Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2022 January 30

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January 30

Bias

Are wikipedia articles allowed to be biased ??.

Looking at the Wikipedia page for former president Donald Trump, I am appalled at the extreme bias used. Making blatant statements without citation such as " scholars often rate the president as one of the worse ever US presidents" but without citation of the source. Also opinionated sentences such as "Donald Trump caused damage by doing this etc*" The article is locked from editing so how can one fix this ? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1009:B1DA:AB1B:1128:9A8B:3CAD:A31F (talk) 15:35, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

One can request edits to the extended confirmed-protected page Donald Trump by proposing them on its talk page, using the {{Edit extended-protected}} template if necessary to gain attention. Philvoids (talk) 15:50, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

The question seems to be about a statement in the lead (or lede) paragraph; "Scholars and historians rank Trump as one of the worst presidents in American history". I would make three points on that:

1) Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lead section says: Because the lead will usually repeat information that is in the body, editors should balance the desire to avoid redundant citations in the lead with the desire to aid readers in locating sources for challengeable material. Leads are usually written at a greater level of generality than the body, and information in the lead section of non-controversial subjects is less likely to be challenged and less likely to require a source; there is not, however, an exception to citation requirements specific to leads. The necessity for citations in a lead should be determined on a case-by-case basis by editorial consensus. Complex, current, or controversial subjects may require many citations; others, few or none. The presence of citations in the introduction is neither required in every article nor prohibited in any article. I generally prefer not to put citations in the lead, but perhaps there's a case for it in this instance.

2) The statement in the lead is wikilinked (click the blue text) which takes the reader to the Historical rankings of presidents of the United States article, which has 65 citations listed.

3) The statement in the lead refers to Donald Trump#Approval ratings further down the article, which says:

C-SPAN, which conducted surveys of presidential leadership each time the administration changed since 2000, ranked Trump fourth–lowest overall in their 2021 Presidential Historians Survey, with Trump rated lowest in the leadership characteristics categories for moral authority and administrative skills.

This paragraph has three citations:

• "C-SPAN Releases Fourth Historians Survey of Presidential Leadership" (PDF). C-SPAN. June 30, 2021. Retrieved June 30, 2021.
• Brockell, Gillian (June 30, 2021). "Historians just ranked the presidents. Trump wasn't last". The Washington Post. Retrieved July 1, 2021.
• "Presidential Historians Survey 2021". C-SPAN. Retrieved June 30, 2021.

So if you feel that any of that is actually wrong, you need to raise it on the talk page, but be sure that you have reliable sources to back-up your point. This is a sensitive article with 3,337 editors watching it, so I would avoid using templates (as suggested above) in this instance. See Wikipedia:Neutral point of view for our policy on bias. Alansplodge (talk) 17:00, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

This is all irrelevant to the topic
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
No matter how bad our presidents are, ol' James Buchanan continues to beat them all to the bottom of the barrel. Possibly not the legacy he wanted, but that's how things go. --←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 17:11, 30 January 2022 (UTC) Only civil war ever but what's the chance different decisions from him could've stopped it? I have no idea, have not looked into this. Presumably some anti-great man theory historians would say that while history is not quite a series of deterministic billiard ball collisions a civil war can still get beyond the power of the leader to stop sooner than when many or most historians agree it became too late. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 18:20, 30 January 2022 (UTC) Buchanan is of course eminently criticable for his support of slavery, but as far as I can tell the bulk of the negative judgment of him is for things he didn't do rather than things he did. Going by a more active criterion, I would nominate others for the "worst" title. Maybe Andrew Jackson for the Trail of Tears and the imperial presidency. Of course it's pretty hard to be POTUS, any time in my lifetime, without doing utterly abominable things. I think it might have been at least possible in Jackson's day. --Trovatore (talk) 21:40, 30 January 2022 (UTC) Being passive is still a decision, or at least bad presidents come in both active and passive flavors. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 03:07, 31 January 2022 (UTC) Oh, definitely it's a decision. In fact it's often the best possible decision, especially by a POTUS. I think the rankings tend to be put out by people who have a high opinion of government in general and the executive branch in particular. I have a low opinion of both, and would be delighted to have a POTUS who just didn't do too many things that actually make things worse. --Trovatore (talk) 18:17, 31 January 2022 (UTC) That's why Robert Novak considered Calvin Coolidge to be one of our best presidents. --←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 19:14, 31 January 2022 (UTC)

Please see Wikipedia:How to put up a straight pole by pushing it at an angle --Dweller (talk) Old fashioned is the new thing! 14:55, 1 February 2022 (UTC)