cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/23066599
Since 2017, Wikipedia editors have compiled a list of news sources from which articles are highly likely to employ systematic bias, lack professional editing and/or journalistic standards, regularly misrepresent sources, and/or fabricate information.
While its list is by no means a complete list of publications with the aforementioned problems, it has helped make Wikipedia articles more reliable by basing them off of sources covering the same events and information from a less biased point of view.
To make Lemmy news communities better than their Reddit counterparts, I think avoiding links to those sources in favor of more reliable alternatives would be worthwhile.
Whether or not that becomes official policy in this community, that is a terrific resource I have never seen before, so thank you!
I don’t like this proposal, but I would love a bot that automatically comments with a link to this Wikipedia page anytime something from one of these sites gets posted here
I really would be fine with the proposal. I see no reason why a site like the Epoch Times should be allowed here when their articles are just blatant propaganda and usually also false.
Because when some false and propagandizing crap from the Epoch Times starts blowing up on telegram or twitter or facebook or wherever I’d like to be able to come to this community and find a comment pointing out the lies and bullshit (ideally with links to sources) that I can up vote here and copy and paste to where it’s needed
I don’t think this is about commenting. It’s about posting.
I don’t think anyone is suggesting barring them from comments within posts, are they?
I should re-phrase - I’d like to be able to scroll through this community’s posts sorted by controversial or new, find a downvoted to hell (as it should be) Epoch Times article that’s getting positive traction on other sites (or even other Lemmy instances), and find within the comments on that post one pointing out why the article/source is bullshit that I can copy and paste elsewhere. Searching through comments is a pain on my preferred mobile app (idk about the desktop web interface, but I can’t imagine it’s a lot better), and it would be just about impossible to know which post’s comments would have the comment saying “oh, btw the Epoch Times is out with some fresh nonsense this morning, they’re claiming x y and z, but in reality a b and c”.
Interesting to see last.fm, am I missing something?
In that case the issue is that it’s user generated content. Just as you’d cite the references listed after a Wikipedia article for the source of that information rather than Wikipedia itself, Wikipedia policy favors references to established publications over those compiled by users in a manner similar to Wikipedia itself.
For the information to be verifiable, its original source has to be both clear and reputable.
Banning from this community won’t make them disappear from site like facebook and twitter that have millions of more visitors, but it will keep people in this community from seeing the kinds of things facebook and twitter users see.
Bad articles from bad sources are a problem that should be solved by an intelligent and active community that downvotes and leaves comments pointing out the article and/or source’s weakness. If the moderators don’t think we have a strong enough community for that this might be necessary, but I don’t think it is.
For those worried about blocking certain viewpoints, it’s important to note that the sources on the list aren’t there for the unpopularity of their opinions, but rather the frequent publication of misinformation. For instance, Fox News, despite its frequent bias, is not one of the publications on the list.
As others have noted, the list can essentially be summarized as state-sponsored, tabloid, and extremist media outlets that, intentionally or not, have editing standards that result in misinformation on a regular basis.
