[HN Gopher] Study finds Wikipedia influences judicial behavior
___________________________________________________________________
Study finds Wikipedia influences judicial behavior
Author : drewem
Score : 185 points
Date : 2022-07-31 10:06 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (news.mit.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (news.mit.edu)
| pyuser583 wrote:
| A while ago the Oxford English Dictionary wrote a letter to the
| US Supreme Court asking them not use the OED as an authority.
|
| They said the OED definitions are based on imperfect collections
| of common use, and aren't "right" or "wrong".
|
| They also said the OED often uses SCOTUS decisions as a source,
| which creates an incestuous link.
| kemitchell wrote:
| Really interesting.
|
| I searched for this online, but couldn't find it. Might you
| have a link handy? Much appreciated!
| notRobot wrote:
| Not exactly what you're looking for, but a super interesting
| article from 2013 from the Oxford University Press's Blog:
|
| _The highest dictionary in the land?_
| https://blog.oup.com/2013/06/scotus-marriage-definition-
| dict...
| [deleted]
| czl_my wrote:
| Related discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32253053
| [deleted]
| asdff wrote:
| This is a repost from three days ago (190pts, 107 comments):
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32253053
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| Judges are biased, especially in political cases. Look at the
| joke of trial in Alex Jone's trial right now to see this. He's
| literally not allowed to plead his innocence to the jury. De
| facto ruling based on accusation of not turning over all the
| evidence.
|
| Biased judges like this, love circular reasoning, to find
| justifications. Hence why Wikipedia is useful. Keep in mind
| wikipedia change the definition of a recession recently, than
| when challanged changed the definition of definition. Just last
| week.
| jbirer wrote:
| After watching a female judge sentence a child with autism for
| killing his rapist and childhood abuser, after he was acquited by
| a male judge years before, I kind of lost faith in all types of
| judicial process. AI needs to take over for such things.
| jagged-chisel wrote:
| This goes against double jeopardy. Do you have a reference?
| morelisp wrote:
| I believe "he was acquitted" refers to the abuser, not the
| killer.
| jagged-chisel wrote:
| This makes more sense than my reading.
| jbirer wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2NZtcfqjDs
|
| Warning: it's very emotional
| throwawy69690 wrote:
| aqme28 wrote:
| An AI would be trained on human decisions, and unless we're
| careful it can easily have the same biases as human decision
| making.
| [deleted]
| istinetz wrote:
| at least some biases we can avoid. We can scrub the training
| data from mentioning gender or race. We can not include
| photos of people, to avoid the attractiveness halo effect.
| Taywee wrote:
| You mean when she sentenced a 25 year old with autism of
| stabbing a bedridden post-stroke 74 year old to death?
| https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-62332824
|
| You're really misrepresenting the case, and I doubt a good AI
| would rule favorably on those circumstances. The judicial
| system doesn't tend to go easy on stabbing defenseless people
| to death, even if you can argue that they were bad people or
| otherwise deserved it.
| sgjohnson wrote:
| If I was bedridden for probably the rest of my life, I'd
| really appreciate if someone stabbed me to death.
| tediousdemise wrote:
| Knowledge influences behavior? No way, I don't believe it.
|
| Say I want to learn how to do a backflip. I do a quick search,
| find an instructional video, and nope the fuck out because of how
| dangerous and difficult it seems to perform. A prime example of
| knowledge that influenced my behavior.
|
| Pointless study since this is just common sense. So much time and
| money is wasted in science just so that people can make a name
| for themselves or get a promotion.
| stevage wrote:
| To me, the fact that Wikipedia influences law is surprising. I
| would not have expected judges or their clerks to rely on
| Wikipedia or a resource.
| t_mann wrote:
| Previous discussion on HN:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32253053
| amriksohata wrote:
| This is why in itself Wikipedia cannot be a trusted source but
| should be treated as purely, an extension of the media. They
| choose who they can cite and who they cannot.
