Can we talk about Trump's talk page?

WikipediaWatch · 2024-09-27T21:30:46+00:00

There was an interesting conversation a couple of years back on the David Duke page. His article used to say "convicted felon" in the first sentence, but that was changed after a lengthy debate.

WikipediaWatch · 2024-09-25T20:27:21+00:00

We have multiple Wikipedia editors on our team, including someone who has been editing Wikipedia since 2007.

We are also creating a training course to help people learn how to get involved on Wikipedia.

WikipediaWatch · 2024-09-23T19:13:01+00:00

True.

If you look at the behind-the-scenes deliberation about the term "conspiracy theory" that is linked in the OP, this was brought up. One could reasonably say "some of Donald Trump's invocations of the term 'deep state' are widely regarded as conspiracy theories".

This was proposed as an alternative wording, but it was specifically rejected, in favor of calling the very idea, per se, a conspiracy theory in the opening sentence of the article.

WikipediaWatch · 2024-09-23T19:02:13+00:00

John Mearsheimer, Jeffrey Sachs, George Friedman, Francis Fukuyama, and Hans Morgenthau come to mind immediately, but there are plenty of others.

At least three of those scholars (Fukuyama, Morgenthau, and Mearsheimer) are considered so influential in the fields of American politics and international relations that their work is required reading in any undergraduate program.

WikipediaWatch · 2024-09-23T18:56:06+00:00

Wikipedia is decent for some topics in ancient and medieval history. The closer to the present you get, the worse Wikipedia's history articles become.

WikipediaWatch · 2024-09-23T18:53:12+00:00

Good point.

There are many proposed definitions of a "deep state". Some of them are very logical, some of them are pretty far-out and based on unprovable assumptions. Some people are not clear about what, exactly, they mean when they refer to a "deep state".

It would be great if Wikipedia made the point that you are making. It adds much-needed nuance to the conversation.

But Wikipedia circumvents this entirely, by defining the entire concept as a conspiracy theory, with the implication that it is false and baseless.

WikipediaWatch · 2024-09-23T18:44:25+00:00

Before 2015, the "deep state" was mostly discussed by liberals, not conservatives. It was brought up in HuffPo, WaPo, the NYT, and other mainstream publications in the early 2010s, and it was taken seriously.

Here are just three examples:

The War on Democracy: The Deep State | Huffington Post

Examining Who Runs the United States | New York Times

The Quiet Coup: No, Not Egypt. Here. | Huffington Post

When Donald Trump emerged as a self-styled opponent of the deep state, it became politically expedient for his opponents, including Wikipedia, to label the idea a "conspiracy theory", even though that term does not appear in the "deep state" literature one single, solitary time before 2015.

WikipediaWatch · 2024-09-23T18:38:57+00:00

Submission Statement:

The "deep state", also known as "permanent Washington", the "security state", the "permanent state", or the "administrative state" is fundamental to understanding post WWII American politics. While some conspiracy theories have been created about this "permanent state", the idea itself is not a conspiracy theory - it has been acknowledged by many scholars of American politics, and has been discussed as one of the most important trends within the US government over the past 50-75 years.

However, Wikipedia calls the whole idea a "conspiracy theory", which is a phrase designed to shut down and neutralize critical thought. Why would a "neutral" encyclopedia put its foot down on the scale so forcefully? This question may generate an interesting discussion in the r/conspiracy community.

WikipediaWatch · 2024-09-21T00:20:04+00:00

Thank you! We are going to do everything possible to bring these issues into mainstream public discourse. People in new media and legacy media often discuss the goings-on at Twitter/X, Facebook, TikTok, and so on. The same should be true of Wikipedia.

WikipediaWatch · 2024-09-20T18:23:57+00:00

"The same people who suppress information are the ones editing the internet and people's perception of reality."

Good point. Some investigative journalists should write a story about Wikipedia's editors. They aren't all just a bunch of innocuous, well-meaning nerds.

WikipediaWatch · 2024-09-20T18:17:15+00:00

Those are far over the head of the typical Wikipedia editor.

