Wikipedia Is Badly Biased

The Uncyclopedia logo. Maybe more appropriate for Wikipedia itself now.

Wikipedia’s “NPOV” is dead.1 The original policy long since forgotten, Wikipedia no longer has an effective neutrality policy. There is a rewritten policy, but it endorses the utterly bankrupt canard that journalists should avoid what they call “false balance.”2 The notion that we should avoid “false balance” is directly contradictory to the original neutrality policy. As a result, even as journalists turn to opinion and activism, Wikipedia now touts controversial points of view on politics, religion, and science. Here are some examples from each of these subjects, which were easy to find, no hunting around. Many, many more could be given.

Wikipedia’s favorite president?

Examples have become embarrassingly easy to find. The Barack Obama article completely fails to mention many well-known scandals: Benghazi, the IRS scandal, the AP phone records scandal, and Fast and Furious, to say nothing of Solyndra or the Hillary Clinton email server scandal—or, of course, the developing “Obamagate” story in which Obama was personally involved in surveilling Donald Trump. A fair article about a major political figure certainly must include the bad with the good. Beyond that, a neutral article must fairly represent competing views on the figure by the major parties.

In other words—and this is the point crucial to evaluating an article’s neutrality—a neutral article is written not to take sides on issues of controversy. It does not matter whether one or both sides believe their point of view is totally factual and supported with incontrovertible proof. How many times, in politics and in many walks of life, have we seen controversies in which both sides can cite apparently rigorous studies, or chapter and verse, or original source material that, they claim, show their view is absolutely certain? In such cases, a neutral resource like Wikipedia is bound by policy not to take a side. Yet it does.

Political scandals are a good example where sources are carefully lined up on both sides. There were many controversies over “scandals” plaguing Obama’s presidency. But in fact, the only scandals that I could find in Wikipedia’s Obama article were a few that the left finds at least a little scandalous, such as Snowden’s revelations about NSA activities under Obama. In short, the article is almost a total whitewash. You might find this to be objectively correct, if you are a Democrat; but you cannot claim that this is a neutral treatment, considering that the other major U.S. party would, citing other ostensibly credible sources, treat the subject very differently. On such topics, neutrality in any sense worth the name essentially requires that readers not be able to detect the editors’ political alignment.

Not Wikipedia’s favorite president

Meanwhile, as you can imagine, the idea that the Donald Trump article is neutral is a joke. Just for example, there are 5,224 none-too-flattering words in the “Presidency” section. By contrast, the following “Public Profile” (which the Obama article entirely lacks), “Investigations,” and “Impeachment” sections are unrelentingly negative, and together add up to some 4,545 words—in other words, the controversy sections are almost as long as the sections about his presidency. Common words in the article are “false” and “falsely” (46 instances): Wikipedia frequently asserts, in its own voice, that many of Trump’s statements are “false.” Well, perhaps they are. But even if they are, it is not exactly neutral for an encyclopedia article to say so, especially without attribution. You might approve of Wikipedia describing Trump’s incorrect statements as “false,” very well; but then you must admit that you no longer support a policy of neutrality on Wikipedia. More to the point, Republican, Trump-supporting views are basically not represented at all in the article on Trump.

I leave the glowing Hillary Clinton article as an exercise for the reader.

On political topics it is easiest to argue for the profound benefits—even the moral necessity—of eliminating bias in reference works. As I argue in my 2015 essay, “Why Neutrality” (updated in Essays on Free Knowledge) we naturally desire neutrality on political and many other topics because we want to be left free to make up our own minds. Reference, news, and educational resources aimed at laying out a subject in general should give us the tools we need to rationally decide what we want to think. Only those who want to force the minds of others can be opposed to neutrality.

“Prior to prohibition, cannabis was available freely in a variety of forms,” says Wikipedia, helpfully.

