YSK: When you want to learn the facts on a controversial topic, check Wikipedia

fbmac@lemmy.fbmac.net to You Should Know@lemmy.world – 44 points –

When there is a heated, with a lot of strong and exaggerated arguments on both sides, and I don't know what to believe, or I'm overwhelmed with the raw information, I look at Wikipedia. Or even something that is not a current event, but the information I found on the internet doesn't feel reliable.

I'm sure some would find flaws there, but they do a good job of keeping it neutral and sticking to verifiable facts.

38

No, absolutely not.

For purely scientific articles Wikipedia is great. But anything remotely controversial or even political on that site should be taken with a grain of salt.

There's too many editors out there who enforce their biases and wage war on such articles.

This is why you don't take anything at face value. Check the sources, which you should be doing on Wikipedia anyway.

A wikipedia sources list is not some sort of list of all available data on a subject. It's a list of what information was used to build the article.

On anything remotely divisive, there will be available primary sources for multiple viewpoints, and obviously a slanted article will largely contain sources supporting its slant and leave out sources that don't. Just checking the sources can easily result in the illusion of consensus where there is none.

I'm going out on a limb and assuming basic fact checking skills here, yes.

Checking facts in a list of curated facts is not fact checking.

Most people do not actively have access to scholarly works, nor the aptitude to review it, nor the time to do so.

In this case, the primary relevant fact checking skill would be searching for sources independent of Wikipedia, in which case, why was one starting with Wikipedia in the first place?

Because it's a crowdsourced way of collecting and correlating those sources.

Often, collecting and correlating sources that agree with one viewpoint of a complex issue, which is the whole problem we were discussing. If a wiki article is camped by an admin with a slant, as they often are, the sources do not represent some neutral middle ground or wisdom of the crowd, they represent the things that ended up in the article and nothing more. If you want to learn the facts of a controversial topic, why would you start with a potentially biased list?

But the fact that a lot of editors fight about such issues means that it ends up being somewhat neutral, no?

Depends on who's currently winning the fight.

3 more...
4 more...

The issue I've come across is vindictive or mean editors who 'own' pages and refuse to allow changes to 'their' article.

Case in point, when a rather well-known bishop was convicted of child molestation I edited his article to add that information.

Boom, reverted, no reasons given.

Anytime I added the block of information back to the article he or she reverted the changes. Wikipedia was no help, so now I refuse to edit Wikipedia articles or even treat them as factual - too many editors have their own agendas.

If you know the policies and how to find your way around Wikipedia, and are certain that you're right - you can generally have the truth prevail (as long as you have reliable sources backing up your claims).

The real trick is to know the policies and where to complain that they're not being upheld. In your case you should goto the BLP noticeboard, and ask for an uninvolved editor's help in figuring out how to, or whether the information should be added.

This generally gets others interested in advocating for the truth.

See, it sounds like that's another way of saying "If you don't have a ton of spare time and nothing better to do with it, don't even try to edit Wikipedia"

Depends whether your edits are consistently bad enough that they're reverted every time.

If so, then yeah, you shouldn't be editing Wikipedia.

I mean, the premise was "vindictive or mean editors who ā€˜ownā€™ pages and refuse to allow changes to ā€˜theirā€™ article". The goodness or badness of the edits are not in question; there are editors who camp a page and find technicalities to revert anything that isn't theirs or that they don't like. Sometimes they don't even find technicalities, they just do it, relying on their own reputation and your ignorance. The fact that one has to learn to do an end run around them and engage in wiki politics, hell, essentially learn an entire second legal system, to "have the truth prevail" for even a minor fact with citation is exhausting. It filters out good potential editors who nonetheless have no time to engage in the behind-the-scenes drama proceedings. It's not like this hasn't been a known issue for years now.

Yeah, but like with anything in life - if you keep encountering the same problem over and over again, you should probably consider your own approach to be a factor in the process.

So sure, there probably are vindictive editors, but if it's a reoccurring theme, then something else might be at fault.

They usually freeze changes when stuff like that happens to prevent ā€œemotionalā€ edits. If it got removed even after the information was verified, you can appeal by providing other sources.

https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/citogenesis.png

Also, check the articleā€™s talk pageā€”for controversial topics, the article usually represents a consensus that was reached after comparing and discussing different sources, debunking misinformation, etc.

I remember keeping eye on some wikipedia pages during early stage of controversial topics. They do hide information and then lock the page.

There are too many misleading statements. However, it is a good start to get an understanding of the large picture. Afterwards more research is needed.

Wikipedia isn't some magical concensus platform, it's just a website with admins and power users like anything else. I wouldn't take Lemmy or Reddit at face value and you shouldn't take Wikipedia at face value either for the same reasons. It's not neutral at all and feelings, biases and personal beliefs are all over the website because the people with power keep it that way.

I like the Associated Press and Reuters, too. Their articles are pretty bland, but thatā€™s kind of the point. They make their money by licensing their content to as many publications as possible, so they have a major financial incentive to remain neutral and reliable.

However, the fact that thereā€™s a financial incentive at all can call their reporting into question, of course. Money corrupts everything. Still, I consider them better than most.

I check Wikipedia for most facts, controversial or not.

I cannot get rid of the feeling that you post this primarily to expose users to the backlash your post will inarguably get.

No, I didn't anticipate significant backslash. The criticism of Wikipedia is valid, but I'm comparing it to the raw stream of BS I get on social media, not to an idealistic vision of what wikipedia should be

Oh that. Yes in comparison to that even controversial Wikipedia entries are saint like.

Okay, but like, places like AP and Reuters are right there and free. If someone's thirsty, you shouldn't point them at a dirty puddle because it's better than sewage, you should turn the faucet on.

"Raw" news sources don't aggregate though.

Aggregating a biased list of sources is worse than not aggregating at all. I would rather someone not know a story at all than they know one side of it as "the truth"