| wongarsu wrote:
| Wikipedia certainly isn't infallible, and on some topics
| reading the talk page or comparing how the article reads in
| other languages can broaden your understanding or completely
| change it.
|
| But if that disqualifies Wikipedia as a "trusted source", which
| sources deserve that distinction?
| nehalem wrote:
| Could you elaborate? I do see the issue about reliability, but
| I don't see how this study is related? They added a random
| selection of cases and provided summaries without intentional
| bias. Except for a complete set, this is always the case for
| every database of cases.
| exadrid wrote:
| Wikipedia has a very clear pro-science and pro-reality bias,
| and that's a good thing. You would not want news like OAN to be
| cited on their.
| ars wrote:
| You clearly don't edit much of Wikipedia if you think that.
| Their bias actually toward things that are in the news.
|
| And since the news of today is only interested in the most
| extreme, that's the facts you'll find on Wikipedia.
|
| Truthfully a much worse problem is that an average user
| cannot edit on Wikipedia. To edit on Wikipedia you need to
| have an obsessive personality, to constantly guard your edits
| and keep other editors from removing them.
|
| And that bias is much worse than any other, you'll find a ton
| of information on matters that attract obsessive
| personalities, and much less on more normal subjects.
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| > Truthfully a much worse problem is that an average user
| cannot edit on Wikipedia. To edit on Wikipedia you need to
| have an obsessive personality, to constantly guard your
| edits and keep other editors from removing them.
|
| This reads like something coming from the _obsessive_ side.
| ars wrote:
| I don't have patience to do any of that, and I'm mostly
| just gave up on editing Wikipedia.
|
| Every once in awhile I go to try to edit something and
| I'm reminded again how time-consuming it is.
| coffeeblack wrote:
| The problem is that the news sources that Wp trusts have gone
| completely bananas over the past decade.
| tomrod wrote:
| Citation, please.
| specialist wrote:
| IIRC, as an example, Newsweek lost its trusted status as
| it adopted a news tabloid format. Further, they no longer
| have fact checkers and do not print corrections. Surely
| that's a disqualification right there.
|
| Though I don't see that specific criteria listed:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_guideline
| s
|
| FWIW, here's Wikipedia's roundup of sources:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/
| Per...
| tomrod wrote:
| If a news source loses reliability and wiki no longer
| uses it, how does that support the claim that wiki
| sources are bad?
| vanattab wrote:
| Just ask anyone over 40...
| phdelightful wrote:
| I wish those people over 40 hadn't put a US government in
| place that abolished the fairness doctrine. Then our news
| sources would probably not be so bananas.
| andsoitis wrote:
| > IRC, as an example, Newsweek lost its trusted status
|
| Precisely, it _lost_ its trusted status, but the GP posts
| that WP _trusts_ publications that have gone bananas. So
| your example speaks _in favor_ of Wikipedia 's
| reliability.
| tomrod wrote:
| That is not a citation. It's an appeal to generational
| bias, and fails miserably.
|
| Please provide an appropriate citation.
| headsoup wrote:
| Depends if it's true though, right? Let's not dismiss
| everything because culture wars.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| If it's true there's probably a less controversial source
| that reported on it. If a controversial source is the only
| place to report on something, it's probably not true.
| headsoup wrote:
| And the 'non-controversial' sources post only truth then?
|
| This is really un-critical logic being applied to news
| consumption.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| This study should have been controlled by asking whether courts
| had access to the curated legal databases (primarily LexisNexis,
| I imagine):
|
| > "...the increase was bigger for citations by lower courts --
| the High Court -- and mostly absent for citations by appellate
| courts -- the Supreme Court and Court of Appeal."
|
| Secondly, is it possible that the study designers themselves used
| LexisNexis to research their Wikipedia articles? The study design
| was based on:
|
| > "...creating new legal Wikipedia articles to examine how they
| affect the legal decisions of judges. They set off by developing
| over 150 new Wikipedia articles on Irish Supreme Court decisions,
| written by law students. Half of these were randomly chosen to be
| uploaded online, where they could be used by judges, clerks,
| lawyers, and so on -- the "treatment" group."
