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WikiPedia Founder Wales Speaks About Wikinews
sebFlyte writes "One of Wikipedia's founders, Jimmy Wales, has given an interesting interview to news.com.com.com about the new WikiNews project. He talks about his dissatisfaction with IndyMedia's bias, the problems with traditional news media and how to make Wiki content credible (a problem WikiPedia faces, as previously reported)."
"They seem to forget this."
From TFA:
How can you ensure that you are actually neutral? Doesn't each individual contributor have his or her own bias? Even the choice of story reflects some bias.
Yes, of course. There's no magic bullet to eliminate bias, and be objective and neutral.
You were saying?
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
You've confused two people. Larry Sanger is the one who had the kuro5hin rant posted recently accusing Wikipedia of anti-elitism. Jimbo is Wikimedia's current benevolent dictator.
But then again, I could be wrong.
I must say that I was impressed with the interview with Jimmy Wales. I've had my misgivings with the Wikinews project in the past, despite being an avid reader/contributor to Wikipedia. Yet from the article Mr. Wales lays out the project well:
The bloggers are the editorial page and response to the editorial pages, and we're the response to the front page. We'll synthesize what's being reported in a variety of sources.
Brilliant! That's exactly what WikiNews should be, and what it would excel at. Now, it will be simply a blog, but sort of an.. uber-blog. I'm just glad that Mr. Wales isn't looking too far, and acknowledges the shortcomings of the Wikinews project - the accessibility to foreign lands, important peoples, etc. In short, the power to break many stories. Not that bloggers haven't broken a few stories, but the lion's share will continue to reside with the big media sources.
All in all, a great interview. Kudos to Mr. Wales!
"There's no success like failure, and failure's no success at all."
- Bob Dylan
I was around in the early days when Indymedia was being planned. I helped a bit from the technical end, how to set up Apache, which Linux would I recommend, etc. I dropped out of the project because I disagred with their moderation scheme, there is very little accountability.
I'm a flaming liberal, and these days I can't stand Indymedia. Why? Because many comments and stories are hidden by the fascist moderators.
Apparenly I'm not liberal ENOUGH to have my comments read by others, especially when I dare to criticize some Black Blockster when they do stupid shit like setting a trashcan on fire...
Does Wikinews have a similar moderation scheme?
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
A great example is what just happened to the fusion power article. Two of the three founders of the Tokamak program have come out against the Tokamak and one of the founders circulated a letter to all of the plasma physics labs as well as to the relevant Congressmen, stating categorically that the Tokamak program was never real -- it was just a vehicle for raising funding so that other more hopeful ideas could be tried.
I scanned the original letter and presented a link to it as an aspect of the fusion power article. This is primary source material -- not original research -- from one of the foremost authorities, indeed one of the fathers of the US fusion energy program. The nothing-better-to-do-with-their-times censored it and quite honestly I just don't have the time, energy or patience to bother with a reversion war with the bottom feeders at wikipedia.
Seastead this.
But what's interesting about the way the wiki process works, and the openness of it, is that if you write something and you want it to survive the process, you have to write it in such a way that is broadly satisfactory to people of many points of view.
But what about issues and facts that may indeed offend a lot of people? One of the problems with mainstream media is that they must retain an audience and so they often frame the information such that it is in a view that is pleases as much of its audience as possible. A single issue has many viewpoints, and each of those viewpoints may be presented with a bias. Take nuclear energy for example--one can explore the dangers of it or talk about its advantages. Both can be reported in a netural way, but by highlighting one and not the other, there is another form of bias. They may circumvent some types of political and opionated biased in this way, but they do not eliminate the bias as to what does and does not receive attention.
But the idea is a sound one, in my view. Total neutrality in an abstract sense is not necessarily being 100% non-judgemental, because just about every assertion that one can make involves a judgement. I believe 100% neutrality is when everyone's varied views on a matter are taken into account. What the Wiki projects do is give everyone the opportunity to inject their view on an issue.
