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  • Stop giving this guy attention. He has not been a representation of what Wikipedia is for almost two decades now. – The Grid (talk) 23:22, 25 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • This stuff with Sanger is just nuts considering that a) he hasn't been part of Wikipedia for, what, 19 years now and b) this "left-wing bias" charge acts like all English Wikipedia editors are from the U.S. which isn't true (anyone have the numbers?). Some of the most active editors on American politics articles are from other countries where I'm not sure this right-left distinction fits. I think this debate in U.S. right-wing media probably involves a handful of articles that present summaries of subjects they take issue with. It's ridiculous to state that there is a political bias in 6M+ articles unless suddenly science, civility and information verifiability are a political stance. Liz Read! Talk! 23:24, 25 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    • @Liz Here's the numbers: [1] Note that "active editors" is defined as having made more than 5 edits in the last month. US-based editors make up a plurality, but not the majority. AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 00:36, 26 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
      • I wish that was given in percentages but it's definitely less than 50% of active editors are from the U.S. Liz Read! Talk! 03:02, 26 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
        • The right-left distinction fits in most places. The right-wing media may take issue with it for good reason if it is left-wing but pretends to be neutral. What is more dangerous than news organisations which spout blatantly political dogma is organisations which spout it but claim it to be neutral which is done by much of left-wing publications such as this one. DukeLondon (talk) 11:57, 26 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
          • I am one of the 190 portuguese listed on that list of active users. I stay away from US politics articles, quite frankly, one, I don't care much about US politics, and two, surely not enough for the trouble it takes. I bet some (many?) non-US editors do the same, more than US editors. Meaning that it is likely that editors involved in US politics' articles probably are a (clear?) majority from the US. I do feel WP has some US-left bias, we even actively campaigned for one side (Wikipedia:SOPA initiative). - Nabla (talk) 18:24, 26 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
            • I don’t think SOPA was a left-right issue. X-Editor (talk) 20:37, 26 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
              • Quoting our article on it: Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) expressed opposition to the bill, as well as Representatives Darrell Issa (R-CA) and presidential candidate Ron Paul (R-TX), who joined nine Democrats to sign a letter to other House members warning that the bill would cause "an explosion of innovation-killing lawsuits and litigation". If it brought together Nancy Pelosi and Ron Paul, it's not a left-right issue in any obvious way. XOR'easter (talk) 20:41, 26 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
                • As I said, I don't care about US politics :-) so I might got it wrong (but I definetely do not want WP - with all its non US editors and users - dragged into US politics, left or right). But I note that just because someone "from the left (or right)" oppose some law, it does not prove the law is right (or left) wing. The same if they support. - Nabla (talk) 17:15, 29 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
          • When has Wikipedia ever claimed that it is unbiased and neutral? We do have NPOV, but it only says Wikipedia tries to be neutral and unbiased and not that it is neutral and unbiased. X-Editor (talk) 20:28, 26 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
          • I haven't heard of anyone referring to Wikipedia as a "publication", I usually think of that applying to media like newspapers, magazines and books, not user-generated content websites. Liz Read! Talk! 04:04, 27 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
            • While there exist downloadable snapshots and sometimes curated derived products that are released, usually by third parties, WP is indeed more always in flux versus a published product. —PaleoNeonate06:00, 27 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I find the section about link rot to be particularly interesting.--🌀Locomotive207-talk🌀 23:54, 25 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    • Apropos, InternetArchiveBot has just been approved for global bot status, meaning that it will be able to combat link rot on 250 smaller wikis beyond the 65 projects where it had been enabled so far. Regards, HaeB (talk) 00:27, 26 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
      • We tried unsuccessfully to persuade Wikimedia to acquire the Internet Archive. As it is, it falls well short of our needs. In Rio in 2016 I tried to get the IOC to keep the Rio2016 site, but the domain registration was paid for only until 2017. It was archived and sent to the IOC, but what happened to it then I don't know. We tried to grab everything we could for Wikipedia; our experience of London 2012 was that the Internet Archive would not correctly or completely archive the site. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 05:48, 26 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    • @Hawkeye7: Did you see the story about the NTV (Russia) archive at News and notes? If I'm not mistaken this is a hugely important archive of 1+ million news stories that was uploaded (with proper licensing) by a pretty small project Russian Wikinews. If they can do that, why can't Wikisource, Commons, or just about any other project? Unfortunately there are many news outlets that are in danger of closing with there archives in danger of being lost. We may have just lost Apple Daily's archive in Hong Kong - and there may be other papers in HK soon to be in a similar position. I've got my eye on another newspaper in Russia that may be in a similar position - but how would I even approach them to ask for permission to upload 150,000 articles?
