[kemayo]

…they couldn’t think of a good Wikipedia scandal from within the last decade?

(The "why wikipedia is bad" bit at the start talks about things from 2005, 2007, and 2012.)

Anyway, this might be pretty "it's hard to make a man understand something when his salary depends on not understanding it" since I work for the WMF, but I'm not really seeing much appeal from federation in this area. It certainly seems less relevant than in social media, anyway.

[sugarkjube]

Well, i think a lot is just not reported any more.

As a small example (not a scandal), a local celebrity mentioned in the (local) media last week that she'd put some incorrect facts on her own wiki page in the past, but can't get them corrected any more.

I tried to suggest a useful addition onto a page recently (against knowing better), and was blocked immediately. Then I noticed others tried the same change several times already, to no avail. So i gave up, and wont bother any more. Also in the future, i wont bother. Life's too short.

Things like this happen all the time without having any visibility.

Its good to be protective, and necessary to avoid spam. But in a few encounters it felt like there are many tiny kingdoms on wikipedia being guarded by their monarchs.

[matricaria]

Just search for anything remotely political and you will find a lot of bias.

[ChrisKnott]

I just picked a random political article to which I have no significant connection[0]; I don't notice "a lot of bias"...?

For me Wikipedia is consistently amongst the least biased sources on the internet.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_Labour_Party

[ThrowawayTestr]

Compare the first paragraphs of these two articles. Remember that Wikipedia is supposed to be neutral

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/gamergate

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamergate_(harassment_campaign...

[ChrisKnott]

This isn't "anything remotely political" is it, it's a highly contentious culture war issue among the chronically online. I was disputing the claim actually made, not a different claim you appear to have understood I was making.

For what it's worth, I agree with that KYM's opening paragraph is better and less-biased than Wikipedia's.

[ThrowawayTestr]

I consider the culture war a political issue but I'm glad you can see the obvious bias in the wiki article.

[ChrisKnott]

Yes it's a political issue, but the user I originally replied to claimed that bias was obvious on _anything_ political.

[vkou]

But... It was a misogynistic harassment campaign. Some maybe well-meaning useful idiots also hitched their horse to it (and most have not even been tarnished by it), but that was the main thrust of that adventure.

Is Wikipedia supposed to describe World War II as a 'small disagreement over national borders and ethnic purity', lest it be accused of partiality? A spade's a spade, a war's a war, a harassment campaign is... A harassment campaign.

[ThrowawayTestr]

The KYM article mentions the harassment but is less editorialized.

"The term has also since been used to describe the group of internet users, based mainly on Twitter, who claim that there is a lack of transparency within the video game journalism industry. These same people have also been criticized of practicing misogyny and sexism by many, through harassment and trolling, referring to their opposition as social justice warriors."

Compare that to the indignation dripping from the wiki paragraph.

[vintermann]

If you have no significant connection to it, how would you know if it's biased or not?

[theamk]

In some wikipedia clones, it's pretty obvious:

https://www.conservapedia.com/Video_games

[wodenokoto]

I don't see how federation can help with that.

At worst it's going to have hundreds of conflicting versions of a document, where each federated node disagree on which is the current master of the document, because each node is fighting for their bias, or it's going to be Wikipedia, where there is one promoted version of the document with whatever bias.

[account42]

> At worst it's going to have hundreds of conflicting versions of a document, where each federated node disagree on which is the current master of the document, because each node is fighting for their bias

Sounds like an improvement over one dominant group being able to declare their viewpoint as The Truth(tm).

[downvotetruth]

If only the versions had voting...

[kemayo]

I'm not talking about whether there are scandals about Wikipedia. I'm saying it's weird what the article chose to use as a demonstration.

[lifthrasiir]

And Wikipedia does have an extensive list of its own controversies [1]. That doesn't mean Wikipedia is not to blame, but miraculously it did have a good track record compared to other online projects of the similar size and influence.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedia_controversie...

[LeoPanthera]

Truthiness is not bias.