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The Internet

Visualizing the Wikipedia Power Struggle 174

Posted by CmdrTaco from the ban-everything-and-let-wales-sort-em-out dept.
todd450 pointed us to a nifty visualization of Wikipedia and controversial articles in it. The image started with a network of 650,000 articles color coded to indicate activity. The original image is apparently 5' square, but the sample image they have is still pretty neat.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Visualizing the Wikipedia Power Struggle More

Visualizing the Wikipedia Power Struggle

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  • "Steal"? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Bigbutt ( 65939 ) on Monday May 21, 2007 @09:27AM (#19207779) Homepage Journal
    This word is not the word you think it is.

    [John]

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Kream ( 78601 )
      This *has* to be purposeful. The letters are quite far away. Or he's using Voice to Text software.
    • So true! It is not theft or stealing, it is copyright infringement!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by HTH NE1 ( 675604 )
      It should read, "...but the sample image they have is copyright infringe pretty neat."

    • Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)

      by Kjella ( 173770 )
      It's an ingenious ruse to make the defintion of "steal" include so many different things like steal, pirate, still and so on, noone will have any idea what the RIAA/MPAA is talking about. My hat off to you, good sir.

  • Nice editing (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 21, 2007 @09:28AM (#19207787)

    The original image is apparently 5' square, but the sample image they have is steal pretty neat.
    It's still pretty colorful.

  • Yeeha! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Rob T Firefly ( 844560 ) on Monday May 21, 2007 @09:31AM (#19207817) Homepage Journal

    but the sample image they have is steal pretty neat.When did Speedy Gonzales get a job at OSTG?

  • Mirror of Sorts (Score:5, Informative)

    by VE3OGG ( 1034632 ) <`VE3OGG' `at' `rac.ca'> on Monday May 21, 2007 @09:33AM (#19207845)
    I am not sure if this is where the article originates from (or vice versa), but here is another example of visualizing Wikipedia:

    http://researchweb.watson.ibm.com/visual/projects/ chromogram.html [ibm.com]

  • LOL! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Kream ( 78601 ) <hoipolloi&gmail,com> on Monday May 21, 2007 @09:33AM (#19207849)

    /windowslivewritervisualizingthepowerstruggleinwik ipedia-f7c7wikivisenlargesection44.jpg

    Service Temporarily Unavailable
    The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to maintenance downtime or capacity problems. Please try again later.
    Apache/1.3.33 Server at www.abeautifulwww.com Port 80

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Thwomp ( 773873 )
      Yee-hah! We've got ourselves an old-fashioned slashdotting. I ain't see one of those in nigh-on thirty stories.

  • Today on /. (Score:4, Funny)

    by faloi ( 738831 ) on Monday May 21, 2007 @09:36AM (#19207871)
    We axe y we dont juzt speel foneticly!
  • Service Temporarily Unavailable

    The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to maintenance downtime or capacity problems. Please try again later.

  • Wow... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Adam Zweimiller ( 710977 ) on Monday May 21, 2007 @09:38AM (#19207901) Homepage
    So not only is the submitter shamelessly plugging his own site, but it:

    A) Crashes before there are 9 comments and B) Doesn't know how to spell "still" Glad to see slashdot's standards are still so high, CmdrTaco. Thanks.

  • hmmmmm (Score:2, Interesting)

    by jollyreaper ( 513215 )
    So here's a site discussing the Wikipedia edit war. Slashdot has tried to remain a neutral power in the war. A link is posted to the slashdot front page and the server is destroyed. Slashdot has been drawn into the war! A sword-day, a red day, ere the Sun server reboots!

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by lilomar ( 1072448 )

      A site discussing the Wikipedia edit war.
      Slashdot has tried to remain a neutral power.

      A link is posted to the front page!
      The server is destroyed!
      Slashdot has been drawn to war!

      A sword-day;
      A red day;
      Ere the Sun server reboots!