The problem is when anyone thinks they are 100% right and, at least in the case of wikipedia, monitor an article to prevent and undermine any changes that run contrary to their views. This is the main failing of the wiki project and it really has no easy answer. The wikinews site offers the advantage that specific articles will be under more intense scrutiny by more people in a short period of time, reducing the potential for sabateurs marginally, but also running the risk that the status quo will dominate the tone and content of the articles more often, drowning out minority voices.
Yup...
Would it kill a project to have 'expert versions' of pages that have been okayed by a panel (elected by majority vote, of course) of experts? These could be right next to regular pages and inspire a little more confidence in results.... especially in more specialized or scientific areas. Your thoughts?
I for one, welcome our news.com.com.com.com.com overlords.
Yep thats very very true.
I found Wikinews by accident. They had a 'drinking fountain/watercooler' area where anything seemed to be ok as far as metadiscussion.
I made a few posts and was rudely slammed by the clique residing there. They take you post and alter it at will, move it other places and do as they jolly well wish.
You can complain there but the 'mafia' just ignores you.
I decided it was a waste of time.
In my view therefore WikiNews sucks big time.
If you have a place for conjecture on the site then don't trash it with your 'supposed'neutrality. By the way who judges the neutrality? A bunch of folks who make the decisions. This is NOT NEUTRALITY. Its bullying in just a new skin but its still the same.
I repeat...its sucks.
The authenticity of any web document must be corroborated. In the case of this letter, there is more than enough corroborating information that's easily verifiable. For crying out loud there's the author of the letter himself to call if you really want to be a jerk and harrass him.
Seastead this.
Here is a sample of a fact only news article that I just made up:
Police responded to a 911 emergency call at 123 Maple Ave last night at 3:22 AM. Mr Raymond Maynard called police to report that several persons were trying to break down his door, and asked for help. The police dispatcher could hear the sound of banging and hammering, and then Mr Maynard stated that the door was giving in, and that he had to put the phone down.
When Police arrived on the scene, they found Mr Dumbo Mcnutt, Mr Metoo Imdumb, and Mr Gang Banger on the floor of the house in the hallway leading to the master bedroom. Handguns were found by the bodies, and Mcnut had $6400 on his person. Mcnut, Imdumb, and Banger were pronounced dead at the scene from multiple shotgun wounds. The intruders all had previous records for assault, robbery, rape, and stampeding cattle thru the Vatican.
Police do not expect to file any charges against Mr Maynard.
Last month, the Governor signed into law the bill that bars lawsuits on the behalf of persons injured or killed while commiting a crime. Instances of home invasion have dropped 62% since the city mandated that each homeowner be armed last year.
### Now here is another story about the event, with a particular bias:
Another tragedy occured in the city tonight, and its cause was, as always, an armed citizen. A vigilante viciously gunned down 3 young men of color, innocent victims of Bush's oppression of the poor, the homeless, those who never had a chance in society. Police responded to a complaint by Mr Maynard that someone was knocking loudly at his door, and that it was past his bedtime. When officers arrived at the scene, they found a scene of bloody carnage. Mr Maynard had killed these three young men, claiming self defense. These sorts of senseless and unneccesary killings must be stopped now!. If only guns were outlawed, then citizens like Mr Maynard would be unable to act as judge, jury and executioner.
In an added tragedy, The Republican Governor last month signed a bill, over the objections of the UN , Cuba, and the ACLU, which prohibits the relatives of the victims of these attacks from having their day in court. Fatal shootings of persons accused of entering peoples homes without permission have risen sharply following the citys bloodthirsty mandate that all homeowners be armed to the teeth.####
I could do a 3ed version which puts the bias of the second version the other way, but I've spend too long on this already. In any case, you can see the first version reports only facts. The second version uses emotional language to press the readers buttons.
Most of what gets put into the mainstream media should be marked as troll or flamebait.
To Jimmy Wales, everything looks like a job for a wiki.
