I'm puzzled: why is it called the "English Wikipedia" when WP's servers are based in America and the vast majority of WP editors, admins and arbitrators are clearly Americans? Surely WP should more accurately be referred to as the "American Wikipedia"? Problem with that title though, is that it could be construed by non-Americans to mean that WP reflects an essentially "American" POV, which is not entirely true. Not all Americans subscribe to a Fox News mentality. Moreover, numerous, very reliable American sources are conspicuously and deliberately absent from the reference citation lists of certain important WP military-political and modern military history topic areas. These missing sources are too numerous to mention individually here, but I will gladly detail them if anyone's really keen to broaden their perspective.

It so happens that these conspicuously absent sources are ones that specifically challenge and/or deviate from the conservative, right-wing, so-called "mainstream" fairy-tale world of Wikipedia. Never mind that most of these reputable but WP-suppressed sources are published by reputable publishers and/or hold tenure or professorships at respected American universities. A few cabalists, through their crypto-fascist style of "consensus building", will ensure that such sources are rejected as "commie propaganda", and/or all the usual similarly mindless right-wing crap. I know from first-hand experience.

Nor is language really an issue as regards bias through omission. There are for example many Russian, Chinese etc sources that are available in English translation; they too are conspicuously and deliberately absent from reference citiations in military-political and/or history topic areas. Their absence does not advance WP's notion of "encyclopaedic content". So, to cut a long story short, maybe better than "English Wikipedia" or even "American Wikipedia", how about "Rightwing Retards Uncyclopedia"? Or, better still: "Simpletons Sicklopedia"?

Vast majority? Just how many non-Americans do you think there aren't?

Huh? Are you saying WP is too right or too left?

Comparatively very few. Far as I can tell, all the arbitrators are American (including one East European-born naturalised American).



I'm saying wikipedia is totally fugged up.

Hey Cat, you're a redeemable soul for Wikipedia. Why are you so down on it?

You got personal and got whacked, but there's no reason that with a little samokritika you can't be back making solid contributions next week.

It's something you can't take so personally. If you're gonna make sand castles next to the surf, your castle is gonna get washed out pretty fast. So build your castles farther up the beach...

Wikipedia is a great thing. Get back in there and get working.


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This is your problem communicat, "as far as [you] can tell" the moon is probably made of blue cheese. A good number of the arbs are Brits and I believe Coren, Xeno and Risker are Canadian and John Vandenberg is an Aussie. No? So that's your problem. You just don't seem to know what you're talking about.

Come to think of it there may be more non-Americans than there are Americans on Arbcom. So yeah, not all that clever. Either that or you're too lazy to do your homework.

You guys forgot to mock Carrite. Shame on you.

Whenever Carrite shows up, you always, ALWAYS mock him. Okay?

Well, he misused the (non-)word "samokritika," so it hardly seemed worth the trouble.

OK, let's get back to the original topic, though I'm not so sure even that is such a good idea...

Mr. Communicat is from South Africa, and while we presumably know nothing about him, his WP contribs and history seem fairly consistent with what he's saying. He was bashed on Wikipedia for edits like this one on "History of South Africa," which was quickly reverted by an American WP'er who cited what appears to be a completely unrelated "topic ban" on World-War II-related articles. (Yet another "WTF? moment" out of thousands per-day on WP.)

But there are also edits like this one, which suggest that he may be something of an opposition-supporter in his own country, and that he believes the current ANC government (under Jacob Zuma (T-H-L-K-D)) is too right-wing for his tastes - though the ANC is generally considered left-wing, if not actually socialist, at least by folks in the US/UK.

I could be misinterpreting some of this, though (especially the last bit), so I guess at this point I should ask Mr. Communicat if I'm fairly close to the mark, or (way) off-base... but let's go on anyway:



The real question is, how pervasive is this? It clearly seems to be happening that way in your own (Mr. Communicat's) case, but our observations suggest that while it does happen in many topic areas, there are also plenty of topic areas where left-wingers (American or not) dominate almost to the point of embarrassment. I realize I'm an American myself and so I may be somewhat biased by default, but in almost any controversial, high-stakes-political topic area, the dominating bias seems almost random, based mostly on level of game-playing talent, if not simply number-of-users.

Moreover, we know (or at least I think we do) that left-wingers particularly detest being criticized by people who are even more left-wing for not being left-wing enough. And I'd assume the more left-wing you are, the more you detest it... That's not quite as true with right-wingers for some reason, though I suppose that's just my opinion. But if that's true, it's a distinct advantage right-wingers have over left-wingers in the context of something like Wikipedia. It gives them more unity across their established range of opinion, even if all the opinion within that range is completely misguided.


