User talk:JzG/Archive 203

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Archive 202

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You can't make this stuff up...

"Associated Newspapers, which owns the Daily Mail and MailOnline, has complained to American TV network CBS over 'deliberate distortion and doctoring'"[1]

Words fail me. --Guy Macon (talk) 07:49, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

Guy Macon, indeed, irony is dead. Guy (help! - typo?) 09:21, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

🤣 Today's media - they're all guilty, or at least have been at one time or another, some worse than others. Taking things out of context, and/or editing to fit a narrative is one of the first things we learn that network programmers do to our work as field producers who recorded the interviews or events for the news or other television program. The general public is becoming more aware of what's going on behind the scenes, including some of the most discreet manipulation that at one time only trained eyes could pick-up on. Atsme 💬 📧 13:05, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

Atsme, they are not the same. There used to be a continuum from hyper-partisan left to hyper-partisan right, but thanks to the influence of Rush Limbaugh and then Fox and finally Breitbart the right-wing partisan media ecosystem is now separate and has a different set of incentives, leading to a homogeneous thought-bubble based on Truth™ not fact, versus the heterogeneous mainstream to partisan-left arc that gravitates towards empirical fact.

This is shown in academic research and can also be seen in the visualisation here: https://www.adfontesmedia.com/interactive-media-bias-chart/

Fox sacked the man who correctly called Arizona for Biden and is promoting both Bartiromo (a Big Lie proponent) and Carlson (a white supremacist). In much the same way, the QOP has abandoned any platform (it had none in 2020, for the first time in its history) in favour of "owning the libs" as its sole unifying principle. Guy (help! - typo?) 12:21, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

What academic research? Are you referring to the book Access Control: The Shaping of Power, Rights, and Rule in Cyberspace published by MIT Press, (pgs 357-366 UK, & pgs 369-387 US/Canada), or academics like Bill Ayers, or one of the academics on this list, or perhaps this list? <— Rhetorical questions that do not need a response because I have no intention of debating you. 😊 I simply responded to the media comment because it is my area of expertise. Journalists do it, academics write about it - big difference? Your response reminded me of what RexxS so eloquently said when hoping that we would all "remind ourselves of the far greater number of things we have in common, rather than putting emphasis on the things that separate us." Be happy, enjoy life and stay well. Atsme 💬 📧 13:47, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

Atsme, no, I am referring to numerous studies and books including Yochai Benkler's Network Propaganda. I have pointed you to this numerous times.

Meanwhile, feel free to read the latest declass from the NIC, which neatly skewers your gaslighting. [2]. Guy (help! - typo?) 21:34, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

Please stop citing Ad Fontes Media. See Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Perennial sources#Ad Fontes Media and especially the linked RSN discussions. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:07, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

There are definitely better resources than Ad Fontes Media. For example, this report—a collaborative scholarly effort by subject-matter experts at Stanford and the University of Washington—is a comprehensive assessment of the nature, role, and spread of partisan misinformation during the 2020 US election season. Their conclusions are not exactly shocking—misinformation played an outsized role in, and was arguably the dominant feature of, right-wing political discourse in this election season, and was both top-down (driven by prominent right-wing figures, Trump himself, and right-wing media) and participatory/bottom-up (once primed by lies about election-rigging, individuals spread items that they mistakenly believed "proved" that the election was being stolen, which were in turn promoted by right-wing influencers).

The report found that there was nothing approaching symmetry or balance; misinformation was not absent but played a very limited role in left-wing political discourse around the election, much of which was devoted to fact-checking or debunking election-related falsehoods originating on the political right. But it is worthwhile reading in that these themes are exhaustively supported with objective data in the report. I don't expect people to give up entirely on both-sides-ing the issue, as it's both a deeply ingrained tendency that masquerades as "neutrality" and a defense mechanism, but that pretense is harder to sustain in light of data like these.