      Sorry, it sounded so poetic, I had to reformat it. (note that, unlike my other posts, this one doesn't belong to me, I blatantly stole it from jollyreaper. So it doesn't enter the PD until he releases it, or for 70 years after his death.)

  • The Slashdotted Article (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 21, 2007 @09:38AM (#19207907)

    [abeautifulwww.com]A new visualization Bruce Herr and I recently completed is being featured in this weeks New Scientist Magazine (thearticle [newscientist.com]is free online, minus the viz). They did a good job jazzing up the language used to describe the vizpower struggle, bubbling mass, blitzed articlesbut they also dumbed down the technical accomplishments. I guess not everyone gets as excited about algorithms as I do.Before I talk anymore about the viz, though, let me mention its appearing at the NetSci 2007 Conference [indiana.edu]this week, and hopefully a varient will appear at Wikimania [wikimedia.org] later this summer as well. The viz is a huge 5 feet by 5 feet when printed, and I only include a low res, smaller version here. At some point high qualityart prints of it will appear at SciMaps [scimaps.org]for sale to fund further visualization research.

    [abeautifulwww.com]Now for the good stuff. Much like my visualization of the netflix prize competition data [abeautifulwww.com], we began this piece byrepresenting the dataas a network. In this case the nodes in the network are wikipedia articles and theedges are thelinks between articles. We then (with some help from our friends at Sandia) used an algorithm to lay out all 650,000nodes (wikipedia articles) that had at least one link in such a way that similar articles are near one another. These are the yellow dots,which when viewed at low res give a yellow tint tothe whole picture.

    The sizes of the nodes (circles, dots, whatever you want to call them), are based on a model of revision activity. So large circles indicate that an article might be controversial, or the subject of lots of vandalism, or just a topic whose content frequently changes. We labeled only the largest nodes, to keep it readable. Thereis an interactive version of this in the works based on the google maps platform which will change the labels and pictures used as the user zooms in or out. Stay tuned for that.

    The image used for each tilewas selected automatically, simply by using the first imagein the most linked to article among all the articles inthat tile.We were pleasantly surprised by the quality of the images that appeared.

    Our hope for this visualization approach, which we continue to improve on,is that it could be updated in real time to give a macro sense of what is happeing in Wikipedia. I personally hope that some variation of it will end up in high schools as a teaching tool and for generating discussions.

  • Now all they need to visualize (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Moryath ( 553296 ) on Monday May 21, 2007 @09:39AM (#19207909)
    is how many false charges of "sockpuppet" or "troll" are put in by the abusive administrators that run the place.

    Whoops. Did I say something less then complimentary about the quantum fucking encyclopedia [penny-arcade.com], where info may or may not be correct based on which second of the day it is, and where you can be assured that the moment someone tries to fix it, they'll be beat down by an army of socially inept retards [artsjournal.com] who have nothing better to do than accumulate hundreds/thousands of edits per day in hopes that they, too, can become administrators and ban anyone they disagree with?

    • just like your link (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Shivetya ( 243324 ) on Monday May 21, 2007 @09:46AM (#19207993) Homepage Journal
      I too have given up in helping Wikipedia through creating new articles or editting obviously bad ones. It just doesn't matter. If not for the idiots in some areas its the political slant in others that is just mind boggling. Wiki died the day that intrest groups found it and realized they could sway public opinion by marginalizing a site which supposedly has accurate information.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by syrion ( 744778 )
        No, it died from the beginning. It was a flawed premise.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by kabocox ( 199019 )
        Wiki died the day that intrest groups found it and realized they could sway public opinion by marginalizing a site which supposedly has accurate information.

        Yeah, but it's still useful for finding out who this guy is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CmdrTaco [wikipedia.org]. I don't pay attention and when a name actually pops up repeatedly, I like to know who the person is supposed to be. Take this person: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Clinton [wikipedia.org] I could tell you vaguely that she the first lady married to Bill Clinton. I c

      • Re:just like your link (Score:4, Interesting)

        by mpe ( 36238 ) on Monday May 21, 2007 @11:45AM (#19209315)
        Wiki died the day that intrest groups found it and realized they could sway public opinion by marginalizing a site which supposedly has accurate information.