Wikipedia can be counted on to cover not just political figures, but political issues as well from a liberal-left point of view. No conservative would write, in an abortion article, “When properly done, abortion is one of the safest procedures in medicine,” a claim that is questionable on its face, considering what an invasive, psychologically distressing, and sometimes lengthy procedure it can be even when done according to modern medical practices. More to the point, abortion opponents consider the fetus to be a human being with rights; their view, that it is not safe for the baby, is utterly ignored. To pick another, random issue, drug legalization, dubbed drug liberalization by Wikipedia, has only a little information about any potential hazards of drug legalization policies; it mostly serves as a brief for legalization, followed by a catalog of drug policies worldwide. Or to take an up-to-the-minute issue, the LGBT adoption article includes several talking points in favor of LGBT adoption rights, but omits any arguments against. On all such issues, the point is that true neutrality, to be carefully distinguished from objectivity, requires that the article be written in a way that makes it impossible to determine the editors’ position on the important controversies the article touches on.

Gospel reliability is “uncertain,” Wikipedia says, neutrally.

What about articles on religious topics? The first article I thought to look at had some pretty egregious instances of bias: the Jesus article. It simply asserts, again in its own voice, that “the quest for the historical Jesus has yielded major uncertainty on the historical reliability of the Gospels and on how closely the Jesus portrayed in the Bible reflects the historical Jesus.” In another place, the article simply asserts, “the gospels are not independent nor consistent records of Jesus’ life.” A great many Christians would take issue with such statements, which means they are not neutral for that reason alone. In other words, the very fact that many Christians, including many deeply educated conservative seminarians, believe in the historical reliability of the Gospels, and that they are wholly consistent, means that the article is biased if it simply asserts, without attribution or qualification, that this is a matter of “major uncertainty.” Now, it would be accurate and neutral to say it is widely disputed, but being “disputed” and being “uncertain” are very different concepts. It is in fact a controversial view that the historical accuracy of the Gospels is uncertain; others disagree, holding that, upon analysis, it is not a matter of significant uncertainty. In other respects, the article can be fairly described as a “liberal” academic discussion of Jesus, focusing especially on assorted difficulties and controversies, while failing to explain traditional, orthodox, or fundamentalist views of those issues. So it might be “liberal academic,” but it ignores conservative academic and traditional views. Therefore, what it is not is neutral, not in the original sense we defined for Wikipedia.

Of course, similarly tendentious claims can be found in other articles on religious topics, as when the Christ (title) article claims,

Although the original followers of Jesus believed Jesus to be the Jewish messiah, e.g. in the Confession of Peter, Jesus was usually referred to as “Jesus of Nazareth” or “Jesus, son of Joseph”.[11] Jesus came to be called “Jesus Christ” (meaning “Jesus the Khristós”, i.e. “Jesus the Messiah” or “Jesus the Anointed”) by later Christians, who believe that his crucifixion and resurrection fulfill the messianic prophecies of the Old Testament.

This article weirdly claims, or implies, a thing that no serious Biblical scholar of any sort would claim, viz., that Jesus was not given the title “Christ” by the original Apostles in the New Testament. The Wikipedia article itself later contradicts that claim, so perhaps the editors of the above paragraph simply meant the two conjoined words “Jesus Christ,” and that Jesus was rarely referred to with those two conjoined words in the New Testament. But this is false, too: the two words are found together in that form throughout the New Testament.

But the effect of the above-quoted paragraph is to cast doubt that the title “Christ” was used much at all by the original Apostles and disciples. That would be silly if so. These supposed “later Christians” who used “Christ” would have to include the Apostles Peter (Jesus’ first apostle), Paul (converted a few years after Jesus’ crucifixion), and Jude (Jesus’ brother), who were the authors of the bulk of the epistles of the New Testament. The word “Christ” can, of course, be found frequently in the epistles, including very early epistles, thought to be the first texts written about Jesus.3 Of course, those are not exactly “later Christians.” If the claim is simply that the word “Christ” does not appear at all or much in the Gospels, that is false, as a simple text search uncovers dozens of instances in all four Gospels,4 and about 550 instances in the entire New Testament. If it is used somewhat less in the Gospels, that would be a reflection of the fact that the authors of the Gospels were, argumentatively, using the Hebrew word “Messiah” to persuade Jewish readers that Jesus was the long-awaited Jewish messiah. But the word means much the same as the Greek title “Christ”: the anointed one, God’s chosen. So, in any event, the basic claim here is simply false. He is called “Jesus Christ” (Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ) in the very first verse of the New Testament (Matthew 1:1) and in the first verse of the gospel sometimes thought to be the first-written, Mark (1:1), as well.5

