Statisticians Investigate Political Bias On Wikipedia

Hugh Pickens writes "The Global Economic Intersection reports on a project to statistically measure political bias on Wikipedia. The team first identified 1,000 political phrases based on the number of times these phrases appeared in the text of the 2005 Congressional Record and applied statistical methods to identify the phrases that separated Democratic representatives from Republican representatives, under the model that each group speaks to its respective constituents with a distinct set of coded language. Then the team identified 111,000 Wikipedia articles that include 'republican' or 'democrat' as keywords, and analyzed them to determine whether a given Wikipedia article used phrases favored more by Republican members or by Democratic members of Congress. The results may surprise you. 'The average old political article in Wikipedia leans Democratic' but gradually, Wikipedia's articles have lost the disproportionate use of Democratic phrases and moved to nearly equivalent use of words from both parties (PDF), akin to an NPOV [neutral point of view] on average. Interestingly, some articles have the expected political slant (civil rights tends Democrat; trade tends Republican), but at the same time many seemingly controversial topics, such as foreign policy, war and peace, and abortion have no net slant. 'Most articles arrive with a slant, and most articles change only mildly from their initial slant. The overall slant changes due to the entry of articles with opposite slants, leading toward neutrality for many topics, not necessarily within specific articles.'"

Comments

How to write without political bias?

[Quakeulf]

What can be done to avoid political bias and how do we do it consistently?

Re:How to write without political bias?

[Captain.Abrecan]

I dunno. People write the content, so it would be pretty hard to be a person who can let their own viewpoint slide when writing. There may even be some confirmation bias too. For example, a dude wants to write an article, so he looks for references. But he only looks at data that meshes with what he already knows about the topic. So the article gets slanted. Hell, I think I am pretty clever, but most of my posts on websites are pretty inflammatory because I don't review them or stop to consider my position (or anyone else)!

In my opinion, the best way to combat it is to let it happen, because that way you create the most content possible. Then you use a review process to improve the content. Actually this is pretty much what Wikipedia does, it seems to work out okay for them. With a large enough user-base you can probably run a lot of stuff like that. I wonder what the overhead statistics are like though (man hours on creation versus man hours on editing). Maybe the review process is where most of the fun is anyways. You could probably make it a day job, if you are good at research and stuff. Actually, I would love that. I would love to read references for articles and stuff all day, then help revise it. But now I am getting off-topic.

Re:How to write without political bias?

[Phreakiture]

I would suppose that if you were to use the same statistical methods described in the article, periodically refreshing your corpus with new input from the federal register, and ran an analysis on what you wrote, you could get a score that you could use as feedback on your attempt at neutrality. Write what you want to write, pass it through the analysis, then edit until the analysis shows it as neutral. What do you think?

Re:How to write without political bias?

[vlm]

What can be done to avoid political bias and how do we do it consistently?

Don't write about political topics that are relevant to you?

For example writing about modern civil rights (gay marriage, gun rights, etc) in the USA is going to get a intention and/or unintentional bias from me.

However if I research and report on the political situation in France, where I have no dog in the fight, I'll probably end up pretty much unbiased.

Its a big interconnected world... there's really no reason for locals to have to write biased filler about local issues.

Doesn't have to be geographic. I have no personal interest in the gay marriage thing, not being gay or close to those in their subculture and not being hyper-christian, so I can be extremely unbiased about the topic. This SHOULD work, but it fails anyway, because my completely unbiased view unsurprisingly seems to match the (few) non-cowardly (D) and oppose almost all the neo-(R) so I'll be accused of being "politically biased" based on results, although I obviously don't have any reason to care that would influence the process of writing about it. Think of how everyone naturally decides that slavery was a dumb idea now, but it was a hot political football around 1860 or so in the USA.

There's some other hints, like if you find evidence of sloganeering in your writing you're probably doing it wrong.

Re:How to write without political bias?

[Anonymous Coward]

There isn't much need to. I am, sure, you could be biased, but so could anyone. Bias is ambiguous and hard to spot. But even if you are biased, that doesn't mean you're wrong.

Re:How to write without political bias?

[Curunir_wolf]

In my opinion, the best way to combat it is to let it happen, because that way you create the most content possible. Then you use a review process to improve the content. Actually this is pretty much what Wikipedia does, it seems to work out okay for them.

Actually, according to this study, that doesn't work out for them at all. They mention that articles with a bias tend to keep that bias - it remains across many revisions. They only found some balance because other articles with bias in the other direction were also found.

But that raises another question, which they don't address: How much bias is the average reader subjected to if they don't hunt around for obscure, related topics. That is, if the main article for a topic is one read by, say, 1,000,000 people, and there are articles that balance out the viewpoint but are only read by 1,500 people, then the public in general is getting a very slanted view of the topic.

Re:How to write without political bias?

[bbbaldie]

What can be done to avoid political bias and how do we do it consistently?

About the only way I can think of is to avoid politics altogether. Too bad we can't determine a man's heroics or douchebaggery without first determining if he's a liberal or a conservative. By the time we figure that out, most of the time, we've already decided his (or her) worth. Sad.

Re:How to write without political bias?

[Captain.Abrecan]

It sounds complicated. I mean, shit, if you hire someone to be the Anti-Slant Editor, how do you check that person's qualifications? How reliably can you expect that person to edit the articles?

Also, does the slant itself actually hinder the way the information being conveyed? I refuse to speculate what the ratios are, but IMHO most of the readers are probably there on a tiny fact finding mission, not really reading up on a whole subject. It's hard to check the bibliography anyways, especially for psychology stuff. You need a subscription to a lot of journals in order to actually check the data, and most folks just don't have them.

So if they are looking for the date of a fire or something, not really caring about who the blame for it was, then the writer trying to blame it on aliens doesn't even matter to the person who only cares about the date.

The only suggestion I have is that, possibly they can expand on the (I dunno what to call it) 'factual sidebar'. Include more stuff in it, completely neutral data without a essay attached to it. This makes the narrative of some articles smaller, so technically any slant would be less of a problem. Well, I guess that is just a band-aid ... I got nothin'.

Re:How to write without political bias?

[Hatta]

You can't. Even if you write purely factual prose, it's slanted toward's the left. Reality has a well known liberal bias.

Re:How to write without political bias?

[TFAFalcon]

There is also another problem. They are measuring only the bias toward the two main parties. What about bias toward/against other points of view?

Re:How to write without political bias?

[mcgrew]

So does slashdot moderation, apparently. Mods, disagreeing with a comment is NOT a valid reason to mark it down. There is no "-1, disagree" for a reason. If you disagree with an opinion like at least one moderator did with hatta, the "I disagree" link is labeled "reply to this".

Re:How to write without political bias?

[Nidi62]

You can't. Really, the best thing you can do is simply acknowledge your bias beforehand. This way you come across as being more honest. Some people might see your initial admission and skip reading what you write, but you wouldn't have wanted them to read you anyway because, if they are that polarized or radical, they would in all likelihood have attacked your ideas anyway. It might also have the effect of getting people who would otherwise have skipped right over your article to decide to read it. Because usually if someone can recognize and admit their own bias, they can present some interesting ideas that are worth considering.

Of course, this works better in journalistic/editorial writing than it does Wikipedia because Wikipedia articles are inteded to be impersonal, whereas journalistic articles/editorials are tied to a specific person trying to present an idea.

Re:How to write without political bias?

[cpu6502]

I think it's impossible to be "unbiased". Even when I was editing articles about HD Radio or DRM radio, I discovered both articles were heavily-biased (against HDR and for DRM). I tried to remove the bias, but now I suspect it's biased the opposite way. This is why I think reporters who claim to be "unbiased" are foolish. The bias sneaks in, even if it's just through omission of relevant stories (such as supposedly unbiased CNN showing a republican primary poll with 2nd place mysteriously missing; the 2nd place person was Ron Paul).

Re:How to write without political bias?

[JWW]

Ok, I'll not mod the troll for what it is. But that condescending "reality liberal bias" shit is getting really old.

Just to point to a counter example. Greece would prefer to stick with its liberal policies and continue spending government money it doesn't have. In this case, and I am not claiming that this is true in all cases, reality has a decidedly conservative bias. Greece needs to make heavily conservative moves with respect to their government spending or they are doomed. And no, the liberal "raise taxes" move isn't going to work, either.

So, Greece is living in a reality that has a conservative bias. Through proof by contradiction, the lie that "reality has a liberal" bias (in all cases) is patently false.

Re:How to write without political bias?

[nedlohs]

There are no other points of view.

Re:How to write without political bias?

[1s44c]

There are no other points of view.

How come that didn't get modded insightful?

The two party bi-polarism has buried every other point of view in the US and it has pretty much killed the democratic process for years now. Nobody gets a fair vote in anything unless it can be represented as one extreme or the other. The system is rigged in such a way that this is unlikely to change and the media keeps dumbing down everything to the same two extremes.

A democratic system can't function with only the illusion of choice, you need more than just 2 viewpoints.

Re:How to write without political bias?

[Anonymous Coward]

if you hire someone to be the Anti-Slant Editor, how do you check that person's qualifications? How reliably can you expect that person to edit the articles?

Simpler than you might think.

If it pisses off the Democrats, it's a Republican slant.
If it pisses off the Republicans, it's a Democrat slant.
If it pisses nobody off, it's neutral.
If it pisses everybody off... then it's probably closer to the Truth than any of the above.

Re:How to write without political bias?

[Anonymous Coward]

"And no, the liberal "raise taxes" move isn't going to work, either."

No, the conservative "_Pay_ your fucking taxes or go to jail!" move is the one.

Re:How to write without political bias?

[Anonymous Coward]

>>Greece needs to make heavily conservative moves = opinion

>> Greece is living in a reality that has a conservative bias = dogma

Re:How to write without political bias?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are no other points of view.

I'd rate you up if I had mod points, that made me chuckle. But it's got truth in it as well; the biggest problem we face in our political system is the False Dichotomy. The problem is, we don't have a third party which is aimed at leaving "all or none" attitudes and insisting on a common sense, realistic set of goals. Everyone preaches not to realistic goals, but rather to ideals, and the Third parties we've seen so far usually are just another Ideal, albeit a less commonly held one.
And frankly speaking, the only way any of those ass-clowns can even hope to deliver what they promise is if they suspend the Constitution, declare Martial Law, disband Congress, and then appoint themselves Dictator.

Re:How to write without political bias?

[mcmonkey]

Ok, I'll not mod the troll for what it is. But that condescending "reality liberal bias" shit is getting really old.

Just to point to a counter example. Greece would prefer to stick with its liberal policies and continue spending government money it doesn't have. In this case, and I am not claiming that this is true in all cases, reality has a decidedly conservative bias. Greece needs to make heavily conservative moves with respect to their government spending or they are doomed. And no, the liberal "raise taxes" move isn't going to work, either.

So, Greece is living in a reality that has a conservative bias. Through proof by contradiction, the lie that "reality has a liberal" bias (in all cases) is patently false.

I don't think you're making the point you think you are. Spending money you don't have is a thoroughly conservative value. In the USA, sure people claiming to be conservatives talk about responsibly government spending, but when they get in to office, it's been 30 years of "deficits don't matter." Even now the presumed Republican nominee for president is running on a platform of cutting taxes and raising defense spending. How is that not spending money you don't have?

I suppose you know this is true, as you say so yourself in your comment. I don't have the solution to the Greece situation, but isn't 'the liberal "raise taxes" move' an effort to get money to spend? While liberals in the USA have traditionally been "tax-and-spend," doesn't that contradict your point? It's the conservatives who have been "borrow-and-spend" AKA spending money they don't have.

There may be situations where the conservative course of action is the best solution, but that does not mean reality has a conservative bias. (I don't think reality has a liberal (or any) bias either. I do think the current reality in the USA shows liberal values (in moderation) work. I say that makes liberals more biased to embrace reality while conservatives biased to deny it.)

Re:How to write without political bias?

[SteveFoerster]

Whoosh. The comment was, to use a political phrase, "illustrating absurdity by being absurd". Sometimes people mod those insightful because they think (mistakenly, it would seem) that this is obvious to everyone.

