• halvar ( halvar@lemy.lol ) 
    32·
    16 days ago

    That’s probably because most mass killings under capitalist regimes are just generally called “mass killings”. They are your regular, run of the mill mass killings that aren’t really newsworthy and that we are accustomed to.

  • freshfusion ( freshfusion@discuss.tchncs.de ) 
    17·
    16 days ago

    Fascist and colonial states atrocities are widely documented in Wikipedia, countries that we consider capitalist probably too. I recently stumbled across Belgian atrocities in Congo reading Wikipedia by accident. It motivated me to read more about it in the future, maybe “Heart of darkness” (while not exactly historical, it still seems like a good critique. By the way is it a good novel?).

    • 1Malayali ( 1Malayali@lemmy.ml ) OPEnglish
      14·
      16 days ago

      True.

      But there does not seem to be an equivalent page for ‘Mass killings in capitalist regimes’

      Even if it is documented, does it not show that how it is organised currently has an imbalance, likely from Anti-communist propaganda, things like red scare etc?

      So, cannoted be unbiased, right? My focus was on that. There is no unbiased source, but only ones which acknowledge biases and maybe try to ensure that the biases do not affect the quality of the source too much.

      • Squirrelanna ( Squirrelanna@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) 
        2·
        14 days ago

        I’m genuinely unsure if it’s because of propaganda or capitalist defaultism instilled in contributors due to its worldwide prevalence. Then again I suppose one could argue that defaultism was instilled by propaganda, but I’d like it more to US defaultism where it mostly stems from a large amount of online interaction in English speaking spaces being between people in the US

  • MrShankles ( MrShankles@reddthat.com ) 
    9·
    15 days ago

    Idk, I’ve learned a tremendous amount about things outside my culture… because of wikipedia. Don’t let perfection be the enemy of good?

    Edit: I apologize that my comment derailed from the conversation of Wikipedia having inherent and abundant Western bias… the fact that VOA is considered reputable is enough to turn heads. What I guess I was trying to say is that I wouldn’t want people to ignore a good resource for information because of that… but it is also very important to point out and criticize their bias, if true neutrality is a Wikipedia “goal”

    I apologize again. I would delete my comments, but I think it’s important to own up to my own errors and have a record of what was said. Maybe others will learn from my misinterpretation of the conversation being presented, and my initial emotional responses

      • MrShankles ( MrShankles@reddthat.com ) 
        6·
        15 days ago

        It’s not? Being informed is always positive, and it’s always unfortunate that bias exists. I’d rather learn and try to understand my own bias, as opposed to being ignorant and having bias anyway

        Do you have a tool that is just as accessible as wiki, but perfectly objective? Or are you throwing the baby out with the bath-water? Knowledge is good for any culture, and bias is a motherfucker to us all. Your critique isn’t unwarranted, but it does flirt with anti-intellectualism

        • 1Malayali ( 1Malayali@lemmy.ml ) OPEnglish
          13·
          15 days ago

          Being informed of the bias is also positive

          No one mentioned anything about throwing the bathwater, but only hinted at the bias.

          Are you trying to villainise and portray it as anti-intellectualism?
          Are you thinking that the source you use is unbiased and trying to derial convos that hint at how it is not unbiased?

          Noting the bias is a good thing and trying to shut down the convoys on that is a bigger mf to all of us.

          Your concerns isn’t unwarranted, but it does flirt with strawmanning and derailing the convo.

        • BanMeFromPosting ( BanMeFromPosting@lemmy.ml ) 
          6·
          15 days ago

          “Being informed is positive” is not what is being argued against, and you know it. This is disingenuous and poor rhetorics.

          Do you have a tool that is just as accessible as wiki, but perfectly objective? Or are you throwing the baby out with the bath-water?

          More poor rhetorics. If youre not interested in actual discussion, why engage with someone acting in clear, good faith? Its pretty clear that the argument is that the issue with Wikipedia is that it presents itself as unbiased, while in fact being heavily biased. The issue is not the presence of bias itself.

    • geneva_convenience ( geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml ) 
      12·
      15 days ago

      Did you? Or did you read a tremendous amount of propaganda and selective truths, thinking you were getting informed?