Or if the claim were that Jesus was not understood to be the Messiah or Christ in his own lifetime before being crucified, we need not quibble about that (though it is easy enough to cite the gospel claims that Peter believed him to be the Christ; see, e.g., Mark 8:29). The book of Acts and the epistles make it abundantly clear that the Apostles, setting up the earliest churches, thought Jesus was the Messiah—indeed, the Son of God.

Clearly, Wikipedia’s claims are tendentious if not false, and represent a point of view that many if not most Christians would rightly dispute.

It may seem more problematic to speak of the bias of scientific articles, because many people do not want to see “unscientific” views covered in encyclopedia articles. If such articles are “biased in favor of science,” some people naturally find that to be a feature, not a bug. The problem, though, is that scientists sometimes do not agree on which theories are and are not scientific. This point is perfectly obvious to anyone who actually follows any lively scientific debate at all closely. On such issues, the “scientific point of view” and the “objective point of view” according to the Establishment might be very much opposed to neutrality. So when certain people seem unified on a certain view of a scientific controversy, then that is the view that is taken for granted as the Establishment one, and often aggressively asserted, by Wikipedia.

Neutral information, representing a scientific consensus with no dissent, I’m sure.

The global warming and MMR vaccine articles are examples; I hardly need to dive into these pages, since it is quite enough to say that they endorse definite positions that scientific minorities reject. Another example is how Wikipedia treats various topics in alternative medicine—often dismissively, and frequently labeled as “pseudoscience” in Wikipedia’s own voice. Indeed, Wikipedia defines the very term as follows: “Alternative medicine describes any practice that aims to achieve the healing effects of medicine, but which lacks biological plausibility and is untested, untestable or proven ineffective.” In all these cases, genuine neutrality requires a different sort of treatment.

Again, other examples could be found, in no doubt thousands of other, less exciting topics. These are just the first topics that came to mind, associated as they are with the culture wars, and their articles on those topics put Wikipedia very decidedly on one side of that war. You should not be able to say that about an encyclopedia that claims to be neutral.

It is time for Wikipedia to come clean and admit that it has abandoned NPOV (i.e., neutrality as a policy). At the very least they should admit that that they have redefined the term in a way that makes it utterly incompatible with its original notion of neutrality, which is the ordinary and common one.6 It might be better to embrace a “credibility” policy and admit that their notion of what is credible does, in fact, bias them against conservatism, traditional religiosity, and minority perspectives on science and medicine—to say nothing of many other topics on which Wikipedia has biases.

Of course, Wikipedians are unlikely to make any such change; they live in a fantasy world of their own making.7

The world would be better served by an independent and decentralized encyclopedia network, such as I proposed with the Encyclosphere. We will certainly develop such a network, but if it is to remain fully independent of all governmental and big corporate interests, funds are naturally scarce and it will take time.

Here is a follow-up article (June 2021).
And here is another (June 2023).