        The problem with interest groups is not only do they typically have a lot of time and resources they also tend to have a strong tendency to monopolise the issue in question. Sometimes to the point where they appear incapable of actually rationally defending their position, whilst having almost stereotypical strawmen and ad hominum responses. (Zionists and Feminists must qualify as "textbook examples"...)
        • I'd say Slashdot Linux Zealots also make an excellent example :P

          Ah C'est la vie...

          I've created a few articles but I don't like editing, editing seems more political its a response (in edit form) to what's there rather than a summary.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )
        The biggest problem is that Wikipedia tries to work by consensus, something which leads to no consensus at all. There are supposed to be guidelines, but the guidelines basically say "have an edit war, a pointless debate and then let the mods enforce their will".

        Wikipedia IS a democracy. It claims not to be, but since consensus is impossible on the internet, it is. Just like real life politics, there are factions, groups, leaders people rally behind.

        What Wikipedia needs is respected, academic moderators, cho

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by sjwest ( 948274 )

      Being an idiot on 400 subjects has to count for something.

      I edit one page of the wiki and no more very occasionally. Since any moron can write what they like there super but if any moron who is a 'super-moron' on 400 topics just shows that being 'responsible' is a strange state of mind.

    • So, at least 3 Wikipedia admin-cultists got mod points today so far. How many more will it be?

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by pretygrrl ( 465212 )
      MOD UP THE PARENT. Nothing evenn remotely flamebait about it.
      How ironic that he totally saw it coming, criticizing wiki.

      that site has gone beyond annoying, beyond misleading, its actually dangerous. Wiki is at the top of just about every google search. The entire storehouse of human knowledge (i.e. the internet) is being hijacked by a media company (google) via the mindless peddling of "consensus" that is wikipedia.
      there can be no popular consensus for topics that require a lifetime's study. there is no eas

      • that site has gone beyond annoying, beyond misleading, its actually dangerous. Wiki is at the top of just about every google search. The entire storehouse of human knowledge (i.e. the internet) is being hijacked by a media company (google) via the mindless peddling of "consensus" that is wikipedia.

        (1) The internet is not the "entire storehouse of human knowledge", much as Google states that becoming that is their corporate mission. Lots of human knowledge is offline-only, and lots of the internet is not use

        • See Also: Essjay, who claimed to be a multiple-doctorate, used that as reason to make the wikipedia article on Catholicism into one of the worst pieces of derogatory shit he could, banned those who tried to counter his lies, and then got found out: turns out that he's a 24 year old dropout with delusions of grandeur and a major hatred for Catholics.

          Cleaning up his slander and nastiness will take years - but the Wikicultists are already working on getting him re-adminned under a pseudonym.

          See Also: John Sieg

          • See Also: Essjay, who claimed to be a multiple-doctorate, used that as reason to make the wikipedia article on Catholicism into one of the worst pieces of derogatory shit he could, banned those who tried to counter his lies, and then got found out: turns out that he's a 24 year old dropout with delusions of grandeur and a major hatred for Catholics.

            And, so what?

            Cleaning up his slander and nastiness will take years - but the Wikicultists are already working on getting him re-adminned under a pseudonym.

            Yes, a

  • Similar effort (Score:5, Funny)

    by Chairboy ( 88841 ) on Monday May 21, 2007 @09:44AM (#19207965) Homepage
    Last year, I did a similar indepth analysis of Wikipedia, generating a map describing the major components of the project with their interlinks:

    http://www.hallert.net/images/mapofwikipedia.GIF [hallert.net]

  • Heh (Score:1)

    by jfade ( 1096961 )
    In the style of Homestar Runner... 503'D!! I wonder how long it'll take for this to get tagged "slashdotted"
  • The visualization technique was intersting, but I found it easier to understand just by reading a simple list of the most vandalized topics. Jesus, Hitler, Britney Spears, Bush, Global Warming, etc... most anything to do with religon or politics.

