Talk:Wikipedia

Name change

Should mention be made in the article that in light of Elon Musk’s recent tweeting, Wikipedia will most likely soon be undergoing a change of name? Just o add context, Musk has offered Wikipedia one billion dollars to change its name. The tweet was sent yesterday at 3:41 pm. 2A00:23C4:AA1D:4A01:90E:D74:1B2E:8D48 (talk) 06:22, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

Interesting if true even if it won't be changing to Dickipedia (and Elon Musk should give the billion just for the concept of the dickipedic-type of request and, secondary, as a gift to humanity). Randy Kryn (talk) 14:03, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

We are not for sale. Deny recognition to the Trolls. Even if they are obscenely rich and have multiple media platforms. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 14:49, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

Of course we won't take him up on this public offer, but it has made news so is more than an average trolling and seems a humorously interesting way for him to make a point. Randy Kryn (talk) 14:53, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

Wait, why not take him up on it? Just stick a cartoon of Dick Tracy on the main page and explain how editors do detective work ("Dick" is a 19th/20thC slang for detective[2]) to find reliable sources to improve articles. And Musk even said after just one year we can change the name back! Let's not be clueless; we should take the billion! BBQboffin (talk) 19:25, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

Absolutely, and he'd bring some much needed improvements to the place. --2A00:23C4:AA1D:4A01:C5DF:4EC2:CFC1:3480 (talk) 16:01, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

Recommendation re: liberal bias section

Recommending that the note in the 'Reception' section about liberal bias be updated to note that a lot of the pundits and media organisations reporting such bias are themselves conservative (Fox News, NYPost, Sanger) or libertarian (Stossel - already noted).

Also recommending that that whole section get moved under the 'Coverage of topics and bias' subsection, so readers can compare the claims by conservatives against the claims by other researchers and orgs, such as Mark Graham and The Guardian. My opinion is that putting it at the top may lend undue weight to the claims by right-wingers, since that info is consumed first and may lead to an anchoring bias in readers.

These changes should improve the neutrality of the article in my view. Thoughts? RichardThePeterJohnson (talk) 04:15, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

I concur. John Mark Wagnon (talk) 01:21, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

I agree too. 86.4.8.85 (talk) 18:05, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

Attacks on the left-wing - from the right

"In 2022, libertarian John Stossel opined that Wikipedia, a site he financially supported at one time, appeared to have gradually taken a significant turn in bias to the political left, specifically on political topics,".

Given that many of the claims of left-wing bias are from-the-right, is it not reasonable to ask if they are using Flak to punish media outlets for daring to question them and some of their more dodgy ideas?

Structure of stored information

Should there be an explanation of how Wikipedia is stored? How is the content of a page stored in the database, in what format, how is it linked to other versions, what metadata is stored about edits, etc, what differences between namespaces etc, in lay terms, reasonably intelligible to readers who are not database programmers. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 08:07, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

It would belong in MediaWiki which powers Wikipedia and thousands of other wikis, many with articles in Category:MediaWiki websites. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:04, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 10 October 2023

Would you please like to add project milestones copied from the History of Wikipedia? This milestone is notable enough to insert this section, due to the growth of this site. 205.155.225.253 (talk) 15:40, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

 Not done for now: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the {{Edit semi-protected}} template. M.Bitton (talk) 15:49, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia and Eurocentrism

The study that says Wikipedia has a "Eurocentric bias" is from 2017. Here's what the study says:

“...Wikipedia narratives about national histories [...] are distributed unevenly across the continents with significant focus on the history of European countries (Eurocentric bias). Thus, our work explored how colonial ties shape popular historiography on Wikipedia.” (Samoilenko, Anna (2017). “Multilingual historical narratives on Wikipedia”. GESIS - Leibniz-Institute for the Social Sciences. Data File Version 1.0.0, https://doi.org/10.7802/1411.)

Is there a most recent study that says otherwise?

Here's what the Wikipedia page says:

“It has been criticized for exhibiting systemic bias, particularly gender bias against women and geographical bias against the Global South (Eurocentrism).[10][11] While the reliability of Wikipedia was frequently criticized in the 2000s, it has improved over time, receiving greater praise in the late 2010s and early 2020s...”

I think this is an attempt to conceal the fact that Wikipedia has a "Eurocentric bias" until today.

If there is no other study that says otherwise, we cannot try to hide this fact. Wordyhs (talk) 09:59, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

Wordyhs, "Eurocentism" is widely regarded as a problem, although I would argue that prosperous, highly literate countries dominate, no matter their relationship with Europe. Can you please put forward specific language that you propose, in the form of "change X to Y"? Cullen328 (talk) 10:08, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

Those sentences are short summary sentences in the lead, and are unrelated to each other. (Every sentence in that paragraph stands entirely alone from all other sentences.) CMD (talk) 12:18, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

I propose to add something like this:

"The most recent studies highlight the fact that Wikipedia (and in particular the English Wikipedia) has a “western cultural bias” (or “pro-western bias”) [Christoph Hube, ‘Bias in Wikipedia’ (2017)] or “Eurocentric bias” [Anna Samoilenko, Cultural Neighbourhoods, or approaches to quantifying cultural contextualisation in multilingual knowledge repository Wikipedia (June 2021)], reiterating, says Anna Samoilenko, “similar biases that are found in the ‘ivory tower’ of academic historiography”."Wordyhs (talk) 13:19, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

Carwil Bjork-James wrote that "many Wikipedia editors and observers have argued that the systemic biases of Wikipedia are inherent to current global distribution of knowledge production, and can only be overcome by changing the encyclopedia’s standards of inclusion". ('New maps for an inclusive Wikipedia: decolonial scholarship and strategies to counter systemic bias', 2021) Wordyhs (talk) 14:58, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

The authors of ‘The colonization of Wikipedia: evidence from characteristic editing behaviors of warring camps’ call for a “decolonization” of Wikipedia:

“WP sadly does, as previously claimed, appear to be a platform that represents the biased viewpoints of its most stridently opinionated Western white male editors, and routinely misrepresents scholarly work and scientific consensus, the authors find. WP is therefore in dire need of scholarly oversight and decolonization.” ('Journal of Documentation'. 10.1108/JD-04-2022-0090. 79:3. (784-810). Online publication date: 4-Apr-2023. Morris-O'Connor D., Strotmann A. and Zhao D. (2022).)

From my experience here: ‘Alleged Silencing the Haitian Revolution and the Imperialism of the French Revolution’, it seems like an impossible task. Wordyhs (talk) 10:00, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

Issues with other pages can't really be dealt with from this talkpage. There also appears to be a conflation of two kinds of bias here, systemic bias and opinion bias. CMD (talk) 12:06, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

Lead and praise

User:Coolman2917, please be specific. Which words or phrases are undue forms of praise? -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 17:35, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

Mainly "Wikipedia is the largest and most read reference work in history.", and "It has consistently been one of the 10 most popular websites in the world, and, as of 2023, ranks as the 4th most viewed website" relying on one source (Semrush) 𝘾𝙤𝙤𝙡𝙢𝙖𝙣2917 (talkpage) 17:43, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

The first one is pretty much unverifiable due to history spanning far before the Internet existed, and many things going uncovered. 𝘾𝙤𝙤𝙡𝙢𝙖𝙣2917 (talkpage) 17:44, 15 November 2023 (UTC)