Interesting article from a serious source. The paywall-free quota is 1 article so you should be able to read it. If not, others can post an archive link. Or else consider subscribing if you can afford it. Democracy needs independent journalism as well as independent encyclopedias.
The campaign seems almost comically inept. There are valid criticisms of wikipedia to be made, but the idea that it’s full of left-wing propaganda is just so ridiculous that it’s hard to imagine anyone taking it seriously. But then I felt the same way about a certain politician’s recent election campaign. I guess it’s the good old “big lie” tactic in action.
While I generally agree (obviously), the critics are technically correct that there is a problem of (lacking) viewpoint diversity among WP editors. Which has led to some unfortunate cases which are easy to point to. For example, the dismissal of the lab-leak hypothesis as “conspiracism” during Covid. Or, very recently, the coverage of what’s going on in Gaza, and specifically the casual use of the G-word. That coverage is blatantly written from a biased perspective, as the WP founder himself has been (very rare event) complaining about. He understands that credibility is everything. It’s not enough to be “right”, you have to be trusted. Sometimes that means phrasing things in a more neutral way so as to accommodate good-faith objections. I really worry about this because it feels like many people do not understand it, or want to understand it.
Adding to what other people said, the only way to be “unbiased” about genocide is ignorance. To quote The Canary, anyone who claims to be unbiased about what’s happening in Gaza is fucking lying.
The lab leak IS a conspiracy theory and israel IS carrying out a genocide in Gaza. These are not opinions. It seems like you are trying to reach a definition of ‘neutrality’ in good faith, but you’re currently saying that the truth should be hidden/altered to accommodate people who refuse to believe the truth. Opinions go under a subheading in a wikipedia article - there is no reason to give opinions the same amount of screen space as facts. Credibility is not everything - credibility is just credibility. If the point of a website is to publish facts then it is enough to just be ‘right’.
Yeah the Gaza article freeze really bothered me because by all objective measures, it’s a genocide. Jimbo didn’t need to fucking freeze the article just to tell it’s authors “State this in terms of the objective measures instead of Wikipedia’s voice, and put the opinions under their own header”. His selective treatment wreaks of bias or political pressure, both very dangerous things for a credible source.
By “g word” do you mean genocide? Like the genocide being openly conducted in Gaza?
Don’t stoop to self censorship, this isn’t instagram.
How is the gaza genocide article not neutral? It reads the same as other genocide articles like the Rohingya genocide.
Stating objective facts that all of us have seen in the news isn’t biased.
If right wing dipshits get offended by objective truth, that’s their problem. Not the rest of ours.