  • Visualising the Wikipedia power strugles (Score:3, Insightful)

    by suv4x4 ( 956391 ) on Monday May 21, 2007 @09:58AM (#19208119)
    Topic: "Visualizing the Wikipedia power struggles"

    Page, visualizing the power struggle: "Service Temporarily Unavailable
    The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to maintenance downtime or capacity problems. Please try again later."

    R.I.P. Wikipedia lost the power struggle...

  • The two sides of Wikipedia (Score:4, Interesting)

    by br00tus ( 528477 ) on Monday May 21, 2007 @10:07AM (#19208181)
    I began editing on Wikipedia in 2003 and used it a lot for a while until over time I began realizing that the problems with it were not going to go away, but seemed to be getting worse, so now I do not edit it any more.

    One thing I learned is there are two sides of Wikipedia. In the upper right hand corner of the main page you can see what are called the "master categories". The categories such as Mathematics and Science highlight what is best about Wikipedia. The categories such as History and Society highlight what is worst about Wikipedia. You do not really have big battles over articles like "Pythagorean theorem", and they usually do a good job of explaining what that is. On the other hand, if you look at the top of an article like "Palestine" you will see that it is semi-protected, meaning new users can not edit the article. You can also see eight pages of discussion which really doesn't get anywhere. The article is garbage. The Wikipedia cabal likes to say things like cooler heads eventually prevail on such articles, but that is just a lot of bullshit. The cabal itself can often be the problem - if you look at the article's originator, it is Ed Poor, who has not only an admin but a bureaucrat at Wikipedia. He is also a Moonie, with some very strange beliefs, not only religious, which I could care less about, but politically. It's typical Wikipedia that he would create the article, and more so that he has held such high level positions.

    Actually I antagonize in using the Wikipedia cabal phrase as these people are so paranoid they have replied to messages like this on Slashdot in the past with stuff like "AHA! YOU SAID CABAL! YOU ARE ONE OF 'THEM'! AN ENEMY! ONLY ENEMIES OF WIKIPEDIA USE THAT PHRASE". Or maybe I could say Wikipediareview.com has some good criticisms of Wikipedia, since they're fanatical about that site to where you are not allowed to mention it on the "Criticism of Wikipedia" article.

    I spent a bit of time on Wikipedia and used to care more about this due to that time spent etc. Nowadays I just contribute to other wikis I like which I feel are more balanced. I should note that Jimbo Wales ran the Ayn Rand mailing list for years, has said "[F. A.] Hayek's work...is central to my own thinking about how to manage the Wikipedia project.", and I can give dozens of more examples of where Wales's somewhat far out political biases lay. This political bias starts at the top and works its way down, as one can see with his appointment of people who did not make the cut electorally such as JayJG to Arbcom.

    My advice to people is to patronize other wikis - the concept of a wiki encyclopedia is a great idea, but their political views are so far out, that it fragmenting is a certainty.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      those are very good criticisms and probably entirely valid. i have some questions though. when you pick up the new york times and read an article by reporter x, does reporter x cite his or her sources? if reporter x gets the facts wrong, how do you find out about it? will the story have changed when you pick up the paper in a week? how do you know how many people have edited the story? how do you even know how many people had input into the reporter's final work? did you notice that in your lengthy and vali

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by superpulpsicle ( 533373 )
        I think wikipedia has absolutely blew away every existing encyclopedias ever existed out there. I really hate the idea of oversourcing, as some subjects are so blatantly obvious to even bother referencing. I appreciate all articles but there comes a point when it is obvious the root of all problem is "Vandalism"!!!