Re:How to write without political bias?

[SteveFoerster]

I know it sounds like crazy talk to most people, but there's a third option called "spending less money".

Re:How to write without political bias?

[The Moof]

You're modded funny, but you speak the truth. A buddy of mine did one of those "what candidate do you align with" things yesterday and was talking about it. He got Gary Johnson, to which everyone replied, "who is Gary Johnson?" On paper, he's the Libertarian Party's presidential candidate. In reality, he is a Republican who got beaten badly in the primaries, so he's running third party.

This is shaping up just like last year's presidential election - We're only getting candidates who are R's and D's, even in the third party nominations.

Re:How to write without political bias?

[tbannist]

That's an interesting point of view, but it's not a very good proof. Greece has been following the "conservative" prescription to solve their economic problems. The result? Record levels of unemployment. If you think the American economy is doing poorly, consider that Greece now has hit a new record level of unemployment (22%) and over 50% unemployment for people aged 15-24. Given how well the "conservative" solution is working out, do you think it's any wonder they're looking for a "liberal" solution instead?

More importantly, you missed the entire point of the joke. The joke is that when reality disagrees with conservatives, they claim reality is biased. It's a sad commentary on the far right's rejection of facts and embracing of fictions to justify their views in the face of evidence to the contrary*. Liberals, while not immune, are currently much less prone to that type of behaviour as recently confirmed.

* Sometimes it manifests as an inability to accept some of the relevant facts. For instance, Grover Norquist is unable to accept that Ronald Reagan raised taxes, increased the size of the government and tripled the U.S. federal debt during his term in office. This colours his entire perception of government and it's role in the economy, since he credits the Reagan economic boom solely to the tax cuts that Reagan implemented without considering any of the other relevant factors.

Re:How to write without political bias?

[operagost]

If you mean "classical liberal" before progressives co-opted the term, I agree.

Re:How to write without political bias?

[Artifakt]

It's not just a matter of "obscure related topics", as you put it, although you're quite right, obscurity will definitely matter in many cases. It's also an 'artifact of language' issue, where the various sides on an issue may use different names for the same topic. For example, it's become a widepsread tactic for the right wing to call the Democratic party the "Democrat Party" instead. Google for that phrase, and you will see an enquiry offering the user a chance to search for Democratic party instead and most of the initial links will come up with the name "corrected". Wikipedia uses a disambiguation page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democrat_party to offer the searcher various choices for the same phrase. Note that a disambiguation page is an external way to try and fight bias (in this case, at least). It exists outside the articles, and has to be created separately where somebody thinks it's needed. So another good question is: Is the use of such disambiguation pages proof that articles aren't being corrected for initial bias internally, or just a second line of defense in the overall struggle to reduce bias?
          Interested readers might note that the disambiguation page explains in a fairly simple way that the phrase "Democrat party" is an epithet when used for the US party, but if the reader doesn't know what an epithet is and clicks that link, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epithet they have to read through over a dozen paragraphs to find out that there is a contemporary usage of the term and that while Shakespeare and Homer used epithets without meaning to be insulting, abusive or derogatory, the modern useage is all of these things. So much for being unbiased.

Re:How to write without political bias?

[operagost]

I don't think you're making the point you think you are. Spending money you don't have is a thoroughly conservative value. In the USA, sure people claiming to be conservatives talk about responsibly government spending, but when they get in to office, it's been 30 years of "deficits don't matter." Even now the presumed Republican nominee for president is running on a platform of cutting taxes and raising defense spending. How is that not spending money you don't have?

It's a little obvious that you're talking about a specific political party and not a political philosophy. By definition, a fiscal conservative would scrutinize every expense. Just because people are hypocrites doesn't mean the definition changes... this includes progressives who decided that "liberal" basically means the opposite of what it used to WRT the size and scope of government.

Re:How to write without political bias?

[JWW]

Republican != Conservative

Re:How to write without political bias?

[Anonymous Coward]

The best way to get to the truth in politics is with an independent media capable of critical thought. The current media corporatocracy which includes CNN, Fox, MSNBC, etc are very biased toward political and economic power. Comparing Democratic vs. Republican buzzwords seems like a really bad way to study the bias in wikipedia since Democrats and Republicans are not at all opposite ends of the political spectrum. In fact, the leadership of the two main parties agree on many issues in conflict with the opinion of the general public. Take a look at the issue of health care in the United States. A 2003 Poll showed that a majority of the public actually wanted a single payer health care system. A single payer system was not even brought up as a solution to health care problems in the 2004 presidential debates. Why? Because both sides are influenced heavily by the health insurance industry, thus you are not even allowed to discuss something like that.

So how do you create an independent, critical, watch dog media? One way would be through more public funding. Don't look to NPR as an example though, they have a similar pro-power bias that the big media companies have, and they get most of their money through donations, not through public funding. There is a high correlation between public funding of the press and how much freedome they have.

Another thing that would probably help is tighter regulation of the news media. IMO, a news organization should not be tied to any other industry, including entertainment media.

Re:How to write without political bias?

[JWW]

Yes, Greece is looking for a liberal solution.

I agree the conservative solution is very painful for them.

But, I think if they follow the liberal solution, their country will burn. It will be 10x worse than anything they've gone through so far.

Their options are painful thriftiness, or universally worthless money.

Re:How to write without political bias?

[Anonymous Coward]

As my pops always says, "follow the money".

Without the financial backing of one of the big two, you're a lost cause.

Re:How to write without political bias?

[MsWhich]

It's impossible to write a completely neutral article, in my opinion. There's limited space in a newspaper (or for a blog article, or for a TV news spot, or whatever) so you have to choose what to say, and how to say it.

Say that two people both write an article about a piece of civil rights legislation being passed by Congress. Both people can write an article that is completely factual and accurate, and yet the two articles will likely have significant differences. Different people might be quoted. Different descriptive phrases will be used. One writer might focus on the lengthy debate that preceded the legislation's passage. The other might choose to focus on the legislation's effects. And so on, and so forth. And without even intending to do so, one writer might come up with an article that seems more sympathetic to the Democrats, and the other might seem more sympathetic to the Republicans.

This is unavoidable; but what is avoidable is writing an article that slants one way or the other on purpose. If you analyze a particular news organization's articles in the way that the researchers in the article did, and you find that the majority of bias is going in one direction, I think that's a problem. It's not possible to avoid all bias, but it is possible to attempt to write articles that are as factual and neutral as possible, and I believe that if you do that, you're not going to skew too far to one side or the other.

I also think that as a more practical matter, having an editorial staff that reviews and corrects articles before sending them out is critical, because then you've got two sets of eyes, minimum, on all of your material. But as news budgets are being slashed everywhere, particularly for newspapers, editorial oversight is going by the wayside. Most publications don't even appear to employ proofreaders these days.

Re:How to write without political bias?

[Ironhandx]

Mod this up.

I tend to think for myself, which actually leads me to a slight democratic slant overall but in general if you took everything I say together I'm pissing off both sides.

As always, the truth is somewhere in the middle, and is likely to make a lot of people uncomfortable.

Re:How to write without political bias?

[Guppy06]

Don't write about political topics that are relevant to you?

One slight problem with this idea...

However if I research and report on the political situation in France, where I have no dog in the fight, I'll probably end up pretty much unbiased.

Why would you?

People only contribute to articles on topics that interest them (witness all the video game and anime/manga articles). How many topics are there that actually interest you, but for which you hold no bias?

Re:How to write without political bias?

[tnk1]

Bias is an interesting phenomenon. I can be a fundamentalist Christian and think all gays are going to Hell to burn in eternal torment and still be okay with gay marriage as a civil situation since its not like the government can actually force me to accept that they are truly married in a Christian sense.

Alternately, I could also be atheist or agnostic, believe that being gay is perfectly acceptable and normal but still wonder just what the point of gay marriage is actually supposed to be, from a state perspective.

Re:How to write without political bias?

[Khashishi]

Define doomed. If Greece goes bankrupt and the foreign debts never get paid, are they doomed? The debt will eventually be repudiated and life will go on, somehow. I don't think Germany or France are quite ready to invade Greece to recoup their investments.

Re:How to write without political bias?

[garbut]

I hear ya brother (or sister). I'll get modded into oblivion for this, but... Just try to get any semblance of truth or even an intelligent question to stay put on the 9/11 page. Yeah, the TV says an office fire can melt steel and that flight 77 disappeared into a 14' hole in the side of the Pentagon, so it must be true. How dare we ask questions? How dare we even tell people about our questions on Wikipedia?

Re:How to write without political bias?

[jmorris42]

Not exactly. Gary Johnson was a libertarian who tried running as a Republican and is now running as a Libertarian. Although to a first approximation you can simplify to saying Gary Johnson is pro drug legalization since that is pretty much the only issue he is pushing now or when he ran as a Republican that distinguishes him from the other candidates. And his popular vote totals will pretty much track with the small demo of stoners who consider that the most important issue in an election cycle where that issue is going to be lost in the noise from the far more important economic issues and the distraction that will be created in the fall to distract from the economy.

There is actually a reason for the two parties being what they are now. Because the country is pretty much divided into two incompatible governing philosophies and things won't get better until one of them actually wins. There really isn't a practical middle and most of our problems are a result of trying to find one.

Re:How to write without political bias?

[jmorris42]

> It's also an 'artifact of language' issue, where the various sides on an issue may use different names for the same topic.

It isn't nearly as petty as you imply. Control of the language is control over the framing of the debate and usually gives whoever has that control an overwhelming advantage. Once you understand that things make a lot more sense.

Some example. Note that I am not interested in opening up these issues themselves so consider them OFF TOPIC here. Keep replies on the idea of bias and language.

Pro Choice/Pro Life? Both are carefully selected phrases that imply acceptance of that side's philosophy, even if the speaker hasn't made a conscious choice yet, so making sure your word selection is the one that most people who haven't yet thought it through pick is very important. Pro Choice carries the implied decision that it isn't a 'life' and therefore it isn't a very important choice at all. Pro Life on the other hand carries exactly the opposite implied decision, that the fetus is a 'life', thus murder can't be a valid 'choice.' And both are an attempt to short circuit the actual question, where does society draw the line of citizen/not a citizen. Birth is the only ljne that can be supported by the current Constitution but the question is whether that is the right place for it in light of modern neonatal medicine and philosophy. However since the very idea that the words in the Constitution have weight is a matter of political debate so again, what would define NPOV?

Is it public charity, welfare, an entitlement or 'the dole'? Which phrase you can get uninformed people to pick up will probably determine their eventual decison as to whether it is a good thing.

Fairness, Social Justice, Redistribution, Socialism. Admit it, that are all just closely related concepts that blur into simolar shades of grey that only hard core partisans can even really distinguish but they certainly carry a world of difference in the public square. And the same word games can be played with Capitalism, Free Market, Survival of the Fittest, etc. So which one is NPOV?

I could go on but the point should be made.

Re:How to write without political bias?

[Nelson]

It's more than that. They do statistics to try to identify language patterns and then associate those language patterns with bias.

That might be a very reasonable approach, in fact it might be the best we have but I don't think the language patterns are that great at identifying bias so much as they identify the bias of constituents. Freakanomics radio had an show about this a while back. The closest you get is a couple derivatives away from the actual intent, you chart politicians and their level of 'loyalty' then you chart their speech patterns and think tanks they frequently quote and then you compare the usage of newspapers and other articles to those speech patterns. It's better than nothing but they also identified that papers with more bias tend their bias toward their customer base. Read: papers in conservative places tend to be more conservative or at least use speech patterns that are consistent with conservative speech patterns and the same is true for liberal places.

Seems like more liberal folks in more conservative places would adopt the conservative speech patterns but not the intent. The intent or actual viewpoint doesn't always match the choices of words, does it?

Re:How to write without political bias?

