User:Norseman/MturDeleted

Deleted by TK. Norseman pwns you. lol

Title: User talk:Mtur/Critique of "Liberal Quotient"

Revision as of 14:26, 22 May 2007 You really shouldn't use those numbers from the Wikipedia chategorization. You only suggest that it might be possible to use those numbers. But there are too many problems with it. Any attempt to do math with it just seems to legitimate it. User:Order April 5, 2:00 (AEST) Well, the main issue is that Andy asserted they're valid (tons of people told him they aren't, but he won't listen). There are objections against these numbers in the intro, but the point is (from what I can see) the issue of Andy's fairly weird "Liberal Quotient" and the offering of alternatives using numbers Andy declared to be valid. At least that's what I read in there. -- Sid3050 04:55, 5 April 2007 (EDT) I am not sure is Andy will ever admit that his 'quotient' is not the only reasonable alternative. But thanks for listing issues with the 'quotient' on you user page. The keeps us from repeating the same discussion over and over again. User:Order 6 April, 11:22  Suggestion We could prove how bad the sample is by going on Wikipedia, and adding to the list of conservatives, it wouldn't be all that hard to make the conservatives at least equal to the liberals. -- Tim (CPAdmin1) talk 23:22, 7 May 2007 (EDT)  That is indeed the case. Especially with such a small sample. I am surprised that noted individuals such as User:Andysch (no user page, but a participant at the original AFD), User:Ed_Poor do not list conservative as their political leaning on Wikipedia. An important realization on this is that even if you were to have a 'membership drive' and get 300 conservatives to sign up (making the "Liberal Quotient" 0.6 - close to the American populace) it wouldn't have any change to the articles themselves. It would be curious to go through and try to compute the Liberal Quotient on Conservapedia based on user boxes and see if this is 5x more conservative than the American public or something equally lacking in meaning.  I would also like to point out (as your user page demonstrates) that 'conservative' is not a simple label (you don't even list yourself with a single "I am ..." (liberal, moderate, conservative)). A conservative in the UK is not the same as one on this side of the pond. And so, using such tags to attempt to measure political bias has a problem that needs to be addressed right there.  I will also put forward that if you are attempting to measure the bias of a website, it is not the collection of the authors, but rather the material that is written that should be measured.: If you really want to try to see how much liberal Wikipedia is than the American public, the thing to do would be to take, some number - lets say 50 articles. Then, go to the public and ask them as part of a proper survey (not self selected, not on the web) and ask two questions of each article:  On a scale from 1 to 5, (1 meaning liberal, 5 meaning conservative) the article that I have read is a ___  On a scale from 1 to 5, (1 meaning strongly disagree, 5 meaning strongly agree) the article that I have read is a ___  <dd> To properly do this, it is also important to flip the values so that 1 is conservative is 5 is liberal in an attempt to remove any association bias. <dd> Then, do the same for 50 articles on Conservapedia. Mix all 100 articles up together as a single survey. <dd> I believe the results would be surprising for those with a strong opinion about bias in various sources. -- Mtur 23:43, 7 May 2007 (EDT) </dl> <dd><dd>you wouldn't even have to do a "membership drive", just create a bunch of new accounts. -- Tim (CPAdmin1) talk 23:48, 7 May 2007 (EDT) <dd> While that would technically work equally as well, it is a hollow victory when they would all be sock accounts. Just think of the spin that would be put out "Wikipedia bans 200 conservative users for saying they are conservative". It is all the more important to have the individuals proudly proclaim "I am conservative" and have the balance be seen that way. If all of the conservative users on Conservapedia were to create wikipedia accounts or have their wikipedia accounts show the conservative user box, that would be nearly enough to get a 1:1 balance. -- Mtur 23:55, 7 May 2007 (EDT) </dl></dl></dl> <dd><dd><dd><dd>I wasn't saying to actually create 200 accounts, just another proof of the poor quality of the sample. PS. I don't think WP would notice the socks, they have alot of users. -- Tim (CPAdmin1) talk 23:58, 7 May 2007 (EDT) </dl></dl></dl></dl> <dd><dd><dd><dd><dd> True. Though, I suspect while WP people wouldn't notice socks directly, the WP software does start throwing up alerts when large numbers of users are created from one IP address in a certain time frame which then leads to people looking at it. -- Mtur 00:00, 8 May 2007 (EDT) </dl></dl></dl></dl></dl> What about political non-Euclidians? Not every political argument fits neatly on the Conservative-to-Liberal axis. How do those get calcuated in? -- Gulik3 21:55, 21 May 2007 (EDT) <dd> Indeed. This is an issue. With comparing to Wikipedia, it becomes a bit more difficult. Is it reasonable to take all the people who are listed with a political template and toss them in moderate? I don't think this would be fair (there are some people who are conservative monarchists, and others who are liberal monarchists, though the both consider themselves monarchists). Thus, the moderate section is drastically under reported on Wikipedia. With the Harris poll, many people who don't identify strongly (be it conservative democrats or moderate republicans) often label themselves as moderate - they don't have a strong identification to either end of the polarized spectrum. </dd><dd>The Harris poll has the advantage of there are only three answers (four if you count 'no answer'). With Wikipedia, there are as many answers as you want (make up one if its not there) and thus comparing the two is not a valid comparison. This, ultimately is the problem with the Liberal Quotient. -- Mtur 14:26, 22 May 2007 (EDT)