My impression is that Wikipedia was founded on an ideal of neutrality, but Gerard doesn’t really believe in that ideal—he considers it harmful, a kind of shield for the status quo. That’s a possible position, but I’m not sure how one can hold it and at the same time edit Wikipedia in good faith. Does anyone know how that can be justified?
Here’s one way it could be justified: “A site’s rules are not morally axiomatic. The amount of readership Wikipedia gets is enough to justify it consequentially.”
Another way could be, “I’m an inside-view actor; when I believe I have better knowledge on the relevant subject, I give little-to-no weight to rules I disagree with as they pertain to that subject, except to the extent doing so is practical.”
I think the most common objection to those would be, “but think about what would happen if many people followed that logic—the world would be worse off if many people did, compared to if no one did, and others’ decisions are correlated with yours.”
My belief is: with regard to discourse/epistemic norms, the above objection is usually true. With regard to (on what feels like the opposite end of a spectrum) rules enforcing ongoing moral tragedies, I would disagree with it; I prefer correlated acting against those, at the cost of also-correlated acting against misidentified ones.
It could also be complex for someone who believes Wikipedia’s ‘neutrality’ policy does both at once. They might, e.g., rhetorically ask what one should do if in a past society with its version of wikipedia which endorses positions which are now widely believed to have been rationalizations for large scale wrongs.
It could also feel like Wikipedia is itself defecting against what the correct epistemic norms should be (truth-seeking instead of status-quo-mirroring). Hope this helps.
(Disclaimer: Not writing about Gerard, only answering your general question.)
That’s a possible position, but I’m not sure how one can hold it and at the same time edit Wikipedia in good faith. Does anyone know how that can be justified?
Excuse me while I channel Insanity Wolf:
GOOD FAITH
IS DOING THE RIGHT THING
THE RIGHT THING
IS WHAT I DECIDE IT IS
WOULD YOU FOLLOW A RULE
IF IT WAS WRONG?
BREAK ALL RULES
WHEN DOING RIGHT REQUIRES IT
DOING RIGHT ISN’T EVERYTHING
IT’S THE ONLY THING
ONE’S OWN OPINION
IS THE ONLY OPINION THAT COUNTS
DOING GOOD
JUSTIFIES EVERYTHING
IF YOU ARE GOOD
ANYONE DISAGREEING WITH YOU IS EVIL
EVIL
MUST BE DESTROYED
And so on. I have getting on for two thousand of these aphorisms, all of them inspired by things people have said, all of them insane.
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.
My impression is that Wikipedia was founded on an ideal of neutrality, but Gerard doesn’t really believe in that ideal—he considers it harmful, a kind of shield for the status quo. That’s a possible position, but I’m not sure how one can hold it and at the same time edit Wikipedia in good faith. Does anyone know how that can be justified?
Here’s one way it could be justified: “A site’s rules are not morally axiomatic. The amount of readership Wikipedia gets is enough to justify it consequentially.”
Another way could be, “I’m an inside-view actor; when I believe I have better knowledge on the relevant subject, I give little-to-no weight to rules I disagree with as they pertain to that subject, except to the extent doing so is practical.”
I think the most common objection to those would be, “but think about what would happen if many people followed that logic—the world would be worse off if many people did, compared to if no one did, and others’ decisions are correlated with yours.”
My belief is: with regard to discourse/epistemic norms, the above objection is usually true. With regard to (on what feels like the opposite end of a spectrum) rules enforcing ongoing moral tragedies, I would disagree with it; I prefer correlated acting against those, at the cost of also-correlated acting against misidentified ones.
It could also be complex for someone who believes Wikipedia’s ‘neutrality’ policy does both at once. They might, e.g., rhetorically ask what one should do if in a past society with its version of wikipedia which endorses positions which are now widely believed to have been rationalizations for large scale wrongs.
It could also feel like Wikipedia is itself defecting against what the correct epistemic norms should be (truth-seeking instead of status-quo-mirroring). Hope this helps.
(Disclaimer: Not writing about Gerard, only answering your general question.)
Excuse me while I channel Insanity Wolf:
GOOD FAITH
IS DOING THE RIGHT THING
THE RIGHT THING
IS WHAT I DECIDE IT IS
WOULD YOU FOLLOW A RULE
IF IT WAS WRONG?
BREAK ALL RULES
WHEN DOING RIGHT REQUIRES IT
DOING RIGHT ISN’T EVERYTHING
IT’S THE ONLY THING
ONE’S OWN OPINION
IS THE ONLY OPINION THAT COUNTS
DOING GOOD
JUSTIFIES EVERYTHING
IF YOU ARE GOOD
ANYONE DISAGREEING WITH YOU IS EVIL
EVIL
MUST BE DESTROYED
And so on. I have getting on for two thousand of these aphorisms, all of them inspired by things people have said, all of them insane.
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.