[Anonymous Coward]

It probably cannot be done, and here's why. I'll use atheists as an example. These people, who seek a logical understanding of the world, are no less biased than the religious whom they attack. They won't take an objective stance to religion, even though logic dictates that they should. They automatically assume the Bible is mythical or full of fairy tales, and are utterly close-minded when it comes to any explanation that may refute them (for instance, it cannot be proven that God doesn't exist, but there are people that are "100% sure" He does not, which is a fallacious way of thinking, as you must be open to the possibility, however small). They are so-called "free thinkers" yet many of them exhibit traits far from this label. This being the case, how do you think anyone else can be unbiased, when even the so-called most logical thinkers can't be?

Re:How to write without political bias?

[SomePgmr]

Too bad we can't determine a man's heroics or douchebaggery without first determining if he's a liberal or a conservative.

I don't know if that's strictly true. I have a whole lot of respect for individual's personal histories without thinking they'd make good politicians, or that they would best represent my personal opinions.

For situations like the wiki, I think it's just a question of intellectual integrity. I'd agree that nobody is perfect and bias will sneak in, but we can try to suppress that (when we're being honest) and overcome the remaining difference with lots of eyeballs.

Re:How to write without political bias?

[jmorris42]

> For example writing about modern civil rights (gay marriage, gun rights, etc) in the USA is going to get a intention and/or unintentional bias from me.

It is worse. Just using those phrases implies a bias. NPOV is a very difficult thing, few could actually attain it and even fewer would actually be interested in the result. No, what most people want is their beliefs confirmed in such a way that they are assured that what they believe is the only Truth, thus defined as 'neutral'. The Truth has no Agenda, all that rot.

Gun Rights? Biased. Denies the possibility of common sense measures to stop the epidemic of gun violence on our streets. The Constitition isn't a suicide pact. Besides the 2nd Amendment only protects the government's right to an army you know. Framing it as a 'civil rights' issue is so loaded.

Same for 'gay marriage.' Implies the word 'marriage' somehow quietly morphed to cover groupings other than one male mated to one or more females in a reproductive unit. The idea it had such a strange and impractical (from a historical perspective) meaning would be amazing for all of human history up until the 20th Century. And to suddenly go from a novel new notion to a fundamental civil right being discovered in the space of a decade or two is even more amazing. Regardless of the desirability of the idea, it should be admitted it is a new one but the language usage of quietly overloading existing language is intentionally deceptive. Again, how would you even approach the notion of NPOV on such a controversial question since the very success of the project hinges on framing it as an uncontroversial and logical extension of 'civil rights' and just saying that is controversial. Tricky.

Re:How to write without political bias?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't remember last year's presidential election. What happened?

Re:How to write without political bias?

[Anonymous Coward]

>Alternately, I could also be atheist or agnostic, believe that being gay is perfectly acceptable and normal but still wonder just what the point of gay marriage is actually supposed to be, from a state perspective.

I suppose you *could* wonder this, but that'd make you an idiot. The "point" is to allow people to have the benefits that are afforded to heterosexual married couples, regardless of the gender of the individual that they choose to marry. It's not just "feel good rainbow magic" ... there are real-world economic benefits to being in a recognized marriage in the US.

Re:How to write without political bias?

[jmorris42]

> Define doomed.

Hyperinflation, total collapse of social order, cats and dogs sleeping together.

Their basic problem is they are spending far more on their welfare state than they can take in through taxes. Full stop. They are far beyond the point where any conceivable tax scheme is likely to actually generate more revenue to their treasury, that 'ol Laffer Curve is a reality that can no longer be denied for them. Their ability to borrow the difference between what they can raise through taxation and what their voters demand is about finished. If they repudiate their current debts and stop making the interest payments they can forget raising more through the international bond markets. That is reality.

Long term you can't spend more than you take in. An argument can be made for borrowing for a short term problem or perhaps for a long term capital improvement. But when you try to borrow for day to day expenses with no plan for getting income balanced to outflow the result is certain. You can't do it, business can't do it, corporations can't do it and governments can't do it.

Re:How to write without political bias?

[Darinbob]

In some ways this goal does not make a lot of sense. Having equal time amongst two or more parties does not necessarily lead towards a more accurate article. It may be a more neutral-point-of-view article or fitting the wikiethos or modern journalistic tendency though, which is not the same thing as being accurate. Correcting mistakes or bias is very important of course, but extreme avoidance of the perception of bias can lead to a misleading article as well.

If two political parties disagree on what the national debt is you don't get to the truth by taking the average of the two numbers.

Re:How to write without political bias?

[Darinbob]

There's a radio show I listen to a lot and they will occasionally have different points of view. I have found that when they devote the full our to just one point of view that a lot more information gets presented than if they split the hour with two sides arguing with each other. Endless rebuttals and repeating the same sound bites feels like wasted time, but letting one side expound on their ideas is much more interesting (of course follow up with other views on another day).

The most bizarre examples occur when they have middle east discussions. If you have both Israeli and Palestinian speakers during the same hour you will get callers on both sides phoning in to complain that is highly biased, or complaining that speakers were cut off too soon, etc. The whole idea of bending over backwards to avoid bias and to grant equal air time to different viewpoints just does not seem to resolve conflicts, allow people to understand the opposing side, or ever get anyone to stop and think about the issues deeply.

Re:How to write without political bias?

[vlm]

People only contribute to articles on topics that interest them

That sounds like insisting that people only read stuff they already know will interest them, ditto movies and TV.

It would tend to lock out the majority of the population, but they probably had nothing useful to say anyway.

Re:How to write without political bias?

[vlm]

One religious friend of mine hates the idea of the government banning gay marriages that happen in churches because hes dead set on the idea that the NEXT bill after it will regulate even more religious ceremonies. Something like if the govt starts approving who stands at the altar of a catholic wedding ceremony, even if he agrees with it, the next step might be the govt will simply declare lutherans are now forced (or forbidden, can't remember) from attending catholic mass. The old slippery slope argument.

Re:How to write without political bias?

[MalachiK]

Because it's supposed to be an encyclopedia - not a forum for debating conspiracy theories. Although, the 9/11 stuff does get a mention under False Flag opperations in the List of Conspiracy Theories page. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conspiracy_theories#False_flag_operations

Re:How to write without political bias?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Besides the 2nd Amendment only protects the government's right to an army you know."

It doesn't specify a government, you might wish to assume they intended it to be a federal right. It is more likely to be a right for local and state governments to form a militia to defend themselves from war, etc. Looking at the militias that were formed before and after the Bill of Rights was created, it was primarily small community groups looking to protect property and life of the community residents. I would say the groups roughly parallel neighborhood watch in terms of size, structure and scope.

To inject some of my personal opinions into this thread, why do you care about gun control? It is not a top killer of any major demographic in the US. Maybe you should focus your energies on teenage automobile deaths and adult obesity. Sure, you don't have to address the top issues, and anything we can do minimize unnecessary death is a positive step. But I'm curious why this particular issue. Are you motivated by fear? did you have some traumatic experience? Do you find the Olympic biathlon taking valuable time away from more interesting broadcasts?

Re:How to write without political bias?

[Guppy06]

The web is a pull medium. Barring advertising and the like, nothing crosses your screen that you didn't already indicate some interest in.

Re:How to write without political bias?

[jmorris42]

> I suppose you *could* wonder this, but that'd make you an idiot.

Not really. The benefits you speak of are designed to promote a public policy purpose that homosexuals can't fulfill so the public (i.e. the state) should have no interest in expending finite resources upon them. See how easy it is? No religion or 'idiot' required. Coldly rational. One could even say reality based if one wanted to taunt the politically correct? Or take this argument: A hundred years ago it was pretty much universally accepted in the medical world that homosexuality was a mental defect. Is it really unpossible for someone to believe that the modern rethinking of that position is in error and was based more on politics than science; without insisting that said belief could only be based in stupidity or religion? I know I haven't devoted enough time to researching the scientific lit to say and I'd bet good yellow gold you haven't either. Leaving aside the entire question of which side is right or wrong, I'm only interested here in demonstrating that there ARE other sides possible that aren't limited to stupid, homophobic, bigoted, blah, blah. That sort of dismissal of the possibility of valid opposing viewpoints is the whole point behind controlling the language of an issue.

Re:How to write without political bias?

[jmorris42]

Whoosh!

Try and keep up, K? This thread is about bias and the difficulty of preventing it, even defining it. Personally I stopped giving the NRA money because they aren't pure enough and seemed to spend more than I was giving them on postage begging for more money. Doesn't mean I can't borrow the gun grabber arguments in an example of the framing bias inherent in the selection of terminology.

Re:How to write without political bias?

[Anonymous Coward]

Incorrect, reality has a liberal bias.

http://www.heritage.org/index/visualize?countries=greece&type=4

Greece spends less than other countries on average. Just because Greece's party is called the Socialist Party doesn't mean it's actually Socialist.

As society progresses, Conservatives lose.

Re:How to write without political bias?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sometimes people mod those insightful because they think (mistakenly, it would seem) that this is obvious to everyone.

I don't think insightful means what you think it does.
--------
Most people think that there are 2 distinct choices between the Democrats and the Republicans when in reality the false dichotomy of choosing between the two parties only gives an illusion of representation to the people. Both parties represent corporate and banking interests, because their lobbying and campaign contributions are an essential requirement to maintaining control.

The democrats blame(d) everything on Bush, the Republicans blame everything on Obama. These people are merely temporary lightning rods used to divert attention from the lock-step progression of tyranny. When Obama was elected everyone thought it was going to be sunshine and rainbows. What happened instead is an acceleration of the destruction of civil liberties and economic consolidation for banks. Republicans proclaim that Obama is the root of all evil, and everything will be sunshine and rainbows when Mitt Romney is elected. What will happen is the same exact progression.

Both parties use the same political tactics and both have represented nearly every side of every issue at one point or another. Hypocrisy is ubiquitous because the entire system is a lie, not just the politicians.

As many here seem to like the phrase "Security Theatre" to describe the TSA, I think the terms "Political Theatre" apply to the state of government in the U.S. It's a representative democracy all right, but who is it representing?

Re:How to write without political bias?

[Anonymous Coward]

This once again illustrates realities liberal bias. Conservatives: Greece shows that liberal policies fail. Reality: corruption, tax avoidance, bad policies and the laissez-faire (hands off) approach the Eurozone was taking towards its members is what put Greece where it is now. There is a difference between advocating liberalism and advocating bad policies (or implementing bad policies to prove that the idea is bad, as certain Republicans like to do).

Re:How to write without political bias?

[tbannist]

So your prediction is that the unemployment rate will reach 220% among the general population and 500% among youth? Or are you predicting more of a Roadwarrior type situation where gangs of Greek punks roam the countryside pillaging and looting?

Re:How to write without political bias?

[_Sharp'r_]

Honestly, this has always confused me. It never even occurred to me that someone could take offense to it until I saw someone comment on it elsewhere.

If the members of the Democratic Party are offended by the reasonably shortened phrase Democrat Party, why do they call themselves Democrats?

I mean, the Democratic National Committee's public web site is Democrats.org!

Why is it offensive as a shorter, easier to say version of the Party name, but not offensive as a name for the members of that Party?

It just seems to smack of people trying to take offense at something... theories about some Republican somewhere using it in a derogatory way don't explain why many Democratic Party groups have called themselves Democrat-something or other over the years.

Anyway, never really made sense to me. I mean, calling Party members a Jackass or something, I can see how that's offensive, but Democrat??

Re:How to write without political bias?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your friend is unfamiliar with the concept of civil marriage. The government doesn't care what ceremonies are or are not offered in various holy buildings. It simply as a curtsey extends the right to solemnize civil marriages to clergy.

Re:How to write without political bias?

[Anonymous Coward]

Next you'll say the democratic republic of the congo isn't democratic or a republic.

Re:How to write without political bias?

[1s44c]

Exactly what I was trying to say, only you said it far better.

Now that should be modded up!

Re:How to write without political bias?

[mcgrew]

Both sides are wrong. Reality is neither conservative nor liberal.

Re:How to write without political bias?

[kqs]

Pro Choice carries the implied decision that it isn't a 'life' and therefore it isn't a very important choice at all.

A minor point: your description shows that you are pro-life. "Pro choice" makes no direct implication about the fetus; it makes the implication that the mother should have a choice and anyone else (government, priests, etc) can go bugger off. Most (all?) pro-choice people are quite certain that the fetus is alive, though when it counts as a person and when it gets legal rights separate from the mother are less clear.

