Snooganssnoogans true & false search

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Snooganssnoogans true & false search

Unread post by pumpkinhead » Mon Aug 05, 2019 8:08 pm

I searched snooganssnoogans' edits (diffs) from the previous ~4 years, from the beginning through 28 July, 2019, for specific words to do a comparison. I selected 554 biographical articles (out of about 1000 that he has edited) that are about living Americans whose articles contain a political party affiliation of either Democrat or Republican. I searched his edits of those articles for the words "true", "false", "falsely", "falsehood", and "pants-on-fire" in inserted text (excluding citations), and counted the number of times that they were used as judgments about the truth of statements made by people. The table below shows the results by political party affiliation.
***
               Republican      Democrat
               -----------    ---------
     true          0             3
     false       208 (-14)       3 (-2)
***
The tallies include:

* "revert" edits (i.e., text that was deleted or modified by other editors but reinserted by snooganssnoogans); this occurs as many as 5 or 10 times for some articles

* statements made by someone that appear in another person's article

* judgments that are attributed to sources (i.e., not in wiki-voice)

* judgments of "mostly true" or "mostly false"

The tallies exclude:

* judgments of "half-true"

The counts in parentheses (negative numbers) are of edits that were deleted or softened by other editors (e.g., changed "false" to "unsubstantiated"), but not reverted by snooganssnoogans.

I don't claim that the numbers I got are precisely correct, because it is likely that mistakes were made in counting. Also, my semi-automated procedure for counting might be flawed.

Other considerations are that, of the 554 articles selected (not all about politicians), 396 are Republicans, and 158 are Democrats (almost 2:1), and that there might be a selection bias because of the sources used for citations.

I would estimate that the number of unique statements or assertions judged (omitting "revert" edits and duplications in multiple articles) is between 50 and 75.

I decided to do this analysis after reading a disscussion on the talk page for the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez article. There, an editor accused snooganssnoogans of partisan editing. Snooganssnoogans replied:
I'd also like to add that I've added negative things to the AOC article,[1][2] despite your suggestion that I approach Wikipedia with nothing but "hatred and contempt for all things Republican or conservative"...
I noticed that the two "negative things" that snooganssnoogans added had been removed by other editors, and were no longer present in the article. Since snooganssnoogans is notable for being an assertive editor, it seemed uncharacteristic for him not to revert those removals. I wondered if it was due to AOC's political affiliation (she's a Democrat).


Below is an (incomplete) list of the sources used by snooganssnoogans for citations:

------------------- sources for "true" judgments (2) -----------------------
https://www.politifact.com/texas/statem ... -donations
http://www.politifact.com/georgia/state ... ent-waste/

