User:Valjean/Essay/Why Wikipedia documents opinions and nonsense

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Wikipedia documents opinions and nonsense because that is a very important part of its larger mission to document the "sum of all human knowledge". We avoid lending credence to nonsense through careful wording, and we maintain balance by presenting both the nonsense and its debunking by reliable sources. This also benefits the world, especially the deceived and defamed.

Why does Wikipedia do it?[edit]

Wikipedia's larger mission requires us to document literally all imaginable types of human knowledge.[1][2] It's what Jimmy Wales calls our "Prime Directive".[2] Some types of information are of much greater importance than others, and we must document all of it, with the following exception: we do not document information that is so fringe it is not mentioned in any reliable source (RS).

One could very simplistically say there are roughly two types of information, the good and constructive and the bad and destructive. This essay deals mostly with the latter. The playing field is uneven:

  • "Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped." — Elbert Hubbard
  • "A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes." — Jonathan Swift

Dealing with facts is a relatively simple and limited task, whereas dealing with nonsense and deception is a never-ending struggle.[3] The contrast is great. Notice how articles about facts are peaceful, whereas articles dealing with opinions, nonsense, and lies are always contentious. Fringe editors[4] make it that way. Because they are here to right great wrongs and battle for what they consider "truth", they dismiss facts as mere mainstream "bias" and opinions and push false opinions and conspiracy theories as facts. Such tendentious editing forces mainstream editors to spend more time documenting the facts from reliable sources.

When we document facts, we are simply explaining and affirming them. That's nice and serves a useful purpose. By contrast, when we document how reliable sources debunk notable nonsense and lies, we enter a realm of higher service to the world, and especially the deceived and defamed. One might even say this is a more important part of our mission than the mere documentation of facts. When we document facts, we do it and are done. All we have to do then is to update as new information comes along. By contrast, when we debunk notable nonsense and lies, we provide constantly updated and accurate information that helps to put a brake on the never-ending attempts of dubious actors to deceive the masses. Some of these actors are conmen, scammers, pushers of alternative medicine and pseudoscientific nonsense, fringe editors,[4] and a deceptive former president who is a sore loser. Wikipedia stands as the premier information node for easy access to updated and accurate information. Unlike other encyclopedias, our policies require us to do this.

When dealing with falsifiable claims that are subject to abuse through distortion and lies, we enter a special arena that requires care and forethought. Such claims can often be debunked using evidence. We even have policies that tell us how to deal with sensitive BLP matters, fringe theories, and pseudoscientific issues. Non-falsifiable claims, like some religious and metaphysical beliefs, are dealt with in other ways. As "there is no there there", they cannot be disproven using evidence. Such beliefs can be criticized, but not debunked, so we document the views of believers and critics. By contrast, religious and pseudoscientific beliefs that are falsifiable get debunked using evidence. Examples that make testable claims are Young Earth creationism, Flood geology, and evolution denial.

With people and ideas, our motivation is not to defend them. We should stay neutral and let the chips fall where they may, documenting the good, bad, and ugly described by verifiable reliable sources. Yet our BLP policy shows our concern for people who are unfairly targeted with false claims.

While our primary motivation is to document the "sum of all human knowledge",[1][2] if we resolve confusion, aid enlightenment, and serve justice in the process, then that's great. It may look like we're righting great wrongs, but we aren't. No, we're just documenting when reliable sources do it. Fact-checking is a good thing.

The spread of knowledge is not a neutral topic of little consequence. Education, especially formal higher education, is the most fundamental, far-reaching, and important task given to any society,[5][6] and Wikipedia's role as a spreader of knowledge is at the pinnacle of all such endeavors, so let's get it right.

Our larger mission[edit]

Our "Prime Directive"
"'Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing.' is the closest thing we have to a Prime Directive."
— Jimmy Wales[2]

Our mission and "Prime Directive" are to document the "sum of all human knowledge" and make it freely accessible to all people.[2] This is also the "vision" of the Wikimedia Foundation.[7] That's a tall order for editors, whose job it is to document the knowledge, whereas it is the Foundation's job to ensure it is freely accessible.

That knowledge includes all types of true and false information mentioned in reliable sources, so editors must not leave or create holes in our coverage of all that knowledge. Editors must not exercise censorship as it undermines that goal. They must present all significant sides of any controversy and not shield readers from such views regardless of tone or bias. To leave out one side amounts to promoting the other side's point of view. Wikipedia should include more information than other encyclopedias, not less.