Footnotes

  1. The misbegotten phrase “neutral point of view” is a Jimmy Wales coinage I never supported. If a text is neutral with regard to an issue, it lacks any “point of view” with regard to the issue; it does not take a “neutral point of view.” My preferred phrase was always “the neutrality policy” or “the nonbias policy.”[]
  2. On this, see my “Why Neutrality?“, published 2015 by Ballotpedia.[]
  3. Both in the form “Jesus Christ” (e.g., 1 Peter 1:1, Jude 1:1) and in the form “Christ Jesus” (1 Corinthians 1:2). “Christ” is found throughout three epistles widely held to be among the first written, including Galatians and 1 Thessalonians, and twice in James.[]
  4. I mistakenly conceded this false point in an earlier draft of this article, after not searching enough. Greek nominative and accusative Χριστόν and genitive Χριστοῦ can be found throughout.[]
  5. If you look at the footnote Wikipedia cites in support of its weird claim, you will find a sensible, not-misleading, and relatively neutral article by Britannica, the context of which makes it perfectly clear that the authors were not making any claim about the use of the title “Christ” but instead the two-word combination “Jesus Christ,” as applied directly to Jesus in his own lifetime. It seems likely that that two-word name was used rarely, but this has nothing whatsoever to do with his having the title “Christ,” but a reflection of the fact that “Ancient Jews usually had only one name, and, when greater specificity was needed, it was customary to add the father’s name or the place of origin.” Wikipedians copying from Britannica may have missed that bit.[]
  6. That it was Wikipedia’s original notion, see the Nupedia “Lack of Bias” policy, which was the source of Wikipedia’s policy, and see also my final (2001) version of the Wikipedia neutrality policy. Read my “Why Neutrality?” for a lengthy discussion of this notion. Both articles appear in slightly revised and footnoted versions in my recent book.[]
  7. UPDATE: In an earlier version of this blog post, I included some screenshots of Wikipedia Alexa rankings, showing a drop from 5 to 12 or 13. While this is perfectly accurate, the traffic to the site has been more or less flat for years, until the last few months, in which traffic spiked probably because of the Covid-19 virus. But since the drop in Alexa rankings do not seem to reflect a drop in traffic, I decided to remove the screenshots and a couple accompanying sentences.[]

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306 responses to “Wikipedia Is Badly Biased”

  1. […] Wikipedia co-founder says the site is “badly biased”“The NPOV is dead”…. Long live the NPOV.  That of course is the “Neutral Point of View” a belief among Wikipedia editors that they are rationally and dispassionately editorializing content and moderating edits in a neutral, unbiased manner.  Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger has been writing about the loss of objectivity on the system for some time now.  Sanger was the co-founder who coined the term “wikipedia” and who wrote most of the original governance policy (according to…. Wikipedia   )Sanger writes “the point is that true neutrality, to be carefully distinguished from objectivity, requires that the article be written in a way that makes it impossible to determine the editors’ position on the important controversies the article touches on.”The article is rife with examples where that clearly is not the case, where subjective opinions are blatantly expressed in the article’s own voice and were wide-ranging pronouncements are made “without attribution or qualification”. Sanger concludes with:“It is time for Wikipedia to come clean and admit that it has abandoned NPOV (i.e., neutrality as a policy).  At the very least they should admit that that they have redefined the term in a way that makes it utterly incompatible with its original notion of neutrality” and further suggests that if they really feel the need to editorialize or skew the material then they should publicly shift their focus away from neutrality and try to lay some claim to “credibility” instead.  Which would still be deeply problematic in my opinion.Read: https://larrysanger.org/2020/05/wikipedia-is-badly-biased/ […]

  2. […] a blog post last week, Sanger argued that Wikipedia has abandoned all neutrality in the name of avoiding what […]

  3. R. R. Boye

    There is a lengthy article titled “Islamophobia” in the English Wikipedia, but no corresponding article titled “Christophobia”. Even in the “Religious intolerance” article’s “See also” section the link “Anti-Christian sentiment” redirects to an article titled “Criticism of Christianity” which is a different thing than anti-Christian prejudice and hate. Ridiculous that the very rral phenomenon of Christianophobia does not have an article of its own and that there is not even an article about Anti-Christian sentiment which closely mirrors the phenomenon of Islamophobia and is completely distinct from the philisophical criticism of Christianity but is lumped together with it in the same article all the while there is a separate article “Criticism of Islam”.

