User:Lights and freedom/biased

About Wikipedia
Wikipedia is biased. That is a result of the consensus making process. When more people have a certain point of view, that point of view is more likely to become the consensus of the article. Additionally, over-reliance on a few particular sources at the exclusion of most other sources leads to bias reflecting those sources. Often a few specific US news sources are used as criteria for whether something is worth including. I try to oppose bias when possible but the truth is, that it will always be biased. No editors should deny that, although many do, and others will tell you Wikipedia's bias is something to be celebrated.

Evidence from user behavior

 * Female editors have said they turned away from Wikipedia because they saw it as sexist; see Gender bias on Wikipedia. That reduces the influence of the opinions that are on average held more by women.
 * Recently, many people believe Wikipedia editors should not be allowed to say that they think marriage is between a man and a woman. That would reduce the influence of the opinions held by people who believe that, who make up a large percentage of the population, especially conservatives in the United States.
 * People who say the demographics of contributors' political or philosophical views do not affect the content are deluding themselves. Consensus comes from sufficient numbers, not a self-apparent view of what arguments are policy-based and which are not. At times, policies do not give a clear answer.

Evidence from content discussion

 * Articles about important topics fall on a scale from very unwatched to very watched. The least watched articles were written mostly by a single editor that many contributors believed was good enough for their purposes. The most watched articles have a stable version from which few changes are made.
 * Nevertheless, many of the most highly watched articles only have consensus on a few sections. Much of the text of the article has probably never been discussed. It only appears that the article was a consensus process because of the number of discussions and reverts, not their relevancy to all parts off the article.
 * At times, consensus comes down to an admin or group of admins believing they are right at the expense of others and reverting others out of WP:OWN problems.

Further reasoning

 * Wikipedia is always going to be biased, due to the natural trends in the people most likely to contribute. What groups of people would be most interested in spending their time writing for free online? The groups represented are going to perpetuate the biases of the content and the policies.
 * From observing discussions that were rehashed after a certain time period, it's clear that attitudes can change on an issue largely due to the attitudes of one person. For example, a lengthy, reasoned response by one well-respected editor can greatly affect the subsequent responses on a discussion.
 * Any system that reacts strongly to the efforts of one person is inherently unstable and biased.
 * Being one of the world's top websites, Wikipedia highly colors millions of people's views on every subject. For example, see the discussion about the Scots Wiki. Many people had an unclear idea of what Scots is, because of this site.

Conclusions

 * Neutral point of view is a worthy vision, but not something that can ever be attained by any one website, Wikipedia included.


 * Is improving Wikipedia ethical or not? The more it is improved, the more people will get the idea that whatever it says on a topic is the only correct viewpoint. Even if you don't see it as a reliable source itself, you can internalize its ideology. Nevertheless, fighting to make Wikipedia more fair will help rectify the problems it has created.
 * The alternatives, such as RationalWiki and Conservapedia, are no competition.
 * Wikipedia should do as little to away people or ideas as is feasible. This means being extremely cautious when explicitly or implicitly describing something as wrong in an article.