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Wikipedia's credibility is compromised.

By John Miller - posted Friday, 6 July 2012


Non-NPOV wording

On WACL under an L2 heading Support there is an entry which in NPOV terms could/should read: XX supports ACL [citation]. YY does not support ACL [citation]. Rather the current WACL entry reads: Whilst XX supports ACL [2 citations],YY has said . . . . and . . . . against ACL [2 citations].

Words deemed as offensive

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On WACL, words which have been deemed offensive, are chronicled and elaborated on, with the opinions of many expert-witnesses provided on the alleged impacts [15 citations]. Meanwhile try Googling both male or female ACL staff members, and the F word, or the C word. Thousands and thousands of results returned. I have never seen apologies, for this, or anything else.

Nature of the criticism

The organisation 'ACL' and the issues on which it lobbies are interwoven. Any disagreement with ACL's position, say, its support for marriage inevitably includes an attack on ACL. These criticisms are often picked up by anti-ACL media and republished within WACL. Those who agree with ACL on marriage often do so without needing to mention ACL, such as the recent statements on marriage by the four Australian national church leaders. While it is accepted that these can not be cited in WACL, it is not unreasonable to suggest that those supporting the Greens (and/or disagreeing with ACL) are often prolific computer and social-media users. They also contribute to and edit Wikipedia. Those supporting ACL, I believe, use computers less intensively and are not necessarily as vociferous. All of this skews the Wikipedia entries of both the Greens and ACL away from neutral representations.

Finally

When challenged, the respective site-editors justify their positions based on (their interpretation of) Wikipedia policies and guidelines, however as shown, a comparison of the two sites demonstrates there are significant editorial inconsistencies.

I note Conservapedia has been established as an alternative to Wikipedia. Conservapedia claims Wikipedia has biases, which it lists. Wikipedia has responded. Further discussion on the reliability of Wikipedia is available, however this reference generally relates to, "scientific topics" rather than, social or political articles. Wikipedia has Policies and guidelines.

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WGreens provides an overly positive view of the Australian Greens. WACL provides an overly negative view, particularly relating to ACL's position on marriage. Conversely, in the real-world, through our democratic processes, the Australian nation is poised to formally ratify ACL's position on marriage.

I would suggest that WGreens and WACL as they stand are both of less-than-acceptable standard as encyclopaedia entries with the neutrality of both disputed. Further, and considering many/most of the above issues have already been challenged, the respective problems are unlikely to be rectified using conventional Wikipedia intra-topic editor-negotiation and/or requests for comments. I would also suggest that it is unlikely that the above WGreens and WACL issues can be rectified by appealing to some higher Wikipedia authority. Appealing to Wikipedia, about Wikipedia, runs into the same limitations associated with any self-regulation. There are deep unresolved Wikipedia methodological problems which can not be circumvented by simply placing Wikipedia {{POV|date=}} editing-tags on the two entries.

The Conclusion

From the above examination, is it beyond reasonable doubt that Wikipedia's credibility is compromised.

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About the Author

John Miller is a happily married Christian. He and his wife are proud parents and grand parents.

Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

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