Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2023-02-20/In the media

Holocaust arbcom case

Just a note for precision that the heading "Arbitrators open case ..." seems technically speaking a bit incorrect, since ArbCom was only "initiating a case request" (as the article body correctly says). However, given that the arbitrator votes currently stand at 9/1/0 (accept/decline/recuse), it can be safely assumed that the case will in fact be opened. Regards, HaeB (talk) 11:51, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

• One thing that the authors of the paper got right, but the authors of this article got wrong, is who is being accused. The paper's authors refer to a group of editors, while the article's author suggests that Wikipedia itself is responsible. The agency always rests with the people. That shorthand evades responsibility in a way that is common among government and corporate officials, and doesn't belong on this site. Wikipedia is not paper, and there's no reason not to be precise.~TPW 14:09, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

  As the author of the article in question, I'd like to point out that Grabowski and Klein titled their essay "Wikipedia's Intentional Distortion of the History of the Holocaust".

  Grabowski and Klein did refer to editors in the abstract—which I quoted in full. (I wrote neither the main headline nor the sub-headline for this page, but they don't seem to me at variance with the title of the essay.) Andreas JN466 17:19, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

  • From Grabowski's 2020 Polish newspaper article, something that may help understand what he thinks about our project in general: [1] I warn students against using Wikipedia and I advise the use of paper encyclopedias. ... I hesitate to use the term 'regulation', but it will be difficult to win otherwise with the spread of lies. Perhaps the time has come for supranational, pan-European institutions... to take a closer look at Wikipedia. Fake news is doing great there... . I just dusted off the 20 volumes of Meyer's encyclopedia that I inherited from my grandfather and had been sitting unused in the family library for years. Using it, I can be sure that articles will not change beyond recognition tomorrow. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 12:08, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

    I remember looking in an encyclopedia my grandparents had. The entry on Adolf Hitler was something like "German politician. Attempted a coup in 1923, sentenced to 5 years in prison."Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 06:42, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

    I wonder which edition of the Meyers Konversations-Lexikon his grandfather had... _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 06:54, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

Updated link

The link to Volunteer Marek's response was updated on 21 February, 2023. It now leads to a different target. (The other document is also still up and linked from there.) --Andreas JN466 16:51, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

Baker

Baker is correct on the negative bias in biographies of even slightly controversial figures either due to media coverage as such or the tendency of editors to focus on them. The way to mitigate that is ready access to non-news sources which cover the subject in toto. I wonder what he has to say about FA articles (though these tend to be few for controversial topics). Gotitbro (talk) 13:41, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

I have opened a discussion at Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/Noticeboard#Russ Baker to address these complaints. -Location (talk) 16:59, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

I was involved in that article a while back, and it's one of the reasons I've tended to avoid COI-laden subject areas, paid editing and so on, which used to be a major focus, I don't follow the COI noticeboard anymore and have given up on paid editing. The COI editor, whether the article subject or a PR firm, is paid or otherwise inherently prone to never give up, not give a damn about Wikipedia policies, and hammer away until they get their way. I started on Wikipedia because of BP, where a PR man was working full time to slant an article. I don't edit BP anymore because dealing with such a determined article subject is simply not worth my time. I think COI situations like BP and this one are a major reason for editor burnout. One reason for this is that other editors very often couldn't care less about COI situations.

What bothers me about the Signpost article is that it fails to point out that the subject of the article actively participated on the talk page and in the article itself. Dealing with COIs can be very stressful, I've certainly encountered a lot worse. One of the subjects of a Trump pardon dispatched an army of sockpuppets to the page on the pardon subject, who was released from a very long prison term. They wanted the article to be a love song, You can't blame them but, please, show a little empathy for the volunteers who have to deal with people like that, who have absolutely no interest in Wikipedia policies. Coretheapple (talk) 19:44, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

Just to quantify one point I made above. Baker has been editing this article through SPAs and IPs for at least thirteen years. See [2]. Coretheapple (talk) 14:57, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

Judges

Senior judges using Wikipedia is not surprising but I wonder what lead to such a situation, easy accessibility perhaps? Gotitbro (talk) 13:44, 1 March 2023 (UTC)