July 28, an administrator of Wikipedia set the "recession" entry to a semi-locked state, allowing only edits with modification qualifications to modify. Other users can make suggestions for modification, but they need to obtain approval from the entry editor, and the semi-locked period ends on August 3rd. The reason for the administrator of
is that there are a lot of controversy about the modification of this entry, which leads to repeated changes in the content of the entry and affects user usage. Semi-locking is a management specification of the Wikipedia community. (Reference
On July 28, the US Department of Commerce announced that GDP fell by 0.9% in the second quarter, after the data in the previous quarter was GDP fell by 1.6%. There is a popular saying in the market that a decline in GDP for two consecutive quarters means that the economy has entered a recession. The Biden administration is naturally unwilling to use recession to describe current economic activities.
Biden said that although the growth rate has declined, the United States has been in a state of recession. The economy is on the right path and just shifts from high growth to stable growth. Treasury Secretary Yellen also denied that the economy was in recession. She emphasized that the employment data was good, indicating that the United States has not entered a recession at the moment.
House Republican leader McCarthy mocked Biden for using his strength to modify the definition of recession rather than taking practical measures to restore economic growth. Republican National Committee Chairman McDaniel It is publicly stated that we have entered the "Biden Recession". The debate between
politicians is reflected in the Wikipedia entry, and the editing and modification of this unpopular entry reached 180 times in a week.
modifications mainly focus on the second paragraph of the entry, technical indicators of recession. A user named Soibangla tried to add a sentence at the beginning of the paragraph, and there was no consensus on how to define recession. The original entry said that although countries do not have a consensus on how to define recession, it is generally believed that GDP declines for two consecutive quarters, which is a sign of the economic fall in recession.
entries also explain the difference between the United States and other major countries on this issue, such as the United States is The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) gave a relatively long definition, while the United Kingdom and other major countries directly adopted the two consecutive quarterly declines of GDP as the recognition standard. The editorial rights of the
dimension encyclopedia are open and anyone can modify it. Therefore, many editors will delete modifications like Soibangla and restore them to their original state, which led to a war of editing. One side believes that the original statement did not emphasize that the United States did not adopt the definition of GDP decline for two consecutive quarters, while the other side believes that the original definition is not problematic.
July 21, the White House website published a blog. This blog explains to readers in a popular way that the GDP decline for two consecutive quarters is not The standard for the economy to fall into recession. [i]
published such an article before the release of important data, and people have reason to suspect that this is a defense of the Biden administration. Sensitive politicians linked the White House blog to the subsequent dispute over the modification of Wikipedia, believing that the Biden administration not only tampers with the definition of recession itself, but also tried to influence Wikipedia and mislead more people.
If you open Wikipedia now to search for the entry "recession", you will find a half-lock mark on the upper right and a highlighted statement in the upper right. The statement said that some media accused us of modifying the entry, but we did not do that.
Some media said that the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) recession standards were not mentioned in the entry, There was only one indicator of GDP decline in two quarters. But after the Biden administration blog was released, Wikipedia made changes and added the NBER standard. Wikipedia denied this accusation, saying that the entry was listed at the same time and there was no tendency.
did not refute the accusation that locked the entry to hinder freedom of speech. On Wikipedia, all entries have a "modification history" page, which records the editing account and content of each modification.
According to records, the recession entry was revised very few times in the first half of 2022, and there was even only one edit in February and March. It was not until July 25 that the number of editing began to rise suddenly, indicating that frequent modifications were indeed related to the statement of the Biden administration.
semi-locking is not completely unavailable. It is a restrictive measure. Only qualified editors can modify this entry. The qualification requirement is that the registration time must be more than four days and that the editors who have contributed 10 successful times on other entries. The item after
is actually very high, because the edits made by newcomers can rarely be retained, and they are often corrected immediately by other editors after submission. There will also be a discussion page for the Wikipedia entry, which records suggestions for revisions made to this entry. However, people who visit entries generally do not pay attention to the discussion area. After
is half locked, the daily editing and modification of the recession entry is still quite active. Especially on the 29th, there were many revisions, obviously because many qualified editors became interested in this entry after hearing the media’s discussion. Currently, Wikipedia has about 110,000 active monthly editors.
