Biased Wiki: Fact Or Fiction? – Semalt Shares Its Opinion On The Matter

23.05.2018

Biased Wiki: Fact Or Fiction? – Semalt Shares Its Opinion On The Matter

Julia Vashneva, the Semalt Customer Success Manager, tells that researchers and scholars from Harvard School of business have recently conducted a case study aiming to compare Wiki and Encyclopedia Brittanica databases.

Researchers evaluated more than 4,000 English-based articles focusing on more controversial topics such as United States politics.

Feng Zhu and his co-author, Shane Greenstein, categorized more than 4,000 articles as either "red" or "blue," to conclude the political onset back in 2012. In an interview, Shane expressed his gratitude regarding the success of Wikipedia, despite the political differences between Democrats and Republicans.

Both Shane Greenstein and Feng Zhu identi ed essential phrases mostly used by each party, to draw into political science conclusions. Wiki is the most visited website on the planet, so the researchers and scholars identi ed key phrases that were idiosyncratic to both Republicans and Democrats.

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23.05.2018

Republicans were likely to use key phrases such as 'immigration' and 'economic prosperity.' On the other hand, Democrats were likely to use 'civil rights' and 'state of war.' During the initial stages, crowdsourced articles and scripts took the side of liberal views, hence displaying a form of bias as compared to Britannica.

Wiki has been playing an integral role in the mutual interaction. Wikipedia has been giving authors an equal level ground to discuss their differences and political ideologies. Researchers from the Harvard School of Business indicated that more than 2.8 million editors working on revising articles on Wiki settled their doctrines and became less biased with time.

A question was raised implying whether editors and volunteers with blue tendencies visit blue articles and vice versa. Juliet Barbara told Quartz that balanced and collaborative perspectives got evidenced. The ndings were supported by IP addresses visiting the site. Wikipedia being a neutralizing factor was not moved by the results.

Barbara also implied that Wikipedia has been working on detecting bias among the editors and potential users, and getting rid of the bias altogether. Recently, Wiki put across set rules and guidelines to govern users on how they revise and comment on a speci c topic. According to Greenstein, editing and amending articles requires reliable and underlying sources. The Wikipedia community does not allow volunteers and authors to make changes on scholarly articles dwelling on opinions.

Contributors and editors with different political ideologies engaging in online conversations is a case scenario that has led to the success of Wiki in providing customers with free knowledge all over the world. For political scientists and visitors who have been thinking Wikipedia is a biased online outlet, a recent case study conducted by authors from Harvard School of Business proved otherwise. According to the case study, Wikipedia is one of the most excellent online outlets that work as a neutralizing factor to customers with different ideologies in controversial topics.

https://rankexperience.com/articles/article1907.html

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