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Response to the reply accusing this comment of bias: When people said this two years ago, they were accused of bias. Now, however, in the present, with the benefit of hindsight and more information, it's a mainstream fact, and Wikipedia does report on it. We also know that major news organizations were aware of this at the time and chose not to report it. After round earth theory becomes mainstream, it's not bias to report round earth, nor to talk about the failures that caused round earth theory to be delayed for so long.
They also do not allow civilians to evacuate or to surrender!!! All exits from Gaza are blocked by Israel or their allies!
The evidence of media bias is extensive and extremely blatant: it spans framing ("[horrible event, war crimes, etc.] happened, according to Hamas" vs no such qualification for Israeli claims, "20 people killed in Gaza" without mentioning who or what killed them), dehumanisation ("2 people killed" when reporting on children deaths in Gaza vs "2 teenagers in hospital" when talking about IDF soldiers), selective reporting (remember the pogroms in Amsterdam that got debunked on social media while every chief of state was sending their condolences?), constant repeat of Israeli "right to self-defence" while Palestinian context is not mentioned, etc., etc., etc.
One of many, many, many reports/investigations on this: https://cfmm.org.uk/cfmm-report-media-bias-gaza-2023-24/
If you need something more visual/real-time, Newscord has been been reporting on this consistently: https://newscord.org/editorials
The media might be largely a reputable source, when it doesn't contradict the preferred narrative, and the Gaza genocide was probably the strongest example we could have had of this.
I'm not sure why I even wrote this out, because 2 years in calling it "subjective opinion" is obviously not a position that is based on facts or reason.
Except the one that matters.
It can be both, an ordinary war that is also used as cover for genocide while it is ongoing.
I like how the article adds weight to mainstream vs fringe. But it occurs to me that some ideas are given so little attention that there is no substantial basis of what is fringe and what is mainstream.
If an idea is given a lot of attention, it might be mainstream or fringe, depending on how accepted it is. It might be getting a lot of negative attention, or it might just be getting a lot of attention right now. It might be transitioning from fringe to mainstream.
But if it is not getting any attention, or very little, then it is by definition fringe.
> The threshold for including material in Wikipedia is that it is verifiable, not merely that we think it is true
> Wikipedia acknowledges diverse viewpoints on contemporary controversies, but represents them in proportion to their prevalence
Sounds great! Now compare:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_genocide
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Ukrainian_War
So here's my problem. There is only one viewpoint present on the Gaza page. For comparison, the Kremlin's justification and explanation about the war is extensively detailed in the third paragraph on the Ukraine page.
And the fact that the Ukrainian war, specifically the agressive role of the Kremlin, is a controversy only on wikipedia pretty much shows what exactly wikipedia's slant is, doesn't it?
There are other ... what I would call "neutrality issues":
For some reason the word "dictator" is not mentioned here, nor is the fact that both the Chavez and Maduro families are multi-billionnaire families: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolivarian_Revolution
Did you know Iran never had any socialists or students in their ayatollah-dictatorship revolution? Perhaps should I say that the CIA's miniscule role is thoroughly mentioned, but international socialism massive role is entirely left out. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_Revolution
(you will still find these facts if you dig into the detail pages on wikipedia, but the fact that they were critical, even were the origin of the Iranian revolution, is not mentioned on the Iranian revolution page)
More generally, the links between leftism and violent anti-immigration and anti-LGBT policies and anti-Youth policies in general are extremely hard to find (good luck finding, for example, that the current leader of the UN, in his youth as a violent communist, used violence against LGBT protestors, or that he beat a few of his own students into the hospital (he was a professor) when "discussing" communism ... hell, you will not even find that he betrayed communism, socialism and essentially everything he has ever believed in)
And the links known to exist between international socialism and world events are downplayed and not mentioned. Their discussions on Ukraine before the Holodomor genocide, or their attitude before, during and after the Cultural revolution genocide in China are not mentioned:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_International
This illustrates a general problem: "communist dictatorship", well, those don't exist.
https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Awikipedia.org+%22comm... ... (note: what is mentioned is the "The Presidential Commission for the Study of the Communist Dictatorship" that Romania has, if you go to the page of Romania you will not find any mention of the actual communist dictatorship, again, the viewpoint of the Romanian government, which is that it replaced a communist dictatorship, cannot be found)
Did you know that North Korea is not communist? It is a "a highly centralized, one-party totalitarian dictatorship" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korea#Government_and_pol...
Same for "socialist dictatorship", where you will only find explanations of Marxist theory, not the many disasters, some of which mentioned above.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth
This text explicitly and implicitly states that the Earth is not flat.
> It is unlikely that you will ever happen upon an editor who will argue that Wikipedia cannot claim that the Earth is not flat. But you may indeed encounter some...
From this, it is obvious that the essay is about people who claim Wikipedia can't claim the Earth is not flat, and how to respond to them.
blueflow•1h ago
jstanley•36m ago
All progress starts out as a fringe belief.
blackbear_•27m ago
surgical_fire•21m ago
mkl•17m ago
That is not true at all. The usefulness and value of many new things and discoveries is often immediately obvious. Even when the value is not immediately obvious, being a curiosity is more likely than being a fringe belief.
Fringe beliefs don't have evidence behind them, but progress does.
braiamp•18m ago