        Someone pull the plug on IP editing. They should be required to setup with a legit email and at least a 3 day wait. Users who trash articles with BS comments should have their account deleted r

    • Re:The two sides of Wikipedia (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Chairboy ( 88841 ) on Monday May 21, 2007 @10:54AM (#19208701) Homepage
      Mentioning Wikipedia Review is not, on it's own, terribly crazy. It's just the context you choose.

      For example, Wikipediareview has made a policy of harassing editors and admins, the users coordinated attacks where they call people at their houses late at night and call their employers to complain about them to get them fired. Do you support that? Since you're probably not going to respond to this, it's probably fruitless to ask, but you opened the door with your line of comment. You REALLY want to use Wikipedia Review as a reference?

      So mentioning that site to bolster your viewpoint (presumably, you're an editor who disagreed with a decision that applied to you, as in perhaps you tried to use Wikipedia as a MySpace site, or were pushing a point of view in contravention of the site policies, or were upset when the article your wrote about your math teacher was deleted as 'non-notable') is similar to starting a conversation with "Now, the Nazi medical experiments were terrible, but we _did_ learn some useful things from them..." (howdy Godwinists!)

      So, your credibility is basically shot. The cabal reference underscores it. I'm an admin there, and we can't even agree on what to order for our pizzas, much less plot to push some sort of wacky political agenda.

      Your bozo bit has been set, good day.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        I'm not a Wikipedia editor, or the guy who wrote the grandparent comment, or in any other way connected with this discussion, but your comment comes off as really smarmy and unpleasant. Assuming that because this guy is critical of the big W that '(presumably, you're an editor who disagreed with a decision that applied to you, as in perhaps you tried to use Wikipedia as a MySpace site, or were pushing a point of view in contravention of the site policies, or were upset when the article your wrote about you

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Chairboy ( 88841 )
          Nah, I don't waste time on ACs. Call me elitist, call me 'Marie Antoinette with a mustache', but AC posts really don't matter, and nobody takes them seriously.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by br00tus ( 528477 )
        As I said in my post above, I knew that all I had to do to get some rabid response was to jokingly refer to the leadership as a cabal, and mention the existence of Wikipedia Review. And lo and behold, an admin takes the bait, despite me even saying that openly, hook, line and sinker.

        A lot of us are Internet old-timers here on Slashdot, did the Usenet "leadership" flip out like this when some jokingly (or not) called them a cabal? Of course not. So how come so many admins on Wikipedia like this guy do?

        • A lot of us are Internet old-timers here on Slashdot, did the Usenet "leadership" flip out like this when some jokingly (or not) called them a cabal? Of course not.


          Usenet leadership? Huh?
    • The Palestine [wikipedia.org] article doesn't seem like garbage to me. It is probably too long, and seem like an example of why a "hide references" would be good.

      The article about the Danisg Muhammad Cartppms [wikipedia.org] was also surprisingly good while the event was current. Actually one of the best descriptions of the case you could fidn anywhere on the net at the time.

      I agree that the talk pages are often horrible, but surprisingly often that horror doesn't reflect on the main articles.

      Maybe you simply are more optimistic than me

    • Conservapedia- A trustworthy alternative (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Have you considered contributing your time to Conservapedia [conservapedia.com]? I've found that it's a much more trustworthy source than the liberal internationalist Wikipedia. Just look at how the article on Homosexuality opens:

      Homosexuality is sexual activity between members of the same sex.
      Sexual relations between two men is condemned in both Old and New Testaments. It is forbidden directly four times in the Bible.

      Doesn't that sound better than Wikipedia?

    • Yeah, Jayjg is a nutcase, who reverts everything he can get away with.

    • Re:The two sides of Wikipedia (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Kjella ( 173770 ) on Monday May 21, 2007 @11:32AM (#19209165) Homepage
      Have you ever been to a soccer match? There's 11 guys on each team that desperately wants everything to be a call in their favor, and one referee that's supposed to be neutral. He gets hounded about 98% of the time. At times you'd think he was dumb, deaf, blind, bought and that his walking dog needs glasses from the sound of it.

