One of the guiding principles for Wikipedia, the free online community-generated encyclopedia, is the “neutral point of view.” According to Wikipedia’s own explanatory page, “NPOV (Neutral Point Of View) is a fundamental Wikipedia principle which states that all articles must be written from a neutral point of view, representing views fairly and without bias.”
The problem is how to make that theory work in practice, especially with topics that are politically sensitive or controversial. The way Wikipedia operates is that anyone — yes, you! — can edit the pages of Wikipedia, with a legion of editors overseeing changes to make sure vandalism or blantant mistruths don’t sneak in. And while the popularity and breadth of Wikipedia’s coverage has boomed, there have also been problems with inconsistent quality and outright revisionist history when it comes to politicians and their staffers.
So I thought it might be instructive to consider the entry for George W. Bush and how difficult it would be to create a “neutral point of view” for our polarizing president. Remember, the object is to create something neutral and not totally neutered of controversy. The idea is to state the various sides without picking a side, or as the NPOV entry states, “One can think of unbiased writing as the cold, fair, analytical description of debates.”
Under the subsection, “Bush Before His Presidency,” the following passage describes his National Guard service:
In May 1968, at the height of the Vietnam War, he entered the Texas Air National Guard. He trained in the guard for two years, where he was among the last to learn to fly the F-102, a plane not used in Vietnam and due to be retired.
While this could be true, why would it be important to know that he was “among the last to learn to fly the F-102”? Is this a commentary on Bush flying an outdated plane? Is it an unbiased point of view? Check out the Encarta encyclopedia’s version of the same time period (note that Encarta lets people edit its pages but with editor approval):
Upon completing college, [Bush] became eligible for the military draft. To meet his service obligation, Bush enlisted in the Texas Air National Guard in 1968. He told the admitting officer that he wanted to become a pilot like his father, who was a highly decorated Navy flier in World War II (1939-1945). He did his basic training at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, and entered a pilot-training program at Moody Air Force Base in Valdosta, Georgia. He received favorable reports from his superiors, attained the rank of second lieutenant, and was certified to fly the F-102 jet fighter during training missions in the South and along the Gulf Coast. After Bush failed to take a required annual physical examination in 1972, however, he lost his certification to fly. Bush remained in the Air National Guard until 1973.
Encarta doesn’t make hay over Bush being one of the last to fly the F-102, and instead notes patriotically how Bush wanted to fly a jet like his father. While Encarta makes scant mention of Bush’s service, Wikipedia has an entire separate entry just for George W. Bush military service controversy.
And Wikipedia also has an entire subsection titled Alcohol and drug abuse for Bush, something Encarta doesn’t mention at all in its lengthy four-page entry. Again, after a lot of arguments on the subject, Wikipedia created a whole new entry just for George W. Bush substance abuse controversy.
Isn’t the creation of these special pages an act of bias in and of itself? Why isn’t there a special page on Bush’s time as governor of Texas or on his religious beliefs? It’s true that Wikipedia is trying to take these more controversial aspects of an already controversial president’s entry off the table, in a way, to make the main entry less controversial. But the final effect feels biased.
In comparison to Wikipedia, Encarta at times sounds like a Bush cheerleader. For example, under the “Bush’s Second Term” heading, this line describes the re-election: “On Election Day, Bush soundly defeated Kerry and was elected to a second term.” The term “soundly defeated” only works in comparison to 2000, as previous GOP victories were by larger electoral and popular margins — something Encarta even points out.
So where is the middle ground, and can Wikipedia or other encyclopedias find it? The search for a “neutral point of view” mirrors the efforts of journalists to be objective, to show both sides without taking sides and remaining unbiased. But maybe this is impossible and unattainable, and perhaps misguided. Because if you open it up for anyone to edit, you’re asking for anything but neutrality.
So what did Wikipedia do ultimately with its George W. Bush entry? There’s an image of a little padlock on the top of the page with this explanation: “As a result of recent vandalism, or to stop banned editors from editing, editing of this page by new or unregistered users is temporarily disabled.”
What do you think? Is there a way to explain the life and times of George W. Bush with a neutral point of view? Point us the way. Also note that this is informally Wikipedia Week here at MediaShift, with the Your Take question on Wikipedia, and an upcoming email discussion between Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales and conservative blogger Robert Cox.
UPDATE: Here are the other Wikipedia Week articles on MediaShift:
Email Debate: Wales Discusses Political Bias on Wikipedia
View Comments (45)
You are correct about the bias on Wilkipedia. They are very politcaly correct you cant even say Hezbollah conducts terorism. The administrators will not allow edits that don't conform to their worldview
Miklo said:
This is an excellent article, and a perfect example of Wikipedia's bias. I am starting to become convinced that those who strongly support Wikipedia are more interested in their egos ("I helped create this knowledge!") than actual fact. An encyclopedia edited
by "everyone" is of questionable accuracy by its definition.
I certainly do not look forward to a day when the genius, the uneducated, and the incompetent all edit as one. Sounds like the genius is outnumbered and the world will become even more stupid.