Separately, there is something truly illustrative about citing David Horowitz's falsehood-laden hit list of college professors in one breath, and decrying divisiveness in the next. Horowitz is someone whose entire career is based on dividing people. His lies and misstatements have facilitated the targeting of private individuals for harassment, death threats, and so on—for the crime of having divergent political views. So when people cite stuff like that and then pivot immediately to decrying the absence of civility in modern discourse, well, I can't believe what you say because I can see what you do. MastCell ^Talk 18:34, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the link MastCell. As for Ad Fontes Media, it's indeed no authority to select sources on WP but it doesn't mean that it's not a useful reference guide (and often accurate enough for perspective). —Paleo Neonate – 19:56, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

Guy Macon, I'm not citing it as a source, it's just a useful graphical representation for the increasingly insular and self-referential right wing media bubble and its positive feedback loop rewarding ideological purity over empirical fact. Guy (help! - typo?) 21:35, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

Following is an excerpt from the colloquium paper Science audiences, misinformation, and fake news authored by Dietram A. Scheufele and Nicole M. Krause. It is simply too good an article to not share. I noticed a few minor reflections of the authors' own biases, inadvertent or otherwise; none of which are worth mentioning. I chose the following excerpt because it speaks loudly in support of my position, as do so many other points in that paper too numerous to mention.

As younger audiences worldwide flock to social media and other seemingly “free” sources of news (79), legacy media organizations that must compete with social media for advertisers’ support are pressured to offer similar targeting services, and we thus see traditional news producers driving audiences to online versions of their stories rather than to newspapers or television broadcasts (80). The intensity of modern commercial pressures on traditional news media was perhaps best summarized by Axios cofounder and former Washington Post political correspondent Jim VandeHei in an interview with the New York Times: “Survival … depends on giving readers what they really want, how they want it, when they want it, and on not spending too much money producing what they don’t want” (81).

These changing economic realities are part of what some have described as “social mega-trends” (41), which arguably contribute to the spread of misinformation in the United States: (i) a decline in social capital, (ii) growing economic inequalities, (iii) increasing political polarization, (iv) declining trust in science, (v) politically asymmetric credulity (i.e., conservatives are [sic] liberals are differently susceptible to misinformation), (vi) evolution of the media landscape (e.g., filter bubbles, incivility, and heightened outrage), and (vii) a fractioning of the media that rewards political extremism.

Happy reading! Atsme 💬 📧 21:10, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

Atsme, this has nothing to do with the "legacy media" narrative. This is about the perverse incentives of ideological vs. documenatary media. Guy (help! - typo?) 21:36, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

It doesn't have to relate specifically to online media writing about televised programming - it's about the irony of media in general. It appears you may have missed the following key points I was trying to make: which arguably contribute to the spread of misinformation in the United States... ^{there are parallels in the UK section}... These changing economic realities are part of what some have described as “social mega-trends”, and the New York Times: “Survival … depends on giving readers what they really want, how they want it, when they want it, and on not spending too much money producing what they don’t want”. Does that sound conducive to high quality factual reporting to you? Isn't that more along the line of tabloid thinking, clickbait and feeding a demographic whatever they want to hear, less what we choose to believe to be sound editorial judgement by a source we respect? If a news source on the East or West Coast wants to survive in a blue state, they focus on what their demographics want to read...and that is when opinion journalism and clickbait come into play...or "spin" - bottomline, it's capitalism...follow the money. I'm not saying we don't have excellent journalist because we certainly do, but our job is separate the wheat from the chaff. I've explained the media's paradigm shift numerous times to you, and even authored a SignPost Op-Ed explaining some of it to whoever chose to read it. What we are dealing with in controversial topic areas on WP is a very vast and diverse pool of talented editors from different walks of life - different countries with different ideologies, political beliefs, and customs. The first article I linked to above gives us a global window into media issues. Dietram A. Scheufele has authored numerous articles, including the following: Framing as a theory of media effects published in the Journal of Communication. Following is an excerpt (pg 3 online, pg 105 in Journal):

Within the realm of political communication, framing has to be defined and operationalized on the basis of this social constructivism. Mass media actively set the frames of reference that readers or viewers use to interpret and discuss public events (Tuchman, 1978, p.␣ ix). According to Neuman, Just, and Crigler (1992) “They give the story a ‘spin,’ . . . taking into account their organizational and modality constraints, professional judgments, and certain judgments about the audience” (p. 120).