------------------- sources for "false" judgments (82) ----------------------
http://forward.com/articles/9621/koch-c ... h-council/
http://iowapublicradio.org/post/candida ... m#stream/0
https://apnews.com/a76e5fe299fc4a8b95533efc66573d99
https://climatefeedback.org/claimreview ... e-warming/
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/10/25/poli ... index.html
https://newrepublic.com/minutes/145615/ ... sa-no-dont
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/roy-moore- ... al-anthem/
https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/18/politics ... index.html
https://www.factcheck.org/2014/12/chene ... red-facts/
https://www.factcheck.org/2015/09/plann ... -services/
https://www.factcheck.org/2018/03/smith ... ate-op-ed/
https://www.factcheck.org/2018/12/trump ... te-report/
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/mitch-mc ... fbde1f42a8
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktak ... ing-rights
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-sho ... ealth-bill
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/20/worl ... trump.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/28/us/p ... check.html
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/02/ ... ory-423413
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/07/ ... ump-691546
https://www.politifact.com/florida/stat ... -he-didnt/
https://www.politifact.com/florida/stat ... socialist/
https://www.politifact.com/florida/stat ... bill-nels/
https://www.politifact.com/florida/stat ... venezuela/
https://www.politifact.com/health-check ... hutter-ho/
https://www.politifact.com/north-caroli ... -election-$
https://www.politifact.com/north-caroli ... se-during/
https://www.politifact.com/north-caroli ... type-elec/
https://www.politifact.com/punditfact/s ... russia-in/
https://www.politifact.com/texas/statem ... legals-co/
https://www.politifact.com/texas/statem ... suicide-h/
https://www.politifact.com/texas/statem ... hout-merit
https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-mete ... esents-ice$
https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-mete ... ic-candid/
https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-mete ... l-justice/
https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-mete ... nues-goin/
https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-mete ... pecial-co/
https://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/st ... uck-bills/
https://www.propublica.org/article/we-f ... ealth-care
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump ... n-execute/
https://www.syracuse.com/politics/index ... _york.html
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-fal ... tax-reform
https://www.vox.com/2019/4/18/18485512/ ... ah-sanders
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fac ... ud-claims/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fac ... nts-are-re$
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fac ... are-legisl$
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fac ... l-had-noth$
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fac ... dia-blitz/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... e-existing$
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... terrorism/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... ck-debate/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... ct-checks/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... -hearings/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... out-citing$
https://www.wfae.org/post/fact-check-fa ... voter-bill
https://www.wsj.com/articles/acting-att ... 1545844613
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rThc2mS51ik
http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/pre ... n-clintons
http://theweek.com/speedreads/647604/do ... -bandwagon
http://time.com/5520715/state-union-don ... act-check/
http://uk.businessinsider.com/who-is-ro ... ?r=US&IR=T
http://www.businessinsider.com/bill-nye ... 014-2?IR=T
http://www.factcheck.org/2016/12/facts- ... a-nominee/
http://www.factcheck.org/2017/03/pruitt-paris-accord/
http://www.factcheck.org/2017/09/ed-gil ... s-attacks/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/don ... 0dfdfc58c7
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/scien ... ts-a775487$
http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/ ... -htmlstory$
http://www.niemanlab.org/2018/07/twitte ... hat-it-is/
http://www.politifact.com/california/st ... supporting
http://www.politifact.com/florida/state ... ing-opioi/
http://www.politifact.com/pennsylvania/ ... ouse-tax-/
http://www.politifact.com/pennsylvania/ ... nope-not-/
http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/st ... eople-vot/
http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/st ... free-2009/
http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/st ... ed-temper/
http://www.politifact.com/texas/stateme ... ders-and-/
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter ... es-much-c/
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter ... re-manipu/
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter ... an-ambass/
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter ... in-migrat/
http://www.politifact.com/virginia/stat ... cut-viole/
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/05/ ... level-rise

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Re: Snooganssnoogans true & false search

Unread post by Kumioko » Mon Aug 05, 2019 8:26 pm

:welcome:

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Re: Snooganssnoogans true & false search

Unread post by Poetlister » Mon Aug 05, 2019 8:27 pm

This is certainly strongly suggestive of a certain POV. To make it watertight, someone else would need to repeat the analysis independently to confirm the broad picture.
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Re: Snooganssnoogans true & false search

Unread post by AndyTheGrump » Mon Aug 05, 2019 8:33 pm

Last time I looked, there wasn't actually anything in Wikipedia policy that says you can't edit articles on people you hold contempt for. Which means that the edits themselves need to be looked at, I'd have thought. Why aren't the edits listed along with the sources cited?

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Re: Snooganssnoogans true & false search

Unread post by Pudeo » Tue Aug 06, 2019 2:36 pm

Yeah, no one is going to force him to write content critical of the Democrats and positive of the Republicans. Wikipedia is a volunteer project, though in theory WP:advocacy (T-H-L) is not accepted.

That said, his editing reminds of some Reddit accounts that post "information packages" with citations and sources to current topics discussed there. Usually they posted the same message to several threads about the particular news event.

This is what an article section looks like after many "add study" edits by Snoogans. Simply listing studies makes very poor prose, but I suppose it's effective in passing information. Additionally, he copied the whole text word-to-word to another article, resulting in 12,500 bytes of duplicate information.

When the former CBS reporter Sharyl Attkisson retweeted a direct link to Snooganssnoogans' contribs, some people there ridiculed the fact that Snoogans had started editing at 10 a.m. and stopped at 2.a.m, taking almost no breaks. That certainly is impressive and makes him a one-man information machine.

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Re: Snooganssnoogans true & false search

Unread post by Poetlister » Tue Aug 06, 2019 3:48 pm

AndyTheGrump wrote:Last time I looked, there wasn't actually anything in Wikipedia policy that says you can't edit articles on people you hold contempt for.
We need a new policy then. :)

I suppose it could be argued that you can't maintain NPOV if you have strong views, for or against, and NPOV ought to be strictly enforced for BLPs. Thus anyone who is obviously biased ought to get a topic ban. But can you imagine what would happen if that sort of policy were enforced?

