fiction part? Both?

The fact that a “legitimate” academic text cited this novel as a sole reference is an indictment of the entire book.

Both The Jungle and Grapes of Wrath were pretty rigorously researched, but were not really 'historical' novels at the time of writing (both described roughly contemporary places and events), so the research was closer to field work or journalism.

Are you sure about that? My dad grew up in the Depression. He sat next to Okies in school in Long Beach. He also had a doctorate in history.

So I asked him about TGoW. He said it was an exaggeration, as was most of Steinbeck's work.

As for TJ, Sinclair could have done it as an actual history book, i.e. putting down the results of his rigorous research. But he didn't, and so he could make up whatever he needed. The entire book was a pitch for socialism.

Unfortunately, in time both will become definitive historical reference sources, if they haven't already.

Before the collapse of Google Books, when for a brief, glorious moment Google came closest to achieving the dream of making accessible all the world's knowledge, I could much more easily trace back historical "facts" to a single popular book in whatever field, but then keep going back through older material and often find contradictory accounts and narratives.

History is messy. There's of course what actually happened, but almost immediately narratives start to branch. Then at some point, years, decades, or maybe centuries later, narratives converge back to a single "truth", typically based upon a single, popular author's gloss. There can be some subsequent divergence and reconvergence, but that first convergence really seems to be nearly as defining if not more defining than the actual event(s).

Just say which article this is about. You're leaving out a lead someone else could use to kick out that editor, or fix his mistakes down the line when he's gone.

I don’t want to get accused of brigading, and also, I think it has the potential to be a distraction from my point.

Your point is terribly weak unless you cite the article in question. The hallmark of an edit war is two editors who are each absolutely convinced that they are editing in good faith while the other has an ideological axe to grind.

I’m not in an edit war. I’m reporting what other people have done.

When I saw the edit “war” (in reality it was the same editor and multiple different people making the same edit over years), I did research into the sources being cited because I was interested.

Based on what I found in the primary literature, I would have made the edit, but I gave up when I saw the situation.

Exactly. They also game the “no primary sources” rule to write pure fiction in modern political articles because a “trusted source” (aka a journalistic rag they agree with) purposefully didn’t include that information, and in fact may have blatantly falsified events.

I was able to edit this to fix it, but the geography of New Zealand page had a reference to Southland having a "tundra like climate." Invercargill, which is in Southland, actually has a temperate oceanic climate and a record low of -9C or 15F.

I find wikipedia is really vulnerable to Gell-Mann Amnesia where any article about a topic on which you are very familiar has blatantly incorrect information, but then you open a different one and read it as though it were true. Of course this is true of other sources, famously newspapers, but I think wikipedia is more vulnerable, especially on topics that are very emotionally salient to its power editors.

If you had to get in a fight to edit that, it really is the height of wikipedianism.

I can totally see how this kind of question would intersect with climate activism though.

I didn't really have to fight to edit it, but it had been in the article for many years, despite being blatantly false (tundras have mean temperatures below 0 C for 6+ months out of the year, while coastal Southland has a mean temperature of 5 C in July, the coldest month). My best guess is some kid thought that Southland was cold and knew that tundras were cold, and added a sentence to the article comparing Southland to a tundra.

Whenever I catch something like this, I wonder how many things like this are in there that I don't notice. And this one isn't even really touching anything that is controversial.

It is probably a reference to upland areas of Southland. Some of those do qualify as tundra although most of it is forested.

It specifically said coastal southland before I edited it, it would've worked to change it from "tundra like climate in coastal southland" to "tundra like climate in apline regions of the south island" instead, you're right.

I think the Southland reference is to upland areas. Invercargill itself is temperate (but often cold) and has a lot of trees, as does Stewart Island to the south. I've camped in both places.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com