User:Updatewithfacts

Updatewithfacts is a user on Wikipedia who has been on the page for years but started an official account in 2021. Updatewithfacts strives to find honesty and integrity in doing research on various articles. His major focus is on making polished edits, though he sometimes branches out into other editing.

While there are some main topics for pages/articles that Updatewithfacts will usually cover (political, religious, history, biography), occasionally he will also do research on pages/articles dealing with videogames, geography, music, etc.

He is friends with a few online commentators, reporters, and minor public figures. This allowed him to create a series of short interviews with a local town reporter, communicate with some political commentators on some recent events, and some rather interesting anecdotes with politicians.

Updatewithfacts will admit to sometimes using partisan or no consensus sources in edits/articles, but will use them in only specific circumstances. Typically they will be used if no "reliable sources" can be found and the information sourced has been documented to happen, if there is an obvious bias/tilt used by the reliable sources, or if unfair conduct was taken against Updatewithfacts in regards to transparency, honesty, and humility. In at least one instance, he went out of his way to find a source that was negative to the subject of an article in order to show strictly pro-biased sources were not his goal. In a brief interview regarding this question (which he has given permission to have typed on his user page), he answered "I will do my best to find sources that are reliable; I sometimes spend hours during a day I could be doing something else scouring the Internet and even some newspages in trying to find a source that conforms to Wikipedia's definition of reliable. Sometimes there are only unreliable or no consensus but the information still occurred. In those instances, the right thing to do seems to be to put the information there, acknowledge there is a bias, but allow the information to be available. If Wikipedia started cracking down on articles that only had reliable sources and if they were honest on looking for sources with minimal bias, I guarantee you that a huge chunk of the encyclopedia would be wiped out. My tentative plan is to get the information out and then make it better over time rather than wait possibly forever for a small selected list of biased sources to decide they will cover something."

While Updatewithfacts acknowledges he has some level of bias, his main goal is to flesh out articles. Many articles he has edited either have typos, did not exist, or have incomplete information with regard to the page. The goal is not to push a particular political ideology particularly (though that could to a degree happen by virtue of the bias he has) but to make sure all pages are treated fairly. If a "political figure has 5 paragraphs on criticism or controversy and their opponent has documented cases of criticism/controversy but none listed", he will attempt to "show transparency".

In a recent chat with him made by a local reporter, he acknowledged "its very possible that I will leave Wikipedia if the censorship, bias, and gatekeeping continues at its current rate. I want an open and respectful dialog among users and have users both praise when a job is well done and own up when they made a mistake. It seems those values that should be universal are woefully inadequate, so far, on here. If Wikipedia doesn't put their money where their mouth is on diversity, transparency, accountability, etc. and if they don't fix the inherent problems with regards to gatekeeping, I will likely quit and also actively provide alternative information search engines/sources to others."

In response to an follow-up inquiry made by the same reporter about what the future will be if these requests are denied, he responded "I try to be involved in assisting people with fact checking or research or fleshing out articles. If these reasonable requests can't be taken, I'll likely just help out on other encyclopedias or other information search engines and make sure you to point out where the bias and censorship and gatekeeping occurred."

He had a short follow-up interview and responded more positively to his experiences on Wikipedia. His main reason? "Some editors finally, and I mean finally, started apologizing and helping out. I felt like I was starting to get some of the help that Wikipedia says new editors are supposed to get and be treated. Its still a long long way from where it should be, but it definitely is a step in the right direction. At the very least, I'm convinced to stay around a short bit longer. I'll see if issues I still encounter become a main problem. They currently are bearable and I am working at making it a better place, but that could change. And some recent experiences left me with some trust issues with regards to some rules, guidelines, and just social etiquette in general on Wikipedia. Time will tell on it shapes up."

The results of these wishes are still to be determined.