Unfortunately, I'm so angry at the US Republicans right now I can't even come up with a good suggestion! And I know I'm not alone, either...

u mad bro?

Since when did this thread become about the economy? I though we were mocking Commie-kat's idiocy and lack of fact-checking.

But Coren is French-Canadian, eh? I always imagined him sounding a lot like Pepe le Pew as he directs his skin flicks in his Quebec penthouse. "Ahhhh, mon petite pom de terre -- spread ze legs et give me un grande orgasm, oui!"

And speaking of French-Canadians: Is it true that the teenaged Risker was one of Louis Riel's groupies?

Xeno doesn't show up here anymore.

Is JV really from Australia? I thought he was from Christmas Island -- or is it the Island of Misfit Toys? I could never tell them apart.

Not surprising, as he's so hopelessly obsessed with that madhouse, he'll probably burn out soon.
All he does, 100+ times each day, is bureaucratic bullshit and arguing with people.

Would anyone like to see my religious-bias-on-en-WP chart?

I think you're the only one mocking him, for the moment at least. His assertion that WP is dominated by Americans, and American right-wingers in particular, is at least understandable given the topic areas he's been involved with. I don't agree with him, but I'd hardly call it "idiocy and lack of fact-checking"...

I might add that in my opinion, nationality is one of the things people are probably least likely to lie about in a WP user profile, and if they do lie about it, it's likely to be one of the more difficult false-fronts to keep up over time. So if he's getting the impression that WP is dominated by Americans, I'd say that while he may be wrong about the "dominated" part, he's probably correct if he says that the people opposing him are mostly Americans. (Unless he would have some reason to lie about that, which I doubt.)

Nope, right-wing domination is only in a certain few areas. Most of WP tends towards left-wing
or "libertarian" control, if there's even a coherent political policy followed by the little wargamers.

Wikipedia nerds have a lot of political information posted, but it's mostly political bios, legislative districts,
and past election results. They'd rather (VERY MUCH RATHER) talk about the school they are going to
or went to .....

Example? This.
Rather obsessive and detailed for an ordinary high school in rural Michigan, I'd think.

And if anyone's "dominating" Wikipedia, it's football fans.

Yikes, don't even mention the football fans...

Well, at his ArbCom case that he himself requested the users opposing him look like 1 Brit, 1 Aussie, and 1 Russian (though the Russian guy thought there may be some way to just topic ban him rather than outright ban him - or something). Also an IP from California (the IP appears to have been pissed off about the South Africa thing). Oh and this guy who does strike me as fairly American. And of course another Russian, Kirill (or is he the neutralized American that he referred to already?). GWH was somehow involved in it but as far as I can tell, not in any meaningful way (and his involvement should not serve as an excuse for Mr. C). At one point he tried to drag User:Paul Siebert into it; I have no idea what PS's nationality/background is, but he does edit Soviet-related articles from a fairly left wing (definitely at least "socialist") and, as he himself admits "Soviet" perspective (basically Paul also thinks that the Soviet POV is under represented on Wikipedia - difference is he goes about it in a reasonable manner with reliable sources and so on (most of the time)). Paul stayed away from the case (the guy does know how to pick his battles).

So it really was an international conspiracy against him.

(Funnily enough Habap at one point got confused and accused Communicat and Petri Krohn of being on the EEML list, which just shows you that nobody has any idea or cares much about that case)

I was just looking at the break down of GAs by category and this certainly seems to be the case. I think they even have the Pokemon/video games folks beat.

Wow, I wonder which was the first school in the nation to ever present "Hairspray"? It's amazing that this 2002 Broadway musical only had two school performances in the period from 2003 to 2010.

Wikipedia is so factual, I just might have to throw in the towel and submit to its excellence.

"A good number" of Brits is not good enough. How many in number? Not many. The fact of the matter is that WP is dominated numerically by North Americans with a typically Western and/or North American POV bias. Take it or leave.

What makes me surprised Radek's posting is so pathetically inaccurate? I mean, after all, the guy is a bemedalled "Senior Editor" at WP.

To set the record straight on just one point, however: It was not I who "tried to drag" Paul Siebert into that Arbcom case; but after he'd been dragged in (not be me), this is what he said to Arbcom: "... let me remind you that he (Communicat) initiated several discussions that led to significant improvement of, e.g., WWII article ... we all must remember that initial impetus to this work was given by Communicat.'' http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.phptitle=W...oldid=402889579 )

By the way, the "one Russian" that Radek refers to is in fact a naturalised Australian. As for your own particular affiliation or naturalisation if any, I couldn't care less.