|
| If these Wikipedia articles were based on LexisNexis research,
| and that same LexisNexis database was being used by judges and
| clerks, this would seem to introduce some major biases (making
| the study rather worthless in terms of measuring Wikipedia
| influence).
| pushedx wrote:
| The 77 cases that were given a Wikipedia article saw a 17%
| increase in citations after publication.
|
| One significant outcome of giving a case a Wikipedia article
| described in the paper but not in the article is that the case
| receives an infobox visible at the top of search results for
| most search engines.
| whatshisface wrote:
| Maybe there's a rising tide of interest in certain cases that
| lifts both Wikipedians and jurists.
| CrazyStat wrote:
| Cases were randomly selected to have Wikipedia write-ups
| posted about them or not.
|
| This is all in the article.
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| It doesn't seem unreasonable to extrapolate this finding to other
| areas of society where a small percentage of people write their
| opinions and then a much larger percent of people read them,
| eventually shaping aggregate opinion independently of any opinion
| held predominantly by "lurkers."
|
| How many elections have been shaped by 4chan, Reddit, and
| Facebook comments? There have been a few studies on this, eg in
| 2016 [0] and 2018 [1] which found results that probably will not
| shock you.
|
| Personally, this might be confirmation/proximity bias, but I
| believe the effect of small internet communities is severely
| underestimated by the public and political consultants. This is
| an area that needs a lot more study, not so that we can stop it,
| but so we can raise public awareness of how memes spread and give
| people the tools to think critically without falling into the
| self-reinforcing cognitive traps that arise from filtering
| information with poor heuristics.
|
| [0] https://arxiv.org/abs/1610.03452
|
| [1] https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.12512v1
| tediousdemise wrote:
| > a small percentage of people write their opinions and then a
| much larger percent of people read them, eventually shaping
| aggregate opinion independently of any opinion held
| predominantly by "lurkers."
|
| ELI5 brainwashing
| jorgesborges wrote:
| >Unsurprisingly, the increase was bigger for citations by lower
| courts... The researchers suspect this is showing that Wikipedia
| is used more by judges or clerks who have a heavier workload, for
| whom the convenience of Wikipedia offers a greater attraction.
|
| This makes sense. I don't know anything about the legal
| profession but they must have their own search tools and
| databases? Is it not easily accessible or digitized for all
| levels? I don't get why it would be easier in the first place to
| search Google or Wikipedia.
| gergov wrote:
| you would be surprised how the world operates outside of tech
|
| it's scary excel sheets and a lot of ducttape
|
| hell I wouldn't be surprised if the next round of innovation
| will be born out of tech people going into gov and realizing
| how much man hours there are to automate
| stevage wrote:
| That movement has been around a long time - see Code for
| America and its offshoots for example. It sometimes works,
| sometimes doesn't. It's easy to think that new tech will fix
| everything but you need to understand the bureaucracy the
| tech resides within.
| _fat_santa wrote:
| If I had to bet, they have those systems but they are a pain to
| use. If I had to speculate, it would be a lot like those
| citation search sites you used in College, they simply didn't
| have the usability of Google. You had to enter search terms
| very specifically, whereas with Google you just search for what
| you want and Google figures out how to structure the query best
| to give you the results you want.
|
| I can totally see a scenario where a clerk needs to look
| something up on a Friday afternoon, the though of pulling up
| the proper search catalog pains them so they shortcut, googling
| the thing they are looking for a reading the citations on
| Wikipedia. If I was a law clerk I would 100% do this.
| vharuck wrote:
| Not to mention that Wikipedia also acts as a filter for
| importance. Important cases are more likely to have articles.
| This is bad for exhaustive research, but great for "I need to
| write a summary by tomorrow."