      Now imagine a match where the fans could overturn the referee's decision. Repeatedly, both sides. "Free kick for the red team" "No, free kick for the blue team" "No, free kick for the red team". Every so often a guy would run around and show all the players the red card, and you'd have to undo it.

      You get the pleasure of being called partial by morons who are so far from being level it's a wonder they don't tip over. And you sure don't get paid for it, or have any league that'll slap the worst personal attacks. You've got zero authority except temporarily locking edits which is like getting between two NFL teams waiting for the play signal again.

      That pretty much sums up the fun of trying to get a neutral and balanced article on a controversial topic in Wikipedia. I understand perfectly those who give up. I use Wikipedia for quick "what is that?" and simple facts. If I want to form an opinion on something, I'm not looking to wikipedia for a balanced view...
      • "Bullshit!"

        You ought to read this great blog by a former wikipedia admin [livejournal.com]. He details the powers a wikipedia admin gets and the methods by which admins connected to partisan debates, or just assholes who managed to get an admin bit, abuse people.

        They get to be as abusive as they want language-wise, and if anyone chides them on it, the other admin-cultists will back them up.

        They get to block anyone, for any reason, at any time, and the "procedures" wikipedia has for an appeal are a joke.

        They can block someone

      • That pretty much sums up the fun of trying to get a neutral and balanced article on a controversial topic in Wikipedia.

        It's unfair to complain that Wikipedia fails to make Israelis and Palestinians see eye to eye. Nothing has been able to do that. Maybe Wikipedia should move towards an adversarial system for controversial topics, where each side has a fixed number of words to state their case.

        What source would you consult for a balanced view of the Palestine issue?

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by MarkH ( 8415 )
        Of course controversial subjects are fought over.

        Expecting any guide to provide the definitive perfect global view of topics like 'Jesus', 'Islam', 'terrorism' is asking a bit much. In fact we might find the endless edits and discussion on these key topics provide invaluable data to future anthropologists for the Zeitgeist around a topic at a particular time.

        Any book or guide purporting to be the definitive guide would be the anti-thesis of many social science aims - we should encourage skepticism of source

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Repton ( 60818 )

        Seems like the referee would be redundant in such a sport. You may as well let the players referee the game themselves: if you think you've been fouled, signal it and take the ball back.

        ...oh, wait. That sounds familiar [wikipedia.org].

    • Good point. I've been with Wikipedia for a while too, although I started to work on Citizendium last year and have moved many of my articles there (I wish they'd get their Wikimedia link working). Luckily, my work isn't very controversial, so I've not suffered as much from the problem you describe. Instead, my main gripes are Wikipedia's default permit policy towards editing, and it's refusal to acknowledge expert opinion. For example, most of the vandalism that occurs could easily be avoided if accounts we

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by gwern ( 1017754 )
      ...And it's Ed Poor's strange beliefs and actions which are precisely why he is no longer an administrator or beaucrat and spends his time working on the Moony's Wikipedia fork and Conservapaedia.
  • I got the page to load and all I saw was a badly formatted page with ads before the actual content while content doesn't really seem worth anything. It had lots of dots on pictures representing articles. I couldn't really tell how much an editing war was happening, not anymore then simply seeing a list of recent edits for those pages. Were the pages selected on the fly (I'd take a closer look at the fucking article except its as slow as pushing out a large turd)? If not, how is it anymore "neat" or informat

  • Oblig xkcd reference: (Score:4, Funny)

    by VE3OGG ( 1034632 ) <`VE3OGG' `at' `rac.ca'> on Monday May 21, 2007 @10:14AM (#19208269)
    http://xkcd.com/c195.html [xkcd.com] -- Map of the Internets
    http://www.xkcd.com/c256.html [xkcd.com] -- Map of online communities
  • Despite the power struggles, Slashdot and Wikipedia are steal pretty cool websites. You can still content from them and put it up on your own blog.

