On Thu, Oct 14, 2010 at 9:47 PM, Guettarda <guetta...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Thu, Oct 14, 2010 at 3:26 PM, George Herbert > <george.herb...@gmail.com>wrote: > >> On Thu, Oct 14, 2010 at 1:11 PM, Ian Woollard <ian.wooll...@gmail.com> >> wrote: >> > On 13/10/2010, George Herbert <george.herb...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >> I am concerned not so much with the specifics they are pointing out, >> >> but at a general trend that we may include more negatives about >> >> conservative positions and people than about liberal positions and >> >> people, which would be worth some statistical analysis. >> > >> > The problem is that a good encyclopedia, such as the Wikipedia, tries >> > to reflect reality and truth. >> > >> > But reality and truth... have a well known liberal bias. >> >> That's the second such reply, and it's a little disappointing. >> >> I want the encyclopedia to accurately and fairly represent things I >> personally disagree with, as well as the ones I agree with. The >> assumption that some bias is ok because "we're right" ... is Wrong. >> It's a fundamental failure of NPOV. >> >> > "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.
I am not consistently in either camp; I'm one of those darn individual issues unbundled, make up own mind people. It's not just "representing reality" - it's misrepresenting Conservatives' positions and philosophy and similar non-neutral things. I see this in plenty of articles where I fully personally agree with the "liberal position" as well as ones where I don't. If I see bias when I agree with the conservatives, I may not be a dispassionate observer on that point, and I know that. But if I see it when I disagree with them, it's probably really there. It's not everywhere. And on the average it's not worth doing anything about. But there are places it's a problem. One area - homosexuality / gay rights. My personal position here is very strongly pro-homosexual marriage and equality - I'm slightly offended still that my ex-neighbors the now married lesbian couple did it without me getting a chance to officiate and even out the heterosexual marriages I've performed for people. I find the anti-gay-marriage arguments either narrow denominationally religiously focused or intellectually incoherent, personally. But I keep finding cases where those arguments against are belittled to the point of not even being reported accurately. I understand the arguments against despite disagreeing with pretty much every one completely, and I can say that our coverage of those points has not (at the times I've looked) accurately resembled the actual arguments, philosophy, and beliefs of the opponents. That's not neutral. That's not representing reality. That's outright "conservatives are so batshit we don't care about them" bias. And the argument doesn't deserve being simplified to that, in part because people seeking to understand it who tend to agree with the opponents who come look at our pages will immediately see the bias and turn off of Wikipedia as a useful information source, at least on this topic. Oh, also, we're supposed to be neutral POV. Minor thing there... This is Not Good for the Encyclopedia. -- -george william herbert george.herb...@gmail.com _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