But I agree with you otherwise; the terms of the debate help frame the debate.

Re:How to write without political bias?

[phlinn]

To give him the benefit of the doubt, I wasn't 100% sure you were joking. It was plausible you really felt the way your wording indicated about both gun rights and gay marriage, although I've not seen someone with both of those belief sets in the past.

Re:How to write without political bias?

[phlinn]

It's don't buy stuff you can't afford on the national level...

Re:How to write without political bias?

[phlinn]

Drinking more tequila to delay a hangover just makes the eventual hangover worse. Or leads to alcohol poisoning...

The fact that there is a cost to trying to fix the issue by not overspending doesn't mean it's wise to use methods to reduce that cost that will make the overall situation worse.

It's worth remembering that Reagan was on net a tax reducer, even if he did raise taxes at one point. And by the end of his term, per capita tax revenue adjusted for inflation was higher than it was at the start of it, despite an overall lower tax rate.

That's a serious misreading of that study. In general, both groups had a broad trend. The rate of change for individualists was much greater as more literacy was gained, so conservatives are clearly more open to adjusting their thinking as facts are gained. A little spin here, but it's still more accurate than your description of the paper.

Re:How to write without political bias?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you for pointing out what should be obvious. There is actually very little difference between the actions taken by politicians who call themselves Republican and those that call themselves Democrat. There is a tremendous difference between the fundamental ideas behind classic liberalism (many aspects of which are now referred to as conservative) and neo-liberalism (now referred to as progressive).

Re:How to write without political bias?

[jmorris42]

> it makes the implication that the mother should have a choice and anyone else (government, priests, etc) can go bugger off.

Which means you accept the exact premise I mentioned as inherent in the phrase, that it isn't an important choice. I.e. that it is 'living' but isn't 'life'. You are willing to be just tolerant enough to allow some poor deluded Christer to imagine it is a baby and not kill it if that is their choice but you know better. You wouldn't be arguing for the mother's right to off the lil crotch fruit the day after birth, right? That would be MURDER, where the day before it is just a PROCEDURE.

But as for me, I'm more of the opinion that on one side you have people who hear Monty Python's _Every Sperm Is Sacred_ and fail to realize it is a joke at their expense while the other side, pushing for abortion right up to the instant of natural delivery is across the line to infanticide. So stupid or evil, are those my only choices? Seriously, it is a question that logic and reason can't decide in the limited knowledge and philosophy available to us so lets just pick something reasonable in the middle, call it "The Line; For now" and move on. No more killing things that could just about as easily be delivered alive and no more of this life begins at conception either. Admit we can't decide for now and agree to revisit it when science advances.

Re:How to write without political bias?

[RockDoctor]

Although, the 9/11 stuff does get a mention under False Flag opperations in the List of Conspiracy Theories page.

That would probably be because regardless of the truth of all the tedious regurgitation of shit about the events of 2001-09-11, it is certainly true that people assert that "it" (for various values of "it" w.r.t. 2011-09-11) as having been a "False Flag" operation. So this is a datum that can appear in an encyclopedia.

As a parallel example, there are probably people who assert that JFK was actually shot by an aggrieved Abe Lincoln, who is in reality a Time Lord in a threesome with Captains Jack and John ; discussing the credibility of such beliefs is not a Wikipedia activity, but reporting the existence of such beliefs is.

Re:How to write without political bias?

[tbannist]

Drinking more tequila to delay a hangover just makes the eventual hangover worse. Or leads to alcohol poisoning...

Interestingly enough, the wikipedia page on hangovers lists "Hair of the Dog" as one potentially useful remedy for reducing the effect of hangovers, so I don't think that's really a settled question. And, of course, that's assuming that the situation is even comparable.

The fact that there is a cost to trying to fix the issue by not overspending doesn't mean it's wise to use methods to reduce that cost that will make the overall situation worse.

Of course, that's true. Unfortunately, no one knows what methods will or won't make the overall situation better or worse. In Greece, the repeated rounds of austerity seem to be making the problem worse. They cut government spending, the recession deepens and the government goes further into debt and needs to cut more. It's a downward spiral. Meanwhile, several prominent mainstream economists are saying that severe austerity is obviously a bad decision and that the problems with this type of austerity were clearly demonstrated by Keynes 80 years ago.

The question is how long do you allow the disease to continue getting worse before deciding to try a different cure? If what I said about conservatives not changing their mind is true, that answer might be forever (or close enough for it to no longer matter because the patient is dead).

In any case, it's not looking good for the von Mises economists, but maybe Ireland will give them better results.

It's worth remembering that Reagan was on net a tax reducer, even if he did raise taxes at one point. And by the end of his term, per capita tax revenue adjusted for inflation was higher than it was at the start of it, despite an overall lower tax rate.

I did a little looking around and it looks like he lowered some taxes and then raised others. I'm not sure that anyone can say with absolute certainty what happened to the effective tax rate after he lowered taxes 2-3 times and raised them 13 times and removed many tax breaks. The net effect was that taxes as percentage of GDP stayed pretty close to the level of his predecessor, they dropped by about 0.1%, although they remained higher than the 40 year average. It's not the clear cut case that many conservatives like to pretend it is, that Reagan massively cut taxes and prosperity bloomed forth. Time and again, we have failed to see the promised economic growth from tax cuts. Keynsian economics would indicate that the Regan boom came from the relatively large amount of deficit spending that occurred. However, people like Grover Norquist, who don't believe in Keynsian economics, often seem to simply ignore the facts that are inconvenient to their pet theories.

The rate of change for individualists was much greater as more literacy was gained, so conservatives are clearly more open to adjusting their thinking as facts are gained. A little spin here, but it's still more accurate than your description of the paper.

The problem is that the individualists rate of change ran opposite to the facts presented. They took the facts that they learned and turned them around to mean the opposite thing of so they could support their pre-existing views. However, the egalitarians actually changed their views when presented with facts that conflicted with their pre-existing views. That's the point you missed, and it's very important. For example, it explains why when they failed to find WMDs in Iraq, many conservatives became more convinced that they existed. They decided it was proof that the WMDs were being deliberately hidden because that was a more acceptable answer than believing conservatives leaders had been wrong or mislead them.

Re:How to write without political bias?

[garbut]

I actually wasn't referring to conspiracy theories. I made no mention of theories of any kind. I'm only talking about the facts of the case and fair questions arising from them. Unpleasant ones, certainly, and difficult ones to consider because of their implications, absolutely.

But since you brought them up, conspiracy theories are generally what you have when you don't have any proof. Proof, as in what the Bush administration said they had that was supposed to link bin laden to the attacks, which they promised to make known "shortly", over 10 years ago and never did. In fact, the taliban offered to deliver bin laden if only the US would produce any such proof. They didn't produce any.

The government claimed that normal office fires caused the pools of molten metal and concrete that was found under the 3 WTC towers. The fact is that's impossible. Remember Building 7 wasn't hit by an airplane. Even with jet fuel added to Buildings 1 and 2, it's impossible. Over 100 accounts from first-responders confirmed the presence of molten metal. Some said it was flowing like lava. Video footage also shows it flowing out of the side of Building 2.

For 20 minutes after the impact and before the roof collapsed, the circular hole in the side of the Pentagon was approximately 14 feet in diameter. This fact is plainly visible in video footage. Where the wings and multi-ton steel and titanium engines should have impacted the building, the windows aren't even broken. These are facts, not theories. They actually said the wings folded up and the plane evaporated. W.T.F.

Scientists are not conspiracy theorists. In fact some of them tend to pursue the truth, no matter where it leads. For example, this peer-reviewed paper was published in an open scientific journal and IMO proves the existence of huge quantities of nano-thermite in the twin towers. It has not been refuted.

It's understandable that some people don't want to consider this kind of information. If you're one of them, then don't click on the link in my signature. Whatever you do, don't google "WTC7". There are some videos on youtube that you should avoid as well, particularly Experts Speak Out and Blueprint For Truth. Even this 5-minute video could ruin your day, so be careful what you click on. You don't have to get in front of this if you don't want to, but calling it a conspiracy theory because the bobble-headed media drones said to might cause one to look foolish one day.

Condemnation without investigation is the highest form of ignorance. (Albert Einstein)

Re:How to write without political bias?

[phlinn]

Ah, you are conflating "greater scientific literacy" with "shown facts supporting global warning". Greater literacy means greater awareness of the flaws that are present in the science as is (beyond the scope of this discussion, but flaws are certainly known.) as well as greater awareness of the science. The communitarians changed views at a much slower rate, and the change was in favor of CAGW, which they overwhelmingly supported anyways, and consensus, which fit right into their basic world view . The individualists, perhaps because they don't inherently trust consensus by definition, picked up on the flaws and realized the CAGW supporters tend to use stronger arguments than are actually justified and overlook some things.

Why, exactly, did they go for egalitarian communitarians and hierarchical individualists? Most individualists would consider themselves egalitarians. I think there was some internal bias in there.

I was judging by the tax receipts as a portion of GDP for a basic overall tax rate. I don't know of any other single number that's closer, although it's certainly not perfect. The effect of tax changes are not felt instantly, which leads into the next point

At no point has any prominent anti-keynsian predicted that austerity would fix their issues quickly. Changes in policy are rarely felt quickly Unfortunately, we don't have an alternate reality to know what would have happened if they had stayed full keynsian. You can't actually say that the deepening recession is the fault of the austerity. That's like saying getting sicker after taking an anti-biotic is the fault of the anti-biotic. It's worth noting that the strong keynsians have been often wrong as well. I lean towards assuming the system is so inherently chaotic that making confident claims of will or won't happen is based on a pretense of knowledge.

Re:How to write without political bias?

[MalachiK]

Everything that you have written is noise. Does it annoy you that I won't buy into the crazy? Oooh, a quote from Einstein. You must be soooo profound. I notice that you just assume that I haven't investigated anything for myself because I haven't come to the same batshit insane conclusions that you have. Do you listen to yourself when you speak. Nanothermite? Riiiight! Of course. No aircraft impact? Just how god damned determined to find hidden truths do you have to be to deny the eye witness accounts of.... You know what, just forget it. It's not the factual inaccuracies that bother me, its the fucking condecending attitude that you mentalists have towards anyone who disagrees with you. You make all these snide remarks that the truth "might ruin my day" and make out like you're privy to some mystical truth about the world that the rest of us idiots couldn't handle. Fuck you, sir.

Re:How to write without political bias?

[garbut]

Ah yes, the ad-hominem attack - last resort of those without a leg to stand on.

As soon as you have anything factual, anything scientific or anything intelligent to say, I'll be glad to hear it.

Re:How to write without political bias?

[MalachiK]

http://www.nist.gov/manuscript-publication-search.cfm?pub_id=909017 That is all.

Re:How to write without political bias?

[garbut]

The report that says normal office fires melted structural steel?? It's exactly the document that I've been trying to explain is impossible. Their own people called that report a "half-baked farce".

Once again, I invite you to read this peer-reviewed scientific paper from the Open Chemical Physics Journal or any of the other links I have provided previously.

Re:How to write without political bias?

[MalachiK]

But that isn't the claim. The claim is that the thermal insulation was displaced by the aircraft impact. This allowed the temperature of the steel to rise to the point where it was no longer able to support the loads. Who exactly called it 'half baked'? Can you provide that quote in context?

Re:How to write without political bias?

[garbut]

Right here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lw-jzCfa4eQ

Hope they don't do just word frequency analysis

[Anonymous Coward]

Or shall we remind them that the English Wikipedia is not only about U.S., and the word 'republican' and 'democrat' have other meanings too?

Re:Hope they don't do just word frequency analysis

[Anonymous Coward]

Would it kill you to read the paper?

We obtain a list of 111,216 articles. We then eliminate these articles that cover countries other than the United States.
[...]

