This is not an idiosyncrasy of Gerard and people like him, it is core to Wikipedia’s model. Wikipedia is not an arbiter of fact, it does not perform experiments or investigations to determine the truth. It simply reflects the sources.
This means it parrots the majority consensus in academia and journalism. When that consensus is right, as it usually is, Wikipedia is right. When that consensus is wrong, as happens more frequently than its proponents would like to admit but still pretty rarely overall, Wikipedia is wrong. This is by design.
Wikipedia is not objective, it is neutral. It is an average of everyone’s views, skewed towards the views of the WEIRD people who edit Wikipedia and the people respected by those people.
Wikipedia was supposed to describe the opinions within the Overton window. Neutral point of view, sections on criticism, etc., but no need to teach the controversy about Flat Earth.
But there is no precise definition of the Overton window, and some Wikipedia admins (such as David Gerard, but some other names also ring a bell) decided to redefine it to match their political tribe.
There is no one Overton window, it’s culture-dependent. “Sleeping in a room with a fan on will kill you” is within the Overton window in South Korea, but not in the US. Wikipedia says this is false rather than adopting a neutral stance because that’s the belief held by western academia.
I may be wrong here, but I think I vaguely remember that each language version of Wikipedia is supposed to represent the speakers of the language. (Which makes it difficult for English, because there are too many countries involved.)
Thus, as a hypothetical example, if Korean “reliable sources” agree that sleeping in a room with a fan will kill you, the Korean Wikipedia should say so. (It may or may not also mention that people in other countries are in denial about this danger.)
This is probably more relevant for notability, for example someone popular in South Korea but virtually unknown in the rest of the world would have a page in Korean Wikipedia, but not in e.g. English Wikipedia.
I may be wrong here, but I think I vaguely remember that each language version of Wikipedia is supposed to represent the speakers of the language.
Expect of course when Africans do something that woke people in California don’t like. The Wikimedia Foundation considers it important to be able to prevent people in Uganda from writing about a topic like homosexuality in a way that’s representative of the views of Ugandian speakers.
When it comes to Ivermectin Wikipedia had the position that meta-analysis in reputable journals in Western academia weren’t notable and the thing that’s important is what non-academic authorities like the CDC had to say about it.
This is not an idiosyncrasy of Gerard and people like him, it is core to Wikipedia’s model. Wikipedia is not an arbiter of fact, it does not perform experiments or investigations to determine the truth. It simply reflects the sources.
This means it parrots the majority consensus in academia and journalism. When that consensus is right, as it usually is, Wikipedia is right. When that consensus is wrong, as happens more frequently than its proponents would like to admit but still pretty rarely overall, Wikipedia is wrong. This is by design.
Wikipedia is not objective, it is neutral. It is an average of everyone’s views, skewed towards the views of the WEIRD people who edit Wikipedia and the people respected by those people.
The whole first part of the article is how this is wrong, due to the gaming of notable sources
Wikipedia was supposed to describe the opinions within the Overton window. Neutral point of view, sections on criticism, etc., but no need to teach the controversy about Flat Earth.
But there is no precise definition of the Overton window, and some Wikipedia admins (such as David Gerard, but some other names also ring a bell) decided to redefine it to match their political tribe.
There is no one Overton window, it’s culture-dependent. “Sleeping in a room with a fan on will kill you” is within the Overton window in South Korea, but not in the US. Wikipedia says this is false rather than adopting a neutral stance because that’s the belief held by western academia.
I may be wrong here, but I think I vaguely remember that each language version of Wikipedia is supposed to represent the speakers of the language. (Which makes it difficult for English, because there are too many countries involved.)
Thus, as a hypothetical example, if Korean “reliable sources” agree that sleeping in a room with a fan will kill you, the Korean Wikipedia should say so. (It may or may not also mention that people in other countries are in denial about this danger.)
This is probably more relevant for notability, for example someone popular in South Korea but virtually unknown in the rest of the world would have a page in Korean Wikipedia, but not in e.g. English Wikipedia.
Expect of course when Africans do something that woke people in California don’t like. The Wikimedia Foundation considers it important to be able to prevent people in Uganda from writing about a topic like homosexuality in a way that’s representative of the views of Ugandian speakers.
When it comes to Ivermectin Wikipedia had the position that meta-analysis in reputable journals in Western academia weren’t notable and the thing that’s important is what non-academic authorities like the CDC had to say about it.