      Virtually all of the information you are reading is written by Western white men who have a very specific agenda. And the sources allowed are Western sources.

        • geneva_convenience ( geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml ) 
          12·
          15 days ago

          You can escape propaganda by getting informed by multiple perspectives.

          Not by reading a single source which claims to represent multiple perspectives but actually completely reframes reality to sell you a single perspective.

          Wikipedia is great for any exact sciences. History and politics related information is extremely selective and has a Western agenda attached.

          Look at this page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Averroes They put his Latin name as the title and his picture is a painting in an Italian church. Now read who he was. Does the framing match?

          • MrShankles ( MrShankles@reddthat.com ) 
            5·
            15 days ago

            I agree, multiple perspectives is absolutely key and using any one source for history or politics will be problematic. Wikipedia is absolutely bias with Western ideology, but it’s not exactly a propaganda machine. I always use it like you’re taught in school, that Wikipedia is not a source. Depending on how deeply you would like to learn about a subject, it’s a great start to finding sources. Unfortunately biased with Western bullshit, absolutely, as is everything coming out the west

            I guess I am derailing the conversation if we’re just talking about and calling out Wiki’s Western bias. I would also hate for people to think it’s automatically not informative because of it’s bias… cause everything has one. Multiple sources and viewpoints, like you said, is the way to go

  • Goodlucksil ( Goodlucksil@lemmy.dbzer0.com ) 
    4·
    15 days ago

    This page in a nutshell: Any material added to Wikipedia must have been published previously by a reliable source. Editors may not add content solely because they believe it is true, nor delete content they believe to be untrue, unless they have verified beforehand with a reliable source.

    Verifiability is as important as truth.

    But reliable sources are biased!

    From WP:BIASED (Wikipedia:Reliable sources#Biased or opinionated sources).

    Wikipedia articles are required to present a neutral point of view. However, reliable sources are not required to be neutral, unbiased, or objective. Sometimes non-neutral sources are the best possible sources for supporting information about the different viewpoints held on a subject.

    (Bolding mine)

    But reliable sources are chosen by biased contributors!

    OP attached to their comic repost RSP columns.

    • Deutsche Welle: Reliability was never discussed in an RFC. Anyone complaining here of bias does not acknowledge their possibility (if they are not banned) of making an RFC on it.
    • Voice of America: Discussed on RSN a few times. The last one is pretty interesting: Here
    • Xinhua: Discussed here. ITT: It’s quite old, but Xinhua is very controversial.
    • Telesur: Discussed here around seven years ago. Quite conclusive, I would say.
    • 1Malayali ( 1Malayali@lemmy.ml ) OPEnglish
      11·
      15 days ago

      I think you may have misunderstood point of that image.

      It not on the sources being biased(there are no unbiased sources), but noting the easily notable bias in the Wikipedia source selection, the preference for media funded by pro-capitalist regimes.

      Do you see an issue in noting how Wikipedia has this bias, and going against the notion by some that it is unbiased or neutral?

                • BanMeFromPosting ( BanMeFromPosting@lemmy.ml ) 
                  1·
                  12 days ago

                  groups usually cancel bias

                  Lmao, so we’re just saying shit now, alright. Famously unbiased:

                  • The police
                  • Lynch mobs
                  • Academic institutions
                  • Think tanks
                  • The KKK
                  • The Clergy
                  • A group of children

                  I think you struggle to understand what the word “bias” means. It seems like it just short-circuits in your brain to “bad”. A group typically enforce the bias inherent to it.

                  It requires actively being aware of ones’ bias to counteract it, which is one of many reasons why Wikipedias presentation as a “neutral” source of knowledge is an issue. Because it makes doofuses like you trust it like gospel and react like fanatics to the heresy that maybe the website founded by a zionist, with a longtime issue with power-users (not to mention the infiltration of Nazis that gets brought up once in a while in a feelgood story about someone taking them on), a rule against being critical of "approved sources investegation making use of primary sources, an arbitrary approach as to how trustworthy a source is (the main judgement of which seems to be “do they reinforce state dept. talking points?”); well, it might have some issues.