What's the ideological bias you identify in Wikipedia? If you name it, we can discuss whether we agree with you or not.

Edit: wow, downvoted for asking this. Really, it's very simple: one should be able to make it explicit what bias they mean. If they don't, maybe they fear to show their own biases and be called out? Downvoting is the coward's way out.

Edit 2: I'm rate-limited, but I find this answer very puzzling:

> Rather, it's a recognition that it's not worth it to engage when the odds of the question being honest are slim.

That goes directly against HN guidelines. Assume the best version of a comment, not the worst. My question should be fairly straightforward to answer.

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Viliam1234 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This article only talks about some of Wikipedia's problems, but it was the best source I could find quickly:

https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/reliable-sources-how-wik...

	▲	the_af 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Spoiler: turns out the commenter I was asking about this had an issue with Wikipedia re: marxism and the Middle East / Israel. The mention of marxism is puzzling, but re: the Middle East / Israel, I think it's impossible for any kind of written publication to report anything relatively recent on this topic that won't make anyone enraged about bias. So it seems a bit unfair to claim this is how Wikipedia is "being lost to ideology", because this is a property of the various Middle East conflicts, not of Wikipedia. Let me emphasize: nothing that could be written anywhere about the Middle East or Israel, today or in recent years, can possibly avoid enraging a large number of people all over the world.

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

Rather, it's a recognition that it's not worth it to engage when the odds of the question being honest are slim. If you are curious about bias on Wikipedia, the information is readily available. There's even a Wikipedia article.

	▲	datsci_est_2015 9 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It's a nice Wikipedia article, and highlights that the people most critical of Wikipedia are cranks (e.g. Larry Sanger, Elon Musk), and that most studies trying to objectively discover bias find very mild and isolated examples of bias.

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AuthAuth 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Sorry, I should have included this in my comment. I'm referring to pages on communism or communism adjacent topics, socialism and the middle eastern conflicts involving Isreal. I find a lot of the communist pages use sources that have 'a marxist perspective of history' which is ahistorical. The middle east articles involving Isreal use a lot of sources known to be unreliable like middleeasteye and Al-jazeera. They also receive a a ton of traffic from both sides as they're using wikipedia to fight over history.

	▲	the_af 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Thanks for the honest reply. Based on what you're saying, I think your real issue is that your own ideology and biases clash with whatever you perceive about Wikipedia. If Wikipedia had a less "marxist perspective of history" (!) or relied more on whatever you think is more reliable about the Middle East and Israel, then we'd have another commenter claiming Wikipedia is hopelessly biased in the opposite direction. Unfortunately this boils down to "I don't like it", which is very subjective and very hard to evaluate in a neutral way that everyone agrees must mean "Wikipedia is being lost to ideology", as you claimed. I think we all agree political and recent-ish history are mired in controversy and these divisive topics are problematic in Wikipedia, but ultimately hard to report on neutrally anyway. I guess they could settle for a insincere "neutral" tone that left everyone unsatisfied; Wikipedia supposedly tries to do that. > The middle east articles involving Isreal use a lot of sources known to be unreliable like middleeasteye and Al-jazeera. Good luck finding any written publication of any kind that everyone will agree is unbiased and reliable on this topic, and that won't upset a significant number of readers. Re: specifically Middle East Eye, Wikipedia's own article on it is critical and highlights controversies. As for using it on articles about the Middle East, it would only be a problem if it was the only reference, but this doesn't seem to be the case in a cursory search I did. So aren't you effectively asking they ban some sources but left others, which ironically would introduce bias? Same with Al-jazeera or any other news outlets you dislike.