    1. Christopher Beland

      “Christophobia” actually redirects to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Christians
      I added a link to there from “Religious intolerance”.

      You’re right there is an asymmetry here; there is also a “Persecution of Muslims” article, but no full article on intolerance or hatred toward Christians. That is probably due to the fact that most native English speakers live in majority-Christian countries, where Christians are not a hated minority. Thus “Islamophobia” and “Antisemitic” are more commonly encountered in English discourse than “Christophobia”, and editors are less familiar with the latter and don’t put in as many contributions on it.

      The Wikipedia community has acknowledged this type of bias and is trying to do something about it. I’ll note the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_intolerance article is tagged as having unbalanced coverage. The Wikimedia Foundation is trying to recruit a broader pool of editors, and on the English Wikipedia there’s also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Countering_systemic_bias

  4. […] hr Wikipedias grundare, Larry Sanger, konstaterat samma sak och uttalat sin besvikelse över att det blivit så. Hans tanke med Wikipedia var korrekt och […]

  5. Joshua Smith

    Weird, it is almost like different people who do different things get different articles.
    Wild how that works, huh?

    1. No, this, like the silly and self-satisfied claim that “reality has a liberal bias,” is a glib and dishonest reply that doesn’t explain the problem away. The fact is that Obama’s presidency was full of many well-established scandals, and even if you think they aren’t well-established, that’s merely your opinion, and many well-informed people think otherwise. Their views are entirely ignored by the article; hence the article is biased. Meanwhile, the Trump mentions very little good (or what his defenders think is good) and provides a highly partisan and one-sided description of points his opponents regard as bad.

      1. Joshua Smith

        1. You don’t want accuracy, you want artificial fairness.
        2. handwaving to shadowy “well-informed people” isn’t very convincing
        3. encyclopedias don’t exist to massage every viewpoint. “what his defenders THINK…”
        4. I think you misread. I’m not trying to “explain the problem away.” I doubt the problem exists.
        5. The answer is simple. It’s possible that a person who does very little good has an article that reflects that. That seems to be closer to the current historical consensus so far.

        1. 1. Of course I want accuracy. But if there is disagreement as to what the truth is, I want neutrality combined with excellent representation and sourcing of the competing views so that the reader may make up his mind for himself. I certainly don’t want the likes of you deciding what is “accurate” for me. And “artificial fairness”? What the hell is that?

          2. What I said is perfectly clear and also obvious. Yes. Many well-informed people, people who know all about the scandals, with advanced degrees or professions in related disciplines, are persuaded that the scandals that were omitted were substantive and important. That doesn’t mean that they were correct about the scandals, but it does mean that an important point of view was simply omitted from the article. And that means the article is biased, i.e., not neutral, which is the only point I was trying to make in the article. (But you apparently think this is “artificial fairness.” LOL)

          3. “encyclopedias don’t exist to massage every viewpoint.” I don’t know what that means. What I do know—a point you’re simply ignoring, despite the fact that it’s the main point—is that Wikipedia was started as a neutral encyclopedia and it still has a pretension to being that. The examples I adduced show adequately that it is no longer neutral or even makes much of an attempt to make a show of neutrality.

          4. If the problem is that Wikipedia’s articles are biased, you haven’t given anything remotely resembling a respond to my blog post. You’ve just blustered. I’m not impressed.

          5. There is no “current historical consensus,” you fool. How could there be on such massively controversial topics as these articles?

          I can’t guarantee I’ll post any further response from you. This blog has standards to maintain.

  6. Jim

    SelfAwareWolf much? Picking up a few examples to discredit the other side not showing all the examples, point of view, and perspective from all sides. Am I talking about this article or the Wikipedia?

    1. Jim, you discredit yourself by propagating stupid, cultish-sounding lefty jargon like “selfawarewolf.” If you didn’t know that, now you do.