Wikipedia was a smashing success, and that surprised a lot of people, including me. But if we step back and analyze why it was successful, I think there are some very specific things that made it work, and that don't apply so much to other types of work:
Well, wikinews fails criterion #2, and probably #3 as well -- its writers probably aren't going to be flying to Fallouja to report first-hand, so all they'll have to contribute is their own opinions about the news. The one place where wikipedia really falls flat on its face is topical and controversial articles, i.e., wikinews' entire prospective subject matter.
Then there's wikibooks, which fails criterion #1. There may be some healthy, thriving books in there, but as for the physics textbook I've been checking on now and then, nobody seems to have the long-term motivation to write anything past the first chapter.
Find free books.
I agree with that viewpoint I'm not trying to say this example is a trend or something but i decided to surf around at the Wikinews beta project to search for a news item which i know a bit of background on.
Little bit later i stumbled upon Pinochet arrested after Supreme Court ruling and i read the article. What striked me was the following sentence: The crimes where a part of "Operation Condor," an attempt to supress opposition to the government. The dictator ruled from a 1973 coup, overthrowing the elected socialist Salvador Allende, until 1990.
This statement is true, but not accurate. Its not news either, its background information for the uninformed reader. From here, the power of Wikipedia (or any other encyclopedia) could be used to link to history but the nice thing is that this is the Internet and that websites and Wiki's can easily 'connect' to each other. That'd be a good way IMO. Because now it misses all the facts of the CIA which were involved in this coup and who have blood on their hands, which is regulary censored or evaded (comes down to the same). I verified, and yes the wikipedia entry for Salvador Allende contains some information on this piece of history of Chille.
I'd like to know why they don't link to the encyclopedia for background information...
WE DON'T NEED NO BLOG CONTROL.
This assumes that the truth is always in the perceived "middle". A compromise has no greater probability of being true than an "extreme" position.
This site, culls news services for the most common word. Not the best topic, or most important topic, just counts what people are writing about and lets you see the headlines. It may be the closest thing yet to a non-biased news source.
You can also introduce bias by choosing which facts to include and which to leave out.
This is fun. Let's try it again.
Same story. Nothing but the facts, but very different slants.
I feel I should chime in here, as the person who originally removed the geocities links from the article.
I removed the link because; number one - wikipedia does not publish original research, two -Jim Baldrson has been a known trollish crazy on Kuro5hin for years and a troll on Usenet for over a DECADE landing himself on a kook-of-the-month list way back in 1994, three -The ideas expressed on his geocities site (which is down now but I'll link anyway, maybe it'll be back up) are just plain insane. Here's a real gem: "Immigration Causes Autism" a lovely little racist tract (also, racist extremists endorse his views), fourth -he started editing wikipedia articles in suspicious anti-semitic and racist ways (see here, though these are merely revivals of his MANY earlier anti-Jewish ramblings) though his changes were reverted by other users fairly quickly, fifth -he seems to go "underground" when he's noticed by others as a problem and then starts posting changes to articles using only his IP. So in conclusion I think its quite clear that neither he nor his ideas or motives are trustworthy. He is closely watched on wikipedia right now and I doubt he will get away with too much shenanigans.
One hilarious bit of irony I can't help but relish is that he came here to cry a river about how he was being "censored" on wikipedia and then had four +5 comments posted below him agreeing with his opposition after recognizing him for the kook he is. Wow, congrats Jim!
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
As to the rest of his ad hominem attack, my challenge still stands: falsify the quite readily falsifiable claim of presenting a genuine letter from Robert W. Bussard, co-founder of the United States fusion energy program, denouncing, as an originator of that program, the Tokamak.
Seastead this.
You have an interesting understanding of the word "facts."
I've always said that the obvious slant found in most newspaper articles should be attributed not to any systematic imposition of bias but simply to the fact that most newspaper and wire service reporters couldn't write themselves out of a paper bag if you gave them a really sharp pencil.
If you're a lousy writer, but your job is to design jet engines or something, that's fine. But if your job is to write and you're a lousy writer, we have a problem.
But whichever it is, here's a friendly tip for you: Words like "claims" and "denounced" and "finally" and "repel" and "invaders" don't belong in a story that runs under the headline "nothing but the facts."