During this period, Soibangla is still contributing his edits every day. Judging from the history of revision, Soibangla should not have done this specifically to cooperate with the Biden administration. His earliest record of revisions to the recession entry was in 2018, when he was in Trump's position.
In the United States, the start and end time of the recession is usually published by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). This is a nonprofit organization with a Business Cycle Dating Commitee that is specifically responsible for the work.
From past experience, NBER can confirm the start and end time after the end of the recession. When the economy is in a recession, no one can confirm it. In addition, GDP indicators are often revised after release, and NBER will not accept these numbers when the GDP indicators are just released.
In addition, the United States does not apply indicators of GDP decline for two consecutive quarters. For example, NBER once announced that the United States experienced a moderate recession in 2001, and during this period, there was no GDP decline for two consecutive quarters.
In this sense, it seems that there is no problem for Biden administration officials to explain the definition of recession. Fed chairman Powell, who is an independent institution, also said he does not think the U.S. economy is in a recession.
But there is a background here. The United States has experienced severe inflation that has not been seen in 40 years, which has aroused public doubts about the Biden administration's economic management capabilities. Especially a year ago, Biden once said inflation is a short-term phenomenon. If the public arranges their lives according to their opinions, such as making decisions on buying a house, they will now encounter more difficulties.
As the responsible government, Biden's team failed to fully understand the people's dissatisfaction, and their quaint words made people suspicious, believing that they only want to divert the attention of the people. Obviously, this is a mistake in public relations design, which has led the opposition to catch the flaws.
Due to inadequate preparations, government insiders also made speech mistakes. For example, at a press conference, a reporter asked that White House economic adviser Dis once said in 2008 that the technical definition of a recession was the decline in GDP for two consecutive quarters, but now he changed his words and said that there is no such definition. Although White House Press Secretary made a defense, the public may not accept it.
Wikipedia is involved in this debate as if it were an accident. Before July 2022, the recession entry has been viewed very few times. Before July 24, the number of views began to rise rapidly, reaching 200,000 times per day.
According to a Wikipedia video on Youtube, between 2008 and 2010, the number of views of the "recession" entry also increased significantly. As the economy faces downward pressure, a “recession” is a natural phenomenon that attracts attention, and many searches will also lead to Wikipedia. It is just that due to external disturbances, the recent entry browsing and editing is indeed abnormal.
This time, conservatives criticized Wikipedia, which is also a reaction from American society to Wikipedia's left-leaning political stance in recent years.
Sangers is the co-founder of Wikipedia. He ran away in 2002 because of a disagreement with another founder, Wales, and later became one of Wikipedia's most important critics. In an interview at the end of 2021, he accused Wikipedia of becoming a phony tube for the establishment.For example, on the issue of vaccines, Wikipedia expresses views from Davos Economic Forum , World Health Organization and US CDCh. [ii]
People will wonder why in the United States, which advocates pragmatism philosophy , there will also be disputes between names and reality like Confucian or scholastic philosophy . In addition to political factors and government decisions, the judgment of the timing of the recession starts and ends does play a big role in the private sector.
If the recession is confirmed, the company will compress investment, freeze recruitment, and speed up inventory clearance. Of course, if the judgment is wrong, the contraction of the company is equal to providing opportunities to competitors, which may lead to the loss of market share. But the private sector usually does not rely on government judgments, but makes decisions and assumes responsibility on its own.
There is also a group of investors in the stock market who are highly interested in the judgment of recession. CNN has a fear greed index used to describe investor mentality. Currently, investor mentality is in the range of fear, and this phenomenon has been going on for several months.
If the possibility of recession continues to be discussed, psychological hints plus herd effect will only get worse. They hope someone can stand up and pierce the window paper and announce that the U.S. economy has fallen into recession. For investors, confirming a recession is equivalent to confirming the bottom of the stock market, which is a positive thing.
More and more stakeholders join the recession discussion, which is also a new trend. There is a news headline that captures this feature, “Welcome to the Great Recession Presumption Game of the United States.”
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