What is "all" human knowledge?[edit]

What is "human knowledge", especially "all" of it? It relates to all things, big and small, factual and bogus, of which humans are aware. These may be facts, situations, experiences, history, understandings, and opinions. It also includes misunderstandings, delusions, scandals, false accusations, unproven allegations, nonsense, pseudoscience, lies, deceptions, falsifiable religious beliefs, defamation, and conspiracy theories. It is an uncomfortable and sad fact that nonsense and lies exist, but it is our job to document all knowledge that is notable enough for mention in a reliable source. Such negative things are often mentioned in fringe and unreliable sources, and sometimes RS document what unreliable sources say. Thus we document fringe topics and viewpoints, but not by linking to unreliable sources. No, we cite the explanations and analyses of the facts from reliable sources as they explain and filter that bogus information from unreliable sources.

This is not about the notability we require for the creation of articles. It's about anything mentioned in a verifiable RS. This applies to bits of information, be they single words, phrases, or more. If a piece of knowledge is notable enough to be mentioned in multiple RS, an article might be created for it, or, if it's only mentioned in one or two RS, it should be mentioned in an existing article, even if that mention is only one properly-sourced word in a sentence. While that is generally true, there are exceptions to every rule. There are sometimes reasons for not including, but not because of editorial bias, what we call "I don't like it", usually worded as "I don't think it has due weight here" or "You don't have a consensus to include it." Those are two of the most rubbery excuses around. When backed by other policies and guidelines, they have legitimacy, but never when mentioned alone.

Wikipedia is not like any other encyclopedia. It has a much different and broader purpose, and, because it is not limited by paper, "there is no practical limit to the number of topics Wikipedia can cover", or the total amount of content. We should be super-inclusive. As Baseball Bugs put it when referring to the humorous WHAAOE ("Wikipedia Has An Article On Everything!") essay: "If I go looking for info, and Wikipedia doesn't have it, then Wikipedia has failed."[8] Even if it doesn't have an article, it should still be mentioned somewhere here.

Concerns about legitimizing bogus information[edit]

See also: Truth sandwich

Some worry that we lend legitimacy to bogus claims by mentioning them here. Such concerns are not justified because it is reliable sources that first mention them, not us, and our job is to then document what reliable sources say. Moreover, we do not merely document them, we debunk them. We make it clear the claims are bogus through careful wording. False assertions should not be left to stand alone. Lies should always be debunked.

Wikipedia is a mainstream encyclopedia, firmly standing on the side of reliable sources and proven facts. Therefore, advocacy of nonsensical opinions and beliefs is forbidden here, even on article talk pages and user pages, while advocacy of proven reality is expected. The argumentation and seeming "POV pushing" may look the same, but it's allowable to have a bias for reliable sources and reality, but not allowable to undermine our reliable sources policy, favor unreliable sources, or frame nonsense with a favorable bias.

Our fringe guideline requires that we avoid a false balance when it states:

When discussing topics that reliable sources say are pseudoscientific or fringe theories, editors should be careful not to present the pseudoscientific fringe views alongside the scientific or academic consensus as though they are opposing but still equal views.

The corollary here is that while we should document bogus information, we should also debunk it so readers are aware of the facts, that reliable sources favor those facts, and that Wikipedia favors the views of those reliable sources.

In a sense, this is all related to NPOV's requirement for balance, and also the principle behind BLP's rule for exactly how we are supposed to properly document, not leave out, even the most false and grotesque allegations about public figures. (The rules there are clear.) The worse it is, the greater the need to include. It requires that we balance the unconfirmed allegations with the alleged perpetrator's denials. Allegations that are proven to be true are dealt with by documenting their accuracy. The innocent are cleared and the guilty exposed.

In this essay, we're mostly dealing with bogus claims pushed by unreliable sources, and the "denial" of the false claims comes as we use RS to debunk them. Thus both the inclusion and debunking serve a very public service. We don't leave those false claims out there. We document how RS debunk them and clear the falsely accused party. That's a good thing, and people who search for information about the topic will find some really good information here that will be missing if we don't include such content.

Due weight[edit]

No fringe advocacy

Wikipedia does not cater to "lunatic charlatans" by permitting them to misuse the encyclopedia.

Neutrality assigns weight to viewpoints in proportion to their prominence in reliable sources. If editors write properly and distribute due weight appropriately (more here and less there), readers should sense that an article includes the biases of the sources, both in its parts and as a whole. Those biases must not come from editors, but solely from sources, and readers should sense that the mainstream and best sources have the weightiest opinions on the subject.

Those opinions are disputed by a fringe minority who regularly attempt to misuse Wikipedia for promotion of their favorite delusions. The dominance by the mainstream point of view will obviously offend these believers in fringe and conspiracy theories, and we regularly see their attempts to change the balance of articles on fringe subjects like homeopathy, ESP, energy medicine, crop circles, 9/11 conspiracy theories, and Barack Obama citizenship conspiracy theories, to name a few examples.

Wikipedia does not cater to what Jimmy Wales calls "lunatic charlatans", nor does it allow advocacy of fringe points of view, so the fact that fringe believers don't like our articles about them shows that we must be doing something right.

