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BTW, for those interested, WP:UPSD will highlight whenever most of these sources are cited. There are some exceptions: Life News, Bill O'Reilly, The Right Scoop, The Daily Signal and The American Spectator, aren't highlighted because it's either not immediately obvious that they are unreliable (you can be partisan without inventing things for example), or lack an WP:RSN consensus. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:44, 29 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Can I tag this article with {{Globalise}}? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:46, 29 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

No, but if you want to do the same type of thing with the UK, or France, or Germany, or ... Please just submit an article. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 19:53, 29 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• Very nicely written Newslinger, I've been thinking about this very thing a lot recently. CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 20:46, 29 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
• Well written and well argued. Well done NS! Levivich ^harass/_hound 20:46, 29 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
• Thank you for this story. I was arguing with my (more conservative) dad about this earlier, and this is a very cogent explanation. Sincerely, Ovinus (talk) 21:41, 29 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

While this very well-written article definitely defeats the right-wing talking point about everything being biased against them, we might need to discuss how your research also implicates Wikipedia in general for having a bias which leans right. Why would that be? Is it our demographic base? Is it that the insistence on reliability and established sources also contains within it an implicit bias towards the status quo, and thus more conservative basis? Food for thought. Gwen Hope (talk) (contrib) 21:54, 29 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Instead of comparing the total number of deprecated left-leaning and right-leaning sources, I think it would be more meaningful to compare the threshold of reliability below which sources may be deprecated. The Daily Mail and Breitbart are deprecated with, respectively, reliability scores of 31.17 and 28.60. Has the same threshold been applied when deprecating left-leaning sources? The only deprecated left-leaning source, Occupy Democrats, has a reliability score of 21.59, and a discussion at the Reliable Sources Noticeboard decided against deprecating AlterNet, which has a reliability score of 23.16. So the threshold for deprecating left-leaning sources appears to be much stricter. Vitreous humour (talk) 23:54, 29 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Vitreous humour: the issue usually reflect actual need to take a position on specific sources. For example WorldTruth.TV at 7.0 and NewsPunch at 13.9 are completely unmentioned at WP:RSN, because no one are trying to use them. WP:RSN reacts to usage (both in how widespread usage is, and the nature of said usage) in Wikipedia, it does not anticipate it. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 00:22, 30 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Here's another example: according to [1], Jezebel (website) is a "marginally reliable" source, meaning it may or may not be used depending on the context. According to that page Jezebel has been discussed at the Reliable Sources Noticeboard twice, and that was the conclusion of those discussions. Jezebel has a reliability score of 26.25, lower than both The Daily Mail and Breitbart. Why did the Reliable Sources noticeboard decide that Jezebel may be used as a source, even though it is less reliable than deprecated right-leaning sources? Vitreous humour (talk) 00:38, 30 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

To clarify my point, I'm saying that this unequal threshold can't be explained by the fact that some sources escape deprecation by never being challenged. All of the sources I mentioned (The Daily Mail, Breitbart, AlterNet and Jezebel) have been challenged at RSN, and so have other sources of about the same reliability such as CounterPunch and The Daily Kos. But only the right-leaning sources are deprecated as a result of those challenges, despite being slightly more reliable than the other sources I mentioned. Vitreous humour (talk) 01:15, 30 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

If I would like to notice something, most far-right sources are the most loud in declaring Wikipedia is biased. SMB99thx my edits! 00:34, 30 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• Agree with Headbomb. You know, there's something with a lot of conservatives these days. They don't really produce reliable information and are prone to ignoring statistics and just opinionating stuff.

That's not to say that conservatives are bad. There are many categories of people in the US:

• • Communists
  • Idiot left
  • Good Democrats
  • Centrists
  • Reasonable Republicans
  • Ridiculous Right
  • Fascists

It's just sad how bad apples ruin the rest. We need diversity of good opinions and more neutrality in today's society. Firestar464 (talk) 01:18, 30 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• I don't believe that the social media analysis is good evidence that Wikipedia is "centre-right", and I think we can all come up with good reasons why there may be confounding factors when it comes to the demographics of people who share Wikipedia articles. But it's a good starting point for us to ask ourselves: what political position would we want to be, were there an accurate yardstick for measuring? If your answer is "apolitical" then think a little bit deeper. Our founding notion was political. We aim to provide educational resources for free. Many organisations and people with power throughout history have opposed and continue to oppose such aims. Such groups aren't simply bad or wrong, but acting according to their political interests. It's part of their support for the status quo in whatever class system their society has.
  We don't limit readership by gender. In many countries, right-wing groups use violence to ensure that girls are not educated to the same level as boys. We don't provide any different a user experience to people who pay. Contrast with state vs. private education. We don't believe in populism—we report what sources with strong fact-checking policies report, not what the majority of a population believe. (Deeper, there's something philosophically interesting here with what we think a "fact" is and epistemology.) But many politicians and journalists think that the majority is always right. We believe in the scientific method. This puts us at odds with some religious and spiritual people. And so on. These choices are all meaningfully political. This is why so many of our topics are battlegrounds for paid/COI editors, misogynists, party political fanatics, science deniers etc. It is not that these people want to impose politics on something that is apolitical. It is that they wish to change the political orientation of a very political body of work. A work which upset the status quo and balance of power by introducing people to a community-sourced, free collection of information. And when I say "political", I do mean that you can mark our principles on a position on a left-wing to right-wing scale (the centre being wherever it is in your community among the median resident). And you won't end up in the centre. — Bilorv (talk) 02:46, 30 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Bilorv: I'd add a slight qualification to that. We do report what the majority of a population believe; it's just that we report it as statistics and opinion, not as fact. We do report who the majority of the US population believe would be better as the next President. Our mission is inherently political, yes, but it doesn't mean we should espouse those viewpoints as superior in our article content unless sources support our viewpoint. Some introspection may be helpful here as we seek to account for our personal biases. We report on the social and economic advantages of educating girls and boys to the same level, but we also report on religious views on educating women. We report science and present it as fact, but we also report the psychology behind pseudoscience and science denial (if we currently don't have content on this issue, we ought to). And we must distinguish the political orientation of our mission, which is left-of-center for reasons you mentioned, and the political orientation of our content, which is right-of-center. Our content is necessarily conservative because we report on topics only after they have been well established in reliable sources. feminist (talk) | free Hong Kong 03:43, 30 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

How do we burst the bubbles of consumers of right-wing media? How can we rehabilitate them and get them to trust Wikipedia effectively? How can we encourage them to write about (US) conservative politics using fact-based sources instead of their opinion-based alternatives? Giving up is not an option because these people are likely voters in America; I'd even suggest it's a duty for editors of one of the most visited sites of a country to ensure the viability of America and its institutions. feminist (talk) | free Hong Kong 03:15, 30 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]