| RaCaS123 wrote:
| Speaking from experience, you're right given its convenience.
| Though, I (and any responsible lawyer for that matter) will
| then also look up the case on WestLaw/Lexis given Wikipedia
| is very much an imperfect source.
| wellbehaved wrote:
| Everything is politicized and weaponized.
| mikotodomo wrote:
| Wikipedia is an amazing wonder of the internet. I could spend ten
| hours a day reading deep into topics and related topics I only
| learned because of the initial curiosity I had. But that's beside
| the point. There is such thorough coverage of all topics of every
| field so I would indeed expect that judges are using it to look
| things up because of how convenient it is.
| mellosouls wrote:
| The problem is that in certain subjects (especially those with
| a potential ethical dimension like social and cultural pages)
| there is significant bias towards the left (I say that as a
| left-leaning person).
|
| That's not healthy at all when being used as a resource without
| awareness and significant caution.
| martin_drapeau wrote:
| How did clerks/lawyers find those articles on Wikipedia? Through
| Google I reckon. I wonder how bad/good the search is for court
| judgements of their existing system.
|
| Sounds like they need to put those court judgements online, or if
| they already are, do some SEO work so they rank. Wikipedia was a
| great way to do that.
| delecti wrote:
| There are legal search engines which just about every lawyer
| should have access to. Resorting to google or wikipedia seems
| like a weird intersection of being comfortable with technology
| but unaware of any of the standard options.
| laGrenouille wrote:
| LexisNexis, which does other things now but started in the
| legal space, offers a huge collection of legal opinions with a
| fairly good search and linking capabilities. Most clerks and
| law professionals would have access to it.
|
| I think the benefit of Wikipedia is not access to materials so
| much as it is the succinct summarization of the legal opinions.
| Perhaps now NLP could help with this, but it's a very
| complicated problem to provide a summary of the important bits
| from a 100+ page legal document.
| bdowling wrote:
| > ... the succinct summarization of the legal opinions.
|
| LexisNexis and Westlaw produce succinct summaries of legal
| opinions. That's the basis of their value, because the legal
| opinions themselves are not copyrighted. They also categorize
| everything about an opinion so that their database is
| searchable by area of law, etc.
| pojzon wrote:
| Lets check how google search results influence judicial
| behaviour. Ups we already know google creates echo chambers.
| DontchaKnowit wrote:
| Can we stop calling stuff like this a "study"? This is not
| science, this is essentially journalism.
|
| I mean technically yes they are "studying" a subject but this is
| not a scientific experiment, but it will almost certainly be
| cited as such just because it's called a study.
| edgyquant wrote:
| This is a statistical study, what are you talking about?
| gwern wrote:
| This is definitely a study and science. It's actually a rather
| high quality experiment too, I was in awe of the way they
| carefully constructed the pairs of decisions to make them as
| identical as possible, and then got the _same_ law student to
| write an article for each member of a pair _before_ randomizing
| to ensure they were written as similarly as possible. Everyone
| knows that you should be blocking to maximize statistical
| power, but very few people ever go that far. (And that 's
| probably a good part of why despite the relatively small _n_,
| they still get very clear causal effects.)
| stevage wrote:
| I still don't understand why they bothered writing the
| articles for the ones that weren't being uploaded. I'm sure
| there's a reason, it just wasn't obvious to me.
| 6177c40f wrote:
| What about it makes it not science?
| tediousdemise wrote:
| Concluding that knowledge influences behavior isn't science.
| It's common sense.
| bdowling wrote:
| A conclusion supported by carefully collected data is
| science. A conclusion based on common sense is not.
| stevage wrote:
| They quantified that though.
| edgyquant wrote:
| You have no idea what science is dude. Suggesting a
| hypothesis and then proving it via rigorous testing is what
| science means. It isn't whatever the hell you want it to be
| nor is "science" anything but a method.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| On HN front page 4 days ago, with 190 comments:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32253053
| option wrote:
| in other news, reading books and attending judicial classes and
| conferences influences judicial behavior
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| This is alarming but I'm not sure the study actually finds that
| "Wikipedia influences judicial behavior" in the way most readers
| would understand that term - influencing decisions and sentence.
