Thanks; I hadn’t checked the Wikipedia current events page much previously, but I really like it.
Do you have any thoughts on how specifically the Wikipedia stuff is biased? I’m imagining that there isn’t a general tendency, and it’s more that specific entries are biased in specific ways that it’s hard to spot if you don’t have background knowledge on the area.
As you said, I would imagine that specific entries probably contain some bias of their original author(s) that is somewhat difficult to spot without background knowledge. But, I am a multilingual person, and one interesting thing that I have noticed is that the same Wikipedia article can have pretty drastically different amounts of information depending on the author’s first language and the nature of the subject. Take for example, the Wikipedia entries for Edith Piaf (a famous French singer). The English Wikipedia entry for Piaf is something like 4000 or 5000 words, whereas the French entry is over 10000 words. The French entry also has more pictures!
Linguistically (and culturally?) speaking, French and English are pretty similar, so you might expect that this content would be easier to translate or to compare. The effect of language and culture on Wikipedia content is much stronger between languages and cultures that are more dissimilar. Take for example, the Wikipedia entries for Himeji Castle which is a famous historical site from 14th century Japan. The English Wikipedia for Himeji Castle is about 3000 words, whereas the Japanese Wikipedia for Himeji Castle is—so ridiculously long that I barely had the patience to come up with this character count—about 50000 characters. That would probably translate to something like 25000 words in English. (And again, the Japanese entry has way more pictures than the English one.)
I think the broad implications of this might be that English speaking Wikipedia is biased by predominantly Western views and somewhat subject to international politics, in addition to whatever individual biases of the author in that highly specific context. I bet there is someone out there on the internet who has written a pretty interesting criticism about this, although I am not familiar with any content on it in particular.
My intuition is also that English speaking authors are probably more inclined to be left leaning in terms of their national politics, but I don’t really have a solid justification for this. Just a hunch.
Thanks; I hadn’t checked the Wikipedia current events page much previously, but I really like it.
Do you have any thoughts on how specifically the Wikipedia stuff is biased? I’m imagining that there isn’t a general tendency, and it’s more that specific entries are biased in specific ways that it’s hard to spot if you don’t have background knowledge on the area.
As you said, I would imagine that specific entries probably contain some bias of their original author(s) that is somewhat difficult to spot without background knowledge. But, I am a multilingual person, and one interesting thing that I have noticed is that the same Wikipedia article can have pretty drastically different amounts of information depending on the author’s first language and the nature of the subject. Take for example, the Wikipedia entries for Edith Piaf (a famous French singer). The English Wikipedia entry for Piaf is something like 4000 or 5000 words, whereas the French entry is over 10000 words. The French entry also has more pictures!
Linguistically (and culturally?) speaking, French and English are pretty similar, so you might expect that this content would be easier to translate or to compare. The effect of language and culture on Wikipedia content is much stronger between languages and cultures that are more dissimilar. Take for example, the Wikipedia entries for Himeji Castle which is a famous historical site from 14th century Japan. The English Wikipedia for Himeji Castle is about 3000 words, whereas the Japanese Wikipedia for Himeji Castle is—so ridiculously long that I barely had the patience to come up with this character count—about 50000 characters. That would probably translate to something like 25000 words in English. (And again, the Japanese entry has way more pictures than the English one.)
I think the broad implications of this might be that English speaking Wikipedia is biased by predominantly Western views and somewhat subject to international politics, in addition to whatever individual biases of the author in that highly specific context. I bet there is someone out there on the internet who has written a pretty interesting criticism about this, although I am not familiar with any content on it in particular.
My intuition is also that English speaking authors are probably more inclined to be left leaning in terms of their national politics, but I don’t really have a solid justification for this. Just a hunch.