For each of these articles, we construct a slant index by applying the methods and estimates developed by Gentzkow and Shapiro (2010), hereafter G&S. G&S select 1,000 phrases based on the number of times these phrases appear in the text of the 2005 Congressional Record, applying statistical methods to identify phrases that separate Democratic representatives from Republican representatives, under the model that each group speaks to its respective constituents with a distinct set of coded language. In brief, we ask whether a given Wikipedia article uses phrases favored more by Republican members or by Democratic members of Congress.

And the corresponding footnote:

The words “republican” and “democrat” do not appear exclusively in entries about United States politics. If a country name shows up in the title or category names, we then check whether the phrase “United States” or “America” shows up in the title or category names. If yes, we keep this article. Otherwise, we search the text for “United States” or “America.” If these phrases do not show up more than 3 times in the text, this article is dropped. This process keeps articles such as “Iraq War” but drop articles related to political parties in foreign countries.

Researchers do think of this stuff, you know.

Re:Hope they don't do just word frequency analysis

[EdgePenguin]

Indeed; I should imagine that those who fought against Franco in the Spanish Civil War have little in common with Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney, and neither have much in common with the former Iraqi Republican guard.

Re:Hope they don't do just word frequency analysis

[FunkyLich]

Mod parent up please. I was just about to wrote the same thing and he beat me twice: first in the chronologial sense. Second in the politeness department, for I felt more like "Who the f*ck do these US politicians think they are that they self-grant the right to give a school grade to Wikipedia?"

Re:Hope they don't do just word frequency analysis

[Anonymous Coward]

Good point

Re:Hope they don't do just word frequency analysis

[SJHillman]

Read the AC post a few posts above yours... he quotes the article where they explain how they removed articles not relevant to the US political parties.

Re:Hope they don't do just word frequency analysis

[__aaltlg1547]

Doesn't matter. The filter that selects political articles for keyword analysis doesn't have to be perfect to find statistically valid correlation.

Re:Hope they don't do just word frequency analysis

[TheRaven64]

'America' appears 7 times in the article 'Irish republicanism' (3 times as 'America' 4 in 'American') and so by their metric (must occur 3 or more times) it would go in, in spite of being nothing at all to do with the US political party of the same name.

Re:Hope they don't do just word frequency analysis

[Dachannien]

Every statistical process has outliers, and one way to deal with those outliers is to have a sample size large enough (oh, say, 111,000 articles) to practically eliminate the effects of those outliers.

Re:Hope they don't do just word frequency analysis

[Anonymous Coward]

'America' appears 7 times in the article 'Irish republicanism' (3 times as 'America' 4 in 'American') and so by their metric (must occur 3 or more times) it would go in, in spite of being nothing at all to do with the US political party of the same name.

Um. You're not very familiar with the IRA and its sources of funding, I'm guessing...

Re:Hope they don't do just word frequency analysis

[pipatron]

That's why they used 111000 articles, you will of course get an amount of statistical noise and articles that doesn't make much sense. That doesn't mean the conclusion is wrong, it just means it's not exact. I'm sure you are aware of that though, judging from even knowing about stuff like "word frequency analysis". :)

I haven't RTFA but it's very likely that they checked a random sample manually, and used the results from that to weigh the results from the larger set.

Re:Hope they don't do just word frequency analysis

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you even read their metric?

Let each input line consist of the article title, followed by all category names (tab-separated or whatever). The countrynames regex matches any country name. The following AWK script approximates their algorithm (yes, I know egrep misses multiple matches on one line -- but you get the idea).
{
    if ($1 ~ countrynames) {
        if ($0 ~ /United States|America/) print $1;
    } else {
        title = $1;
        "egrep -c 'United States|America' wiki/" title | getline;
        if ($1 > 2) print title;
    }
}
Since "Irish Republicanism" contains "Irish", a form of country name, it would go through the first branch, and would require "America" to appear in a section heading.

Re:Hope they don't do just word frequency analysis

[Anonymous Coward]

'Um. You're not very familiar with the IRA and its sources of funding, I'm guessing...'

The Irish REPUBLICAN Army you say?

Re:Hope they don't do just word frequency analysis

[SteveFoerster]

Would it kill you to read the paper?

Probably not, but here at Slashdot our thinking is: why take the risk?

Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

It's quite interesting as a data mining method. I'm not sure I'd use it as strong evidence of Wikipedia's political leanings but it certainly is food for thought.

Equally biased != NPOV

[TorrentFox]

One guy may say that the sun is green, the other guy may say it's purple. Having both of them in the same article does not make it neutral.

Re:Equally biased != NPOV

[Troyusrex]

One guy may say that the sun is green, the other guy may say it's purple. Having both of them in the same article does not make it neutral.

It depends on what your definition of "neutral" is. If it's making sure that all major points of view get equal mention and if Green and Purple are the two major points of view then it may well be "neutral".

Of course, there are many other definitions of "neutral" for which your example would not make then neutral.

Re:Equally biased != NPOV

[Theophany]

You're trying to make neutrality of opinion an absolute measurement; everybody gets an equal say and everybody gets to air their beliefs. Which is as close to neutrality as is realistically possible for the simple reason that neutrality of opinion is no more or less relative than the different biases that exist.

Re:Equally biased != NPOV

[Hatta]

Exactly. A neutral article will be biased towards the position that is actually true. An article that treats all opinions equally is biased in favor of the positions that are untrue.

Re:Equally biased != NPOV

[jrumney]

One guy may say that the sun is green, the other guy may say it's purple. Having both of them in the same article does not make it neutral.

And given that it is a well known fact that reality has a liberal bias, clearly the results of this study indicate that Wikipedia has a strong republican bias.

Re:Equally biased != NPOV

[Theophany]

You make the erroneous assumption that the biases are empirically provable or that opinions are in some way absolute rather than normative, which is not always the case. (Actually, in politics this is never the case, they all distort facts beyond any limitations of meaningfulness to suit their own agendas.)

Re:Equally biased != NPOV

[CastrTroy]

This is the same problem we have in the news. Reporters (some anyway) want to be seen as non-biased, so they give equal time to both supporters and non-supporters of global warming, and therefore the general public thinks that there is actually some kind of debate in the scientific community over whether or not global warming is really happening. Same goes for evolution and a lot of other topics. Sometimes it even gets a little out of hand, like this Anderson Cooper interview where he has some non-educated person who just embarrasses herself on national television, because they insist on having someone from the other side of the issue talk about it, and she was the only person stupid enough to try to defend the point of view. Ignoring the other side of the debate is fine if the other side of the debate is provably wrong.

Re:Equally biased != NPOV

[phlinn]

"And given that it is a well known [opinion among liberals] that reality has a liberal bias..." FTFY.

I may have missed a joke here depending on why you italicized, but since I've frequently see that actual sentiment, I can't assume so.

Re:Equally biased != NPOV

[BMOC]

An article that treats all opinions equally is biased in favor of the positions that are untrue.

Since when do opinions factor into any logical definition of truth?

We'd best just accept that everyone has a bias in their opinion, and that makes no statement to the validity of their worldview when applied to everyone else.

Re:Equally biased != NPOV

[Anonymous Coward]

You make the erroneous assumptions that biases are not apparent, or that they are equal in illogic, that all opinions are valid in some normative way, and that in politics, there is never a right or wrong.

That's a symptom of falling into the trap of False Equivalence.

I know you want to be a cynic, but cynicism is itself a delusion.

Re:Equally biased != NPOV

[1s44c]

One guy may say that the sun is green, the other guy may say it's purple. Having both of them in the same article does not make it neutral.

The sun may well be green to one observer and purple to another depending on their movement relative to it. Look up red/blue shift.

I agree with what you are saying, just disagreeing with your example of it.

Re:Equally biased != NPOV

[1s44c]

Exactly. A neutral article will be biased towards the position that is actually true. An article that treats all opinions equally is biased in favor of the positions that are untrue.

You are not taking into account Wikipedia's abject hatred of truth. It cares only about what has been reported elsewhere by publications that are also biased. See WP:TRUTH.

Re:Equally biased != NPOV

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Yes, you did miss a joke; which you'd know if you'd ever bothered to do half a minute's time googling the phrase.

2. "FTFY", and its variants, is a stupid and lazy way to troll. If, OTOH, you actually do have something legit to say, say it yourself. Don't put words in other peoples' mouths.

Re:Equally biased != NPOV

[emarkp]

And of course, it's hard to measure the bias of pages that have been deleted.

Re:Equally biased != NPOV

[shutdown -p now]

In this particular case, it's not even in the same article - rather, there is a roughly equal amount of articles which say that sun is green and those which say that sun is purple.

Re:Equally biased != NPOV

[ArsonSmith]

One guy may say that the sun is green, the other guy may say it's purple The other ~7 billion people of the world say it's yellow. Having all of them in the same article does make it neutral.

Especially when you find out why the two people odd people disagree with everyone else. It gives a place of study, either on the common perceptions of everyone that the sun appears mostly yellow although it is radiating all colors or the specific individuals that may be color blind or psychologically unstill.

Re:Equally biased != NPOV

[Yvanhoe]

But what can we suggest as an alternative form of debate ? I agree that this gives a false impression of the demographics of the debate but when you have to present a subject you know whack about, how do you, as a journalist, understand which point is the most reasonable ?

Crackpots will spend a lot of resources trying to look legit. They have their fancy "labs", their fancy publication journals, their fancy diplomas. How are you supposed to see through that ? This is not as easy as it sounds.

I can see how one can imagine that making both side hear their arguments is a good way of letting everyone have an opinion. Justice courts work that way, that doesn't seem like such a good idea.

Re:Equally biased != NPOV

[Anonymous Coward]

It's nothing to do with cynicism, it's about the absurdity of trying to shoehorn a scientific element where it doesn't fit. The fact that you allude to their being a 'right' and 'wrong' in politics is bizarre, because right and wrong are absolute concepts - either something is or it is not 'right' or 'wrong', the definitions of which change over time and from vary person to person. Compare that to, say, math where you assert that 2+2=10 then you can definitively answer that it is wrong because you can prove it to be so. If I say 'I believe that free cheese whiz should be a constitutional right' you can say I am wrong, but you cannot scientifically prove I am wrong because it is an opinion.

You science types need to appreciate that the world is not binary.

Re:Equally biased != NPOV

[phlinn]

Unfortunately, I've seen multiple people on this page seriously suggest that reality actual has a liberal bias, so I couldn't trust that it was a joke. For the record "FTFY" is not trolling, it's a slightly amusing way to indicate disagreement with the quoted comment. It only seems like trolling if you can't stand having the flaws in the original comment pointed out because of your own bias.

Re:Equally biased != NPOV

[jrumney]

I was trying to put a superscript TM after the italicized part of my comment to make it more obviously a joke, but Slashdot doesn't let me. Unlike the AC, I have no problem with your FTFY response.

Obligatory

[beezhive]

[Citation Needed]

Re:Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

[Citation Needed]

Is Wikipedia Biased?, by Shane Greenstein and Feng Zhu.

TFA seems a bit biased

[Anonymous Coward]

lol at silly research biased towards a two party state. do it properly, you two!

Libertarian bias?

[EdgePenguin]

Surely they need to investigate libertarian bias (especially seeing as Wales himself is, how should I put this, a raving Objectivist nutjob). The fact that libertarian beliefs overlap with democrat and republican beliefs can explain the two separate slants with one single hypothesis.

Re:Libertarian bias?

[elfprince13]

Please don't confuse objectivists with actual libertarians. 1049 applies.

Dangerous to Conclude this is "Slant"

[eldavojohn]

This is a neat study but I feel like the foundational assumptions are subjective and a little flawed.

(civil rights tends Democrat; trade tends Republican)

Could that be simply because Democrats invent/introduce/overuse new phrases and talking points for civil rights and Republicans invent/introduce/overuse new phrases and talking points for trade? For example, you'd probably hear Democrats say "Equal Opportunity Employment" or "Affirmative Action" a lot and you'd probably hear Republicans say "Laissez-faire" or "Free Market" a lot. What would be the antithesis of these phrases for the other side? I would posit that it's entirely possible that these articles are not on average biased and instead are merely explaining and using the phrases that each party has employed to tackle their number one priorities.