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Re: Snooganssnoogans true & false search

Unread post by Tarc » Tue Aug 06, 2019 5:40 pm

So, what is the point here, exactly, other than to affirm the "reality has a well-known liberal bias" aphorism?
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Re: Snooganssnoogans true & false search

Unread post by Dysklyver » Tue Aug 06, 2019 6:28 pm

Tarc wrote:So, what is the point here, exactly, other than to affirm the "reality has a well-known liberal bias" aphorism?
I think a reasonable conclusion would be that Snooganssnoogans really really likes politifact.com and has made a hobby out of adding to Wikipedia's famous liberal bias using it.

:like:
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Re: Snooganssnoogans true & false search

Unread post by Midsize Jake » Tue Aug 06, 2019 7:52 pm

Tarc wrote:So, what is the point here, exactly, other than to affirm the "reality has a well-known liberal bias" aphorism?
I was going to ask the same thing myself, but most of the criticism about Snooganssnoogans (T-C-L) is that he's biased in favor of the Democrats in the US specifically, as opposed to being biased in favor of liberal ideology in general. Maybe Mr. Bezdomni will want to comment on that (or maybe he won't, since I think he might be under some sort of WP-based restriction about this) - he's had run-ins with him before (as User:SashiRolls on WP), and he's no conservative.

For most people this is likely to be a distinction without a difference, since the Republicans are now pretty solidly behind Donald Trump and therefore they're having to defend a truly extraordinary amount of lying and political deceit on a daily basis. But I guess the point is that on Wikipedia at least, it looks worse to be a "shill" for a specific party or other organization than it does to just follow a general belief system or whatever.

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Re: Snooganssnoogans true & false search

Unread post by Poetlister » Tue Aug 06, 2019 8:31 pm

This is to some extent a purely US issue, since in most civilised countries what would be regarded as the main dividing line issues between Democrats and Republicans are resolved in the Democrats' favour.
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Re: Snooganssnoogans true & false search

Unread post by Bezdomni » Tue Aug 06, 2019 11:56 pm

I didn't realize it was possible to constitute an analyzable corpus based on one person's contributions.

How did you do that, anyway? Do you work out at an SQL gym?
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Re: Snooganssnoogans true & false search

Unread post by Tarc » Wed Aug 07, 2019 9:42 pm

Dysklyver wrote:
Tarc wrote:So, what is the point here, exactly, other than to affirm the "reality has a well-known liberal bias" aphorism?
I think a reasonable conclusion would be that Snooganssnoogans really really likes politifact.com and has made a hobby out of adding to Wikipedia's famous liberal bias using it.
Perhaps, but there are much more effective ways to ensure our "liberal bias" remains in effect in political articles. Ridding the topic area of one's opponents takes more time & effort, but the rewards pay off in the long run.

Look at poor Wumbolo (T-C-L), once that gnat was flicked out of the politcs articles, things have been much smoother lately.
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Re: Snooganssnoogans true & false search

Unread post by Katnips » Wed Aug 07, 2019 10:36 pm

There's a broader issue here with the use of PolitiFact. It is a reliable source, sure. But its individual use in any given case can easily become undue. Thousands of PolitiFact articles have been published, including usually at least a dozen or so on each major political figure, and Snoog (along with other editors) will selectively add one or two of them. There is a definite selection bias there (what, exactly, is the criteria for which PolitiFacts to feature on Joe Blow's article when there are a dozen PolitiFacts relating to Joe Blow?). And the PolitiFacts are generally being used as "gotchas" (as it is more often than not the "lies" than the "truths" that are added). I don't really think PolitiFact should be getting used in this way, so it probably just shouldn't be getting used at all. I can't find a diff now, but he also will add content to Democratic pages along the lines of "Republican X says Democrat Y is a big dirty pinko, a claim which PolitiFact found to be false." If it is a smear that has been found to be false, why give it more air time? Isn't there a BLP aspect there? It seems dumb to go around repeating false claims that have been made about someone since they are evidently false.

As I've noted for some time, Snoog's issues are more general than PolitiFact. For instance, he added https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... =906798124 to National Review. Pretty terrible editing, which fails to mention that both HuffPost and Forbes did the same thing as NR (and he obviously didn't add this content to the articles on those outlets--so more selection bias--why pick 1/3 outlets that a piece is about?). He also fails to mention NR's retraction. And the greatest sin of all is that it's a prose nightmare (incomplete sentences, oh my!) I found the NR particularly interesting since he evidently doesn't have enough of a problem with NR to think it's a https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... =904934765 fine source here.