It also explains audience perceptions, etc. and how they accept or reject what they read. I see things as both a former publisher and journalist/author/producer. There are many academic sources that support everything I've tried to relay in general about the inner workings of media. I totally align with what Jimbo relayed to editors on his UTP. I also consider WP:YESBIAS an excellent essay. And on that note, I'll leave you to your own devices. Happy editing! Atsme 💬 📧 13:53, 17 March 2021 (UTC)

While it's not difficult to find studies here and there about media quality, one thing to be careful about however (I'm not saying that it's your goal but I mention it as it's very common), is focusing most of the reliability discourse around such controversies (I don't mean assessing the reliability of a source or author which is important, but the narrative that the mainstream media is biased and unreliable in general) to promote the idea that nothing is trustworthy, so we may as well chose to believe what we want and stray from "consensus reality" (the Russian disinfo campaigns for instance push this kind of uncertainty, so do climate change denialists, conspiracy theorists, creationists, idealism philosophy apologetics, etc). Once their audience is confused enough about what to believe, more division and radicalization is possible, including embracing outlandish beliefs uncritically... If for instance one is convinced that climate change is only a political movement, unless that flawed position eventually changes the person is not ready to study any of the related science: all literature is perceived to merely be conflicting opinions and apologetic statements by advocacy groups (which is how propagandists and lobbyists work, but not climatology)... —Paleo Neonate – 18:49, 17 March 2021 (UTC)

Atsme, Bias and reliability are separate. The problem with the right-wing media bubble is that bias drives unreliability.

Example: right-wing sources publish climate change denialism because they have a bias towards the fossil fuel industry, which bankrolls the right. Because of their bias they support counterfactual narratives and have been active participants in ensuring that the climate continues to change.

Example: right-wing sources have a bias towards the Trump campaign, which causes them to deny obvious facts such as the Ukraine shakedown and the Russian interference in 2016 documented by Mueller. Their bias causes them to publish counterfactual narratives and become active participants in a Russian-driven disinformation campaign.

Example: right-wing sources have a bias towards the QOP, a party with declining support nationally. Their bias causes them to promote narratives that support voter suppression, notably including the Big Lie, because they know their preferred party can only survive through voter suppression and gerrymandering.

Example: the right-wing media knows that efforts to address hatred directed towards vulnerable groups based on race, religion, gender or whatever, are vastly more likely to impact right-wing speakers than left-wing. Not all Republicans are racists but most racists are Republicans. Therefore they have a bias towards trying to excuse policies against hate speech as though it's targeting a legitimate viewpoint (political alignment) rather than an illegitimate one (bigotry). Hence a days-long discussion on Fox of Dr. Seuss being "cancelled", but virtually no sign of the actual pictures that were removed (which are clearly unacceptable racial stereotypes), minimal mention of the actual books, preferring to illustrate with pictures of The Cat In The Hat, which is of course unaffected, and minimal mention of the fact that the Seuss Estate removed the books, unilaterally and proactively and not in response to any significant outside campaign. So they drive a counterfactual narrative that "conservatives" and "American values" are being "cancelled" in the name of "wokeism", when the actual fact is that a rights owner decided to stop publishing some questionable material they owned.

All sources have to weigh ideology against factual accuracy. What we've seen over the last 20+ years, and especially over the past five, is a fundamental shift in the balance, but only within the right-wing media - an asymmetric polarisation that is based on a positive feedback loop.

After the insurrection, Fox sacked a man who reported accurately on the election, promoted Big Lie proponent Maria Bartiromo, and is giving white nationalist agit-prop tool Tucker Carlson additional platforms. They have not realised that they made a mistake and decided to correct, they have realised that with a bit more effort they might have succeeded in overthrowing that pesky democracy.

