Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Netoholic (talk | contribs) at 04:05, 22 May 2018 (start). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

The notion of ideological bias on Misplaced Pages refers to analysis and criticism of the reliability of the online encyclopedia Misplaced Pages, and especially its English-language site, in relation to whether its content is biased due to the political ideology of its volunteer Misplaced Pages editors.

Analyses

Greenstein and Zhu

Shane Greenstein and Feng Zhu, both professors at the Harvard Business School, have authored several studies and articles examining Misplaced Pages from an ideological standpoint as component of its collective intelligence.

Is Misplaced Pages Biased? (2012)

In Is Misplaced Pages Biased? (2012), the authors examined a sample of 28,382 articles related to U.S. politics (as of January 2011) measuring their degree of bias on a "slant index" based on a method developed by Gentzkow and Shapiro (2010) to measure bias in newspaper media. This slant index measures an ideological lean toward either Democrat or Republican based on key phrases within the text and gives a rating for the relative amount of that lean. The authors used this method to measure whether Misplaced Pages was meeting its stated policy of "neutral point of view" (or NPOV). They also examined the changes to articles over time as they are revised. The authors concluded that older articles from the early years of Misplaced Pages leaned Democratic, whereas those created more recently held more balance. They suggest that articles did not change their bias significantly due to revision, but rather that over time newer articles containing opposite points of view were responsible for centering the average overall.

Do Experts or Collective Intelligence Write with More Bias? (2017)

In a more extensive follow-up study, Do Experts or Collective Intelligence Write with More Bias? Evidence from Encyclopædia Britannica and Misplaced Pages (2017), Greenstein and Zhu directly compare about 4,000 articles related to U.S. politics between Misplaced Pages (written by an online community) and the matching articles from Encyclopædia Britannica (written by experts) using similar methods as their 2010 study to measure slant (Democrat vs. Republican) and to quantify the degree of bias. The authors found that "Misplaced Pages articles are more slanted towards Democratic views than are Britannica articles, as well as more biased", particularly those focusing on civil rights, corporations, and government. Entries about immigration trended toward Republican. They further found that "(t)he difference in bias between a pair of articles decreases with more revisions" and, when articles were substantially revised, the difference in bias compared to Britannica was statistically negligible. The implication, per the authors, is that "many contributions are needed to reduce considerable bias and slant to something close to neutral".

Jointly They Edit (2013)

A 2013 study, Jointly They Edit: Examining the Impact of Community Identification on Political Interaction in Misplaced Pages, was conducted by Jessica J. Neff, professor at USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, and colleagues David Laniado , Karolin E. Kappler, Yana Volkovich, Pablo Aragón, Andreas Kaltenbrunner, all from the Barcelona Media-Innovation Centre. The study was conducted to "take a closer look at the patterns of interaction and discourse that members of different political parties have around information online, because they may have important consequences for the accuracy and neutrality of political information provided online". It investigated how Wikipedians (editors of Misplaced Pages) identified themselves as affiliated with any political party, whether their participation was divided along party lines, if they had a preference to interact with members of the same party, and how much affiliation impacted conflicts within discussions. The authors identified party and ideological affiliation using "userboxes" which some Wikipedians place on their user pages. The authors concluded:

"Although Democrats and Republicans seem to maintain their political identity within the Misplaced Pages community, our findings show that users displayed more 'Misplaced Pages' boxes than political boxes on their user pages, indicating that the identity of being a Wikipedian may be more salient in the context of this community. Further, the lack of preference to interact with same-party members in the context of article discussions does not indicate the same polarization that has been observed in other contexts. In this sense, the Wikipedian identity seems to predominate over party identity. Hence, the results of our analysis show that despite the increasing political division of the U.S., there are still areas in which political dialogue is possible and happens."