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Re: Snooganssnoogans true & false search

Unread post by Midsize Jake » Thu Aug 08, 2019 1:36 am

Katnips wrote:And the PolitiFacts are generally being used as "gotchas" (as it is more often than not the "lies" than the "truths" that are added). I don't really think PolitiFact should be getting used in this way, so it probably just shouldn't be getting used at all.
That really just depends on the situation, doesn't it? Or more accurately, the prominence of the person making the statement at issue (whether or not it's true or false) and the extent to which the statement/claim has spread via the media. And it's better that they use something rather than nothing, at least.
I can't find a diff now, but he also will add content to Democratic pages along the lines of "Republican X says Democrat Y is a big dirty pinko, a claim which PolitiFact found to be false." If it is a smear that has been found to be false, why give it more air time? Isn't there a BLP aspect there? It seems dumb to go around repeating false claims that have been made about someone since they are evidently false.
I couldn't find any within the last year; the closest I got was this diff on the article about Peter Strzok, which mentions Trump's false (and frankly absurd) claim that "19,000 text messages between Strzok and (Lisa) Page were purposely & illegally deleted." But Strzok isn't really a Democrat, and he certainly isn't a politician. If Snoogans is making a calculation there between "make Trump look bad" vs. "protect Strzok," presumably making Trump look bad is a no-brainer for him. That said, if we have to go back that far to find even that example, I'd have to say this isn't really one of the more problematic aspects of his behavior.

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Re: Snooganssnoogans true & false search

Unread post by Katnips » Thu Aug 08, 2019 1:59 am

I can't find a diff now, but he also will add content to Democratic pages along the lines of "Republican X says Democrat Y is a big dirty pinko, a claim which PolitiFact found to be false." If it is a smear that has been found to be false, why give it more air time? Isn't there a BLP aspect there? It seems dumb to go around repeating false claims that have been made about someone since they are evidently false.
Found an example of what I was talking about with adding the rebutted claims to Democratic pages (in this instance it's not a PolitiFact but a CNN fact check). Here https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... =907420011 he adds "During the election, President Trump falsely claimed that McCready "wants to take away your guns", "raise your taxes", "likes open borders", and "really admires socialism." ''CNN'' described Trump's claims as comprehensively inaccurate, as McCready advocates for tax cuts for the middle class, does not advocate for taking guns away and supports physical barriers on the border." I mean...is it reasonable to plant the seed that he might want to "take away people's guns" even if you go on to rebut it...? I think it's a bit strange to use anything Trump says as a barometer for reality, and this is the way this content seems to be framed.

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Re: Snooganssnoogans true & false search

Unread post by Midsize Jake » Thu Aug 08, 2019 5:12 am

Katnips wrote:...is it reasonable to plant the seed that he might want to "take away people's guns" even if you go on to rebut it...? I think it's a bit strange to use anything Trump says as a barometer for reality, and this is the way this content seems to be framed.
OK, fair question. I guess maybe you could say that the fact that it was on CNN, which presumably has a wider audience than Politifact, and that Trump had made the initial false claims during a rally in North Carolina which is the very state in which McCready is running for a House seat, and the fact that it's a "do-over" election because the Republican candidate ran a ballot-fraud operation during the general, and that the election has yet to take place, tends to "up the ante" on this particular article.

I know a lot of people probably think I've got an unusual amount of enmity towards Trump, and of course I do, but in this case if it were someone other than Trump making the false claim, I think I would probably agree with you. Unfortunately, Trump has thrown out the rulebook and now nobody really knows how to deal with the effect this has had on "political discourse," such as it is. (This is what I keep saying, I know, sorry.) And there's a basic assumption among many Democrats that they can't allow the "normalization" of such an extraordinary level of lying, manipulation, and criminality, and even if Republican voters are just going to ignore it (if they even see it at all), it still has to be pointed it out as such, wherever possible (or at least practical).