You don't conquer this by pretending that bad-faith arguments by sources that place ideology over fact are somehow equivalent to good-faith arguments. Guy (help! - typo?) 22:26, 17 March 2021 (UTC)

Just some comic relief (from Asterix and the Great Divide): http://www.otakia.com/wp-content/uploads/V_1/nom_9/95/786.jpg Translation: "Friends, brothers! Come under the protection of my copper, gold and silver shield, symbol of peace, work and paid vacations! Don't listen to Segregationix, that cupid wolf who'll pluck your feathers up to the wings of your helmet! Come to m...(interrupted by tomatoes)". "Popular sentiment was just expressed toward Tournedix, that cheat and demagogue, ready to sacrifice our collectivity to his power lust at the service of Roman nobility! Friends! Cross this chasm that separates us, I welcome y...(interrupted by tomatoes)". —Paleo Neonate – 13:04, 18 March 2021 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Undisclosed paid

Template:Undisclosed paid has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. —Locke Cole • t • c 02:28, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

New section issue

Hi you've closed the discussion on No original research noticeboard but the new section i've made has merged with it, any way to fix this? [3] Magherbin (talk) 01:24, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

Magherbin, thanks, I see this is now fixed. Guy (help! - typo?) 09:26, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

Seeking help/advice

I see you blocked a user Jonathan f1 and am curious as to the situation. He has in the last few days launched a full, totally verbose, often off topic assault onto a 6 month old talk page micro issue on the Irish_slaves_myth page. He is repeatedly misrepresenting my ideas, i.e. arguing in bad faith, and making a number of errors in analysis as well, cherrypicking which wikipedia standards suit his story, and keeps pushing some kind of conspiratorial narrative as to my motivations. I've been really clear about my point, and that I want him to stop (drop the stick). I'm baffled why he is so bull headed on this. It does feel like it's getting into personal harassment territory. Appreciate your help and/or advice. Hesperian Nguyen (talk) 21:26, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – April 2021

News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2021).

Administrator changes

Alexandria • Happyme22 • RexxS

Guideline and policy news

Following a request for comment, F7 (invalid fair-use claim) subcriterion a has been deprecated; it covered immediate deletion of non-free media with invalid fair-use tags.
Following a request for comment, page movers were granted the delete-redirect userright, which allows moving a page over a single-revision redirect, regardless of that redirect's target.

Technical news

When you move a page that many editors have on their watchlist the history can be split and it might also not be possible to move it again for a while. This is because of a job queue problem. (T278350)
Code to support some very old web browsers is being removed. This could cause issues in those browsers. (T277803)

Arbitration

A community consultation on the Arbitration Committee discretionary sanctions procedure is open until April 25.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:20, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

Clarify WP:NORN close?

Hi, I was wondering if you could clarify your close of the discussion at WP:NOR/N#Race_and_IQ:_"no_evidence"_for_genetic_component? I'm confused, because I feel like editors in the discussion failed to refute the fact that this contested claim is a clear violation of WP:Verifiability and WP:OR, where none of the sources support the contested statement. Other editors overwhelmingly appealed to the RfC on this topic, rather than citing support from the sources, which seems to be a tacit admission that it does indeed fail verifiability. So I guess I'm having a hard time understanding how you determined this is simply a matter of editors' personal preference, rather than a WP:Verifiability/WP:OR issue? Thanks Stonkaments (talk) 18:14, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

Stonkaments, that article is under sanctions, if you want to advocate the fringe view that intelligence has a genetic racial component then you can argue that case on the article's talk page until you have consensus for it or (more likely) get topic banned, as most such advocates do. Guy (help! - typo?) 09:25, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

I'm disappointed by the lack of nuance in this discussion. Pointing out that a claim fails verifiability and misrepresents the cited sources is not advocating. Stonkaments (talk) 16:42, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