|
| It finds that "Getting a public Wikipedia article increased a
| case's citations by more than 20 percent." That could mean judges
| are citing cases with wikipedia entries rather than similar cases
| without and their judicial behaviour remains the same.
| feet wrote:
| My guess is that law clerks are using wikipedia as an easy way
| to find info on cases, which isn't entirely surprising to me
| photochemsyn wrote:
| I think law clerks and other legal professionals would be
| using a curated service (most likely LexisNexis) as their
| primary information source, not Wikipedia.
|
| Wikipedia is quite unreliable on any major legal case,
| controversial issue, political personality, corporate entity
| etc., as the relevant wikipedia pages end up being heavily
| manipulated by agenda-driven editors who often erase or alter
| the most important information.
| grumple wrote:
| I would guess that google and other search engines have
| much better search functionality than curated services.
| You'd find a case via google, then review the details on a
| curated service.
| ajross wrote:
| Exactly, Wikipedia is the first step for almost every expert
| professional in every profession. We all do it, and the world
| is better for it.
|
| Also the causality of the argument in the linked article
| seems clearly backwards anyway: it's not that "Getting a
| wikipedia page for your case makes it more likely to be
| cited", it's "More important/citable cases are more likely to
| have a wikipedia page". Which is sort of an obvious point.
| stevage wrote:
| Your second comment is incorrect.
| mjw1007 wrote:
| The linked article is describing a randomised trial, which
| looks like it was set up in a way that's good enough to be
| sure the causality goes in the former direction.
| roenxi wrote:
| It isn't that obvious that this is alarming. What are we
| alarmed about?
|
| The point of judges is that they make judgements. The citing of
| other law is just to try and keep some consistency between the
| judgements to make them predictable. In theory they could even
| give out inconsistent judgements and that would also be
| workable, it just happens that it usually means something bad
| is happening because judges aren't naturally more pleasant
| people than the horrible Mass of Humans that causes so much
| grief. So we want judges to put in an effort at consistency and
| if they are consistently using Wikipedia as a reference then it
| is easier for the rest of us to guess what the system is about
| to do.
|
| It is easy to influence judicial opinion on a case. There are
| even professionals hired to do it as a full time job! We call
| them lawyers.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| >>What are we alarmed about?
|
| While I think the study has some major deficiencies addressed
| in other comments, if it was true, the alarm for me would be
| that Wikipedia has clearly become politically partisan in
| many area's and topics, including some that would intersect
| the law
|
| Wikipedia is hardly a "neutral" site of just facts
| haswell wrote:
| Do those have topics have anything to do with the class of
| Wikipedia article mentioned in the study?
|
| I'm not saying there isn't bias, but the existence of bias
| in certain controversial subjects isn't necessarily
| evidence that articles about cases are subject to the same
| kinds of issues. I'm not saying they're immune either, but
| it's not clear that the two are related.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| The part that concerns ('alarm' implies surprise) me is the
| confirmation that activist wikipedians have levers and knobs
| to play with that impact court decisions.
|
| And if Wikipedia does, you can bet Google does too.
| wisnoskij wrote:
| But that is what influencing is. By definition, these results
| show that cases given Wikipedia articles exert an otherwise
| unproportional influence on the legal landscape.
|
| Not a particularly surprising result, but it shows how much of
| an effect such a little thing can have, and how big of an
| influence for example controlling what articles published vs
| not published could have over time.
| smrtinsert wrote:
| Why would it be alarming. Wikipedia is a fine entry into any
| topic. Seeing PragerU influencing the court would be alarming.
| bacchusracine wrote:
| Sir, I'm afraid your bias is showing...