On top of that, I didn't see anything that seemed to indicate that they used windowing to determine when a phrase was opposed to the phrase they were using. For example if you found that the acronym ACORN indicates a Democratic slant but there's a whole section on its Wikipedia page full of negative criticism despite them using 'ACORN' frequently in that section. Would this section be identified as a Democratic slant?

Where is this G&S word bank? Where is the list of results so I can look up the ACORN article's scores?

I'd be more interested in the media

[Grayhand]

I would have assumed a fairly even distribution with Wikipedia so the results weren't that surprising. I'd be more interested in using it to find bias in the media. There are obvious cases of bias such as Fox but I've noticed a gradual move towards the right in groups like CNN who seemed in the past Democratic in it's leaning. I've found more open reporting from comedians these days. Some subjects only the comedians take on that the media avoids or barely mentions. One interesting trend I noticed early on is all media sources including supposed left wing groups call the President Mr Obama while Bush was generally called President Bush and I can't remember him being referred to as Mr Bush. Traditionally the media always calls a sitting President by the title President and expresidents are generally referred to as Former President. Pay attention when you listen to the news and see if I'm right. Both Bushs and Clinton are referred to as former Presidents far more often than Obama is called President Obama.

Re:I'd be more interested in the media

[tomhath]

CNN used to be blatantly biased against President Bush. After he left office their coverage might have become less biased; I wouldn't know though since I became disgusted with CNN several years ago.

As far as referring to the men as "Mr." vs. "President" I don't see any difference in coverage. Most writers will mix it up within an article to avoid repetition.

Re:I'd be more interested in the media

[1s44c]

Strange. I always saw CNN as pro-war, anti-middle east ( all of it ), and quick to oppose anyone who contradicted US government views on anything. To some extent it appeared to treat the rest of the world as a bunch of fools crying out for US help in every situation. I certainly didn't notice it being against Bush.

I gave up even trying to watch it as it appeared to be more a propaganda exercise than a news channel.

Re:I'd be more interested in the media

[Quila]

I would have assumed a fairly even distribution with Wikipedia so the results weren't that surprising.

I never expected even distribution. Those in charge tend to be liberal, and they will guard liberal articles that are important to them. You are a mere peon editor, so trying to insert factual information or even make the watched article consistent with the rest of Wikipedia will not be allowed. You will be reverted three times with no explanation, and any attempt by you to undo the vandalism will run you up against the three revert rule.

Re:I'd be more interested in the media

[Anonymous Coward]

"I would have assumed a fairly even distribution with Wikipedia so the results weren't that surprising. I'd be more interested in using it to find bias in the media."

You might be interested in hearing the show Counterspin, by the media watchdog FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting):

Also worth looking at is Daved Brock's Media Matters

You should also read Noam Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent and watch the documentary based on the book

There's a lot more to recommend, but these should get you started.

Re:I'd be more interested in the media

[phantomfive]

I've found more open reporting from comedians these days.

Take this as a sign of your biases, then, you probably like what the comedians are saying. Comedians, such as Jon Stewart, are fully happy to distort the truth, selectively report, anything for entertainment value. When he is called out on it, Jon Stewart doesn't deny it, he says, "hey, I'm a comedian."

If you think comedians are giving you 'more open reporting' it's a problem with you, because they are not even trying to do that.

Re:I'd be more interested in the media

[Bob the Super Hamste]

The media likes to cover wars, especially ones against people who don't look like us as it gives them better ratings. As I don't have cable I don't know whether CNN was for or against Bush. The few times I have seen cable news (on business trips) CNN seemed to be by far the best one to watch, as I would rather go slam my heat in a car door than watch Fox News or MSNBC. I have watched both of them a couple of times and I it was painful. My ideal preference would be to watch BBC World but that seems to be a fairly rare find here in the US.

Re:I'd be more interested in the media

[orgelspieler]

Seems like the "Former President" so-and-so has fallen out of favor. Almost all media outlets just call them all President these days. I find it annoying, though. Regarding CNN, I think you are thinking of MSNBC. They were pretty slanted. CNN was too boring to be slanted.

Re:I'd be more interested in the media

[nyctopterus]

Hi, can you point to the history page that shows this happening to one of your edits? Because I hear this story a lot, and have never actually had experience of it or seen it happen.

Re:I'd be more interested in the media

[Quila]

That you hear it a lot is pretty telling. All you need to do to experience it is edit an unofficially protected page. While the page isn't in official protection status, there will be a group of people who watch for any change on the page. They will instantly revert without explanation, which is in itself vandalism. With many against one, you will run up against 3RR. Any complaints will fall on deaf ears since they have a sympathetic admin backing them. You push it, you risk a temporary ban.

Pick any one with a topic sensitive to liberals, such as one relating to the social issues around homosexuality. Insert inconvenient fact that runs counter to the liberal conclusions made on the page. Watch the fun.

Re:I'd be more interested in the media

[nyctopterus]

So no link then? Because I have checked out people's stories before, and it always turns out the situation is more complicated than people like to let on.

Re:I'd be more interested in the media

[Quila]

Not linking /. to Wikipedia identities.

Not that complicated, not even a story I cared about, just noticed a discrepancy, the motivation for a crime stated one way in one story, the other way in another story. One version was neutral and better cited, I decided to change the story that appeared incorrect.

Problem is the second story was very sensitive to a certain demographic, and that motivation was a key in the whole mythos surrounding the incident. It had to be protected, even if the second article was left intact.

Don't have time to even read the summary?

[Anonymous Coward]

You have to make it all the way to sentence two of the summary to see:

The team first identified 1,000 political phrases based on the number of times these phrases appeared in the text of the 2005 Congressional Record and applied statistical methods to identify the phrases that separated Democratic representatives from Republican representatives...

Armed with this knowledge, they then looked at Wikipedia to identify trends. Specifically, they identified trends based on U.S. politics. While this isn't a comprehensive measure of all political systems of all users of Wikipedia, the method nonetheless tells us something non-intuitive. It's a good idea, if you care to read instead of trying to be pedantic.

WAIT!

[Charliemopps]

How on earth can 2 scientists be so naive as to think there are only 2 political points of view... and then to measure for those 2 points of view? They basically took talking points from our 2 main parties and then measured how often each showed up in an article. I'd argue that the Republican and Democrat points of view are one and the same. They disagree on very minor, but very polarizing points of view that give them something to argue about in an election. Most of the subjects they were surprised to see no slant on, both parties agree on... foreign policy, war, peace... How has our current president acted any different than the last one? Or the last 10 for that matter? Abortion? Does anyone really care other than extreme feminists and extreme Christians?

We have one ruling political party in this country that masquerades as two. They measured bias in those articles... far more than they realize. Bias towards the statuesque and our 1 party system.

Re:WAIT!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hence the fallacy of "neutrality". To say that right wing propaganda and left wing propaganda appears statistically even, and call that "neutral" is nonsense. If the left says "the sky looks green on a sunny day" and the right says "the sky looks pink on a sunny day" - they may be polarizing and different(1), but neither is factually true. This is the problem with main stream news media these days. Rather than seeking "truth, as best we can tell", they combine a right wing perspective with a left wing one and then say "that's all the time we have" after each side argues for a sort of equal time period. That's not neutral or fair & balanced, it's plain ol' bullshit.

(1) The example colors intentionally reverse the standard view that left wing liberals are "pinko commies" and right wing conservatives are driven by dollars (green) just to emphasize how pathetic this all is.

Sounds US-centric

[Anonymous Coward]

People called "Global Economic Intersection" ought to take a less US-centric view: a middle ground between
democrats and republicans is nowhere close to NPOV (democrats would be considered pretty right-wing in most
of the world).

Six of one, half dozen of another

[rmdingler]

No tirade, experiment, or analysis can be free of observational bias. Perhaps the best presentation of information includes bias from as many fringes as possible. Or we could limit our information flow to one source and Trump reason.

Interesting, but shallow

[Hentes]

The frequency of using individual words is far from an actual political bias.

Re:Interesting, but shallow

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why there's a discussion of the findings section in any research. Numbers and statistics have no meaning without context.

Re:Interesting, but shallow

[HeckRuler]

Well, I could understand if some language gets more use by one party or another, but that's linguistics, not bias. If you assume everyone with a texan drawl is a dyed-in-the-wool republican and you see a lot of articles with that Texan drawl, you can't assume that those articles are biased towards republicans. Because the Texan republicans can still write with a NPOV. They can be professional and, you know, fair. Even when they speak funny.

Hey, it's possible. (plus, there's this place called Houston).

Re:Interesting, but shallow

[phantomfive]

That's what people from the Democrat party always say, you dirty hippie filthy liberal!!

Of course, ethnically sensitive people who respect Gaia would never stoop to the level of rednecks, hicks, and all those other racist sea-kitten-haters. Those Repooplicans.

Re:Interesting, but shallow

[Hentes]

True, there are some words that have an inherent bias, but those aren't really used in Wikipedia articles. Words like hippy, liberal or racist are only biased in certain contexts. The researchers didn't search for actually biased words, but did an algorithmic wordcount in political writings to identify the 'bias' of each word, which I think is far too inaccurate for the confident conclusions they have drawn.

Please limit it to articles about the US gov't

[captainpanic]

Europe has a clear political bias too (we're left wing socialist surrender monkeys), and we're quite happy about that. So, please America, leave our wikipedia alone. Thanks.

If I think that wikipedia is politically neutral, then this investigation will show it has a bias for the Democrats.
If wikipedia is neutral between Democrat and Republican views, then I will think it has a strong right wing bias.

The problem with this kind of reserach is that it might either undermine Wikipedia as a source in general (when finally the world seems to agree that the qualiy of wikipedia is just as good as any encyclopedia), or worse: it leads to changes in the contents to neutralize the supposed bias. This investigation has no benefits for wikipedia, or for free information.

Re:Please limit it to articles about the US gov't

[Chrisq]

Europe has a clear political bias too (we're left wing socialist surrender monkeys), and we're quite happy about that. So, please America, leave our wikipedia alone..

Didn't you know that every use of British spellings counted as a "left wing" article.

Re:Please limit it to articles about the US gov't

[Anonymous Coward]

Didn't you know that every use of British spellings counted as a "left wing" article.

Didn't you know where Karl Marx's "Das Kapital" was written?

Re:Please limit it to articles about the US gov't

[Anonymous Coward]

I note that you have the view that certain types of research should not be performed because the results can influence the population in a direction you dislike.

You conform perfectly to the left-wing stereotype and illustrate why many consider you threats to society that must be removed from power for society to improve.

This really surprises me

[anticant]

Given that republicans can't read.

I wonder what a similar study on slashdot...

[Chrisq]

I wonder what a similar study on slashdot would show. Probably neutrality as well, for every "hang the niggers" there is a compensating "death to America".

Re:I wonder what a similar study on slashdot...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, hanging the niggers would bring death to a significant part of America, indeed.

Re:I wonder what a similar study on slashdot...

[pipatron]

Might be more interesting and relevant to compare Windows, Linux, OSX and BSD...

And of course Amiga, but that would be cheating.

Changed to what?

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems accurate enough to me.

No news

[Claudix]

History books are biased too.

Three accountants go duck hunting.

[drainbramage]

The first accountant shoots and misses a meter high.
The second accountant shoots and misses a meter low.
The third accountant says "Got it"!
------------------
It looks like another paid for study that proves what they were asked to prove.
They only had to determine which data points would produce the required end point.

What's "Global" about "Dem." vs. "Repub."?

[fantomas]

Seems to me that "Democrat" or "Republican" are USA-specific terms - not sure what's 'global' about that bias? ;-)

Not much use exploring articles about political biases in civil rights articles in the UK using "Democrat" and "Republican" as terms. "Labour", "Scottish National Party", "Plaid Cymru","Liberal" , and "Conservative" (amongst others) might be more useful.

Ok, so I guess it is a good test of an example, whether USA specific articles on the English language have a political bias. Not sure it says much about UK articles (won't be much reference to these terms there as we have neither of those parties) , not sure if those US named parties exist in other countries either.

Re:What's "Global" about "Dem." vs. "Repub."?

