| HN Mirror

Even outside of the highly politicized articles, the tendency for editors to claim articles as their personal fiefdoms and engage in petty edit wars is illustrative. Even if you feel that Wikipedia's stance is normative in the partisan sense, reasonable people should be able to see how the aforementioned dynamic interacts with the highly charged partisan environment we find ourselves in.

Yes, the current administration has issues. However, when we look at the numerous issues around previous administrations, such as the Disinformation Governance Board or the WH's directing social media companies to censor users, they are hardly new or distinct. Disregard for individual liberty is the norm. In fact, the opposition frequently celebrates what they dictate as "collective good" over the remaining notions of individual rights.

Partisans choose to engage in selective outrage.

The current issues are continuations of the trend. We see this in the rationalizations of the current partisans. School yard favorites, such as "They started it" and end-justify-the-means, "If we don't abandon the principles of free speech, we are at a disadvantage to our unprincipled opponents" are used to rationalize this behavior. Meanwhile, the principled remnant are castigated as weak, anti-maga turncoats.

Finally, the assertion around "objectivity" is either a misuse of language or a misunderstanding of basic premises. Objective truth may exist in nature, but we experience it subjectively. Further down the chain, we are able to use our limited facilities to describe it. We frequently make mistakes in both perception and description. In the case of Wikipedia, the results are of an even lower tier, as we can only describe what other, frequently partisan sources have previously described. Then there is the contentious issue of which sources are acceptable for Wikipedia's "Reliable Sources".