No, you have to be kidding me. Every single person who signed this petition needs to go back to check their premises and think harder about what it means to be honest, factual, truthful. Wikipedia's policies around this kind of thing are exactly spot-on and correct. If you can get your work published in respectable scientific journals - that is to say, if you can produce evidence through replicable scientific experiments, then Wikipedia will cover it appropriately. What we won't do is pretend that the work of lunatic charlatans is the equivalent of 'true scientific discourse'. It isn't." — Jimbo Wales, March 23, 2014

The same principle applies to the viewpoints of people whose views are only published in unreliable sources. If people want us to document their views in other than their own biographies (per WP:ABOUTSELF), they must get them published in RS. Until then, we document the coverage of their views as filtered by RS. Our standard is that we use only RS for sourcing, with ABOUTSELF being the only exception, one which limits such content to the biography of the author, and documents their own views about themselves, not even about others, per the limitations of BLP.

This view is wholly consistent with the ending of the first sentence of the NPOV policy:

All encyclopedic content on Wikipedia must be written from a neutral point of view (NPOV), which means representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic. (emphasis added.)

Notable examples[edit]

We document, source, and vet every type of opinion and nonsense, broadly construed, including articles about people who push nonsense. Here are some articles directly or tangentially about controversial and false ideas. Imagine someone who hears about one of these topics and wonders if it's true or not and does a Google search. Then rest assured that, because Wikipedia documents opinions and debunks nonsense and lies, they will learn the facts here. We have failed if they find nothing. Without Wikipedia's coverage of such topics, many would be left to flounder in their confusion as they find plenty of unvetted opinions that bring them no closer to the truth, and those sources are often at the top of Google searches. Fortunately, Wikipedia is usually near the top.

Articles and lists[edit]

Categories[edit]

Evaluating sources in the AP2, Trumpian, post-truth era[edit]

Editors should understand how to evaluate sources, and here are some topics that are red flags to watch for. Any source that sows doubt about the following proven facts is not a RS:

  1. Russia interfered in the 2016 election in a "sweeping and systematic" fashion.
  2. Their goals were to put Donald Trump in power by harming the campaign of Hillary Clinton and increasing political and social discord in the United States.
  3. Trump and his campaign had myriad, illicit, secret links with Russians. Several people connected to the Trump campaign made false statements about those links and obstructed investigations. These investigations resulted in many criminal charges and indictments.
  4. Trump and his campaign welcomed, facilitated, aided and abetted, and cooperated with the Russian interference in myriad ways.
  5. The Steele dossier had no role in triggering the overall Russian interference investigation.
  6. Trump did not win the 2020 election.
  7. It was not stolen from him by Biden.
  8. Trump attempted to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 United States presidential election.
  9. The 2020 United States presidential election was the most secure in American history, and its results were not affected by any widespread voter fraud.
  10. Trump's efforts were actually an attempt to steal the election from its rightful winner. Those efforts have rightly been described as an attempted coup/self-coup and insurrection.
  11. Donald Trump is rarely truthful in any sense. He uses misinformation, disinformation, conspiracy theories, and chaos as his political modus operandi, even when it mostly affects and literally kills (COVID-19 and anti-vaccine actions) his own supporters.
  12. Republicans have largely defended Trump's false claims of 2020 election fraud.
  13. Climate change is largely caused by humans and is serious.
  14. Vaccines are safe.

Some facts should be nailed firmly to the front door of Wikipedia:

  1. There are such things as verifiable, reality-based, facts.
  2. Trump's "alternative facts" are not reality-based facts; they are falsehoods.[9]
  3. The mainstream media are not fake news; they are working hard to report the news accurately and don't allow spin to get in the way of the facts. When they make a mistake, they correct their errors.
  4. The "news" sources favored by Trump are invariably unreliable, inaccurately spin and distort the facts, and some are worthy of being called fake news because they only spout what's favorable to Trump, even though it's often false. He likes them because the truth hurts, and it interferes with his agenda.
  5. When Trump misuses the term fake news, he doesn't mean "news that is untrue";[10] he means news which is negative and unfavorable to himself, even though it's true.[11][12]

In these post-truth[13][14] Trumpian[15] political times, fringe editors[4] often have a strong Trump bias and point of view because they adopt Trump's open animosity toward reliable sources.[16][17][18][19][20] They believe his untruths and the fake news stories that support him and attack those he does not like. They live in a closed information bubble and are often ignorant of the facts, thus disqualifying them from editing on politically sensitive topics. If they become problematic, AP2 topic bans are usually the best way to deal with them until they show a positive learning curve that demonstrates they are better informed and can vet sources accurately.

