this post was submitted on 30 Mar 2024
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Not The Onion
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Can you not literally see the edit history of Wikipedia articles?
Yes, that's why this is in c/nottheonion
Wait so it's fake?
No, it means that the subject matter is ridiculous enough to be satirical, but unfortunately it isn’t.
I have been curious about this since the subreddit on reddit, is The Onion the magazine from Harry Potter universe that wrote ridiculous things or is it a real magazine? I always think of someone from HP deliberately writing dumb articles (perhaps Rita Skeeter named someone?) So i'm not sure.
The Onion is a real paper (or at least while it was in print, it’s all digital now) and has existed since the late ‘80s, well before Harry Potter came along.
The report actually suggests a new bias and neutrality editing framework with its own edit history, unrelated to existing content editing tools.
In other words, the argument is that the current editing framework does not do enough to specifically address bias and neutrality. That seems pretty clear to me regardless of current events.
I know edits to add and correct bias do happen. I agree it would be nice if power editors, at least, were not anonymous. I wish there was a Wikipedia that could only be edited be verified, trusted experts. The potential is there with the fediverse. And in fact I thought Wikipedia was working on this. I requested an invite but never got one.
Such edits for neutrality (as well as to insert bias) are made. There is a history. It is talked about and recorded. It is searchable. It is distributed. Man, you should hear these Wikipedia editors talk to each other if you haven't, it's like a different language.
Anyway: the source article suggests an extra layer to that system, with public standards and criteria supported by research, which it also proposed, and suggests that editors could be monitored for bias based on such standards.
I see the potential for draconian abuse but this is one website. As I said, I hoped there would be a fediverse instance to consolidate legitimate expert, factual information. Someone shared a website with me the other day that included such technical analysis for current events. I will link it when I get another minute.
E: here's that link https://www.sciencemediacentre.org
The current platform does enough to address bias and neutrality. If you are doing so bad you want a lopsided view of what you did, you're supposed to fork it and let it die like other free speech oppressors do, not compile PDF with stupid suggestions to mainline.
Everything has to be sourced from a reputable source. So I don't see why this is a huge problem. As long as they're sourcing their edits, and using reputable, verifiable sources, why should it matter if they're anonymous or not?
Rather than talk about what Wikipedia should or shouldn't do to improve, people should take the initiative of helping to improve it themselves. Wikipedia is ultimately a collective of its volunteer editors, so the best way of enacting change on the platform is getting more people to make informed, unbiased improvements to articles.
Wikipedia do lock articles so that only editors with good standing can change them. But obviously that's not necessary for every article because 99% of articles are not political and are in fact about a type of moss that grows in the Canary Islands.
That's what the world is about, so 99% of articles being about that moss makes sense