      Yes I did. Russian Wikinews is a surprisingly active project - far more so than its moribund English-language counterpart. I once wrote an article on a dam opening in Australia, and it was quickly translated into Russian. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 02:26, 28 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    • Locomotive207, yes, it was a fascinating piece. The other comments about newspaper archiving make me think - I've heard that some archivists are now encouraging the creation and storage of certain types of long lasting microfilm. The big advantage to microfilm, evidently, is that it's not very technologically difficult to rig up a projector to read it, so we can be confident that future generations won't be scuppered by a lack of VCRs or DVD players or whatever technological gizmos they've long since left behind. Ganesha811 (talk) 18:19, 26 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
that article also seems to equate anti-semitism with opposition to the present government of the State of Israel. All of the instances he give are those dealing with recent politics, not with coverage of any other aspect of Jew or Judaism. DGG ( talk ) 03:33, 27 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Not... quite. He claims the Balad al-Shaykh massacre ~70 years ago (not really recent politics) is "fake history", but this is a position so bizarre I don't even see anyone speaking up for it on the talk page. (And as usual, even if his homebrew history was actually correct, then the WP article still properly covers the "wrong but mainstream" view, verifiability not truth etc.) SnowFire (talk) 23:02, 28 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Non-random break

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  • For info, on page 12 of the latest issue of Private Eye (#1552) has a piece on Sanger/Daily Mail/WP. Lugnuts Fire Walk with Me 11:26, 26 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • It's times like this that make me wish we could obtain gag orders against Sanger and some anti-Wikipedia news sites (or at least make a press release publicly disowning Sanger just for the sake of it). I am aware that it could mean stifling one's freedom of speech, but there should be a limit to even that right. Criticising real issues like incomplete articles? Sure, that's sensible. Exaggerating things clearly for entertainment? Hey, Hamilton exaggerates some things (and makes other things up) and I love it. Yapping about a non-existent global conspiracy to make Wikipedia leftist? That's not sensible. Tube·of·Light 13:34, 26 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Sanger has also boosted QAnon, calling the Q drops an "information source" [2] rather than, you know, garbage. Yesterday he was retweeting PragerU and yammering about a massive left-wing and mainstream media movement to cancel the Bible [3]. The day before that, he called Tucker Carlson, noted employer of white supremacists, election-fraud conspiracist and anti-vaccination activist, one of the most effective bulwarks against the insanities and evil of the left [4]. A few days before that, he was dismissing the delta variant by sharing a story from the New York Post. I could keep scrolling, but I think I'll content myself by quoting the advice I formulated for a hypothetical journalist last summer: It is against our policy to indulge in speculation that Larry Sanger has been desperately grasping for relevance since the year of Super Troopers, Star Trek: Nemesis, and Blade II. However, if you make that comparison, we are allowed to report that he has, according to reliable sources, been trying to ice-skate uphill. XOR'easter (talk) 20:26, 26 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • A story in The Wall Street Journal did not reference Sanger specifically but said in "How Science Lost the Public’s Trust" that science writer Matt Ridley held "Wikipedia long banned any mention" of heterodox topics like the Wuhan lab leak theory. It's a bit awkward, then, that the article COVID-19 lab leak hypothesis exists. To be scrupulously honest, I should note that I argued for deleting that page, but only because it looked like a disruption magnet that would be redundant with pages like Investigations into the origin of COVID-19, COVID-19 misinformation, Wuhan Institute of Virology ... XOR'easter (talk) 20:37, 26 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The other articles have discussed the topic for over a year. (For example, when COVID-19 lab leak hypothesis was a redirect, the section it redirected to was 500+ words long, not including references. And Wuhan Institute of Virology already had content on the subject in February 2020.) The draft was deleted because it was a POV fork of content that already existed in mainspace. Not having an article dedicated to something is a far cry from banning "any mention" of it. XOR'easter (talk) 23:31, 26 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I was about to discuss this WSJ opinion source: it appears to be a press release for a book that is more about advocacy than science... —PaleoNeonate04:13, 27 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The earlier presentations about the lab leak hypothesis presented it as a fringe conspiracy theory, which might not be NPOV coverage for something discussed extensively in the most reliable general sources and is a political as well as medical issue. Personally I think we're in danger of looking as silly as we did with Donna Strickland. DGG ( talk ) 03:48, 28 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for adding that. I was trying to think of a way to put my thoughts into words on this. It seems like we've swatted some things aside as redirects to "things only obvious idiots believe in". Allowing the heterodox to be presented only as something worthy of derision is constructively banning any mention of it, and is likely to drive away tons of GF editors. As described in the now-defunct WP:WikiProject Alternative Views, alternative views [are] at risk of neglect, misrepresentation, and a level of coverage not in keeping with their relative notability. Preventing development of a neutral article in draft space seems like the icing on the cake to me. ☆ Bri (talk) 18:37, 28 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I will repeat what I wrote on the "Wikipedia Weekly" Facebook page: He (Sanger) was very influential in the first year of Wikipedia and that's his little claim to fame. Then he slunk away nursing his wounds (an anarchist was mean to him!), and has spent the last 19 years being consistently and spectacularly wrong about every single issue related to online free encyclopedias. Now, this "philosopher" has gone over to the MAGA cult and Qanon. So sad. He and The Devil's Advocate will spend years interviewing each other. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 04:14, 30 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]