Facts are facts, lies are lies, and opinions are not facts. Sources that undermine those facts are the ones that should be removed and deprecated. All editors should know the "Good, Bad, and Ugly" about which sources do that and that those sources are often defended by fringe editors here at Wikipedia. The Washington Post and The New York Times are not such sources.

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b Wales, Jimmy (August 2006). "The birth of Wikipedia (transcript and video)". TED Talks. Retrieved December 5, 2015. Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. And that's what we're doing.
  2. ^ a b c d e Jimmy Wales (October 14, 2012). "Comment by User:Jimbo Wales". Wikipedia. Retrieved August 30, 2022. 'Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing.' is the closest thing we have to a Prime Directive. 'Everyone can edit' is a means to that end, and very very very far down the list.
  3. ^ Haidt, Jonathan (April 11, 2022). "Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid". The Atlantic. Retrieved August 30, 2022.
  4. ^ a b c Fringe editors: I define them as editors who lack the competence to vet sources, and who are misinformed by, and use unreliable sources. See the essay Reliable sources, Trump, and his editors here for more on this.
    Here's why I call them "fringe":
    1. More people voted for Clinton, with Trump receiving 46.7 percent of the vote in the 2016 election. Trump voters were a clear minority, but "minority" doesn't necessarily equal "fringe". Things have changed since then.
    2. That minority has grown even smaller, as many Trump voters have regretted their vote and are no longer supporters.
    3. What's left is current Trump supporters, a much smaller group who are indeed fringe, largely because of their blind allegiance to a man divorced from truth and reliable sources. If it weren't for the fact that Trump is actually sitting in the WH, they would be ignored as a radical group of people divorced from reality, just like Trump.
    4. Like Trump, they get their "news" from fringe, very unreliable, sources. Keep in mind that before Trump was elected, only 3% got their "news" from Breitbart (2014), yet Trump gets his "news" from them, InfoWars, and Fox & Friends, and he brought Bannon into the WH. Trump is a very fringe president.
    5. Here we have a tiny subset of editors who try to include views from unreliable sources, and even try to use those sources as references. They lack the competence to vet sources, which seriously impacts their editing and discussions here. That is all very fringe by Wikipedia's standards.
  5. ^ "Importance of education in society". Allison Academy. September 22, 2021. Retrieved September 14, 2022.
  6. ^ "Education: Overview". World Bank. April 18, 2022. Retrieved September 15, 2022. Education is a human right, a powerful driver of development, and one of the strongest instruments for reducing poverty and improving health, gender equality, peace, and stability. It delivers large, consistent returns in terms of income, and is the most important factor to ensure equality of opportunities.
  7. ^ Wikimedia Foundation (August 4, 2018). "Wikimedia vision". Wikimedia Foundation. Retrieved August 30, 2022. Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. That's our commitment.
  8. ^ Baseball Bugs quote
  9. ^ Blake, Aaron (January 22, 2017). "Kellyanne Conway says Donald Trump's team has 'alternative facts'. Which pretty much says it all". The Washington Post. Retrieved January 22, 2017.
  10. ^ Lind, Dara (May 9, 2018). "Trump finally admits that "fake news" just means news he doesn't like". Vox. Retrieved May 10, 2018.
  11. ^ Gendreau, Henri (February 25, 2017). "The internet made 'fake news' a thing—then made it nothing". Wired. Retrieved May 9, 2018.
  12. ^ Cillizza, Chris (May 9, 2018). "Donald Trump just accidentally revealed something very important about his 'fake news' attacks". CNN. Retrieved May 10, 2018.
  13. ^ Papazoglou, Alexis. "The post-truth era of Trump is just what Nietzsche predicted". The Conversation. Retrieved 2019-04-22.
  14. ^ Alloa, Emmanuel (August 28, 2017). "Post-Truth or: Why Nietzsche is not Responsible for Donald Trump". The Philosophical Salon. Retrieved July 14, 2022.
  15. ^ "Trumpian". Dictionary.com. February 1, 2018. Retrieved August 25, 2018.
  16. ^ Pak, Nataly; Seyler, Matt (July 19, 2018). "Trump derides news media as 'enemy of the people' over Putin summit coverage". ABC News. Retrieved July 23, 2018.
  17. ^ Atkins, Larry (February 27, 2017). "Facts still matter in the age of Trump and fake news". The Hill. Retrieved March 9, 2017.
  18. ^ Felsenthal, Julia (March 3, 2017). "How the Women of the White House Press Corps Are Navigating "Fake News" and "Alternative Facts"". Vogue. Retrieved March 3, 2017.
  19. ^ Massie, Chris (February 7, 2017). "WH official: We'll say 'fake news' until media realizes attitude of attacking the President is wrong". CNN. Retrieved March 27, 2017.
  20. ^ Page, Clarence (February 7, 2017). "Trump's obsession with (his own) 'fake news'". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved February 9, 2017.
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