I respond:
Actually, this is the day I do look forward to, provided that they are willing to learn from each other, and for the incompetent to become more
competent (everyone starts out "incompetent" at some point, after all), and all set aside their egos for a moment and just sit down and cooperate. A "geniusocracy" like you propose is an elitist ego-generator, and once ego starts to superimpose itself above solid reason, things go to hell. If you did not want the "genius" to be "outnumbered", then everyone else would have to be more educated. How would you propose to do that?
For one, people would have to be more educated, thus education would
have to be more accessible. To do this it must become cheaper, and/or people must become richer. Would you want that? Or do you prefer elitism and rich-stay-rich/poor-stay-poor? (I sure the beep! beep! beep! do not!) Any other systems maintains a too-privileged sense in those "geniuses", a bona fide ego generator. Giving the editing to a "privileged few" is going to generate ego I guarantee it 100%. Everyone should be able to get good education, and if they really want to make the commitment, to seek further education and become "experts", unhindered by financial barriers. But you seem to like having only the few edit it, and that is an ego-generator. If we want everyone to edit, then everyone should be well-educated. Having that -- excellent education for everyone -- would solve oodles of HUMANITY's problems.
If you want your "geniusocracy" try the upcoming Citizendium. I'm sure you'll love it as it is overseen by "experts" that are necssarily social elites because you can't really become an expert in specialized fields
unless you are quite well off financially, etc., hence it's also a plutocracy.
As for Wikipedia Bias, well, it is indeed possible if it is really very secretive. I haven't noticed any secrecy during my own use, but I have noticed some things that ticked me off, for example they have a "notability" guideline but a lot do not follow it -- it talks about things being "notable" enough for inclusion if there is a significant amount of 3rd-party coverage on it, but that is seldom a used criterion, instead people will say "DELETE!!! This thing is Non-Notable since I HAVEN'T HEARD OF IT!" (or Google gave only 75 hits, or the group has only 370 members (I saw a "vote" that said "Delete. Only 370 members? Really. Non-notable."), or other non-existent criteria) and the "vote" (it shouldn't actually be a vote as Wikipedia is not a democracy) is accepted without question as though that was a legit criterion! That can bias the encyclopedia very easily, as then they can not include something even if it should be included in an ideal encyclopedia. I have noticed some pages seem to be "owned" by groups (or "cabals") of editors with special agendas, which is obviously a way to create bias. Some people there have recognized these problems, though.
The George W. Bush article is constantly and extensively debated, of course, check the talk page. Is there really a neutral viewpoint? I do not know. Politics is often a very polarized thing, what with all the "left/right" dichotomy (in my view, political "truth" is NEVER all left-wing or right-wing.), and thus a TRULY neutral point of view is extremely difficult to achieve with that type of crap going on. Look how each extreme insults the other, so you can imagine the wrangling that would go on with trying to set up a "neutral" view that "fairly" summarizes all significant positions, according to the Wikipedia definition of NPOV.
Although true and complete neutrality on anything is probably not achievable by humans (as humans are limited and contain intrinsic biases. In my view only God could have a truly "neutral", just, fair "viewpoint."), that does not mean that we should not strive to make it as neutral as we can.
Were is the bias? i don't see it. They merely stated fact. If you ask me encarta is bias for not giving the whole story. Is this some kind of propaganda site aimed at discrediting people who speak ill of George Bush? Alcohol and Drug abuse was a major part of George Bushes life, and its omission would not be right. He replaced one addition for another; religion, which sat more comfortably with society, which enabled him to become president (that and the vast amounts of wealth and powerful daddy). Why are people who speak out about bush in America persecuted? He is a highly questionable president who's assent to office was aided by so called 'electoral anomalies'. Wikipedia is neutral in this case, you just suspect it because of all the propaganda you've been fed by spin doctors
Has a communists complot taken over Wikipedia ?
An anti-spam-project on Wikipedia is suspected to be a communist complot. One of the leaders of the spam project is WP User:El_C who is a self declared Hebrew communist http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:El_C (see his "spam-star" award) . The group contolls the key positions on Wikipedia: Not only do they determine which contributions are consisered as spam and which not. They also decide whom they block from contributing and which websites are blacklisted A few days ago the hebrew communist openly claimed discretion about Wikipedia's blocking policy on the WP administrators noticeboard. see :
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard&diff=prev&oldid=132535309
They also seem to controll and fraud Wikipedia's security system and have aquired full controll over the administator's noticeboard. Repeated alarm messages for the attention of bona fide administrators were posted on the administator's noticeboard. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard. The warnings were erased in less than 30 seconds without leaving a trace on the WP history tab. This obvious fraud of the WP archive system appears to be part of a large scale cover-up.
