[lbo-talk] Wikipedia: demographics and prose style (was: Socialim (was: Cheery thought...

Chuck chuck at mutualaid.org
Sun Feb 26 10:54:14 PST 2006


Colin Brace wrote:


> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jmabel#On_systemic_bias

This is a very interesting overview of bias on Wikipedia.

I looked at the "talk" page for the author and found some interesting links, including one to the Wikipedia entry on the February 15, 2003 antiwar protests around the world.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_15%2C_2003_anti-war_protest

This entry has evolved quite a bit and unlike many Wikipedia entries has lots of sources listed at the bottom. But even this article sucks. It's been re-written to give a biased view of the protests. The entry makes it sounds like authoritarian left anti-war groups organized the protests, when in fact the protests were very huge because grassroots activists organized the protests. This inaccuracy is compounded by the list of anti-war organizations listed in the "External Links." Moveon.org, ANSWER, and Not In Our Name were not prominent organizers in the 2.15.03 protests.

Don't even get me started on the fallacious crowd estimates in these entries. We all know that leftist groups routinely inflate crowd sizes and I think there is clear evidence that groups such as ANSWER triple the actual size of their protests for their own disgusting political ambition. The old activist saying goes: "Take the estimate of the police, the estimate of the organizers, and average that to find the actual number of protesters."

Chuck



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