On Fri, Oct 15, 2010 at 3:47 PM, Guettarda <guetta...@gmail.com> wrote:
> "Reality has a liberal bias" doesn't mean that liberals are right. Rather, > it means that any attempt to represent reality will, in the eyes of American > conservatives, amount to displaying a liberal bias. That should only be correct insofar as the reverse is true, namely that reality has a conservative bias - when viewed from the Left. However, reality is subjective for pretty much anything that we can't whip out a tape measure for, take its temperature or define its geographic range. We can cross-reference a hamlet on Google Maps or define the tilt on the Leaning Tower, but we cannot accurately describe the precise political orientation of a politician. My rule of thumb is to look at (say) a biographical article on a sitting politician, and ask myself, would that politician's media spokesman be happy with it. If the answer is YES!, then it's biased. Reality, according to some editors, is a matter of following the party line. Or the faith's doctrine, nationalist outlook, cultural preference or preferred football team's victory song. We aren't going to convince, through rational argument or ranting abuse, the editors producing biased material that they are actually doing so. Or, if they know their material is biased, they will not admit it, because that would be a betrayal of the sacred party line. The same holds true for biased critics of fair and balanced articles. If an article contains criticism or a negative view of their hero, then it must, by definition, be biased. And in need of correction. I think that Wikipedia is big enough that we have room for all points of view by drilling down far enough. We are not going to state in our main article that the 9/11 attacks were a conspiracy organised by the US government, but we have an article on the various conspiracy theories. In fact we have sub articles on specific theories. If critics claim a bias in Wikipedia, then rather than battle over the main article, just write a child article focussing on the specific concerns. If there is any merit, then it will be revealed and promoted. Contrariwise, if it is tripe, it will be labelled as such and eliminated. -- Peter in Canberra _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