[jrumney]

Not much use exploring articles about political biases in civil rights articles in the UK using "Democrat" and "Republican" as terms. "Labour", "Scottish National Party", "Plaid Cymru","Liberal" , and "Conservative" (amongst others) might be more useful.

LIberal ...?

I'm glad it isn't liberal, because...

[N0Man74]

I'm glad it didn't turn out to be a liberal bias. I would tire quickly of the phrase "Liberal Pedia" constantly from Conservatives.

Though, it still might not stop Fox.

Speaking of shallow

[Anonymous Coward]

I have also not read the actual paper, but obviously these researchers did not base their methods on earlier research that has shown correlation between political bias and the frequency of certain words and expressions. They should have asked Slashdot first.

Re:Speaking of shallow

[Anonymous Coward]

I doubt the original study just as much as I doubt this one. You're saying that this debatable study is backed up by another debatable study. How does that do anything to bolster the ridiculous conclusions of this ridiculous research?

Some things can't be objectively measured. There's absolutely no way to validate whether the results of this research indicate the conclusions the researchers are trying to make. I could have asked a magic eight ball about bias on Wikipedia and the answer would have just as high a likelihood of being correct.

When statisticians and sociologists get together bullshit is the result.

And this article is example 1: Apodixis

[Anonymous Coward]

Bias is rhetoric. Apodixis: A rhetorical device that stealthily inserts a false pretense of general knowledge. For example "As everyone knows..."

Or, as this article does: "expected political slant - civil rights tends Democrat"

Republicans broke the Democrats filibuster of the Civil Rights Laws of the 60's. The Republican Party was formed for the sole purpose of overturning Democratic Legislation that allowed slavery to expand into the Western Territories. The first Republican President freed the slaves. Every Governor of every state that let loose the fire hoses on and dogs on minority students was a Democrat.

Study rhetoric, and don't fall for it. We are most vulnerable to the rhetoric we cheer for. That's where we should put most of our scrutiny.
Being tricked by adversary is bad enough, being tricked by someone you support is truly insulting.

The conservative movement has an option...

[BVis]

If they don't like the 'liberal bias' (read: intersection with reality) that they see in Wikipedia, they can go use Conservapedia with all the other conservative folks.

Re:The conservative movement has an option...

[poity]

This "reality has a liberal bias" meme popular among people my age is exactly the type of conceit that puts a stop to introspection and self-critique -- which are among the pillars of liberalism.

Bias is not in the use of phrases alone

[hessian]

There's also choice of topic, slant of the article and what is included or excluded.

I see, for example, they excluded the chart with the average IQs of all nations.

Slant of article is tough to define, but it's your approach to the topic. "Self-Appointed 'Neighborhood Watch' guy shoots innocent teen" or "Angry Teen with marijuana possession offense attacks neighborhood watch official."

As long as there are people, there will be political bias, and Wikipedia still leans left because the people behind it are mostly students.

Bias is rhetoric. Apodixis For Example

[TerryCary]

Apodixis: A rhetorical device that stealthily inserts a false pretense of general knowledge. For example "As everyone knows..." Or, as this article does: "expected political slant - civil rights tends Democrat" The Republican Party was formed for the sole purpose of overturning Democratic Legislation that allowed slavery to expand into the Western Territories. The first Republican President freed the slaves. Every Governor of every state that let loose the police, the fire hoses and the dogs on minority students was a Democrat. Republicans broke the Democrat's filibuster of the Civil Rights Laws of the 60's Study rhetoric; don't fall for it. We are most vulnerable to the rhetoric we agree with. So, that's where we should put most of our scrutiny. Being tricked by an adversary is bad enough, being tricked by someone you support is truly insulting.

Re:Bias is rhetoric. Apodixis For Example

[EmagGeek]

Mod parent up.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Bias is rhetoric. Apodixis For Example

[Anonymous Coward]

Despite being perfectly correct, this will probably be marked down as trolling. It is hard to speak ill of the three gods of Slashdot: wiki-anything, Google, and the Great Linus.

Debates can be reframed, introducing bias

[Urban Garlic]

Bias can sneak in because of changes in terminology, presumably in both directions, although I've noticed it more on the right these days. As Robert Anton Wilson famously observed, you can go from liberal to conservative without changing a single idea if you wait long enough -- the reverse is also true, depending on the domain in which you have your ideas.

For instance, an article about taxation written in the 1990s might be considered neutral in its time, and talk about the "inheritance tax" a lot. Fast forward ten years, during which the term "death tax" has come into prominence, and the old term "inheritance tax" is only used by fogies and liberals. The textual analysis of the unchanged article will now score it as "liberal", because the terms of the debate have shifted.

This can happen with policies, too -- I remember when a carbon tax was considered a compromise position between liberals, who wanted to directly regulate carbon dioxide emissions, and conservatives, who felt that some kind of market mechanism would provide useful flexibility. Carbon taxes were a technocratic, ideologically neutral solution when they were proposed, but now they're seen as liberal social engineering.

It doesn't always go rightward, of course, some debates have been successfully re-framed by the left, as well, I think -- "global warming" used to be a neutral descriptive term, but the warming isn't uniform, so "climate change" is the preferred term, and I think it's mostly conservatives who use the term "global warming".

That ought to blow up my karma for a solid year...

Funny, but not politically correct

[Anonymous Coward]

I would have modded you funny if I had mod points. Unfortunately Slashdot is very politically correct, and your statement was not PC, so you will be modded down.

Re:Bias is rhetoric. Apodixis For Example

[Anonymous Coward]

And then in the 1960s, after the Civil Rights Act...it changed. The Republicans saw what the Democrats had done with the Solid South for decades, realized they could grab it up since the racism and prejudice was still there, and went for it.

I know it's a strategy in the Republican party to try to present a history of discrimination and racism to attack Democrats, while ignoring the immediate present, but do you really think anybody is actually fooled by your chicanery? Abraham Lincoln is dead, trying to wrap yourself in his skin is nothing more than base rhetoric, and you are the one who is trying to get us not to scrutinize your own presentation.

But you ain't that good at tricking the public. The only people who will chime in for support are those who are supportive of your attempt to exploit ignorance with distractions and illusions.

Stick to being a state magician, it's an honest profession.

Re:And this article is example 1: Apodixis

[uigrad_2000]

Republicans broke the Democrats filibuster of the Civil Rights Laws of the 60's.

Everett Dirksen was a republican congressman that grew up in the extremely racially charged town of Pekin, Illinois. I grew up nearby, and Pekin is still regarded as one of the most racially divided towns today, but they have made a lot of progress. At least they got rid of the previous high school mascot (changed from the "Pekin Chinks" to the "Pekin Dragons").

Dirksen is the one who brought forward the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

You can't go through the Illinois school system without hearing about what Dirksen did to bring about equality, and Springfield has even tried to make him a local hero, by naming roads after him, etc. But, I don't know how many times I've seen him listed as a democrat, when the truth was the complete opposite. Now, this article is calling civil rights a democrat issue, and it just makes me cringe. Is history education really this bad in this country?

The paper's bias?

[noobermin]

Does anyone else find it odd that this paper has been submitted to American Economic Review?

Perhaps this validates the point of the paper in that if we had the title "Economists Investigate Political Bias On Wikipedia" we would have gone in with different feelings about the whole thing.

Conservative Democrats

[Attack DAWWG]

Your "history" stops at the 1960s. You are aware, aren't you, that huge numbers of conservative Democrats moved to the Republican party in the '60s? Look up "Solid South."

So you are basically claiming that a significant part of today's Republican party is racist.

Brilliant.

Re:Conservative Democrats

[_Sharp'r_]

Maybe your own bias for something "everyone knows" around you in your cocoon is just showing?

Here's a link to that super-conservative Republican loving rag the NY Times explaining how your facts are incorrect.

Flawed

[Jiro]

I think the major flaw is that this seems to be assuming that bias on Wikipedia is done in the same way as bias elsewhere. Someone who wants to bias a Wikipedia article has to do so within the confines of rules which help prevent some kinds of bias more than others.

For instance, one of the most common ways to bias a Wikipedia article is undue weight--you include negative information and exclude positive information, or vice versa. This sort of bias doesn't use coded language (thus making it invisible to this study) and while it is still against Wikipedia rules, Wikipedia does relatively poorly at stopping it.

Don't trust Wikis for that info anyway

[GodfatherofSoul]

I've seen far too many contemporaneous and historical political pages being modified for political purposes, usually to water down or outright whitewash a scandal. Heck, even some scientific content I wouldn't bother reading on Wikipedia if there was a strong enough political angle; e.g. climate change or the nuclear industry.

Next Study

[Anonymous Coward]

Next, we're going to take Fox News and Steven Colbert, then cross-reference against words commonly found on TMZ . . . SCIENCE!

The appropriate response to this comment.

[InvisibleClergy]

About eight months ago, I was searching around the internet to find out why my computer was running so slowly (it normally ran quite fast, but had gradually gotten slower over time). After a few minutes, I found a piece of software claiming that it could speed up my PC and make it run like new again. Being that I was dangerously ignorant about technology in general (even more so than I am now), I downloaded the software and began the installation. Mere moments after doing so, my desktop background image was changed and warnings that appeared to originate from Windows appeared all over the screen telling me to buy strange software from an unknown company in order to remove a virus it claimed I had.

I may have been ignorant about technology, but I wasn't that naive. I immediately concluded that this cab was rare, but I thought nah, forget it, yo homes to Bel-air! I pulled up to a house about seven or eight and I yelled to the cabby, "Yo homes, smell you later!" Looked at my kingdom I was finally there. To sit on my throne as the prince of Bel-air.

Re:The appropriate response to this comment.

[spatley]

you just blew my mind
best troll ever

Left slant + right slant != neutral.

[Freddybear]

There is a basic error in this idea that because there are roughly equal amounts of "slant" towards various partisan ideological points of view that this somehow adds up to being "neutral". Objectively neutral would be straight to the facts without ideological slant at all, if that's even possible given the nature of the subjects.

Examples of some of the phrases?

[pne]

What are some examples of "typically Democrat" and "typically Republican" phrases?

I skimmed the links but didn't find anything there.

Yes and Conservapedia is much less biased

[Ranger]

They even have an article on Examples of Bias in Wikipedia to prove it. It's their 9th most viewed page. Because proof for Conservapedia whatever they pull out of their asses.

Their second most viewed page is THE HOMOSEXUAL AGENDA. See the full list. It's unusual that only one of their top ten is about homosexuality. In the past as many as seven of the top ten most viewed pages have been about it.

Re:Yes and Conservapedia is much less biased

[Anonymous Coward]

Then go back to reading unbiased news sites, like Daily Kos. Sheesh.

Re:Yes and Conservapedia is much less biased

[Bob the Super Hamste]

Nah, they are just being honest /snarky

Re:Yes and Conservapedia is much less biased

[WWWWolf]

My first thought was "Gee, they're using 'democrat' and 'republican' keywords - I wonder if they're making use of Conservapedia's Best New Conservative Words? Andy Schlafly has already charted this linguistic ocean, and obviously every scientist should follow his superior conservative insights! ...and they probably should only use conservative terms, because 'republican' terms may include RINO terms."

Re:Yes and Conservapedia is much less biased

[Ranger]

Daily Kos is biased too, but as a rule their writers are much much better informed.

Re:Bias is rhetoric. Apodixis For Example

[slimjim8094]

The Republican Party was formed for the sole purpose of overturning Democratic Legislation that allowed slavery to expand into the Western Territories.
The first Republican President freed the slaves.
Every Governor of every state that let loose the police, the fire hoses and the dogs on minority students was a Democrat.
Republicans broke the Democrat's filibuster of the Civil Rights Laws of the 60's.

True, but missing the point. LBJ managed to get the Civil Rights Act passed, largely using the political capital of JFK's death (by describing it as an enduring legacy) and nearly all Republicans and Democrats in the North (but more Democrats) voted for it, while nearly all in the South of either party voted against it. This correlation reverses when you combine the figures (Simpson's paradox) which is what you are talking about. The divide was so intense that it changed the base of the parties - the Democrats "lost the South", and they went to the Republicans - which changed the GOP more than the GOP changed them. Starting with the next election after this shift (Nixon's), the GOP started winning elections by playing to racist fears

While saying that the Democrats in aggregate opposed the CRA is technically true, it's not really relevant. The South opposed the CRA, and that was so important to them that party lines not only didn't matter, but they changed what the party lines were.

