I consider myself more liberal than many, and yet I was struck by the obvious left slant of that page.
Not that it has inaccuracies, but its selection of facts and how they are presented, are definitely not neutral. From the header ("protests" or "riots"?) to the prevalence ("George Floyd protests in Minnesota"[0] and "George Floyd protests"[1], etc[2], [3], [4], [5] ...) to the descriptions and topics....
IMO such bias erodes their trust, and the more centrist will have to choose between one echo chamber and another and decide their facts by emotion.
Unfortunately, I am beginning to feel that the more "woke" a subject is, the less likely the facts will be presented fairly.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Twin_Cities_riots [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Floyd_protests [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Floyd [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_George_Floyd [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_George_Floyd_protests_... [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_George_Floyd_protests_...
I wouldn't even want to read an article about Floyd because it won't net me believable information. I will just say that he was a victim of state violence. That is more severe than violence between any groups and everyone in a society is responsible to a degree and that social media or the internet in general is a bad place for reverence.
Reminds me of this from Scott Alexander: https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/01/neutral-vs-conservativ...
Bypassing due process and the presumption of innocence does not promote justice. Perhaps news stories should include subscription links to be notified of the key due process events associated with the criminal investigation.
I would hope that thoughtful protest could be patiently delayed until due process is complete.
None of the edit suggestions or controversies were racist or biased. It is clear that ardent supporters of the BLM movement simply want to shape the historical record in the way they want to. And Wikipedia will probably side with them.
How is mentioning Floyd's past criminal record on his biographical page (not even on the "Killing of..." page) a detraction from his death? Are we just going to edit Wikipedia to remove anything that detracts from people we idolise? Wikipedia should present the facts (all of them) and that is it. If the facts detract, then maybe there's a reason for that. That doesn't change the fact that they are facts.
I guess it's unavoidable though. Having your ideological group stand on such a popular resource is incredibly powerful propaganda. It's like having millions of dollars lying in the street, you can't expect people not to touch it.
The URL of the article being linked to was "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Twin_Cities_riots" (it has now been changed).
Compare the two: "Twin Cities whatever" used in the URL is a lot less political than "Goerge Floyd whatever". And the "riots" used in the URL is obviously something people were searching Google for.
Wikipedia could have used the more conservative name, and acknowledged that "the protests, also known as the "George Floyd Riots" (as is obvious from the URL)....
Don't get fixated on that example though - the whole article reads like it was written by the press team of a large corporation with a narrative to sell.
When it comes to political events, you cannot take Wikipedia as a reliable source anymore.
The sad fact is that the people who have the most time to give to wikipedia, are typically the most biased.
I disagree riots is a more conservative name - this would imply an article solely about the riots, necessiting an additional article about the protests, one which, being written in a way as to minimize overlap, would probably be accused of downplaying the very much existing riots. Or at the very least balkanize coverage.
Call me slanted all you want, but this, the current state of comments here, that's what an agenda looks like.