So... I don't mean to move the goalposts or anything, but I guess I'd like to see some examples where a Republican other than Trump lied about a Democrat's positions and Snoogans added it to that Democrat's article, cited to Politifact or whatever. I also don't mean to harp on this one aspect of Snoogans' editing behavior, but if he's ever going to be reined in (for good or ill), I agree that it would be easier to make the case if he's consistently doing his thing on articles from "both sides of the aisle" - even inadvertently.

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Re: Snooganssnoogans true & false search

Unread post by Poetlister » Thu Aug 08, 2019 12:25 pm

Katnips wrote:There's a broader issue here with the use of PolitiFact. It is a reliable source, sure. But its individual use in any given case can easily become undue. Thousands of PolitiFact articles have been published, including usually at least a dozen or so on each major political figure, and Snoog (along with other editors) will selectively add one or two of them. There is a definite selection bias there (what, exactly, is the criteria for which PolitiFacts to feature on Joe Blow's article when there are a dozen PolitiFacts relating to Joe Blow?).
This is a major problem with Wikipedia. Look, this article is good! Everything in it is referenced to a reliable source! But the sources have been carefully selected by a POV or even COI editor to prove a point, and of course they may not prove exactly what the article says.
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Re: Snooganssnoogans true & false search

Unread post by Bezdomni » Fri Aug 09, 2019 8:32 am

Thanks for the posts Katnips, those are some good examples. In their haste to not waste too much time, they also got the date of the article appearing in National Review wrong. I'll save Tarc the trouble of coming and pointing out that he couldn't have spun the story into the Forbes article & the HuffPost article due to the AE sanction prohibiting him from making mass edits in AP2. (Just following the rules, officer!)
Arbitration Enforcement Decision wrote:Snooganssnoogans is banned from mass editing in the area of American Politics post-1932 for an indefinite period of time. This means adding (more or less) the same material to more than two articles.

source
I've updated the NR entry. My proposed text might stick as long as the Snoog's did, but only because he watches Wikipediocracy & Wikipedia Sucks like a hawk.
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Re: Snooganssnoogans true & false search

Unread post by Katnips » Fri Aug 09, 2019 7:29 pm

I've updated the NR entry. My proposed text might stick as long as the Snoog's did, but only because he watches Wikipediocracy & Wikipedia Sucks like a hawk.
Yet he never adds what's said about him here to his user page hall of fame! He is facing a bit of scrutiny at the moment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... bard_again and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... _Team_Blue but I'm sure it'll blow over as usual (just waiting for Neutrality to chime in!)

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Re: Snooganssnoogans true & false search

Unread post by Poetlister » Fri Aug 09, 2019 7:36 pm

Katnips wrote:Yet he never adds what's said about him here to his user page hall of fame!
WP:SOFIXIT; that would be a public service. :D
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Re: Snooganssnoogans true & false search

Unread post by pumpkinhead » Fri May 01, 2020 4:01 pm

Thanks for all of your replies. I did another "analysis".

I searched snooganssnoogans edits (diffs) again, this time counting the occurrences of words. I parsed his edits and for each word updated a count for the word by subtracting one for each deletion and adding one for each addition in the "diffs". The generated list of words is sorted from the most deleted (negative counts) to the most added (positive counts) and is partially reproduced below, omitting the bulk of the list in the middle for words with small counts (website names in citations were also counted):
-510 illegal
-234 introduced
-225 issues
-171 aliens
-164 bill
-153 including
-153 www.youtube.com
-152 hanson
-134 skin
-133 regarding
-128 america
-127 caucus
-126 journalist
-121 although
-121 world
-118 national
-116 member
-110 program
-108 also
-106 www.foxnews.com
-104 kucinich
-101 iraq
-98 now
-95 like
-95 www.congress.gov
-92 freedom
-92 this
-91 israel
-89 free
-88 alien
-88 include
-87 many
-85 others
-84 bills
-84 congress
-82 infrastructure
-80 our
-80 transportation
-80 www.nationalreview.com

...