Stonkaments, that might be persuasive in isolation from years of POV-pushing on that article. Alas, the history makes it much less so. Guy (help! - typo?) 09:22, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

I understand your concern about POV-pushing; I'm fairly new to this whole debate, but I have no doubt that it's seen a deluge of POV pushers over the years that would test any editor's patience. But respectfully, that is simply not the case here, and I would appreciate a reconsideration of the argument on its own merits. Stonkaments (talk) 16:35, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

Guy, I think you have a fixed notion on the subject, which might possibly mean that someone else should do the close. DGG ( talk ) 04:46, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

DGG, the only fixed notion I have is that this is an area that has been the subject to endless civil (and often not so civil) POV-pushing for over a decade. The consistent aim of this POV-pushing has been to advance claims which are considered fringe in the scientific community, to the effect that intelligence has a racial genetic component.

The repeated tactic of the POV-pushers has been to argue on the article's talk page until all patience is exhausted, then venue shop. Accepting the answer "no" has never been an option for them and probably never will be.

I read the question as posed. As is so often the case, not just in this area, it seems to me to be one of UNDUE not NOR, but in this case it is part of the long term pattern of a certain subset of editors to muddy thee waters over what is, in the end, a pretty unambiguous scientific consensus, and a Wikipedia consensus too, hashed out over years. A bit like the endless attempts to cast climate change as theory rather than fact. Guy (help! - typo?) 05:24, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

Or evolution: "Look, there's a legitimate controversy, because some people are arguing", —Paleo Neonate – 05:48, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

PaleoNeonate, yup. Guy (help! - typo?) 14:17, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

Except none of the cited sources support your conclusion about the scientific consensus. Misrepresenting sources is not simply a case of UNDUE, and the POV-pushing in this case is in fact in the opposite direction of your claims. Stonkaments (talk) 15:46, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

Stonkaments, that's exactly what the race/intellingence POV-pushers have said on that article for years. Which is the entire point. The correct place to resolve that dispute is via RfC on the article's talk page, and the correct response if the consensus is against you is to accept it. Guy (help! - typo?) 16:49, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

I would happily accept it, if they could point to sources that actually supported the contested claim. Correct me if I'm wrong, but even in the face of extreme POV-pushing, claims still need to supported by sources. And arguments still need to be defended on their merits, rather than simply dismissing them because they argue in the same direction as the POV-pushing.

When the consensus on the article's talk page is defending an unfounded claim that misrepresents the cited sources, it's clear that something with the talk page discussion has gone wrong; so surely you can see how the suggestion to simply discuss it further on the talk page is unhelpful. The fact that WP:NORN isn't interested in addressing a clear case of misrepresenting sources and unfounded claims, and dismisses these concerns as POV-pushing, is rather alarming. Stonkaments (talk) 05:32, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

Your opinion

Hi. I just wanted to invite you to the discussion Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Princess Leonore, Duchess of Gotland (2nd nomination). Since you had previously participated in similar discussions, I thought you might be able to provide us with some insights regarding this article. Thank you. Keivan.f^Talk 16:19, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

(Possibly) stale page restrictions

Hi, I was recently doing a review of all the page restrictions I've placed or taken ownership of over the years, and I noticed that a majority of the pages were no longer battlegrounds and didn't require restrictions anymore. I was looking backwards a couple of months on the article history and talk page looking for major diputes, and for the most part things were pretty quiet. I've removed the BRD restrictions from about 70% of the articles that I had put them on, and the 1RR restrictions from probably 90% of pages.

I figured while I was at it I might as well try to track down the other pages with active sanctions and see if the admins who placed them might also be interested in doing a similar review. The following list might not be complete, but it's the best I could come up with by tracking usages of the American Politics AE template. (Perhaps you can compare it to whatever system you have for tracking your active sanctions.) For convenience I'll put links to the edit notice page and the talk page.

I'm hoping that removing some of these restrictions can help restore some sense of normalcy to the topic area. In any case I hope this list is helpful. ~Awilley (talk) 00:06, 9 April 2021 (UTC)