PS: As for georgewilliamherbet: here we have an administrator who openly admits to being a US "defense analyist" and he also works apparently on military contracts, while as an "uninvolved" WP party at the same time, he works at blocking irksome people like me, when they try to inject some apparently embarrassing NPOV into certain WP topics of modern military history, among others. Poor old George, forever waving the big stick in his "free" time.

(PPS: Radek, why don't you tell them the only reason why I ended up at arbcom was because Nick-D and others refused to participate in an earlier mediation attempt.)

Chase me Ladies and Roger Davies are Brits as far as I know. I've always assumed Elen of the Roads and PhillKnight are as well (can't remember why though). Mailer Diablo was born in Malaysia and resides in Singapore by the way. According to his user page he's never set foot in the US or Europe. There are others that I have no inkling about like David Fuchs, whose sig is in German, and SirFozzie, who is probably American by the look of his edits. The only three arbs that are clearly from the United States are Newyorkbrad, Cool Hand Luke and Jclemens. If you think that Canadians are politically similar to citizens of the US you're very, very mistaken. Anyway you were incredibly wrong with your claim that they were all American ... just absurdly wrong my friend.

Re: your "plenty of topic areas where left-wingers (American or not) dominate almost to the point of embarrassment". True, there may be some very minor left-leaning article edits (I personally know of only one or two), but I guarantee those articles receive very limited, low-level visibility compared with certain right-leaning POV-biased, heavy-traffic / high-visibility articles such as the World War II article, among others.

I was referring more to his claim that ArbCom is comprises mainly American Wikipedians, but whatever. It seems this thread has gone off on the whole economical-political-international road, which I find rather boring.

I agree that there are serious problems with the World War II article and some other top 20 articles.

Take a look at WWII. It mentions Jews precisely twice, as a body count, and has no mention of antisemitism and very little about the Nazi ideology that put the whole thing in motion. It basically says about Hitler and Nazis, "radical, racially motivated revision of the world order", buried in a wall of text, and that's about all you'll hear about that.

Communists and anyone else interested in truth might want to read the part about the bombing of Guernica, which is pretty much the fascist version of events. "The Bombing of Guernica, a city of 5000 - 7000 inhabitants, was considered a horrifying attack at the time, with a propaganda figure of 1,654 people killed widely circulated in the west, leading to charges of "terror bombing".[27] In reality the attack was tactical operation against a city with militarily important communications close to the front-line, and modern estimates yield no more than 300 - 400 dead at the high-end.[27][28]"

Note reference 27 is totally full of shit, and is basically some dude in military school spouting off how he doesn't think the bombs could have killed so many people because similar bomb droppings later in the war didn't, nevermind that the Spanish might not have been so good at hiding as late-war German civilians and were less likely to have basements to go to. I don't know about 28, but I find it ridiculous that this statement still stands there and that the Basques, Spanish, and communists haven't been able to challenge it.

Surely in three pages someone has said that it's English Wikipedia because it's in English? Americans speak English, whether they like it or not. Or, actually, Spanish (and why not?).

I don't have time or inclination to do a proper audit of who's active and who's inactive at Arbcom, but I think your calculations are suspect. Lokshen is an American, so are Fuchs & Fozzie. And Canadians remain North Americans whether they like it or not. Much the same applies to mere low-level editors: mostly North American.

Did you read the leaks? ArbCom is a bunch of ineffectual, self-important morons. Who cares where they're from? They all have the same brain disease.

Wikipedia is not run the way it is because of ArbCom. Those people couldn't lead themselves out of a paper bag. The "leadership", what little there is of it, comes from the WMF foundation people including Jimmy and the board.

They're the ones who set up and provide support for the system that is filled with bias, plagiarism, and hardcore pornography, while promoting its use by young children in public schools.

Don't blame the idiots that sit on ArbCom.

Dang, you're right.



There's a group of faux-Germans (most of them are not even German, at least one is a Swede, another was a wacky American and few Brits - sort of like the most hardcore Stalinists and Putinistas on Wikipedia aren't Russian either (as our friend CC clearly illustrates)) on Wikipedia who have taken up the "The Allies were as bad as the Nazis" line (in countries where outright Holocaust denial is illegal that's pretty much how neo-Nazi groups try to get around that restriction), David Irving style. Even without looking at the history I bet I know exactly who put that "it was propaganda" stuff in there.

Going by last names, I'm guessing both NYBrad and CHL have some Eastern European ancestors. Frank's great grand parents (or whatever) probably made barrels back in Poland.

