Talk:Criticism of Wikipedia

Criticism in the Telegraph

Wikipedia should focus on content creation – not social justice campaigns Michael G. Lind (talk) 12:15, 28 March 2024 (UTC)

Paywall. Pascalulu88 (talk) 02:26, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

https://archive.ph/n71wJ Buenovale (talk) 03:05, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

Thanks! Pascalulu88 (talk) 11:40, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

Antisemitism

You don't have a section on your antisemitism or anti-Americanism or your extremely left bias. 2600:480A:8834:8F01:2C7C:D924:2303:9F03 (talk) 21:44, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

Accusations of leftwing bias are covered in the Partisanship section. Broadly, the section on Racial bias discusses white supremacists and Neo-Nazis, but doesn't explicitly mention antisemitism. Do you have any citations specifically mentioning this criticism? Do you have any sources for "anti-Americanism" that could likely fit in somewhere if properly cited by a reliable outside source? GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 04:30, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

Despite what some on the right maintain, perhaps the reason there is no section about extreme left bias is that there is not enough (decent) evidence to fill it? 91.110.75.30 (talk) 20:42, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

wikipedia has a pretty obvious center-right, or liberal bias. 65.59.4.202 (talk) 17:00, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

Subsection on Antisemitic bias on Wikipedia

Without prejudice to the ongoing discussion of whether merge or keep the current Wikipedia and antisemitism as its main article, a new subsection on antisemitic bias is now added. So far, it is based mainly on academic research. The comments of Deborah Lipstadt and major Jewish organizations, re: ADL as an RS source, also merit inclusion here, even if expanded at greater length in a main article. ProfGray (talk) 11:02, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

FYI there are more sources on the ADL case cited by the Signpost: Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2024-07-04/In the media. Are there any sources that cover a response by Wikimedia? ProfGray (talk) 11:27, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

For a Wikipedian's published and other responses to one of the academic articles, see: Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2023-02-20/In the media. @User:Piotrus ProfGray (talk) 12:24, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

@ProfGray Thanks for the ping. Did you User:Piotrus/Response and other responces to that article (recommendation: install PubPeer...).

Regarding: "Several studies have found flaws in Wikipedia's handling of the mass murder of Jews during the Holocaust, including Wikipedias in different languages". This is certainly true of the Grabowski paper that I am sadly too deeply familiar with and per above, I consider it deeply flawed, but the current text is an accurate summary of it.

Moving to other, better sources cited (IMHO, anything will be better than the paper mentioned above...).

I am not sure if Makhortykh is a good source for this sentence, as I am not seeing what "flaws" their research identified. Instead, I note in conclusion that they write that [the existence of] Wikipedia's policies "prevents the use of Wikipedia for the propagation of views of Holocaust deniers or highly subjective interpretations of the past in general", although he does talk about " the instrumentalisation (e.g. by framing Ukrainians as Holocaust perpetrators in the Russian Wikipedia) or disparagement (e.g. by putting emphasis on non-Jewish victims in the Ukrainian Wikipedia) of Holocaust memory", which perhaps could be seen as a flaw of Wikipedia in this context?

Wolniewicz-Slomka (should be linked to [1], all our current refs in the new section are poorly formatted :( ) also talks about the flaws in the context of neutrality: "the articles in Polish and Hebrew present almost solely cases of heroism performed by members of their own respective nations. The semiotic analysis strengthens the conclusions of the manifest analysis: the appearance of judgmental or evaluative language in the articles is rare, yet occasional choices of vocabulary (such as the interchangeability between the words “Jews” and “victims” in the Hebrew version) reminds us that the articles are written in a certain cultural context."

den Hartogh ([2]) is a master thesis, so not a very high quality source. Likewise, they seem to focus on issues such as "One of the most significant findings of this research is that the Holocaust entries under study revealed that there does not exist one representation of the Holocaust, but each language version has its own unique account of events and phenomena included in the representation of the Holocaust." and "Another important finding is that it has been found that none of the Holocaust entries under study is rated ‘good quality’, which indicates that the pages are in considerable need of improvement according to Wikimedia standards."

Crucial point here is that outside of the first (bad but technically reliable) source, the other mentioned sources don't seem to find flaws in the context of antisemitism.

For additional academic sources on this topic, see:

• Pfanzelter, Eva (2015) At the crossroads with public history: mediating the Holocaust on the Internet, Holocaust Studies, 21:4, 250-271 [https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17504902.2015.1066066#d1e337 - but I don't think she finds any flaws...

So outside the first source, we don't really have any reliable (academic) works that argue Wikipedia has 'Antisemitic bias' (in the context of the Holocaust). I think this needs to be rewritten or the heading changed; since only one of the three cited sources supports the 'antisemitic bias' claim (so this is borderline DUE...).

