[EcommerceFlow]

The Wikipedia "reliability" list shows wild, almost laughable biases.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Per...

Surely people don't think sources such as Mother Jones are more 'reliable' than The New York Post, Fox News, or The Heritage Foundation? Not a coincidence there.

Having such obvious biases does nothing but damage the Wikipedia brand, and at this point has me anticipating Ai replacements.

[LasEspuelas]

This is the comment on the Mother Jones entry: "There is consensus that Mother Jones is generally reliable. Almost all editors consider Mother Jones a biased source, so its statements (particularly on political topics) may need to be attributed. Consider whether content from this publication constitutes due weight before citing it in an article."

They acknowledge it is a biased source and they make a distinction between reliability and bias. Not familiar with the publication.

[kemayo]

To elaborate slightly, note that "reliable" is sort of Wikipedia jargon. When it applies to a news organization, it means that statements of fact are likely to be correct... or at least, not intentionally incorrect, because errors do happen. So a source can be reliable and biased at the same time, which means that if it says a thing happened you can largely trust that it really did happen... but any interpretation of that might be slanted, and so shouldn't be trusted.

The New York Post isn't "reliable" because it's a tabloid that doesn't care overmuch about fact-checking what it publishes (and, worse, has a history of just making stuff up sometimes). So the Wikipedia position is that you can't trust a citation to the NY Post without finding something else to corroborate it -- at which point you might as well just cite the corroborating reliable source instead.

Whereas Mother Jones will absolutely mostly publish articles which say good things about progressives and bad things about conservatives, but those things will all be true. Their bias comes in the form of selectively presenting these things -- they're unlikely to bother posting a "Ted Cruz just did a good thing" article -- and in their color commentary / opinion pieces, not in the form of just making things up.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources

[mmooss]

> Surely people don't think sources such as Mother Jones are more 'reliable' than The New York Post, Fox News, or The Heritage Foundation?

That seems based on a premise that I don't grasp. Why is Mother Jones more or less reliable than those sources? Are those sources reliable in your opinion?

My impression is that you have a strong opinion and are assuming everyone shares it.