364 thehill.com
365 democratic
370 american
379 who
382 times
383 news
388 iceland
390 clinton
392 www.politifact.com
393 falsely
395 states
403 but
410 journal
412 she
422 www.politico.com
426 did
438 care
439 voter
440 saying
450 crime
451 likely
462 party
472 are
475 republican
480 an
482 been
490 campaign
493 or
497 immigrants
500 administration
507 political
511 after
524 change
529 white
533 president
536 when
564 voted
574 undocumented
578 obama
579 at
597 election
600 during
606 theories
617 false
640 no
644 research
650 more
669 climate
674 it
676 than
687 evidence
687 his
689 described
689 with
709 about
748 there
823 which
843 university
863 on
886 www.nytimes.com
905 were
935 not
965 would
967 conspiracy
968 have
1230 according
1280 has
1291 found
1291 www.washingtonpost.com
1362 he
1530 by
1545 said
1623 had
1700 as
1725 study
2048 was
2061 for
2674 trump
3280 and
4853 a
5224 of
6081 to
6090 in
8028 that
13420 the
The counts include "revert" edits. The counts do not include user page or talk page edits (i.e., articles only). The search range is from the beginning, September 3, 2015 through February 4, 2020. As before, I don't claim that these numbers are precisely correct, since my procedure might be flawed.

The most deleted word, "illegal", is because he replaces it with "undocumented" frequently (as in "undocumented immigrant" instead of "illegal alien").


On a separate note, on January 15, 2020 snooganssnoogans made some interesting edits to the wikipedia pages for Joanne Nova (she is a climate change heretic). Snooganssnoogans is enamored with academia, universities, and peer-review, so he inserted in her article that her books are self-published, to diminish them,
and as a source cited an obscure paper in the Australian Journal of Politics & History titled "Climate Change Sceptical Frames: The Case of Seven Australian Sceptics", that has a section about Nova. Apparently not satisfied, one minute later he started a new section on her talk page asking for reliable sources to substantiate her association with Austrialian National University. Four days later, after getting no replies, he removed from her article the claim that she was an associate lecturer of science communication at ANU, with "poorly sourced" as the reason given. It's funny, because the "Seven Austrialian Sceptics" paper that he cited says (in the next sentence after the sentence about her books being self-published):
She graduated in the field of biology and worked as Associate Lecturer of Science Communication at the Australian National University.
I am guessing that he did a keyword search for "Nova" and "self-published" and then, excited by finding a supporting source, rushed to add it to her article without reading the next sentence.

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Re: Snooganssnoogans true & false search

Unread post by Poetlister » Fri May 01, 2020 5:53 pm

Thank you for this splendid work. That's rich material for assessing POVs. Refusing to accept that thre are illegal aliens is obvious. Frequent additions of "trump" (presumably Mr Trump) doesn't of itself tell us whether the references are favourable or otherwise but I'm sure that we can guess.
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Re: Snooganssnoogans true & false search

Unread post by Bezdomni » Sat May 02, 2020 12:59 am

From the beginning, I've been as interested in how you're doing this as the actual results, revealing though they do seem to be. What concordancer are you using? Is cleaning up the data difficult?

(I'm currently working on the 100 most common words in English, so seeing "trump" and "conspiracy" show up with greater frequency than some of those words, well... I'd want to run the same scan on (subsets of) my own contribs before drawing too many conclusions though...)

Also, if you have a bubble graph machine to prettify Snoog's userpage with these findings, I'm sure they couldn't say no. :D
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Re: Snooganssnoogans true & false search

Unread post by pumpkinhead » Sat May 02, 2020 4:12 am

(replying to Bezdomni)
I write the software myself, in C. I use the curl library to download diffs, in HTML format. I did not have to do much cleaning up for the list of words posted above.


Below are listed counts for the words "conservative", "liberal", and "progressive", and a few variations of those words. In this case, I did clean up the list by omitting website names, some superfluous variations, and words with zero counts.

-8 neoconservatives
1 paleoconservatives
3 ultra-conservative
5 neoconservative
23 conservatives
224 conservative

-5 neoliberal
-1 ex-liberal
-1 non-liberal
2 liberal
4 neoliberals
10 liberals

-19 progressive

Snooganssnoogans adds the word "conservative" more frequently than the others.

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Re: Snooganssnoogans true & false search

Unread post by Poetlister » Sat May 02, 2020 10:18 am

pumpkinhead wrote:
Sat May 02, 2020 4:12 am
Snooganssnoogans adds the word "conservative" more frequently than the others.
That could cut both ways. He is making small removals of pejorative terms like paleoconservatives and ultra-conservative.
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Re: Snooganssnoogans true & false search

Unread post by Pudeo » Sat May 02, 2020 10:07 pm

pumpkinhead wrote:
Sat May 02, 2020 4:12 am
Below are listed counts for the words "conservative", "liberal", and "progressive", and a few variations of those words. In this case, I did clean up the list by omitting website names, some superfluous variations, and words with zero counts.