| Tostino wrote:
| Pretending PreagerU is anything but blatant propaganda is
| silly.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Pretending Wikipedia isn't also, is silly. This week's
| nonsense with the definition of 'recession' is proof
| enough of that. If you want to argue magnitude, you've
| already conceded what Wikipedia is (and I don't deny
| PragerU is what you claim it is).
| cmeacham98 wrote:
| Wikipedia is not perfectly unbiased, but if you honestly
| believe it is even comparable to PragerU you should
| seriously talk to someone about your biases and
| perception of the world.
|
| There are left-wing equivalents of PragerU (ex: the
| Gravel Institute) that are just as far away from
| Wikipedia as PragerU is.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| I think it depends on the topic and section of wikipedia.
|
| If you get into the political area's of wikipeda, I think
| the bias of Wikipedia is pretty clear polar to that of
| PragerU.
|
| If you stick to the pure hard sciences (physics as an
| example) and non-controversial events (like an
| earthquake) then sure they are unbiased
| kitschyred wrote:
| > I think the bias of Wikipedia is pretty clear polar to
| that of PragerU
|
| As if. This article:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor_genocide_question
| is still up despite having almost zero pertinent
| sources.[1] Calling that "polar" is nothing short of a
| stretch.
|
| _At most_ , Wikipedia could be said to have a _neo-
| liberal_ bias, an ideology upheld by both of the US '
| political parties, based on policies alone and not on
| each individual voter's personal and nuanced adherence.
| The parties are wrongly assumed to be polar opposites on
| the political spectrum by most US citizens, but they're
| not.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kaaYvauNho
| edgyquant wrote:
| That holodomor example isn't a good one. That article is
| up for, and mostly pertains to, the debate surrounding
| whether or not it was technically a genocide.
| cmeacham98 wrote:
| Can you give an example of a wikipedia page that you
| think shows bias on the same level as PragerU?
| chjj wrote:
| This is one of the most clear examples of bias in favor
| of leftism that I've seen on wikipedia:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_marxism
|
| > The term "Cultural Marxism" refers to a far-right
| antisemitic conspiracy theory which claims that Western
| Marxism is the basis of continuing academic and
| intellectual efforts to subvert Western culture.
|
| I feel like a lot of actual marxists would disagree with
| this statement. People like Antonio Gramsci, who
| basically laid the foundations for cultural marxism in
| the early 20th century.
|
| Oddly, if you read about Antonio Gramsci on wikipedia,
| they all but call him a cultural marxist:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Gramsci
|
| > Gramsci is best known for his theory of cultural
| hegemony, which describes how the state and ruling
| capitalist class - the bourgeoisie - use cultural
| institutions to maintain power in capitalist societies.
|
| Also, the last time I looked at the cultural marxism
| article, it simply said a "far-right conspiracy theory".
| Now they've somehow managed to roll up antisemitism in
| there too. Apparently it became antisemitic in just the
| past year or two!
| cmeacham98 wrote:
| Just because they use the term "cultural" on Anotonio
| Gramsci's page doesn't make him part of "continuing
| academic and intellectual efforts to subvert Western
| culture". Can you substantiate that claim, or is that
| just made up?
|
| > Also, the last time I looked at the cultural marxism
| article, it simply said a "far-right conspiracy theory".
| Now they've somehow managed to roll up antisemitism in
| there too. Apparently it became antisemitic in just the
| past year or two!
|
| This is the first ever revision of the article that isn't
| simply a redirect, and it contains the term: https://en.w
| ikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cultural_Marxism_...
| chjj wrote:
| Antonio Gramsci asserted that the reason Marx's
| predictions of late-stage capitalism never came to
| fruition was due to cultural institutions propping up
| capitalism. He states very clearly that the (new)
| objective of marxism should be to establish a counter-
| hegemony within the existing cultural hegemony, thereby
| subverting it.