      I didn’t “pick up a few examples.” There was no shortage of examples. It might be harder to find an article that isn’t as obviously biased as these. They really are pretty much all that bad. If you disagree, go ahead and find me a few articles on controversial topics that are equally acceptable (or unacceptable) to both left and right (or Christians and non-Christians, etc.) as representing their own views. Good luck with that.

      1. Joshua Smith

        1. If you don’t know what something is, you should look it up. “I want neutrality combined with excellent representation and sourcing of the competing views so that the reader may make up his mind for himself.” AKA you want artificial fairness. Get the scientist and the flat-earther on the podium, implying the positions come from an equally valid place. Neither neutrality nor accuracy nor fairness come from including all opinions.

        2. Thank you for expounding on your fallacy. I wish you did so without raw assertions that you are smart, and the nebulous, unnamed people who agree with you are smart too. It’s a twofer, because you are also assuming that i. your point of view is important (without making the case) and ii. that “neutrality” is both needed when describing reality, and that it can be achieved as soon as your pet opinion is included.

        3. “I don’t know what that means.” probably because you aren’t getting the points above. You want your view massaged.

        4. “You haven’t given anything remotely resembling a respond to my blog post. You’ve just blustered.” Clearly I have though. Clearly I directly disagree with you, and it makes you quite mad. Question: If I handwave to “many super smart professionals that DON’T think there is a problem” is that blustering, or a “perfectly clear and obvious” argument?

        5. “There is no ‘current historical consensus,’ you fool.” Maybe you should talk to some historians. There most definitely is if you are in the know. That’s another thing that is possible for you to look up.

        6. “I can’t guarantee I’ll post any further response from you. This blog has standards to maintain.” That’s ok. I’ve been civil and direct, but have just been sinning by openly disagreeing with you and not finding your arguments persuasive. I get why that is so upsetting and dangerous for you. But, you and I both know cop-outs when we see them. I wish we could also both know fallacies when we see them

        1. 1. If you use some obscure jargon, it is of course on you to explain it. If the sentence of mine you quoted entails “artificial fairness,” I conclude that artificial fairness is an excellent thing that encyclopedias should generally strive toward, as difficult as it might be. You haven’t said the slightest thing to indicate otherwise; you’ve just put a negative-sounding label on it. Oh, well done!

          2. I didn’t say I was smart, although next to you, I probably look that way. The point, which you ignored doubtless because you cannot possibly respond to it, is that the views of people extremely knowledgeable about a subject deserve an airing in an neutral encyclopedia. There’s nothing the slightest bit fallacious about this. It’s relevant to point out that they’re well-informed because, obviously, an encyclopedia regards the opinions of such (well-informed) people as being important. You know what isn’t relevant? That they be members of the Democratic Party, or on the political left, or widely published in left-wing journals.

          3. Is this an example of you being “civil”? LOL. Anyway, this is not substantive enough to warrant a reply, and you again just ignored things you clearly weren’t able to reply to.

          4. No, disagreeing with me isn’t what makes me mad. I appreciate a good rational argument, which you don’t seem capable of giving me. If someone were able to articulate arguments for the crap you merely take for granted, I might be entertained. I held out hope in the beginning, but that has disappeared.

          5. You’re claiming that there is a “historical consensus” about Trump is…well, you don’t say what it is, except to imply that it is so unremittingly negative that that consensus justifies a Wikipedia article that is equally negative. I called this foolish, and I still do, pointing out that there is massive controversy. You responded that I could “look it up,” which I find laughable. While doubtless the vast majority of left-wing academic historians have a decidedly negative view of Trump, (1) their opinions are not a “historical consensus” because history is…in the past. Trump is still president, Einstein. There is no historical assessment of a sitting president because we don’t have access to all the relevant documents, as we will in the future. Also, (2) left-wing academic historians are not the only people whose opinions should be reflected in an encyclopedia article, obviously.