  • Network Mirror of the site (Score:5, Informative)

    by mpieters ( 149981 ) on Monday May 21, 2007 @10:34AM (#19208479) Homepage
    Mirror including the famed image [networkmirror.com]
  • Well, that does a pretty good job of describing power struggles at Wikipedia after all. It's kind of like modern art in a way...

    Service Temporarily Unavailable
    The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to maintenance downtime or capacity problems. Please try again later.
    Apache/1.3.33 Server at www.abeautifulwww.com Port 80

  • Very Leftist (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Quila ( 201335 ) on Monday May 21, 2007 @12:25PM (#19209757)
    Personally, I'm not really "right" or "left." I just want to live my life as free as possible from government control -- the control constantly sought by both the left and right. I get called a leftist by those on the right, and a rightist by those on the left, so I guess that puts me in the middle somewhere.

    Given that, I do see a serious ideological left bent in Wikipedia. I've tried to put hard facts (well-cited, thank you) to give a counter to obviously left-biased articles (or articles where the viewpoint is used to justify government intrusion), only to have them removed or edited to oblivion. It's often a hard fight to keep such facts in Wikipedia. Anti-American sentiment is definitely there, with wild, unsubstantiated rumors that keep popping up again after they're killed, and the editors will not keep them out. In that case the only recourse is to post the facts in opposition to the rumors (and hope they survive), but such things should not have to be done.

    Yes, I abhor the pathetic conservapedia even more. Wikipedia's slant is more of an accident, a result of the populace and to some extent those Wales put in charge. But conservapedia was conceived as biased.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by NevarMore ( 248971 )
      You sir are at least a libertarian.

      Have you thought about becoming a Libertarian? http://lp.org/ [lp.org]

      • Re:Very Leftist (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Quila ( 201335 ) on Monday May 21, 2007 @01:06PM (#19210189)
        I considered it, but some things still rubbed me wrong. What I can't do is get into either of the main parties.

        Democrat: Out of your bedroom and into your business.
        Republican: Out of your business and into your bedroom.

        But there's been some crossover, each inheriting the worst traits of the other.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ultramk ( 470198 )
      Well, that's the problem, isn't it? Reality has a strong liberal bias.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Quila ( 201335 )
        If you'd watched the US in the early 80s you'd have thought we were all Bible-thumpers who wanted everything we disliked wiped out. But that wasn't the case, instead it was a relatively small, but very loud and influential group called the Moral Majority.

        It doesn't take reality to be liberal. All it takes is for liberals to be more fanatical about editing Wikipedia.

        • If you'd watched the US in the early 80s you'd have thought we were all Bible-thumpers who wanted everything we disliked wiped out.


          Fortunately, no one would get that impression in the 2000s.

    • I've tried to put hard facts (well-cited, thank you) to give a counter to obviously left-biased articles (or articles where the viewpoint is used to justify government intrusion), only to have them removed or edited to oblivion
      [citation needed]
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    Apache/2.0.52 (CentOS) Server at www.abeautifulwww.com Port 80
  • From the Top 20 Most Hotly Revised Articles (in the article):

    1. Jesus
    4. Nintendo revolution
    10. Playstation 3

    So Sony Playstations and Nintendo systems inspire almost as much evangelism as Jesus? Seems to me that both atheists and Christians ought to have a problem with that false idol worshipping.

  • wikipedia is a useful dynamic (Score:3, Insightful)

    by 2TecTom ( 311314 ) on Monday May 21, 2007 @03:49PM (#19212331) Homepage Journal
    and therefore, one distinct advantage it has over traditional encylopedias is in its ability to reflect changing beliefs and controversies

    personally i'm tired of "either or" type thinking, in fact, I use each and every resource
  • RED dots? I understand the yellow ones - they are explained in the article - as are the pictures behind the yellow dots. The RED dot have no explaination. Anyone?

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