[kingofthehill98]

There is no such thing as neutrality or unbiased views, we are humans, everything we do or say is filled with bias. Claiming for Wikipedia to "stay neutral" is a bias itself.

They do as good of a job as any of us in trying to stay neutral.

[LudwigNagasena]

> There is no such thing as neutrality or unbiased views, we are humans, everything we do or say is filled with bias.

Meh, there is a scale.

> Claiming for Wikipedia to "stay neutral" is a bias itself.

Yeah, everything is relative, truth doesn’t exist, yadda-yadda.

> They do as good of a job as any of us in trying to stay neutral.

They don’t.

[fesoliveira]

I can also play this game of stating things without giving an argument:

They do.

[_gabe_]

Here’s an article from Larry Sanger (original creator of Wikipedia) giving the case for why Wikipedia is biased https://larrysanger.org/2020/05/wikipedia-is-badly-biased/ .

[FireBeyond]

That's ... not a good article.

Larry just comes across as pissed off. He complains that Obama's article doesn't discuss, or discuss enough for his liking, "Hilary's email servers".

He complains that it doesn't discuss Obamagate in any detail. Possibly because it was essentially a baseless accusation/conspiracy from Trump that when investigated, showed no evidence?

He complains that Trump's page contains too many "negative words", in sections like his "Public Profile" (and then complains that Obama doesn't have a section titled exactly the same, though he does have "Cultural and Political Image").

He complains that the article on abortion describes it as a very safe medical procedure, "a claim that is questionable on its face" - which is why the article links to citations, unlike Larry, who just rebuts with "conservatives don't think so".

He then goes on to claim that "Wikipedia holds positions that some scientific minorities reject" around concepts such as the MMR vaccine, global warning, chiropractic and homeopathy. That latter one is the easiest, as there is zero assertion based in physics that a substance can be imbued with the "essence" of something when diluted to the point where it would take multiple universes worth of molecules to get one original molecule in the final substance. Sanger wholly fails to give a valid reason why anyone should give homeopathic dilutions an equal weight to the rest of our body of work on medicine and physics other than "bias!"

[hnbad]

> He complains that the article on abortion describes it as a very safe medical procedure, "a claim that is questionable on its face"

So far the only good argument I've seen for abortions being very unsafe from people ideologically opposed to them is that they're unsafe by definition because they lead to a person dying (in which case, yeah, but that's not what people normally mean by "safe").

Also, as with other culture war medical topics, the danger of the cure needs to be assessed relatively to the danger of the "disease". Pregnancies are not safe. Giving birth is extremely not safe, regardless of method. Heck, even menstrual cycles aren't safe. Even conception can lead to death in the case of ectopic pregnancies, not to mention the health risks of sexual intercourse itself (which is why it's called "safer sex", not "safe sex"). So we need to take those into account as a baseline when talking about the safety of medical procedures or drugs interfering with these. Those on the side that insists on making it a culture war topic usually deny or downplay that baseline risk while widely exaggerating the risk of the procedure.

This goes for abortions, hormone suppressors, vaccines, premarital sex and many more. But of course it isn't about the medical risk. They'd still be opposed even if it were perfectly 100% safe (which can't even be said about ordinary daily activities like using the toilet, walking or sitting). The main "risk" they are concerned about is moral, and that can't really be argued with.

[soundnote]

> They do as good of a job as any of us in trying to stay neutral.

Not even close. Anything even close to political has a clear slant to it, from actual article wordings to allowed sources to build the articles off of.

[Gareth321]

Yeah it’s really egregious, but hard to notice for people who aren’t involved in the topic more deeply.