Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2024-03-29/Special report

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Individuals be complaining about Wikipedia when Israel is criticized in any way, bruh. The WJC's piece is also poorly researched; they couldn't even look for the history tab? --Firestar464 (talk) 22:52, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

I can't believe they cited both Tripodi (2021) AND Klein (2023). Now with Lir (2024), we have completed the holy trinity of bad research that fundamentally misunderstands what this website is. Curbon7 (talk) 22:55, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

Weirdly, Klein interviewed me for that paper, and the one thing not included was the actual limitations of Wikipedia's structure allowing biased content *without* "moderators" being biased about a topic... (t · c) buidhe 23:01, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

• Without getting into the weeds, when it comes to 'bias', I sense a pot-kettle scenario with this set of accusations. But keeping this to a dry, technical consideration, we cannot expect to have only editors sans bias, as every editor has bias. Bias can even be thought of as one of many natural motivations for doing the work of editing here. But it's how our policies/guidelines rein these biases in that's key here. We are constantly reminded to find the most balanced way to present a topic, and I posit that the more experience an editor accumulates, the more they are attuned to try to set their biases aside as they write. I surmise that the true underlying complaint, as it were, is that what we call reliable sources are actually becoming less biased in their coverage of Israel (the government, not its people), and that feels like increased bias from the Israeli POV. To wit, the US media used to be hard-biased in Israel's favor, and recently, that has softened (as far as I can tell). And since that's where we source much of our material from, the rest follows. Wikipedia is not exactly detached from the media universe or the global (political) culture, and when those things change, our content is naturally affected to a degree. Any expectation that the Wikipedia find some kind of special detachment seems specious without specific serious proposals that don't violate our editor's privacy rights or make this site too difficult to work on while somehow achieving a less biased result. But what's funny here is a "Wikipedia without any bias" would likely end up being an object lesson of "be careful what you wish for" for those lodging the complaints. Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 00:08, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

  Wikipedia has some degree of Western, anglophone bias regarding pretty much any topic where that is relevant. (t · c) buidhe 00:25, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

  Indeed, as it's the English Wikipedia, as much as we try to avoid it via policy/guidelines, our work here is going to reflect some degree of the bias of the vast majority of English speakers. But I posit the complaint is that in this area of concern, the Western bias is perceived as mildly easing toward a more global view. The prior staunch defense of the Israeli government in the media is now less staunch. And we reflect that media. Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 00:34, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

  There are three aspects of this: the bias of our sources, of ourselves and of our readers. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 03:54, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

• If you can't be bothered to run your article through a basic spell checker, why should anyone take you seriously? "Beurocrats", lmao. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 00:34, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

  you scared me with this, as i thought there was another egregious typo i'd have to fix after publication lmao ... sawyer * he/they * talk 00:40, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

• The report misunderstands policies and makes vague assertions instead of providing conrete examples of bias. And it's very poorly written, I don't believe this took more than an afternoon or two. --Xacaranda (talk) 00:39, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

  Another example of being poorly written is the misuse of title case. Alfa-ketosav (talk) 19:00, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

• Excellent report, on the whole. One little thing, this clause about "... a link to the complete history of every article has been a central element of the top of every Wikipedia page since the year 2002" is not quite right. Last week a troll made a threat of sexual violence in Wikimedia Commons against a respected Admin. I undid the edit, and soon another Admin wiped out all record that I could see of the event. This was entirely the right thing to do in this case, and has been occasionally done, not just in Commons personal Talk Pages but in WP articles. So, we ought not imply that it never happens. Jim.henderson (talk) 00:40, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

  good point! i've added that detail :) ... sawyer * he/they * talk 00:46, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

  And I've tweaked it further. Graham87 (talk) 10:38, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

• "strong opinions being expressed on the talk page" Which talk page? Please include a link. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:09, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

  the talk page discussion was linked earlier in the report at A long discussion ensued, but i've reworded it a bit for clarity ... sawyer * he/they * talk 19:50, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

• WJC perceives an anti-Israeli bias seems like a bit of a duh conclusion, although the report itself is impressively poorly researched. AryKun (talk) 15:21, 30 March 2024 (UTC)
• I'm not buying it. I've been accused on-wiki of being biased against Israel for creating Palestinian law, and off-wiki and publicly doxxed (actually getting into a shouting match on the NYC Transit Subway and being trolled on "X", formerly known as Twitter) for being biased against Palestine. Our coverage is fair. Bearian (talk) 15:52, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

  And they wonder why we don't want to force editors working on our most controversial articles to doxx themselves. AryKun (talk) 16:06, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

  If your goal is neutrality, and partisans on both sides scream that you're biased, that's a strong indicator that you're doing a fine job. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 00:13, 31 March 2024 (UTC)

• Just stopping by to say I really appreciated this Signpost report, and in particular the writeup from JPxG. It made for interesting reading, noting both the things Wikipedia does well and the areas where we don't, and was impressively detailed. Nice job. --Yamla (talk) 11:32, 1 April 2024 (UTC)
• I liked the part about how they based their conclusions in part on, "interviews with Israeli Wikipedians". Someone needs to introduce this 'researcher' to the concept of Selection bias. --21:09, 1 April 2024 (UTC)
• WJC will just not stop falling off, will they. Orchastrattor (talk) 05:52, 2 April 2024 (UTC)
• Anti-Israel & anti-Jew bias is far from the biggest problem on Wikipedia. There is far more pro western chauvinist, pro US-government bias than there is anti-Jewish bias. But hey, if this is the story that brings Wikipedia criticism into the mainstream, so be it. Philomathes2357 (talk) 19:39, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

  WP-critisism isn't mainstream? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 11:27, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

  I very rarely hear serious, sustained criticism of Wikipedia in the mainstream. All books on the topic that I am aware of are self-published, and Wikipedia is almost never mentioned when people discuss bias and propaganda in English-language media. Philomathes2357 (talk) 15:47, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

  You can start at Wikipedia:Press coverage 2001 and advance from there. All of it is not mainstream or critisism, but you should be able to find some. "Serious" is eye of the beholder of course. That WP is user generated and has errors should be fairly sustained in critisism. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 18:36, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

  You may or may not find the work of these people interesting: Category:Wikipedia beat reporters. This book [1] isn't self-published, but if it is serious is another matter. Some article talkpages has a template that lists media coverage, like Talk:Warsaw concentration camp and Talk:Recession, perhaps you can find something serious and mainstream in those. The Signpost has been known to include a "Recent research" page. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 18:44, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

• Wait until the ADL follows suit and calls Wikipedians antisemitic for calling the Nakba ethnic cleansing by citing more than a dozen scholars. Literally, at this point I don't trust people who claim there's an "anti-Israel bias" in virtually anything. You do war crimes, you get talked about. GeraldWL 04:07, 8 April 2024 (UTC)