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Comment by servo_sausage

14 hours ago

I find it more surprising that the common understanding has shifted away from "wikis are crap for anything new or political".

As soon as there is a plausible agenda for selecting a narrative the way Wikipedia works we should be sceptical.

For recent examples, everything to do with Biden and family, and Gamergate. These pages are still full of discussion; and what's written is more ideological than factual. You can follow these pages to see how an in-group selects a narrative.

And these topics are not nearly as controversial as race, feminism, or transgender topics.

10 comments

servo_sausage

Reply
ryandrake  14 hours ago

OK, is there a specific example on either the Biden or Gamergate page that is factually incorrect? Or are you saying the entire pages are false?

  • servo_sausage  11 hours ago

    My point is more that the history of those pages is a good example of how Wikipedia works for controversial topics; it's not really a process of becoming more correct as better sources are found and argued about like it is on more neutral pages, instead it's an in group deciding what to represent, collecting their preferred opinion pieces. And this changes over time, getting no closer to neutrality within the same articles history.

    You can write an equivalent article starting with "Gamergate was a movement reacting to the improper collusion between game developers and journalists" and find just as many sources, but the current article wants to promote the idea that it was a harrassment campaign first.

    • datsci_est_2015  10 hours ago

      It was also pretty credibly a psyop orchestrated by Steve Bannon and Jeffrey Epstein, but that’s probably better served in history books and biographies rather than an encyclopedia.

  • scarmig  12 hours ago

    Wiki's Gamergate opening paragraph:

    > Gamergate or GamerGate (GG) was a loosely organized misogynistic online harassment campaign motivated by a right-wing backlash against feminism, diversity, and progressivism in video game culture. It was conducted using the hashtag "#Gamergate" primarily in 2014 and 2015. Gamergate targeted women in the video game industry, most notably feminist media critic Anita Sarkeesian and video game developers Zoë Quinn and Brianna Wu.

    Grokipedia's:

    > Gamergate was a grassroots online movement that emerged in August 2014, primarily focused on exposing conflicts of interest and lack of transparency in video game journalism, initiated by a blog post detailing the romantic involvement of indie developer Zoë Quinn with journalists who covered her work without disclosure. The controversy began when Eron Gjoni, Quinn's ex-boyfriend, published "The Zoe Post," accusing her of infidelity with multiple individuals, including Kotaku journalist Nathan Grayson, whose article on Quinn's game Depression Quest omitted any mention of their prior personal contact. This revelation highlighted broader patterns of undisclosed relationships and coordinated industry practices, such as private mailing lists among journalists, fueling demands for ethical reforms like mandatory disclosure policies.

    I don't care about "Gamergate" and never use Grokipedia, but Wiki definitely has a stronger slant: it's as if an article about Black Lives Matter started with a statement that it was a campaign meant to scam people to pay for mansions for leadership.

    • yongjik  11 hours ago

      Well, I'm naively assuming Grokipedia is being sympathetic to the cause(?) of Gamergate, but if the best thing they could lead the article was essentially "It all started when someone got mad at his ex-girlfriend and her many other boyfriends and wrote something that went viral" ...

      ... it does sound like an online harassment campaign.

      1 reply →

    • brendoelfrendo  10 hours ago

      Wikipedia's assessment is more accurate. Wikipedia does go on in its second paragraph to explain the context of the start of the campaign, including "The Zoe Post" and the accusations of conflict of interest. But the broader impact of Gamergate was as a misogynistic online harassment campaign, and Wikipedia is correct to make that the central part of its summary. Just because Grokipedia is more reluctant to state a conclusion does not make it less biased.