Wikipedia finds that the description content is gradually becoming neutral at the end of 15 years of editorial battle

ByCea +

The greatest free encyclopedia on the Internet "Wikipedia" is a content that makes use of the unique merits of the Internet that anyone can edit content freely, but that is why editor's intention is reflected somewhat I can not escape from the facts. However, from research by a research team at Harvard University, we know that the content of Wikipedia's articles, once certainly politically biased, has gradually changed to neutral as the number goes on .

Wikipedia is fixing one of the Internet's biggest flaws - The Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/10/25/somethings-terribly-wrong-with-the-internet-and-wikipedia-might-be-able-to-fix-it/

I did this research,Harvard Business SchoolProfessor Shane Greenstein and Professor Feng Zhu. The team retroactively analyzed the pages of the English version of Wikipedia in the past 15 years and studied the trends in each era by taking statistics on the number of occurrences of politically right-handed keywords and left-handed keywords.

As a result, in the past, the article content was biased to the left, but as time went by, it tended to calm down to the neutral position finally, while going to the right or returning to the left It is that. This neutrality is one of the most highly-valued encyclopedias in the world,Encyclopedia of BritannicaIt is said that it is the level corresponding to.

BySarah & amp; Renuka Photography

The research team applied a method to classify the remarks in Congress as conservative or innovative and adopted a method of measuring political bias from words included in Wikipedia page. For example, words such as "illegal aliens (illegal immigration)", "death tax (inheritance tax)" and "border security" are the conservative forces of the Republican Party of the United States and "poor people" Breaks (tax reduction) "and" change the rules (words and rules amendment) "are considered to be liberal American Democratic Party.

The graph below is an example of such analysis. In the United States called "Afghanistan", when we measure the political bias that changed within 2006 about the word that seems to be sensitive, the graph which initially turned to the positive side and showed "right side" was greatly enlarged from the middle and " Left "and then gradually shifted to neutral.


In this way, the research team analyzed a total of 70,000 articles on American politics edited by a total of 2.9 million editors from 2001 to 2011 and politically as an overall trend We clarified that many of the editing contents are shifting to a neutral position. To this trend, Professor Greenstein, one of the authors, commented, "The result was quite amazed, even in the past even highly biased editors, as time went on, we had a neutral position It was supposed to take it. "I talk about the actual situation.

As you can see from the situation, it seems that many of the editors who initially swayed to the left or right initially weakened the bias as time went on, and gradually became accustomed to editing with a neutral perspective. The Wikipedia guidelines include "To take good intentions"Attitude in editing and the statement that the fact that it is necessary to support by fact is required is stated. Also, as an advice when actually editing, "Take a breath and let's see what we can agree on." (Let's relax and look for parts that can agree on the contents)It is written..

Papers by the research team can be viewed from the following links.

(PDF file)15-023 - e044 cf 50 - f 621 - 4 759 - a 827 - e 9 a 3 b f 8920 c 0. Pdf