Talk:Anti-abortion March for Life draws thousands in Washington, D.C.

I notice that you keep changing American/Oxford spelling to British (organization to organisation, etc.). Is there a reason for this? Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:18, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

Review of revision 4283469 [Passed]

 * Do you mean that you think the article should say that most Americans prefer keeping abortion legal or that the pro-choice quote at the end is too much? Darkfrog24 (talk) 22:17, 28 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Hmm? The former. I didn't have anything to say about the quote. (Of course, any article can always be made better with more detail...) It survives as it is, but I had to think about it. BRS  (Talk)   (Contribs) 22:21, 28 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Just checking. Of course we want to avoid false equivalence, but we didn't put any "are they right"/"are they wrong" stats in with the Queer Rager article. Darkfrog24 (talk) 22:52, 28 January 2017 (UTC)
 * She's up. How do you like the placement? Darkfrog24 (talk) 23:24, 28 January 2017 (UTC)
 * That's kinda how I figured I would pass on NPOV. We don't even usually have these figures available to report for a lot of protests. I like it, incidentally, it's unobtrusive and works well. BRS  (Talk)   (Contribs) 00:14, 29 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks. That seemed like a good place for it.  Pence says what's essentially an assertion that more people are becoming anti-abortion; that's a good place for a poll that says that they're not.  Abortion polls can be tricky, though.  A huge part of the results depends on how the question is phrased.  That's why I was careful to keep the part specifying that the poll was about whether people supported Roe v Wade and not "abortion." Darkfrog24 (talk) 01:56, 29 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Also... There's a belief out among the exiles that Wikipedia skews too liberal.  I have absolutely no problem with Wikipedia being exactly as biased as the overall media that provides its source material, so it'll be a little liberal for systemic reasons.  But what I've heard people complain about is a lot more scrutiny for conservative sources than for liberal ones.  They're not saying that the pro-liberal stuff isn't properly sourced; they're saying that conservative stuff gets left out.  And I'm coming out here to this part of Project Wiki that, unlike Wikipedia, doesn't have so many editors that it can be reasonably expected to cover everything eventually, so it has to pick and choose what to write about.  We're definitely at more risk of skewing toward our own personal political beliefs (and why not?  If I'm doing the work, I should cover stories that I think are fun or worth my time and it's not like conservative Wikieditors can't come on down whenever they want).  I think we need to put some extra effort into the balancing act.  We've got an opportunity. Darkfrog24 (talk) 02:13, 29 January 2017 (UTC)
 * We cover what somebody chooses to write (well enough to be publishable) and somebody else chooses to review. Skew through choice of stories is a natural consequence, subject to (1) we don't claim to be comprehensive and (2) we are, as you note, able to redress the balance somewhat ourselves, and the sort of people attracted to Wikinews contribution tend to be the sort of people who want to be fair.  What really changes the calculation is that, in practice, "neutrality" means something different on Wikinews than on Wikipedia.  I've been preparing for years to write an essay about it (because honestly I don't think WN:NPOV does at all well at explaining), but it's remarkably difficult to cast into words (in prospect; hopefully it'll look easy in retrospect).  A key point is that we have the luxury of aspiring to concrete objective facts; never mind the impossibility of achieving perfection, Wikipedia can't even aspire to limit itself this way because the whole purpose of an encyclopedia is to summarize knowledge.  Much knowledge is subjective, and summary is pretty much an inherently subjective activity (we try to avoid it on Wikinews); so Wikipedia couldn't use Wikinews's approach to neutrality if it wanted to.  Instead Wikipedia has this notion of "balance", the implementation of which is wall-to-wall subjective judgements.  --Pi zero (talk) 02:45, 29 January 2017 (UTC)
 * As I saw PiZ remark recently, polls/surveys do tend to 'confirm' whatever their authors expect them to confirm. You're hitting the nail on the head in terms of the way systemic bias manifests itself on this wiki. I try to counter it in my story choices, sometimes; sometimes, if I really want to write an ultimately minor story from a region we cover extensively, I do just that. BRS  (Talk)   (Contribs) 18:15, 29 January 2017 (UTC)