-8 neoconservatives
1 paleoconservatives
3 ultra-conservative
5 neoconservative
23 conservatives
224 conservative

-5 neoliberal
-1 ex-liberal
-1 non-liberal
2 liberal
4 neoliberals
10 liberals

-19 progressive

Snooganssnoogans adds the word "conservative" more frequently than the others.
The Daily Telegraph has called a phenomenon like this political "health warnings". That is, you label views you don't like as "conservative", "socialist" or so, but if you agree with the view, you don't add any labels because it's better if it looks like an objective stance.

Of course, this is very effective in Wikipedia because the lead sections pop up in Google and there's also a good chance of citogenesis.

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Re: Snooganssnoogans true & false search

Unread post by Poetlister » Sun May 03, 2020 9:07 am

Pudeo wrote:
Sat May 02, 2020 10:07 pm
The Daily Telegraph[/url] has called a phenomenon like this political "health warnings". That is, you label views you don't like as "conservative", "socialist" or so, but if you agree with the view, you don't add any labels because it's better if it looks like an objective stance.

Of course, this is very effective in Wikipedia because the lead sections pop up in Google and there's also a good chance of citogenesis.
I think that you have to watch out for capitalisation. While "Conservative" is pejorstive in many quarters, "conservative" might not seem so bad. Similarly "Liberal" and "liberal".
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Re: Snooganssnoogans true & false search

Unread post by pumpkinhead » Sat Mar 19, 2022 10:27 pm

I did another analysis of snooganssnoogans edits, this time searching for edits where the word "rights" is added or removed in subsection titles. In the date range searched (from the beginning through 2020) he removed "rights" from Gun rights section titles 5 times, added "rights" to LGBT titles 11 times, and added "rights" in 3 Abortion (or related) titles.

The diff numbers are also listed. They can be used to see the diffs as in this example:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/?diff=955372992

 -1 gun rights (John Cornyn)                                 955372992
 -1 gun rights (Ken Cuccinelli)                              898412687
 -1 gun rights (Mitch McConnell)                             863003286
 -1 gun rights (Pat Roberts)                                 827127478
 -1 gun rights (Thad Cochran)                                795317402

 -1 lgbt issues (Ken Paxton)                                 956523844
 -1 lgbt policy (Tom MacArthur)                              935253170
 -1 lgbt policy (Presidency of Donald Trump)                 897721879
 -1 same-sex marriage and lgbt issues (Shelley Moore Capito) 895303988
 -1 lgbt (Rod Blum)                                          867742058
 -1 lgbt (Doug Jones (politician))                           852680440
 -1 lgbt (Steve Scalise)                                     843713800
 -1 lgbt issues (Dan Lipinski)                               827595530
 -1 lgbt (Ron DeSantis)                                      823115703
 -1 lgbt issues (Karen Handel)                               772876132
 -1 lgbt issues (Jason Chaffetz)                             768099498

 presidency of Donald Trump (Reproductive rights)            995407719
 Scott Tipton (added)                                        765294543
 Martha Roby (changed section title)                         764965386

He never added "rights" to Guns section titles, and never removed "rights" from LGBT rights or Abortion rights titles.

On a separate note, in another thread on wikipediocracy it was mentioned that snooganssnoogans nominated and successfully got deleted the wikipedia article for Kyle Kulinski. Kyle is a popular progressive political commentator on youtube who supported Bernie Sanders for president. Presumably, the motive to delete his article was to prevent Kyle from siphoning votes from Joe Biden in the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Nobody has replied in that thread that his article was restored after the election - so I'll mention it here. Here is a link to the page views for the Kyle Kulinski article from 2018 through March 2022:

https://pageviews.wmcloud.org/?project= ... e_Kulinski

And on another separate note, Todd Starnes is a radio talk show host and conservative Republican who has a wikipedia article. Snooganssnoogans made this edit to his article which is pretty funny:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/?diff=993818298

That got reverted soon afterwards, but similar wording had been in the article for over a year.

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Re: Snooganssnoogans true & false search

Unread post by Katnips » Sun May 22, 2022 2:05 am

Snoog recently had Diannaa revdel his user page for privacy concerns (he famously used to keep a list of all the mean things people said about him online, and apparently came to realize that this inadvertently outed his real life identity) then had himself renamed to User:Thenightaway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Thenightaway

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