You can't be "encyclopedically neutral" on an ongoing story, especially an American presidency, when any rando can edit the "encyclopedia." That is why there should be a "two year edit block" rule on articles about sitting heads of state, to keep the drama down. Meanwhile,
Art Madrid is still Mayor of La Mesa, California, even after my blog post.
Fix it, Jimbo - it's only been
six years!!
.....Examples have become embarrassingly easy to find. The Barack Obama article completely fails to mention many well-known scandals: Benghazi, the IRS scandal, the AP phone records scandal, and Fast and Furious, to say nothing of Solyndra or the Hillary Clinton email server scandal—or, of course, the developing “Obamagate” story in which Obama was personally involved in surveilling Donald Trump. A fair article about a major political figure certainly must include the bad with the good. The only scandals that I could find that were mentioned were a few that the left finds at least a little scandalous, such as Snowden’s revelations about NSA activities under Obama. In short, the article is almost a total whitewash.
When did Sanger become the right-leaning centrist? Obama ran the country on Republican lines - we never got a second New Deal out of the economic collapse, and
none of the bankers responsible were tried, then taken out and shot as what should have happened. The actual scandal was that Obama became the Drone President, firing air-to-ground Hellfire missiles at Afghan wedding parties and allowing the idiot war between the Houthis and the Saudis in Yemen to rage out of control. Absolutely, all of these "scandals" he lists should be in the Obama BLP but he doesn't say a word that a lot of the issues he brings up were hyped endlessly on AM radio, and that the conservative rant-o-sphere (the blogs, the sites, the op-ed pages of certain newspapers) suffered from total obsession over Barack Obama.
I understand why Sanger used the examples he used, but he gave himself away in the comments section:
James
May 21, 2020, 8:50 AM
Your point about ‘bias’ against Trump is not taking into account that someone can say demonstrably false things, which is why it mentions false so many times. In addition, even the bible contradicts its self (let alone the testaments), which is why Jesus’ story was deemed as confusing. Just because someone takes offense to what is a pretty unbiased view does not mean its false.
With your example of MMR and global warming articles – presenting false information is not neutrality. Of course like with journalism and most encyclopedias you will have bias with the currently available information, which you will find is funded by the ‘establishment’. This research is later verified and reviewed and adopted. In addition your claim of not presenting the view is false. This is covered inside of the ‘public opinion’ articles on global warming which covers the other side. Unfortunately (believe me I’d love global warming to be a hoax) its just that – opinion, and flawed studies funded by the ‘establishment’.
This article feels like its blowing smoke and shouting fire.
Larry Sanger
May 21, 2020, 10:17 AM
James, it is your
opinion that Trump has said many “demonstrably false things.” Many others
deny that you can demonstrate this. Hence, if you write an article about a politician according to which you can easily tell that it was written by those who oppose him, the article is biased against the politician.
Similarly, it is your
opinion that the Bible contradicts itself (so spelled).
There are many Christians and theologians who disagree, who maintain that apparent contradictions are due to failures of correct interpretation and contextualization. (I happen to think they’re probably right on that, by the way.) (My bolding.)
Now, you can disagree about what the facts are, and you can maintain that the facts are demonstrable. But you cannot
also maintain that stating those alleged facts without attribution, and in a way that discounts other common views, is
neutral. Rather, you are forced to the conclusion that you oppose neutrality as a policy for encyclopedias. That is your prerogative, but it has been Wikipedia’s explicit policy from the beginning (as I can tell you, since I wrote the policy).