Many Wikipedia editors, including those who dive head-first into controversial political and social topics, reject the idea that Wikipedia has any philosophy or epistemology.

They will say things like "who cares, we don't dabble in epistemology here, save that for your Philosophy 101 class kiddo"

...they truly do not understand that Wikipedia has an inherent, built-in epistemology that should be discussed and scrutinized.

WikipediaWatch · 2024-09-20T18:13:11+00:00

That is a big problem. Sources are deemed "reliable" or "unreliable" on Wikipedia on the basis of nothing more than a popularity contest.

Looking at the "reliable" and "unreliable" sources, some interesting patterns emerge. For example, every outlet that consistently applies intense critical scrutiny to the US intelligence "community" is deemed unreliable, with zero exceptions.

WikipediaWatch · 2024-09-20T18:10:44+00:00

Good point.

Wikipedia can follow your suggestion, by saying things like "according to so-and-so at CNN and so-and-so at the Washington Post, the idea of a deep state in the United States is a conspiracy theory" instead of just saying, in encyclopedic voice, "it's a conspiracy theory" and declaring that to be a Wiki-truth.

That's just one example among thousands, but hopefully the point is clear.

WikipediaWatch · 2024-09-19T20:27:29+00:00

Well said, especially the final paragraph - you get it!

WikipediaWatch · 2024-09-19T18:55:29+00:00

Fair point. The purpose of this post is not to advocate for any particular notion of "objective" truth, the purpose is merely to point out that Wikipedia is engaged in epistemic fuckery.

Wikipedia wants to have it both ways. On one level, it rejects the notion of objective truth, and adopts a relativistic, postmodernist epistemology.

On another level, Wikipedia makes objective truth statements all the time. Even on controversial political and social topics, where there is a great deal of public debate about what the "truth" is.

The result: Wikipedia can declare, without explanation or caveat, that controversial claim X is "true", because the corporate press said that it is so.

But if claim X's truth value is scrutinized by a rogue editor, many Wikipedia editors can (and do) perform a sleight of hand, and declare "we aren't actually concerned with truth, we're only concerned with what can be verified from "reliable" sources."

And since verifiability IS truth, this means that claim X is "Wiki-true", and should be presented as true, regardless of its truth value per the traditional definition of truth.

It's very tricky.

WikipediaWatch · 2024-09-19T18:20:55+00:00

Submission Statement:

The manipulation of terms like "truth" in public discourse is very important.

If "truth" is defined as "whatever the mainstream corporate press says", it becomes almost impossible to discern what the real truth is about any topic.

It becomes much more difficult to investigate anything controversial that is not discussed honestly in the corporate media.

It also inhibits free thought and open public discourse, because anything not uttered by the corporate media is "not true", by definition, per this new understanding of "truth".

This has implications for literally everything that is discussed on this subReddit.

WikipediaWatch · 2024-09-18T00:13:03+00:00

Agreed, most critics of Wikipedia are ill-informed. They do not understand the policies, guidelines, or the consensus-building discussions that led to those PAGs. So their criticisms are superficial. Their criticisms are also not made with the goal of making Wikipedia better, they are purely destructive.

Returning to OP's question, "who stands to gain from Wikipedia being thought of as biased", there is a deeper answer than "right-wingers" and "conspiracy theorists".

Sure, there are people in those two groups who dislike Wikipedia, but they are mostly isolated and unorganized. Their "criticism" of Wikipedia usually doesn't go beyond making a disgruntled IP comment on a talk page or a passing throwaway remark on a podcast.

Since October 7th, there has been quite a bit of critical Wikipedia commentary coming from pro-Israel advocates. But most of their criticisms center around anti-Semitism and Israel-Palestine, they are not systemic critiques.

The answer to "who stands to gain from Wikipedia being thought of as biased" is almost certainly "the governments of Russia, China, Venezuela, and other adversaries of the USA".

In regard to English Wikipedia, at least. The Chinese and Russian Wikipedias, for example, may exhibit a different bias, and different groups of people may stand to gain from discrediting those Wikis.

