Yes, exactly. I think it should be obvious [1] to anyone that Wikipedia is unreliable for extremely contentious subjects or modern politics. But if you point to those as examples of editorial bias, you get mired in of-the-moment political bickering. The reason I raise this example is to show that even in a boring area that should be unrelated to modern politics, you still see the rot.

[1] "should be" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in this sentence. Unfortunately, too many people have had their higher reasoning centers liquified by partisanship, and cannot acknowledge inconvenient facts even when they're blatant.

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econ 20 hours ago | parent | next [-]

An example would be a minority view on something. Even experts may strongly disagree if it should be included.

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the_af a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Are other encyclopedias or sources of information less or more likely to fall prey to this kind of bias?

Maybe in Wikipedia it's just more open, so you notice it more?

I've also noticed bias, especially in anything political (or that admits different political or ideological interpretations, such as history). However, I think you have one thing backwards: the more obscure and niche a topic is, the more likely you'll find it biased, since it has fewer editors looking at it.

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Edit: reply to breezybottom, as I'm rate-limited:

> Encyclopedias in general are not primary sources, and should never be cited.

Note this is not what I'm arguing. I mentioned Wikipedia as a source of information, which it is, not as a primary source to be cited.

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timr a day ago | parent | next [-]

Plainly less. It’s not a question.

Every source has bias, but wikipedia has the additional problem that anyone with a torch to burn, regardless of experience or knowledge, can become a dictator for the content on a topic.

Say what you will about encyclopedias, but they generally farm their writing work out to subject-matter experts, and at least try to be neutral in their editing.

> I think you have one thing backwards: the more obscure and niche a topic is, the more likely you'll find it biased, since it has fewer editors looking at it.

Maybe, but the point remains: this bias has fully permeated wikipedia.

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breezybottom a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Encyclopedias in general are not primary sources, and should never be cited.

	▲	WalterBright a day ago \| parent [-]
		Many people cite TikTok as their reference material :-)

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10111001 20 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> Are other encyclopedias or sources of information less or more likely to fall prey to this kind of bias?

I think it's less likely, because other encyclopedias are written by paid professionals (or at least some cohesive group whose reliability you can evaluate).

> Maybe in Wikipedia it's just more open, so you notice it more?

I think it's more likely on Wikipedia, because no one there is getting paid, so you have to ask yourself, what's their motivation for doing so much work? Sure you have the altruistic gnomes, just laboring to do a good, fair job for its own sake. But you also have people with an axe to grind, propagandists, and other obsessives, and they contribute to basically propagandize their POV. The dumbest ones get banned, but the smarter ones learn to twist the rules and use things like slow long-term persistence to get their way.