> Based on empirical data drawn from a series of interviews and an exhaustive analysis of its cases between 2004 and 2020, this paper examines the ways in which the Arbitration Committee handles conduct-related disputes between editors, and the impact of social capital, summarily defined as the “capital captured through social relations” (Lin 2001, 19), on this process. My empirical material indicates that the Arbitration Committee not only examines the merits of the claims made by the disputants, but also and more crucially facilitates a social contest by considering the position of each disputant within the community of editors. Ultimately, the Arbitration Committee seeks to “cancel” these disputes in order to preserve Wikipedia’s social fabric.
Here you go, there’s some empirical evidence that proves it. This describes a _political process_ where controversies are resolved according to the _politics_ of Wikipedia editing. I am not talking strictly about something like democrats vs republicans, or whatever your own narrow view of politics entails, as I suspect you may have presumed.
It doesn't matter how hard it is to determine his height, if it's wrong on Wikipedia, or if it's controversial. If the height is incorrect on Wikipedia it's not true or a fact. If two sources have his height and they are different only one is true, which one? No idea but there aren't multiple truths.
This line of thought is a way to muddy the difference between opinions and facts. A good opinion is one that is based on factual information, if you can claim there are multiple true but contradictory facts (like his height) it allows you have an opinion that might otherwise be based on nothing or false information.
The difference between an opinion and a fact is an opinion can't be falsified[1]. It's possible to find out his height[2], therefore there is only one truth, and other "truths" would turn out to be false.
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The paper you supplied shows social capital helps with the arbitration committee and talks about some inner circle of people who coordinate. You're right, this does prove your point and I did assume that you were talking about the more common current use of politics. I was too focused on the "facts" part of our discussion and read too quickly. That's my fault.
I don't think what you're talking about are facts. I think you're talking about Universal Truths, which don't exist in any real sense. A fact isn't something that can never be falsified. A fact is something that is widely believed to be, or proven to be true. Kevin Durant's NBA-listed height definitely meets one of those definitions already. As far as proof goes, a fact is only as true as the level of proof that you require it to meet. Given that all proofs can ultimately be falsified (at least all the ones we've seen so far)[0], the level of proof associated with any fact is going to be some arbitrary level that must exist below absolute proof.
There are sophisticated institutions in our society that are devoted to evaluating facts, and none of them have a definition of a fact that is as rigid as yours. The criminal justice system is one, they only require proof "beyond reasonable doubt" (as subjectively decided by a jury or judge) to establish a fact. The academic system is another, and their standard for establishing a fact is arguably lower, as they rely on a (perhaps similar) peer evaluation process.
It's not possible to have a fact with the characteristics you're describing. All facts can be subject to legitimate controversy.
The criminal justice system relies on multiple facts to establish proof because an individual piece of evidence can be a fact but may not prove guilt by itself. Also remember that it's a jury's opinion that determines guilt, an opinion based on facts (we hope)
I was implying "true fact" because I didn't know that it has a definition "a statement that can be proven true or false". An opinion can't be falsified right? So there's still a clear difference even though I wasn't using "fact" incorrectly.*
Let me rewind to the statement I replied to ""promote their own views as the truth (for whatever reason they have for doing that), and suppress all opposing views."
What I don't understand and you can help me with (I'm not being sarcastic at all) is that how can you push views (opinions) using truths (proven facts?) over another view without at least one of the following
1. False facts, fake sources, and other out of bounds actions
2. Omission of information
Because I think I'm beginning to understand what you might be saying. Is it that someone would want to push a view by only adding facts that could cause someone to come to a conclusion but leaving out other information that might sway them to another conclusion?
If that's true wouldn't that occur less often than other sources of information because those other sources of information are created once by a small set of authors? Books, blogs, news articles, etc. If so then isn't Wikipedia the best option?
* I think I've gotten so used to saying "fact" to mean "proven fact" obviously if that was the case there would be no way to describe incorrect facts. I'm sorry, I do appreciate your patience. I have a habit of assuming other people know what I mean.
Aside from the editorial control over which facts are included/omitted, that you rightly mention, the bigger issue with facts is who gets to decide which facts have been proven, and which haven't been. If you accept the premise that there are no universal truths, no facts that have been absolutely proven and can never possibly be falsified (a premise that you're free to reject, though I'm rather certain no proof of fact exists that cannot be invalided by the munchausen trilemma), then you should also accept that the process of validating a fact is naturally subjective.
The role of the fact validator is to evaluate the proof, and decide whether it meets a subjective criteria that elevates it to the level of fact. Controlling this process allows the fact validator to decide which information is fact, and which is not. Even when you have a rigid criteria for evaluating facts, the criteria itself is going to be subjective and opinionated, and no matter how much you try to control it, the fact validator will have some leeway in interpreting the criteria and how it applies differently for different facts.
This is one of the roles of a jury. When a jury is presented with conflicting accounts of facts (as they often are), one of their jobs is to review the evidence and come to a consensus on which facts (in their opinion) are true.
There's also the issue that statements of fact, and statements of opinion are not quite that clear cut. Consider the statement "He attempted to undermine the process", which is the sort of thing I could hypothetically imagine a fact checker attempting to validate. It's a statement of opinion that potentially alludes to statements of fact. If you break it down into how you might reach that conclusion, you'd have: "He did a thing" this is a statement of fact (whether it's "proven" or not). "The thing he did undermined the process" this is more of a statement of opinion, as it presupposes what the process is intended to do, and how the thing he did influenced that. "It was his intention for this thing that he did to undermine the process" and this is unambiguously an opinion as all cases of attributing a motive are naturally opinionated.
But keep in mind that this whole argument I'm making is based upon the idea that there are no universal truths (which relates to philosophical ideas like relativism and absurdism). These ideas have their critics (such as Plato who criticised Socrates' interpretation of them), but I've never heard any satisfactory (according to me) explanation of how you might go about proving a universal truth (with universalist ideas typically only being embraced by religion, and perhaps ironically the anti-religion moral universalist camp, people like Richard Dawkins)
> prove your last statement that a significant amount of Wikipedia editors are influenced by political
https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:4228b090-8900-4a29-baa3-66...
> Based on empirical data drawn from a series of interviews and an exhaustive analysis of its cases between 2004 and 2020, this paper examines the ways in which the Arbitration Committee handles conduct-related disputes between editors, and the impact of social capital, summarily defined as the “capital captured through social relations” (Lin 2001, 19), on this process. My empirical material indicates that the Arbitration Committee not only examines the merits of the claims made by the disputants, but also and more crucially facilitates a social contest by considering the position of each disputant within the community of editors. Ultimately, the Arbitration Committee seeks to “cancel” these disputes in order to preserve Wikipedia’s social fabric.
Here you go, there’s some empirical evidence that proves it. This describes a _political process_ where controversies are resolved according to the _politics_ of Wikipedia editing. I am not talking strictly about something like democrats vs republicans, or whatever your own narrow view of politics entails, as I suspect you may have presumed.