I am also concerned that the next paragraph is cited to a poor newspaper article and a press statement by the researchers ("In 2023, following allegations of deliberate distortions of Holocaust history, the English Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee subsequently opened a case to investigate and evaluate the actions of editors in the affected articles. Ultimately, the Committee ruled to ban two editors from contributing to the topic areas, although the researchers who studied the issue criticized the proposed remedies as "[lacking] depth and consequence".). While the first sentence is factually correct, the second is misleading - for example, the two topic banned editors represented "both sides", one of them was criticized and the other praised by the "researchers". Effectively, the community of our experts (ArbCom) reviewed the researchers allegations carefully and found that most of them cannot be substantiated or are unactionable. The researchers were unhappy with that, but I don't think it is due to give their press release much a voice. I'd recommend removing the second sentence with the reference to the PR, and replacing the newspaper citation with what I think is a better analysis by a journalist who specializes in Wikipedia: [3]. Note that AFAIK there has been no publication about this after the case; the journalist interest died out before the case was closed, and since the ArbCom did not confirm the researchers claims about major conspiracy, did not even ban anyone (except one sock), and just topic banned two editors (which is pretty much a wiki equivalent of the slap on the wrist), well, this all proved to be just a storm in the teacup. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 03:07, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

PS. I'll @Hemiauchenia who merged some content. I don't want to edit this myself, due to some possible COI. I'll leave it up to you folks to figure out what do do here, but the merged content is, as I note above, problematic (only one academic ref supports the assertions made in the heading about antisemitism, the other refs are pretty much saying that Wikipedia is incomplete and different language versions of Wikipedia have different POVs).

PPS. I have not reviewed the ADL part, so I am not sure if this is relevant to thread heading or not. I would expect it to be relevant, since after this is ADL. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 03:13, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Sorry about this. I added this with the intention for others to correct it. Hemiauchenia (talk) 03:18, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for taking the time to write out your analysis and recommendations, @User:Piotrus. I spent much of the day trying to revise and salvage Wikipedia and antisemitism, after the Merge closure was reverted at my request. I agree with your basic assessment of 3 academic articles and I've removed the "flaws" wording for now. I think they do find some bias worth reporting, but may require some careful way to say it. (For starters, I elaborated on two studies in the above-linked article.) I started to change the sentences about Grabowski and Klein, but will need to pick this up again Sunday or next week. I appreciate your COI situation, so I'm pleased to learn and discuss with you here and then make appropriate edits. ProfGray (talk) 21:44, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

@ProfGray Thank you. The topic may be notable, although I am not sure we have much in the way or academic sources (particularly of good quality); there is certainly some newspapers that tackle this (including in the aftermath of the 2022 paper - have you read the three rebuttals to it, including mine?). The version in the Wikipedia and antisemitisms covering now seems reasonably due and neutral, thank you, although I have some concerns regarding this sentence

“ Ultimately, the Committee banned two editors from the topic areas, although Klein criticized the proposed remedies as "[lacking] depth and consequence" ”

as far as its logic and correctness (mind you, I am not sure if we have independent RS to correct it). As I might have mentioned above, some additional sanctions were levied (including, IIRC, a total of three tppic bans); additionally, one of the topic banned editors was someone the authors endorsed. So the sentence implies, roughly correctly, that the ArbCom did not go far enough, but it also implies that the two topic bans were desired by the researchers, whereas in fact only one of them would be. And wasn't her PR published in response to the case closure, of at the stage of proposed decisions? This should be double checked. It's complicated to explain this in the article's body (and probably would be undue, even if we could cite independent sources...). I'd say something like "Ultimately, the Committee's remedies were criticized by Klein as "[lacking] depth and consequence"", although it would be good to add a short sentence saying that "the Committee did not find sufficient evidence to confirm the researchers allegations" (if there would be any RS for that), since otherwise we are missing some context (as in, why the remedies were criticized). Effectively, the paper made grandiose claims which were not substantiated, hence, lackluster remedies. Feel free to mull over how this can be worded. Frankly, I'd prefer not to be involved in this too much, both due to COI and because I find this issue quite upsetting/stressful (since from my POV, I was subject to significant slander there). _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 05:26, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

Whoever approved the merge and finalised it:

Why did they delete almost all of the actual content in the original article and not reproduce it here?

It seems less like a merger and more like a deliberate burying of the original information. KronosAlight (talk) 21:26, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

fwiw, the previous Main article was turned into a draft at Draft:Antisemitism on Wikipedia, with the possibility that it could be moved to Mainspace as an article. ProfGray (talk) 23:43, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

Hmm. Let’s come back in a week or two and see just how much ends up actually being published here.

Given some of the users involved there, I don’t have very high hopes given the Pirate Wires allegations. KronosAlight (talk) 00:18, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

Pro-forma COI declaration

Since many critics of Wikipediocracy act as though they are members of a cult, bending WP site rules to advance their objectives, I will note here that I replaced a 404ed link for a permalink to a Wikipediocracy external link. I am a registered user and regular participant of that site but have no formal connection to its ownership or management, nor a financial connection of any sort. Derp derp. —Tim Davenport /// Carrite (talk) 18:06, 5 November 2024 (UTC) /// "Randy from Boise" on WPO

Discussion at Talk:Wikipedia and antisemitism § Proposal to merge to Criticism of Wikipedia

 You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Wikipedia and antisemitism § Proposal to merge to Criticism of Wikipedia. Levivich (talk) 20:22, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

To update the redlinks above -- The article is currently being edited and discussed at: Draft:Antisemitism on Wikipedia, input welcome! ProfGray (talk) 04:22, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

Link to Wikipedia in the Gender bias and sexism section

The Gender bias and sexism section has a link to the Wikipedia article (emphatised in the quote below). I am not sure why.

Wikipedia has a longstanding controversy concerning gender bias and sexism. Gender bias on Wikipedia refers to the finding that between 84 and 91 percent of Wikipedia editors are male, which allegedly leads to systemic bias.

Neixe (talk) 14:57, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

This was a server side error on my part. Neixe (talk) 15:46, 17 November 2024 (UTC)