|
| This is all present in Gramsci's prison notebooks[1] and
| is common knowledge to anyone who has ever studied
| marxist intellectual literature at any length. I find it
| ridiculous that wikipedia would claim this is a
| "conspiracy theory". Marxists speak about this _very_
| candidly in their writings.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison_Notebooks
| cmeacham98 wrote:
| This still does not provide any proof for the claim. Of
| course Marxists want to promote their ideology, even
| culturally. Nobody denies this. The claim made by people
| using the term "Cultural Marxism", and the reason it is a
| conspiracy theory, is that said Marxists do so for the
| purpose of destroying Western culture.
|
| Again, to be clear: I am not asking for proof that
| Marxists promoted Marxism (obviously they did), but that
| they did so "to subvert Western culture".
| chjj wrote:
| Again, Gramsci and later followers of Gramsci advocated
| infiltrating cultural institutions and establishing a
| counter-hegemony to subvert the existing cultural
| hegemony. That should be enough to satisfy anyone's
| definition of cultural marxism. Read Gramsci or any other
| cultural marxist if you want proof.
|
| edit: I'll also point out that Mao's cultural revolution
| in China was the first implementation of Gramsci's vision
| of cultural marxism. There's no way to know whether Mao
| had ever read Gramsci, but it's not out of the realm of
| possibility.
| hither_shores wrote:
| Browse through https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wik
| ipedia_neutral_poi... and you'll find plenty.
|
| For example:
|
| > Mohammed Zakir (also known as Meyra) was an Ethiopian
| Oromo nationalist. Regarded as "legendary Oromo hero", he
| is noted for his high contribution to keep the lights of
| Oromo nationalism shining after the martyrdom of his two
| hero colleagues called Elemo Qiltu and Ahmad Taqi ... the
| Oromos would never forget this early exemplary hero. And
| above all, history will always remember Meyra and his
| heroism.
| cmeacham98 wrote:
| If you go to the page in question (available here:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammed_Zakir_Meyra) it
| has not one but two warnings at the top of the page about
| the content within. Is this not an example of Wikipedia's
| process working as intended?
| hither_shores wrote:
| There's been an NPOV warning on that page since 2011, and
| the content has remained substantially the same since
| 2010. So no, I don't think it is.
| cmeacham98 wrote:
| Wikipedia runs off of community contributions. This
| person seems to be extremely obscure, as searching the
| full name 'Mohammed Zakir Meyra' I found this Wikipedia
| article, websites that scrape Wikipedia and post its
| contents, and garbage SEO-optimized websites that had
| nothing to do with the person. I gave up trying to find
| anything that wasn't SEO garbage or a Wikipedia scrape on
| page 5 of the search results.
|
| At least in the English speaking world, this person seems
| to be a nobody and nobody seems to care enough to fix
| this article. Honestly, someone that knows how the
| process works on Wikipedia more than me should probably
| submit it for deletion, as this (at least in my opinion)
| shouldn't even meet Wikipedia's notability standards.
| 8note wrote:
| Here's a fun hour and a half analysis on a page related
| to Ukraine: https://youtu.be/3kaaYvauNho
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| The method of this study was to deliberately construct a
| bias on wikipedia, which the researchers were able to
| successfully pull off with measurable effect.
| theduder99 wrote:
| bacchusracine wrote:
| As the other poster pointed out, it's the pretense that
| Wikipedia is in any way shape or form neutral that shows
| the bias.
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| > Wikipedia is a fine entry into any topic
|
| It isn't, that's the point of the study - not all court
| decisions are on wikipedia and those that are, are getting
| cited more. Judges, Lawyers, Clerks have access to the
| original decisions and court transcripts in electronic form
| going back decades and longer. If they're relying on whats on
| wikipedia - they're either doing poor research or are too
| lazy to write their own summations.
| zinekeller wrote:
| ... and then rely on LexisNexis et al.? Unfortunately it
| seems that (US) courts don't really have a good collation
| of cases (as opposed to collated laws which exists as the
| US Code).
| [deleted]
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