Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Criticism of Wikipedia" in English language version.
{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of February 2024 (link)But if a reader had started on the page for either of Breivik's guns, the Ruger or the Glock, they would not know this. That reader would find a great deal of technical information about the weapons in question – their weights, lengths, cartridges, rates of fire, magazine capacities, muzzle velocities – and detailed descriptions of their designs, all illustrated with abundant photographs and diagrams.
{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of February 2024 (link)According to The Verge report and an independent follow-up by Haaretz, the top editors of the Colt page are pro-gun enthusiasts who skewed the information presented on it and are also involved in editing other articles on Wikipedia – for example, the much more general article, titled AR 15 – to push their worldview ... Through countless exhausting debates, this small group of pro-gun Wikipedia editors – linked together through Wikipedia's Firearms project (or "WikiProject:Firearms," mentioned below) – has managed to control almost completely the discourse around the rifle, predominantly by making sure any potentially negative details about it be excluded from the original Colt AR-15 article.
The Wikipedia's open structure makes it a target for trolls and vandals who malevolently add incorrect information to articles, get other people tied up in endless discussions, and generally do everything to draw attention to themselves.
The search for a 'neutral point of view' mirrors the efforts of journalists to be objective, to show both sides without taking sides and remaining unbiased. But maybe this is impossible and unattainable, and perhaps misguided. Because if you open it up for anyone to edit, you're asking for anything but neutrality.
A group of pro-gun Wikipedia editors tried to hide the true number of mass shootings associated with the AR-15 rifle in the aftermath of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida.
... the considerable and often-noted gender gap among Wikipedia editors; in 2011, less than 15 percent were women.
Such checking leads to a daily battle of wits with the cyber-wreckers who insert erroneous, ludicrous and offensive material into entries. How frequently entries get messed about with depends on the controversy of their subjects. This week the entry Muslim is being attacked dozens of times a day following the row about cartoons of Mohammed with angry denunciations of suicide bombing and claims of hypocrisy. Prime Minister Tony Blair's entry is a favourite for distortion with new statements casting aspersions on his integrity.
The bias in the articles was not explicit, but structural. The project did not insert false information into the articles but instead purged information that showed the weapons in a bad light - dismissing it as "off-topic".
But on Wikipedia, as in the real world, the users with the deepest technical knowledge of firearms are also the most fervent gun owners and the most hostile to gun control. For critics, that's led to a persistent pro-gun bias on the web's leading source of neutral information at a time when the gun control debate is more heated than ever.
What do the perpetrators of the massacres at Sandy Hook, at Aurora, at Orlando, and at Sutherland Springs have in common? They were all men under 30 and they all used versions of the same kind of firearm, the AR-15, the semi-automatic version of the military's M-16, and the bestselling gun in America. It might be difficult to make this connection because as I write this, the section on the use of AR-15s in mass killings has been deleted from Wikipedia ...
The nascent Web encyclopedia Citizendium springs from Larry Sanger, a philosophy Ph.D. who counts himself as a co-founder of Wikipedia, the site he now hopes to usurp. The claim doesn't seem particularly controversial—Sanger has long been cited as a co-founder. Yet the other founder, Jimmy Wales, isn't happy about it.
The search for a 'neutral point of view' mirrors the efforts of journalists to be objective, to show both sides without taking sides and remaining unbiased. But maybe this is impossible and unattainable, and perhaps misguided. Because if you open it up for anyone to edit, you're asking for anything but neutrality.
... the considerable and often-noted gender gap among Wikipedia editors; in 2011, less than 15 percent were women.
{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of February 2024 (link)But if a reader had started on the page for either of Breivik's guns, the Ruger or the Glock, they would not know this. That reader would find a great deal of technical information about the weapons in question – their weights, lengths, cartridges, rates of fire, magazine capacities, muzzle velocities – and detailed descriptions of their designs, all illustrated with abundant photographs and diagrams.
What do the perpetrators of the massacres at Sandy Hook, at Aurora, at Orlando, and at Sutherland Springs have in common? They were all men under 30 and they all used versions of the same kind of firearm, the AR-15, the semi-automatic version of the military's M-16, and the bestselling gun in America. It might be difficult to make this connection because as I write this, the section on the use of AR-15s in mass killings has been deleted from Wikipedia ...
But on Wikipedia, as in the real world, the users with the deepest technical knowledge of firearms are also the most fervent gun owners and the most hostile to gun control. For critics, that's led to a persistent pro-gun bias on the web's leading source of neutral information at a time when the gun control debate is more heated than ever.
The bias in the articles was not explicit, but structural. The project did not insert false information into the articles but instead purged information that showed the weapons in a bad light - dismissing it as "off-topic".
A group of pro-gun Wikipedia editors tried to hide the true number of mass shootings associated with the AR-15 rifle in the aftermath of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida.
The Wikimedia Foundation has defended itself and Wikipedia from allegations of being host to these kinds of influence campaigns, arguing that the encyclopaedia is constantly being updated and improved.
According to The Verge report and an independent follow-up by Haaretz, the top editors of the Colt page are pro-gun enthusiasts who skewed the information presented on it and are also involved in editing other articles on Wikipedia – for example, the much more general article, titled AR 15 – to push their worldview ... Through countless exhausting debates, this small group of pro-gun Wikipedia editors – linked together through Wikipedia's Firearms project (or "WikiProject:Firearms," mentioned below) – has managed to control almost completely the discourse around the rifle, predominantly by making sure any potentially negative details about it be excluded from the original Colt AR-15 article.
The nascent Web encyclopedia Citizendium springs from Larry Sanger, a philosophy Ph.D. who counts himself as a co-founder of Wikipedia, the site he now hopes to usurp. The claim doesn't seem particularly controversial—Sanger has long been cited as a co-founder. Yet the other founder, Jimmy Wales, isn't happy about it.
Such checking leads to a daily battle of wits with the cyber-wreckers who insert erroneous, ludicrous and offensive material into entries. How frequently entries get messed about with depends on the controversy of their subjects. This week the entry Muslim is being attacked dozens of times a day following the row about cartoons of Mohammed with angry denunciations of suicide bombing and claims of hypocrisy. Prime Minister Tony Blair's entry is a favourite for distortion with new statements casting aspersions on his integrity.
The Wikipedia's open structure makes it a target for trolls and vandals who malevolently add incorrect information to articles, get other people tied up in endless discussions, and generally do everything to draw attention to themselves.
The Wikimedia Foundation has defended itself and Wikipedia from allegations of being host to these kinds of influence campaigns, arguing that the encyclopaedia is constantly being updated and improved.