          6. “I’ve been civil” in the clown-world sense this word might be used in, in the alternative universe that is Wikipedia, but not in the real world. You’ve been a disrespectful blockhead, as I’ve carefully explained for your edification above.

          Anyway, you’re not going to reply any further. Unless you want to do so on your own blog. I mean, I’d give you the last word, but I do that only for people who are capable of arguing in a rational, fair-minded way. Thanks for reminding me why this sort of idiotic blog/forum debate is such a thorough waste of time.

        2. Reliable Source

          The Hive isn’t sending its best. If the shills are working this hard to disrupt the comments, Larry is over the target.

          I particularly love the seriously held belief that left academics and “fact check” sites can be taken at their word. At least people in a madrassa know they are in a religious institution. The beauty of Wikipedia is that there is a sustained pretense to the contrary.

        3. LOL Right on. This is how many blogs were, circa 2005-2010 or so. Before that, it’s how Usenet and mailing lists were. And it’s still how Wikipedia is…except that the left has taken exclusive control, which they did not have 10-15 years ago. One does wonder what proportion of the sustained idiocy is bought and paid for. On Wikipedia, not a little.

          This particular shill replied again but its reasoning skills were getting unhinged and abusive—I seem to have hit a nerve—so I decided to do everyone a favor and throw the comment away.

  7. Impressed!

    Came upon this accidentally, if only Jimmy had the balls to say this!

    Defund Wikipedia!

    Use InfoGalactic!

  8. Reliable Source

    Even sadder than Shareblue trolling is that the trolls do it for free. Not just pawns but eager lemmings competing to be at the front of the pack.

    “Artificial fairness” is actually not that bad as a way to describe the goal of a neutrality policy. “Deliberate, scrupulous fairness” would be more correct. The point is similar to that of oversampling minorities in surveys.

    What an encyclopedia should NOT do is represent viewpoints in literal proportion to what is published, because that only amplifies the views of those with more control of the printing presses. Unfortunately Wikipedia does exactly that, on steroids, by first taking a voted “consensus” to exclude most of the non-leftist sources, and all of the rightist sources, and then sampling in rough proportion to what’s… left.

    This is, I think, the most important and unappreciated point about Wikipedia’s leftism. The actual processing from source material to article has all the trappings of procedures, appeal procedures, appeals to the appeals, like some grandiose legal system perpetually focused on microscopic trivia. Talk page debates have all the clamor and pompous gravitas of a New England town meeting, officiously debating to reach a rule-based, collectively assented and tediously documented outcome. It’s built to look fair, and many leftists pushing far left POV’s appear to come away empty-handed as Wikipedia rules don’t break their way.

    But this is an illusion, because the actual cut is made at the level of the sources themselves. This is where the overwhelmingly left demographic imposes its will under the pretense of “reliability”. Since the sources swing left before the cut it is easy to package this as merely being in line with The Mainstream.

  9. Ben

    Dr. Sanger, I am just so glad that people like you still exist and are fighting for the truest democratic ideal that seems so cast-aside nowadays: compromise. I have edited on Wikipedia myself on highly left-leaning articles, and my edits have always been reversed regardless of how much they would greatly fix NPOV. Some adminstrators have even limited what I can do! What??? The mob on there always seems to justify themselves with a crap-ton of links to Wikipedia policy that seem a jumbling mess of alphabet soup. It’s really messed up, and what’s more shocking is how many people trust Wikipedia at face value every day.

  10. Fabian Nikken

    I saw the “whig historian” or the “whig interpertation” on Wikipedia on “science” so that’s good.

    right?

    1. If you look at “Why Neutrality” (the essay linked from the post above) you’ll find a section discussing the fact that neutrality cannot be defined except relative to some accepted background assumptions. This does not mean that just anything goes, as you imply here. We could (and do) define neutrality in a way that excludes long-dead points of view but which includes the views of both major U.S. parties, the most devout and traditional adherents of the largest religion in the world, and all views in (currently) politically charged scientific controversies.

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