There is no such thing as neutrality or unbiased views, we are humans, everything we do or say is filled with bias. Claiming for Wikipedia to "stay neutral" is a bias itself.
They do as good of a job as any of us in trying to stay neutral.
> They do as good of a job as any of us in trying to stay neutral.
Not even close. Anything even close to political has a clear slant to it, from actual article wordings to allowed sources to build the articles off of.
Every bit of content has a POV, there is no getting around that. Neutral POV is the Wikipedia ideal - one they work towards but will never reach. They do as good a job as anybody at it.
Every bit of content has multiple POVs, and when you continuously present only the POVs associated with one part of the political spectrum, that's an avoidable bias.
There's certain "radioactive" topics on Wikipedia where it's almost impossible for contrarian views to get a fair hearing: evolution, vaccination, nationalism, etc.
Contrarian views on many topics are not backed by facts but by emotion. A collection of knowledge is not obligated to let contrarian viewpoints with no scientific basis share the same space as factual coverage of a topic.
This is the problem I see far too often with people who criticize Wikipedia for their NPOV policy.
Political movements not garnering support from mainstream or left wing media... When you get to pick which sources you use you get to pick which views you will present...
This is a common complaint against many publications or resources that attempt unbiased coverage - they are are attacked by people on all sides as being biased against their side.
I wish people would use their brains rather than seek out charlatans promising unbiased information.
To elaborate, I think that this obsession creates a few interesting scenarios. If people are flatly told/believe how a given media is biased then they don't have to read critically themselves. It can also be used to shut down discussion, your source is biased- I can ignore it.
Calling stuff biased is becoming a hell of a thought-stopper. That you say elsewhere,
> Yeah, everything is relative, truth doesn't exist, yadda-yadda.
strikes me as downright ironic. The routine and wholesale dismissal of sources because they don't tell the story with someone's preferred angle is amounting to a whole lot of yadda-yadda, I agree!
kingofthehill98|2 years ago
They do as good of a job as any of us in trying to stay neutral.
LudwigNagasena|2 years ago
Meh, there is a scale.
> Claiming for Wikipedia to "stay neutral" is a bias itself.
Yeah, everything is relative, truth doesn’t exist, yadda-yadda.
> They do as good of a job as any of us in trying to stay neutral.
They don’t.
soundnote|2 years ago
Not even close. Anything even close to political has a clear slant to it, from actual article wordings to allowed sources to build the articles off of.
LastTrain|2 years ago
logicchains|2 years ago
Every bit of content has multiple POVs, and when you continuously present only the POVs associated with one part of the political spectrum, that's an avoidable bias.
>They do as good a job as anybody at it.
Actual encyclopedias do a much better job of it.
esafak|2 years ago
silent_cal|2 years ago
snuxoll|2 years ago
This is the problem I see far too often with people who criticize Wikipedia for their NPOV policy.
nvy|2 years ago
Those "contrarian views" are little more than fringe conspiracy theories. A fair hearing on those topics is at best a sentence or two.
Ekaros|2 years ago
Angostura|2 years ago
veltas|2 years ago
2OEH8eoCRo0|2 years ago
To elaborate, I think that this obsession creates a few interesting scenarios. If people are flatly told/believe how a given media is biased then they don't have to read critically themselves. It can also be used to shut down discussion, your source is biased- I can ignore it.
unknown|2 years ago
[deleted]
Clamchop|2 years ago
> Yeah, everything is relative, truth doesn't exist, yadda-yadda.
strikes me as downright ironic. The routine and wholesale dismissal of sources because they don't tell the story with someone's preferred angle is amounting to a whole lot of yadda-yadda, I agree!