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Why Wikipedia cannot claim the Earth is not flat

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Why_Wikipedia_cannot_claim_the_Earth_is_not_flat
49•duncanjbrown•2h ago

Comments

blueflow•1h ago
Wikipedia rules are just insufficient to protect against "fringe" beliefs. Wikipedia itself creates several of them per year due to citogenesis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_citogenesis_...
jstanley•36m ago
Why are fringe beliefs something that need protecting against?

All progress starts out as a fringe belief.

blackbear_•27m ago
But not all fringe beliefs lead to progress, in fact most of them don't.
surgical_fire•21m ago
Many absolutely retarded and damaging ideas also start with fringe beliefs.
mkl•17m ago
> All progress starts out as a fringe belief.

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
Why should wikipedia protect itself from fringe, when it doesn't need to try to? If your fringe theory becomes the widely accepted one, it will naturally change the wording of the article, just based on sourcing alone.
immibis•58m ago
I thought it was interesting how long Wikipedia took to rename "2023 Israel-Hamas war" to "Gaza war" and start calling it a genocide, but I suppose this is why. When major sources have a significant bias, Wikipedia copies that bias as a matter of policy.

---

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.

throw83949448•47m ago
This is not a "bias". There is precise legal definition for "genocide", and it was recognized as such. Israel goverment offials were very specific on record, what they will do to population in Gaza.

They also do not allow civilians to evacuate or to surrender!!! All exits from Gaza are blocked by Israel or their allies!

blueflow•45m ago
Which does not matter, because for Wikipedia, Journalists are a reputable source regardless of their bias. If the WaPo writes tomorrow that Hannah Arendt was a far-right extremist, that would be a valid source by Wikipedia standards.
lnrd•42m ago
I believe what Wikipedia tries to do (simplifying here) is reporting the "opinion" of reputable sources which should have an informed view on the matter. If reputable sources believe it's a genocide, then they will report it, if not they will not. Calling these sources biased because they do not corroborate your view of the situation is your subjective opinion and doesn't mean they actually do have a bias. The whole point of considering them reputable sources is that they should be as unbiased as possible (even though 100% neutrality is impossible), if they had "significant bias" as you claim they would not be considered as reliable sources to begin with.
constantius•17m ago
Circular reasoning that is completely ignorant of the last 2 years of analysis of media reporting on Gaza.

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.

lkrubner•37m ago
But it is now clear from the evidence that Israel never committed genocide in Gaza. Genocide is defined under international law as a crime of intent. Israel was happy to sign a ceasefire agreement as soon as Hamas offered to return the hostages. Therefore Israel had no intent of removing the people of Gaza from Gaza, therefore there was no genocide. This was simply an ordinary war. The fact that Israel is effective at war does not mean that it engages in genocide, but rather, it means that the Israeli military is competent while the Hamas leadership is incompetent. And Wikipedia has an obligation to correctly represent the nature of international law.
Hikikomori•33m ago
Genocide definition includes more than exterminating all the people. UN, pretty much all humanitarian organisations, including Israeli ones, has concluded that its a genocide. Hamas offered hostage exchange 2 years ago.
almogo•19m ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Africa%27s_genocide_case...

Except the one that matters.

Scarblac•21m ago
> Genocide is defined under international law as a crime of intent. Israel was happy to sign a ceasefire agreement as soon as Hamas offered to return the hostages. Therefore Israel had no intent of removing the people of Gaza from Gaza, therefore there was no genocide. This was simply an ordinary war.

It can be both, an ordinary war that is also used as cover for genocide while it is ongoing.

braiamp•28m ago
Wikipedia is not meant to appear neutral, it's meant to "mirror the current consensus of mainstream scholarship [... aka] 'accepted knowledge'". Basically, if the accepted knowledge of an event is that it is not a genocide, Wikipedia has to reflect _that_. Wikipedia is not a soapbox. It doesn't have an stance. It just copies and transmit as accurately as possible, the current understanding from qualified sources. You can literally see it in the "balance" section of this article.
nashashmi•48m ago
This is a Lesson 101 on how to refute baseless arguments. Or maybe it is a 400-level class. It all comes down to recognizing mimicry of authenticity manipulated towards fringe ideas.

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.

bckr•6m ago
That the ideas are given little attention is the substantial basis in determining that they are fringe.

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.

charlieyu1•39m ago
lol but they are quick to take Chinese propaganda
david_draco•32m ago
Now apply to each topic at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_topics_characterized_a...
almogo•11m ago
Very interesting to see "Technical Analysis" in this list. I'm no expert in the field, and TA always seemed like quackery to me, but I suspect many more people believe in it than for example Cryptozoology. I personally know someone who even took a course in TA, couldn't imagine anyone taking a course in looking for Bigfoot.
spwa4•17m ago
Wikipedia defending it's neutrality. Except ... it's not even remotely neutral on political topics.

> 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.

raffael_de•16m ago
I don't get it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth

This text explicitly and implicitly states that the Earth is not flat.

strken•10m ago
The first paragraph of the linked essay is as follows:

> 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.

bckr•9m ago
It’s an essay with a title that is tongue-in-cheek. It’s throwing shade at flat earthers.

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