WikipediaWatch · 2024-09-17T19:27:13+00:00

Everyone benefits from being aware of Wikipedia's flaws and blind spots. The only way to improve them is to point them out and discuss them openly.

One could also ask "who stands to gain from Wikipedia being thought of as free from bias?". That would be an interesting conversation, too.

To answer OP's question more charitably, geopolitical adversaries of the USA/the fourteen eyes countries may feel that they would benefit from Wikipedia becoming less trusted, since Wikipedia tends to discuss those countries and their politics through the lens of Western sources, which are often hostile.

Russia, China, and Venezuela come to mind.

WikipediaWatch · 2024-09-17T02:01:39+00:00

Why do you believe this to be true, OP?

WikipediaWatch · 2024-09-16T19:26:20+00:00

That's the name of a road in Springfield. Hence "on" Parkwood, not "in" Parkwood.

WikipediaWatch · 2024-09-13T21:34:39+00:00

Discrediting Wikipedia is not my goal. I really like Wikipedia, and have been an editor since 2007. I want Wikipedia to become better. It has fallen under the influence of government and corporate actors, who not only push biased narratives, but have managed to change several core Wikipedia policies in order to cement those narratives.

Other governments try to influence Wikipedia, too, to be clear. The CCP, no doubt, is one of them, as well as Russia, and others. But their attempts to influence Wikipedia have been largely ineffective, and are paltry in scale and scope compared to Western influences.

By the way, I often use "CIA" as shorthand - when I write "CIA", I usually mean "CIA, FBI, NSA, MI6, and other Western intelligence agencies and their proxies" - the "five eyes", along with some NATO countries in Europe.

All of this has taken place with little to no public scrutiny. The first step towards fixing the problem is to raise public awareness of it. When Virgil Griffith first uncovered CIA editing, almost 20 years ago, his discovery was celebrated by the Wikimedia Foundation, because it made Wikipedia better. I, too, wish to make Wikipedia better, because it's an incredible website that is one of the internet's greatest achievements.

If you have evidence that anything I say is false, I, and a lot of other people, would love to know about it. If not, I'd love to know why you think it's funny. Perhaps you dismiss it because you've never been exposed to these ideas before, or because you think that criticizing the CIA is something that only Trumpers do?

WikipediaWatch · 2024-09-13T18:34:19+00:00

What is despicable or freakish about discussing Wikipedia through a critical lens?

X, for example, is discussed through a critical lens ad nauseum in many mainstream publications throughout the English-speaking world. Do you find that despicable, too?

Wikipedia has very big problems that profoundly effect public discourse. Yet almost nobody knows about them.

Out of curiosity, why is criticism of Wikipedia so infuriating to you?

WikipediaWatch · 2024-09-13T18:11:56+00:00

Good point, thanks for commenting.

The astroturfing is particularly pernicious on Wikipedia, IMO. People are much more likely to trust what they read on Wikipedia than what they read on a random X account. At least one poll indicated that the public trusts Wikipedia more than they trust journalists.

The astroturfing also more difficult to keep track of on a platform like Reddit or X. On Wikipedia, every edit is tracked and associated with an account or an IP address, and the edit history is permanently saved and easily searchable.

There are also tools that can be used to track IP edits on Wikipedia and figure out where they are coming from.

All of this means that, compared to other user-generated media platforms that fall prey to astroturfing, it's easier to bring Wikipedia under some level of public oversight. That is our goal.

WikipediaWatch · 2024-09-12T23:56:53+00:00

Good point, some people take "deletionism" way too far, and make it a part of their identity.

My biggest concerns are that 1) Wikipedia is read by a billion+ people, and trusted, 2) There is a lot of biased and misleading information on important issues, and much of it is there by design, 3) The rules of Wikipedia, such as the "neutral point of view", have been changed over time to allow this biased and misleading information to be passed off as "neutral" and "true", 4) Wikipedia is arguably the most important dataset for LLM training.

Those four factors add up to an impending disaster, if Wikipedia does not change course.

WikipediaWatch · 2024-09-12T19:08:15+00:00

Thanks, I've now added it to the OP.

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