Communists have already vandalised thousands of socio-economic and phylosofical titels in Wikipedia and are continuing to do so : see a few examples here
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:The-Advocates-For-Free-Speech&diff=132799349&oldid=132721521#The_result_of_the_editing_for_Wikiperia_Quality_and_Objectivity
The plot was discovered by http://workforall.net staff while they were defending the contributions they made over a two year period against the communist vandalism. During their dispute with the communsists they discovered the autoritarian behaviour of the spam project was fully incompatible with Wikipedia principles and that their editing methods violated all rules, procedures and particularly WP principles to reach concensus in a conflict.
The pieces of the communist putch puzzle only fell together only a few days ago. Most details of the story are still available here, as well as evidence and description the main actors. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:The-Advocates-For-Free-Speech&diff=132799349&oldid=132721521
(updated till WWFA staff was finally blocked).
It is beleived the communist take-over will mean the end of Wikipedia's impartiality and credability. A coordinated action of bona fide administrators could still undo the communist take-over, while also an intervention of CIA could be imagined as this putch in the virtual world has also the very real world consequences of having the world's most refered to source perpetuating the socialist fraud and lies.
Great article.... great comments & arguments ...
Everybody's deep real desire is freedom ... and that's what we're trying to create ... a free world... welcome!
Freedom means anarchy?... to me, yes ... Anarchy sounds like it is something threatening , but it is not as we all become more and more aware of who and what we really are and agree to resolve our differences non-violently. So, seeking awareness is the key here.
My opinion about Wikipedia is that it is not perfect. However, by reading this article it seems to me that it is more accurate than Encarta. It seems it is an improvement comparing to other systems of editing an online encyclopedia. Neutral point of view is impossible this way, so, the solution seems to be that the head editors (the ones that have the ability to close articles so as to prevent vandalism) to be in the open, so they can be questioned for what they let to be published and what not.
And there are better systems and ways of editing an online encyclopedia and Wikipedia should strive to find what they are and adopt them. I consider the existence of a controversy page as an improvement and not bias, would it be better not to exist at all and only one side of the argument to be stated? So let's keep talking and arguing so we can improve ...
In the end I would say that there is no such thing as perfect. Perfect means that there is nothing better than that "perfect" whatever. So perfect means that this is the end, this is death. But who wants to die? no one. So it seems that we should seek improvement rather than expecting something (thing, person, circumstance, etc) to be perfect ...
joy, love & peace,
Nikos
Any attempt at neutrality for an article of George W. Bush is doubtful, because his actions have generated extreme schisms of opinion. He has polarized more people in the USA than any other president in recent years. His vilification of certain national origin groups is alarming. I am an Asian and my people have been specifically targeted by his dictatorship-type passing of the Patriot Act.
Wikipedia is full of white administrators, pushing white-centered world views, preventing real neutrality on the Bush article. The moderators on Wikipedia are not indifferent robots; they're real people with bias too. They have a white-centered world view because most of the administrators are white. I would gauge that >90% of the administrators are white. Consequently, for a new administrator to be promoted, they must agree with the viewpoints of the current administrators, promoting the white-bias status quo. The article on Bush will always have pro-white and anti-non-white bias due to the backgrounds of the administrators.
Bush Still Hated by Everyone, Forever
For all the comparison’s he would like to make about himself and Harry Truman (who left the White House with a high disapproval rating but history later proved him to be jawesome), George Bush has managed to outshine his predecessors in at least one respect: he’s beaten every other president in history with how much he’s hated.
“No other President’s disapproval rating has gone higher than 70 percent,” said CNN pollster Keating Holland. “Bush has managed to do that three times so far this year.” Including his current highest-ever rating of 76%.
Retrieved November 18, 2008, from http://www.jossip.com/bush-still-hated-by-everyone-forever-20081111/
“George Bush doesn’t care about black people.” –Kanye West (African-American rapper, record producer, and singer).
Maybe if George W. Bush changed and learned to like and care about black people, the American people would not hate him so much and forever. In addition, maybe if Bush constructively aspired to overcome his hatred of black people, it would be beneficial in relieving some of the psychological strain and inner turmoil within—which would, if anything, risk exacerbating his situation as a dry drunk if not dealt with.
Submitted by Andrew Yu-Jen Wang
B.S., Summa Cum Laude, 1996
Messiah College, Grantham, PA
Lower Merion High School, Ardmore, PA, 1993
if you consider the cia to neutral then i guess that is the case.
Interesting! I used Bush (and this photo!) as an example of controversial user. See slide 11 of my presentation "Controversial Users demand Local Trust Metrics: an Experimental Study on Epinions.com Community"
Presentation at http://www.slideshare.net/phauly/aaai
Wikipedia is most certainly not neutral! They refer to criticism of the HIV/AIDS hypothesis with the pejorative term “denialism.” When called on using the pejorative, they claimed “consensus” already settled the matter as an excuse for such childish namecalling. I also believe I saw the name of Eric Lerner, who rejects the Big Bang Theory, on the Wikipedia edit ban list. What this tells me is that Wikipedians are not true scholars but rather self-absorbed consensus monkeys.
It all depends on what the standard might be. Scientific information isn't on Wikipedia because some person believes it and can make a coherent argument, it is on there because it has been tested in ways that can be reproduced.