Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2025-12-01/In the media: Difference between revisions

It’s terrible! Wikipedia is just as bad as the BBC, a source we consider reliable and which is regularly accused of anti-Palestinian as well as anti-Israel bias. /s but surely that shows how seriously we should take these complaints. (t · c) buIdhe 02:43, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Most political parties and pressure groups accuse the BBC of bias against them. This is a good thing, as it means they’re getting the balance about right most of the time by not being biased in favour of any of the complainants (which is of course what they all desire). Neiltonks (talk) 20:33, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Assuming that if “both sides” dislike the BBC, the BBC must be right, is an example of the golden mean fallacy. (t · c) buIdhe 20:38, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Not necessarily. We’re not trying to come down halfway between, we’re trying to get it right according to the facts and this will always mean that we’re condemned by groups that find anything but 100% agreement unacceptable. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 23:30, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

facts reliable sources. Polygnotus (talk) 23:47, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If there was a debate whose sides are “2 + 2 = 4” and “2 + 2 = 5”, is it bad that the equals-4 side finds “anything but 100% agreement unacceptable”? LightNightLights (talk • contribs) 13:45, 2 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think Hank Green‘s take on Jimmy Wales‘ reaction to that question makes the most sense to me. Was it a good response? Probably not, but I don’t blame him for having reacted that way. Larry Sanger has contributed significantly less to what Wikipedia is today relative to Wales, but Sanger criticises Wikipedia from the right as if he has had the same influence on Wikipedia as Wales. A better answer may have been something along the lines of “I am a co-founder on paper but the founder in spirit”, but given that the interview was about his book on trust and not Wikipedia, I could understand him getting frustrated over a bad first question that is arguably irrelevant to the topic at hand. Yue🌙 03:59, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I love that there’s so many people on Reddit and elsewhere defending the interviewer, saying “His show’s ‘Jung and Naive’, the point is to be ignorant”, when of course ignorant has nothing to do with being a terrible interviewer and an a-hole. The Jung guy is just terrible at his job and if he really is that popular in Germany, it makes me seriously question the German public’s ability to properly socially interact. Though I suppose it is a common stereotypical joke that Germans don’t know how to interact socially with other people in a positive way? So I guess that tracks. Silverseren^C 05:28, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I personally know Germans who are smart, sensitive and have great social skills. Imagine having to answer the same dumb question for year after year as if its some kinda gotcha when it is nothing more than meaningless semantics. Polygnotus (talk) 05:49, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That’s why I’m confused on why this specific interviewer is popular at all within the country. It seems like he exemplifies the negative stereotypes about Germans and is actively harmful (such as in this case) to non-German understanding of German culture and social norms. Silverseren^C 05:53, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The whole idea is that I play a bad reporter, who’s unprepared, who’s not very good at his job, who asks seemingly naive questions,” Jung said. “When I need to I can always play dumb, I can always say, ‘Huh? What? Why?’ I think especially politicians are not really used to being asked such fundamental questions. [1] Its this whole genre of uncomfortable/cringe stuff which started with Kaufman, and then moved to Eric Andre and Nathan Fielder and then got adopted by people far less talented like Bobbi Althoff. It used to be funny when Kaufman, Andre and Fielder did it. Polygnotus (talk) 05:59, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don’t know about the German version, but that sounds a bit like the Colbert Report back in the day. Where Colbert simultaneously interviewed people but was also playing a character. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 06:10, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah that same source says The character he created for his interview segments is modeled in part after Stephen Colbert’s approach to his ultra-conservative alter ego[2]

You’d expect Wales to have someone working for him who tells him what to expect but I guess not. Still, there are way better gotcha questions. Polygnotus (talk) 06:12, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I’ve tried to think of another more substantive question I would want Jimmy Wales to be asked that might actually be interesting to people outside Wiki projects and I’m not coming up with anything. I think it was useful for showing that Wales is just another Silicon Valley type who lives a life insulated from people disagreeing with him and that his book is probably a bit trite. The kind of thing most people could write with the help of a professional ghost writer, but don’t because they’re not famous enough to sell a book. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 23:52, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@MtBotany We don’t really use Jimbo as a wise wizard on a mountain top; that is not his role.

The community doesn’t actually need someone like that.

Because our system is consensus-based we just need someone who is generally a good egg and is willing to take on some responsibilities, not an infallible superhuman that answers questions in the style of the oracle(s). After a few beers he’ll probably have an interesting story or two, but I am not sure if they are for public consumption. Polygnotus (talk) 05:57, 2 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe it’s worth going into what’s the specific distinction between Sanger and Wales as project founders. Both ended up criticizing Wikipedia from the outside (instead of voting on new rules) but Wales in a paroxysmal way, over the appearance of specific topics, and Sanger in a radical way, over the appearance of specific editors. Lumbering in thought (talk) 15:12, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Sanger was a paid employee who was laid off in February 2002, just a bit over a year after Wikipedia started, at the point where Wikipedia had about 20,000 articles [no, that’s not a typo]; he has essentially not contributed since, not counting his frequent critiques. Wales provided not only things like the servers that the website ran on, but massive amounts of **upaid** time as he worked with the community to establish all the policies and guidelines that – I’m guessing – most editors, today, think somehow sprang up on their own. In 2003 he **donated** Wikipedia to the new Wikimedia foundation; he never got a dime from it, and he never was a “Silcon Valley type”, though his reputation from the success of Wikipedia got was worth money, indirectly. (And no, Wales and other Wikimedia Foundation Board members aren’t paid, so that’s yet more time he has contributed to the foundation.)

The edits of User:Larry Sanger and User:Jimbo Wales are quite different – Wales has almost 15,000, compared to Sanger’s less than 2,00. Only about 2,000 of Wales’ edits are in mainspace (articles). The rest are mostly his efforts to make Wikipedia an ongoing success. — John Broughton (♫♫) 01:31, 3 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I have to agree with Buidhe about the importance of the opinion of an organisation that works with Israel’s Foreign Ministry on “hasbara fellowships”. Likewise we’re citing Spiked (a fringe / alt-right British “magazine”) and 2 British tabloids that we explicitly describe as not being reliable sources. Perhaps we should all pay less attention to the opinions of propagandists — especially on Contentious Topics such as Israel/Palestine, where we have a long history of working to ensure our content is neutral and objective? — OwenBlacker (he/him; Talk) 11:05, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I brought up the question of the Spiked coverage specifically in the Newsroom. We discussed it and decided that In the media is the correct forum for coverage about Wikipedia, without necessarily adding commentary about the merit of that coverage, though we may provide context. Until it’s archived, you can see the discussion at “Ashley Rindsberg, again?” ☆ Bri (talk) 17:55, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

On Art+Feminism, thanks for drawing our attention to their current problems. It is indeed sad to see the negative influence of political attitudes towards feminism and related “woke” issues on this enterprise. Those involved in A+F have helped to contribute to Women in Red‘s coverage of many hundreds of notable women around the world, thanks to the efficiency of their annual editathons over the past eight or nine years. In my opinion, their contribution deserves our full recognition and continued support.–Ipigott (talk) 16:20, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Wikimedia’s ongoing banner campaign: I just wanted to point out that Wikimedia could completely stop bothering readers for donations other than a simple donate link in the corner, and keep the website running for well over a hundred years, depending on how ineffective the donate link turned out to be and how the endowment performs. I’m just saying. —Guy Macon (talk) 05:55, 3 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]