— Neff, JJ et al, "Conclusions", Jointly They Edit: Examining the Impact of Community Identification on Political Interaction in Misplaced Pages,

Brian Martin

In 2017, Brian Martin, a social scientist at the University of Wollongong, published a critique (Persistent Bias on Misplaced Pages: Methods and Responses) of the Misplaced Pages editing process, based on his observations of the development of his own entry in the encyclopedia. Martin described several techniques which he considered being used by editors of opposing viewpoints to introduce bias into the article, such as the removing or reducing positive information, expanding or adding negative information, selective sourcing, and negative connotation. Further, he describes process-based tactics used to maintain such bias: "(r)evert contrary edits", "(i)nvoke Misplaced Pages policies selectively", "(a)ttack and ban resistant editors". Martin also criticized the process for replacing scholarly citations with mass media or social media sources, especially newspaper articles which he described as "not high quality sources" in comparison. In his conclusion, Martin stated "(e)ffective imposition of bias will superficially conform to Misplaced Pages policies."

The Wisdom of Polarized Crowds

A 2017 study The Wisdom of Polarized Crowds (Feng Shi, Misha Teplitskiy, Eamon Duede, James Evans) investigated the effects of ideological diversity on Misplaced Pages entry quality scores for political, social issues, and science articles. To accomplish this, the authors estimated editor political alignment on the liberal-conservative spectrum based on their prior contributions and gauged article quality using a MediaWiki tool called "ORES". The authors found that "polarized teams" (a balanced group if editors with diverse political viewpoints) "create articles of higher quality than politically homogeneous teams", "engage in longer, more constructive, competitive, and substantively focused but linguistically diverse debates than political moderates", and "generate a larger volume of debate and their balance of political perspectives reduces flare-ups in debate temperature". They found that homogenous or highly-skewed teams engaged in less, but highly acrimonious, debate which produced articles scoring lower in quality.

See also

• Gender bias on Misplaced Pages
• Racial bias on Misplaced Pages

References

1. Gentzkow, M; Shapiro, J. M. (January 2010). "What Drives Media Slant? Evidence From U.S. Daily Newspapers". Econometrica. 78 (1). The Econometric Society: 35–71. doi:10.3982/ECTA7195.
2. Greenstein, Shane; Zhu, Feng (May 2012). "Is Misplaced Pages Biased?". American Economic Review. 102 (3). American Economic Association: 343–348. doi:10.1257/aer.102.3.343.
3. Greenstein, Shane; Zhu, Feng (forthcoming). "Do Experts or Collective Intelligence Write with More Bias? Evidence from Encyclopædia Britannica and Misplaced Pages" (PDF). MIS Quarterly. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
4. "Is Collective Intelligence Less Biased?". BizEd. AACSB. May 1, 2015. Retrieved 17 May 2018.
5. Guo, Jeff (October 25, 2016). "Misplaced Pages is fixing one of the Internet's biggest flaws". The Washington Post. Retrieved 17 May 2018.
6. Jessica J. Neff; David Laniado; Karolin E. Kappler; Yana Volkovich; Pablo Aragon; Andreas Kaltenbrunner (April 3, 2013). "Jointly They Edit: Examining the Impact of Community Identification on Political Interaction in Misplaced Pages". PLoS ONE. 8 (4): e60584. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0060584.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: unflagged free DOI (link)
7. Martin, Brian (June 21, 2017). "Persistent Bias on Misplaced Pages: Methods and Responses". Social Science Computer Review. 36 (3): 379–388. doi:10.1177/0894439317715434.
8. Shi, F.; Teplitskiy, M.; Duede, E.; Evans, J.A. (November 29, 2017). "The Wisdom of Polarized Crowds". (paper). ArXiv. Retrieved 22 May 2018.
9. Stevens, Sean (December 21, 2017). "Research Summary: The Wisdom of Polarized Crowds". Heterodex Academy. Retrieved 22 May 2018.
10. Damore, James (February 2, 2018). "The Case for Diversity". Quillette. Retrieved 22 May 2018.

• Criticism of Misplaced Pages
• Discrimination