Which is why mild whitewashing is the standard corporate PR policy to take with Wikipedia. It's just a dialing down of the quality, a subtle way of violating NPOV by discouraging the inclusion of unhappy facts.
On Tue, Mar 15, 2011 at 6:17 PM, Ian Woollard <ian.wooll...@gmail.com>wrote: > The thing is, it takes a conspiracy within the Wikipedia's rank and > file to bias an article significantly over a long period; otherwise > normal editing and then RFCs and so forth will tend sort it out. > > If it remains sufficiently inaccurate then the target will kick up a > big fuss; initially within the Wikipedia, and then other places like > Wikipedia Review and eventually in the press. The more people that > look at the bias, the less sustainable the position of the conspiracy > becomes. > > > On 15/03/2011, Ken Arromdee <arrom...@rahul.net> wrote: > > On Mon, 14 Mar 2011, The Cunctator wrote: > >>> Oh, certainly, left wing blogs are attacking the Kochs. And awareness > >>> among > >> hard-core political activists and junkies is probably pretty high. > > > > There you go. > > > >> But we're talking a very small percentage of the US population. > >> > >> There are only a few thousand regular editors on en.wp. There really > >> aren't > >> that many people who edit Wikipedia. And [[David H. Koch]] for example > is > >> semi-protected. So we're talking about a handful of editors. > >> > >> There are big differences between the hypothetical potential pool of > >> people > >> capable of editing Wikipedia, the pool of people interested in doing so, > >> the > >> people with the experience and ability to do so effectively, etc. > > > > It's true that only a certain number of people would bias a Koch article > > against the Koch's. It's also true that this can be said for virtually > any > > article where there is danger of political bias. By your reasoning > nobody > > should ever have to worry about political bias anywhere on Wikipedia. > > > > Some people do like to believe that no outsider should ever worry about > > political bias on Wikipedia. If so, there's not much I can say to > convince > > you except to point out that you have an inflated idea of how well > Wikipedia > > works. But if there's ever any article which is a valid concern, surely > > the Koch article has to be one of them. It's a BLP on a subject that is > > routinely the target of the left; about the only way it could be worse is > > to be about Obama or Bush (and those are so high profile that the danger > is > > probably less, anyway.) > > > > _______________________________________________ > > WikiEN-l mailing list > > WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org > > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: > > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l > > > > > -- > -Ian Woollard > > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l > _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