The Sun *is* green, at least sort of

[SteveFoerster]

"Some think that the Sun's output in visible light peaks in the yellow. However, the Sun's visible output peaks in the green": http://solar-center.stanford.edu/SID/activities/GreenSun.html

The funny thing is

[Anonymous Coward]

Your (the common folk's) political views don't even matter, you don't make a difference.

Seems backwards..

[Anonymous Coward]

Or perhaps Republicans and Democrats are pulling terms from the domain of the ideas they support. I think they are mistaking cause and effect here.

Re:And this article is example 1: Apodixis

[Anonymous Coward]

Is history education really this bad in this country?

yes. I have seen MLK marked this way too.

It runs deeper than that though. Many want 'their' team to win. They will say whatever they want to make it seem like 'their' team came up with the idea and the other one was holding it back. Then you see many who will take parts of history and run broad swaths over other groups of people to vilify them (ie crusades and Christians missing the other side of that battle (it was about money, laws, and taxes btw)). My *favorite* line these days 'the democratic party is like what the republican party used to be'. Really? Seems like they are still trying to segregate and categorize people... Look no further than how they want to tax people and how they want different laws depending on who you are (and these days how much you make)...

Re:And this article is example 1: Apodixis

[MyFirstNameIsPaul]

And somewhat more recently, in the 80s it was the Democrats who pushed the tougher drug laws on crack, which have resulted in the unjust imprisonment of millions of blacks.

Re:And this article is example 1: Apodixis

[Anonymous Coward]

"Republicans broke the Democrats filibuster of the Civil Rights Laws of the 60's. The Republican Party was formed for the sole purpose of overturning Democratic Legislation that allowed slavery to expand into the Western Territories. The first Republican President freed the slaves. Every Governor of every state that let loose the fire hoses on and dogs on minority students was a Democrat."

Exactly. The Republican party used to be basically like the Democratic party was today. And the Democratic party used to be like the Republicans. That is, until the Republican party adopted the Southern Strategy in the 70's to win over the racists (at which they were very successful). That was when the parties switched polarities to be much like what they are today.

Re:And this article is example 1: Apodixis

[0xdeadbeef]

Well that explains why blacks overwhelmingly vote Republican. Republicans love blacks and would never betray them for white votes, plus Republicans are so honest they would never use passive-aggressive rhetorical tactics like the lie of omission.

This confirms US-centric bias.

[Alex Belits]

Though probably not intended as such, this confirms that English-language Wikipedia articles have US-centric (that is, rampant right-wing, as both Republicans and Democrats are right-wing by non-US standards) bias.

Two slants don't make a neutral.

[jweller13]

"The overall slant changes due to the entry of articles with opposite slants, leading toward neutrality for many topics, not necessarily within specific articles." I disagree with that statement. Two opposing "slants" don't make a "neutral". Wikipedia is supposed to be an encyclopedia not a political debate forum.

How are States Rights racist?

[SuperKendall]

ntil the Republican party adopted the Southern Strategy in the 70's to win over the racists

    It's absurd that the Wiki page you link to labels the "southern strategy" as racist - when the main thing that entailed was Republicans advocating for states rights! The article tries to paint that as pandering to "scared white people" but if you even thought for a second about what it actually meant, you'd realize that stronger states rights means more control for blacks than whites in the south where the black population is a majority, since after all they could vote at that point... That is how Nixon managed to get a high percentage of the black vote. Think again, WHY would black people vote for Nixon in large numbers were he pandering to racist whites?

That whole article is a prime example of how Wikipedia tilts so far towards Democrats it's horizontal.

The Republican party used to be basically like the Democratic party was today.

Not at all, things are still as they were. Democrats still seek to keep "lower classes" like the black minority groups down, by keeping them addicted to government handouts and assistance.

Affirmative action is another example. It is basically a declaration that the specified minorities are inferior and cannot help themselves. When you expect less from people you get less, which serves no-one well.

As far as I can tell, Republicans are still the only major party offering true equality and freedom from racial discrimination.

It is rather funny that the black population continues to vote in large numbers for Democrats, at this point it's a combination of Stockholm Syndrome and very advanced propaganda from Democrats parroted and amplified by much of the media. Looks like the racists won after all.

Re:How are States Rights racist?

[jmorris42]

> It's absurd that the Wiki page you link to labels the "southern strategy" as racist

You make good arguments but failed to go for the kill. Go reexamine the election of 1968. Does anyone think a California liberal Republican like Nixon would think he had a shot at many 'racist southerners' in a cycle with George Wallace in the race? Nixon was many things, mostly bad, but fool wasn't one of them. This rewrite of history re: Nixon's 'Southern Strategy' requires putting that little historical fact in the memory hole.

Re:And this article is example 1: Apodixis

[Anonymous Coward]

"Republicans broke the Democrats filibuster of the Civil Rights Laws of the 60's."

The Civil Rights Act was famously called for by a democrat president, introduced by a democrat representative, and then eventually signed by a democrat president. And if you look at the voting totals by party line (so convienently provided by wikipedia) then you can see that the majority of Democrats (as well as Republicans) voted to pass the bill. It was a handful of "Southern Democrats" who went against their party line and opposed the bill on racist and anti-miscengenist grounds. It was both Democrats and Republicans who passed the bill in spite of the filibuster. To suggest that Republicans passed the bill over the objections of Democrats is a misleading statement at best.

But if you really are suggesting that Republicans receive sole credit for passing the bill then please explain why, in mordern times, the most vocal opposition to the bill has come from Republicans against Title IX?

Go back to conservapedia, you whiners

[Benfea]

Anything that does not have an extreme right wing bias is identified as having a left-wing bias by the "fair and balanced" crowd. You want fair and balanced, stick to Conservapedia. That's what it's there for.

Debunking your SS misconceptions

[SuperKendall]

If you want to understand what the "Southern Strategy" really meant, read this.

Again, any argument that the Southern Strategy is racist against blacks is inherently flawed when the Republicans enjoyed a massive increase in the black vote because of it.

I have no doubt you'll ignore the article because of where it is stored, but the inability to learn where knowledge is to be found is your own problem that I cannot solve for you.

Comparison

[Internetuser1248]

Doesn't this study assume that the US congress is inherently neutral? For this to work that would have to mean that the phrases used by the democrats represent an absolute average of human left wing sentiment and the phrases used by the republicans represent an absolute average of human right wing sentiment. If one were to hypothesise that the US congress has it's own inherent bias then this study is not measuring absolute bias but only a comparative bias, ie. does wikipedia have the same bias as congress. The fact that the answer is roughly yes, is very worrying to me as I don't think the US congress represents an unbiased debate in terms of the left/right spectrum, or any other spectrum for that matter.

What if one party is more in step with reality?

[jbeach]

Is that "bias"? Or is that having accurately written articles?

Since there is no universal rule that I'm aware of that two sides of an argument must be equally right, there's no rule that either of two parties have to be equally right either.

Evolutionary science vs. creationism, climate science vs. climate change denial, and modified Keynesian theory (which actually works) vs. the laughably disproved "trickle-down" economics based on the Laffer curve (which does not) all shape up as Democratic Party vs. Republican party ideology. This is generally due to the liberal/conservative distribution among both parties.

One party really is more incorrect than the other, on all of the above issues. And more besides.

Re:What if one party is more in step with reality?

[utkonos]

Re-read what you have written and you will learn about bias. The problem with wikipedia articles is that things like what you wrote have crept into them: "and modified Keynesian theory (which actually works) vs. the laughably disproved "trickle-down" economics based on the Laffer curve (which does not) all shape up as Democratic Party vs. Republican party ideology" That is heavily biased (even though I agree with you). What the articles need would be the above changed to an explanation that from x date to y date there existed two competing theories. Once called x the other y along with explanations of what the theory consists of. It needs to be dry and medical. No opinion.

Re:What if one party is more in step with reality?

[jbeach]

I see your point and agree re: a dry and clinical tone. I'm just not sure if it's biased to say "the earth is round" as opposed to "group A claims the earth is round, while group B maintains it's flat."

If the preponderance of evidence shows that group A is right and group B is wrong, is it bias to say that the evidence supports Group A?

Which has me skeptical as to whether the above investigation had a proper definition of "bias" - that is, if they just counted fact-supported theories vs. non-factual beliefs as equals that should both be presented.

Of course, I can just RTFA and make my own judgement on their methods. That's just actual work, and I'm already avoiding enough work by commenting here...

Re:What if one party is more in step with reality?

[utkonos]

Keep in mind that it isn't bias to state that the evidence points in one direction or another. Its the way that you say it that introduces bias. Using words and phrases such as "actually works" and "laughably disproved" are the problem. The author can't let her own views, opinions, and emotions bleed into the writing.

Re:What if one party is more in step with reality?

[phlinn]

What, precisely, is your evidence that modified Keynesian theory actually works? It certainly hasn't been demonstrated by the most recent recession.

Re:What if one party is more in step with reality?

[jbeach]

Sure, agreed. I expect that most wikipedia articles don't have that level of tone.

Re:How to beg the question

[Capsaicin]

But, I think if they follow the liberal solution, their country will burn.

You do think that, and that's what's fatal to your "proof." It's question begging, since you are simply assuming that your prescription of austerity (which you are associating with 'conservative') with no increase in taxation, is in reality the prescription which will produce the best results. We don't know that as a fact against which we can asses the bias of reality.

Bad example basically. Perhaps leftist AIDS denialism would server better?

Middle ground fallacy

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no reason to think that an adherence to 'neutrality' - ie. the rationalist, empiricist principles upon which Wikipedia operates (as any reference tool of that type must) - should result in articles which fall in the center of the political spectrum of an arbitrarily selected country. To me this reminds me of the noxious middle ground fallacy - the notion that the most reasonable view is that which occupies the middle ground between two extremes of opinion. That ain't how the world works, folks.

I live in NZ, and things are somewhat different here politically, but I can't think of any other political party in the developed world as willing to embrace the blatantly counterfactual as the current GOP. The dominant strands of right-wing thought in the US are diametrically opposed to the foundational enlightenment principles upon which both our democratic institutions and the scientific method (which has given us the tools of prosperity) are built.

Knowing that in all likelihood this is a party that will, at some point, hold the reins of a dying nuclear-armed empire is a scary thought, to say the least. Moderates like Romney don't worry me so much as figures like Palin, Bachmann, Santorum etc. who've all come far closer to the oval office than would have been thinkable a decade ago. My fear is that as the reality of America's declining global status starts to bite, the political appeal of reality denial is only going to grow.

"Jungle" vs "Rainforest"

[GlenRaphael]

> It doesn't always go rightward, of course, some debates have been successfully re-framed by the left, as well, I think

Often, yes. Two more examples: "clearing the jungle" became "destroying our virgin rainforests" and "draining the swamp" turned into "destroying wetlands".

Re:And this article is example 1: Apodixis

[khallow]

the most vocal opposition to the bill has come from Republicans against Title IX?

Because that bit of law is highly discriminatory?

Consensus

[NewYork]

Wikipedia gives preference to consensus, not truth.

Snopes is Next

[Anonymous Coward]

They should be checking the uber liberal slant and editing of Snopes articles which are "proven" to be "untrue".

Reality has a well-known liberal bias

[jopet]

"Reality has a well-known liberal bias" - Stephen Colbert.

BIAS????? WHAT BIASS????

[Anonymous Coward]

jewkipedia is not biased, i meant, wikipedia is not politically biased at alll, not at aLLLLLL!!! all the articles are 100 percent fair, they all show israel and jews in the greatest of lighty lights like they should, ooooo the chooooosen race.........heh fuck wikipedia and fuck the jews

Need lawyers.

[cellurl]

Until Internet is content is liable, it will be substandard.
I hear it is illegal to liable anyone in Germany? Anyone confirm that?
We really need that here.
The Internet is such a bully pulpit.

Make money while you drive.