And of course same is probably true for anyone named "Casimir"

I mostly quit Wikipedia because I didn't want to be enabling people like this. They can't write all that well, and if good people stop helping them, then Wikipedia will decay and eventually most internet users will stop turning to it as a reference.

Belated mod note: I moved the posts on the economy and what have you to this location. HK

The Holocaust is mentioned and linked to in the first paragraph of the WWII article, or does it need to say NAZIS MURDERED THE JEWS in all-caps?

Time to post this:

Or, you could always bring up an article that was created last year, and has been a battleground ever since:

Nazi_relations_with_the_Arab_world (T-H-L-K-D)

You mean "including the [[Holocaust]]".

You're not getting it, or maybe you're getting it but you're just an asshole.

The article devotes three paragraphs to starting and ending dates but not even a single sentence to racism, antisemitism, and the Nazi ideology that led to the war.

Students of WWII don't need to know all the minor battles but they should know about a little book called Mein Kampf, don't you think?

The owners of the WWII article are more concerned with reducing the most calamitous event in human history to a long and meaningless series of loud explosions, reading like Pvt. Ryan on steroids. Take a look e.g. at the longggg section titled Courses of the War.. Plenty of "fact noise" there; but nothing at all on strategic analysis and suchlike scholarly items.

Briton Roger Davies recused himself from the proceedings (he didn't bother to say why). Your argument is stupid and tendentious. A clear majority of the approx 18 arbitrators are North American. I'm referring to those arbs who are actually active, not the several inactive ones. At my last encounter with Arbcom, only three or four arbs actually managed to turn up -- all of them North Americans; with American administrator and US defense analyst Georgwilliamherbet self-proclaiming himself as Arbcom's informal spokesman. The admin T Canens who ultimately imposed an indefinite ban on me (after I'd named him as a party to the proceedings) is of course also an American. Bless him. I've got nothing against Americans, I mean, after all, prolific author and MIT professor Noam Chomsky is an American. Though you'll be hard pressed to find many (if any at all) WP citations attributed to him or to other progressive Americans of his calibre.

Agreed. Look at this compelling prose:



I could pick apart this article forever. Another small example. No mention of the Ploesti oil fields in Romania.

If I were a neonazi, I would write the article exactly as is:


Hmm, a fire happened, Hitler was appointed chancellor. We all agree on that!

Would you like to use my hanky? It amazes me that you find new ways to say anything but, "OK so I was wrong." You were wrong. This exercise tells me all I need to know about you. The combination of attitude and fringe beliefs puts you over the top. It's OK to be a stubborn, self-righteous jerk on Wikipedia as long as your beliefs don't go too far away from those of your peers. Trust me, very few Wikipedians are capable of admitting fault, just like you. But you see, if you want to espouse fringe beliefs and stick around the project you'll need more humility than everyone else. You clearly don't have it, and that's why you're here now instead of there. Good luck with yourself.

Nobody's perfect. Not even crap-heads like you who can only manage to substitute thoughtful comment with childish personal attacks. Get a job.

Never mind the WW2 overview article for a moment. It has official WP "Good Article" status. And the WP powers-that-be have excellent judgment, don't they? Wait 'til you see some of the B-class officially not-so-good military history articles such as the Cold War article, which manages to reduce that destructive epoch to a cosy fireside chat with a happy ending. (See main pic at that article). But if you really want to see a total ballsup, have a look at Western Betrayal article, or Aftermath of World War II or Effects of World War II or a few other "military history" debacles that I could name.

Do you have a job? All I see is you whining around on WR about Wikipedia.

Now that they've read about it here, the jackasses started edit warring over the Guernica section. However, because SOFIXIT and the wiki way are dead, they've now taken their pearls of wisdom over to the Talk page, on their way to doing absolutely nothing. Nice stonewalling.

Never mind; with a bit of luck, someone might eventually refer it for comment at "Content" RFC Noticeboard, which will of course be a complete waste of time because that noticeboard, like others, is totally dysfunctional. So, the next step in the so-called "dispute resolution process" would be a tedious request to Arbcom which, in turn, will reject the request, saying: "Oh, we don't handle content issues. Discuss the dispute among yourselves." This of course takes you back to square one; except that by now some of the more energetic and reactionary "discussants", among themselves, have had enough time to covertly canvass support for their individual POVs, via each others' talk pages and/or off-wiki via facebook or whatever. And so "consensus" is attained. Or not. Depends on which faction has the most time to waste, and the most solid cabal devoted to the objective of dumbing down world knowledge.