Posted on 10/20/2025 8:32:31 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Wikipedia, a popular online encyclopedia millions of people treat as an authoritative source of information, is systemically biased against conservative, religious, and other points of view, according to the site’s co-founder, Larry Sanger.
Larry Sanger, co-founder of Wikipedia and former philosophy professor, among stacks of reference books at a library in Columbus, Ohio, on March 26, 2007. Kiichiro Sato/AP Photo
Sanger, 57, who now heads the Knowledge Standards Foundation, believes Wikipedia can be salvaged either by a renewed emphasis on free speech within the organization or by a grassroots campaign to make diverse viewpoints heard.
Failing that, Sanger said, government intervention may be required to pierce the shell of anonymity that now protects Wikipedia’s editors from defamation lawsuits by public figures who believe the site portrays them unfairly.
In an Oct. 9 interview with Jan Jekielek, host of EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders,” Sanger discussed Wikipedia’s derailing and what could get the site back on track.
Wikipedia, launched in 2001, was co-opted by a globalist, academic, secular progressive worldview in the early 2000s, Sanger said. He added that the viewpoint monopoly accelerated following the 2016 U.S. presidential election, when many media outlets began to abandon the notion of impartiality.
Though the site is overseen by the nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation, Wikipedia describes itself as a self-governing project and states “its policies and guidelines are intended to reflect the consensus of the community.”
Sanger said that eventually, the site’s original neutrality rules, which he authored, were rewritten to instead forbid “false balance.”
“Basically, it’s required now, even for the sake of neutrality, that they take a side when [they believe] one side is clearly wrong,” Sanger said. “Pretensions of objectivity are out the window.”
One way this is enforced is through a color-coded rating system that favors or bans certain sources, Sanger said.
“You simply may not cite as sources of Wikipedia articles anything that has been branded as right wing,” he said. “I don’t think that The Epoch Times, for example, is particularly right wing, but it is colored red on this list.”
Information from some “green” sources is taken as fact and repeated without attribution, Sanger said.
Sanger, who has long campaigned for a restoration of free speech and accountability on the platform, said many people continue to think of Wikipedia as neutral and accurate.
“Even now, people are still sort of waking up to the reality that Wikipedia does, on many pages … act as essentially propaganda,” he said.
As evidence, Sanger listed a host of public figures, including novelist Philip Roth, journalist John Seigenthaler Sr., and filmmaker Robby Starbuck, who complained to him that they were misrepresented on Wikipedia.
In 2022, Wikipedia deleted its page on U.S. Senate candidate Kathy Barnette, a Republican, saying she was not a notable person. The page was later restored.
Pennsylvania U.S. Senate Republican candidate Kathy Barnette speaks during a Republican leadership forum at Newtown Athletic Club in Newtown, Pa., on May 11, 2022. In 2022, Wikipedia deleted its page on Barnette, saying she was not a notable person. The page was later restored. Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
The same year, editors deleted an entry for Hunter Biden’s investment company, Rosemont Seneca Partners, saying it was not notable. An editor said keeping the page online could turn it into “a magnet for conspiracy theories about Hunter Biden.” That editor didn’t elaborate or provide any evidence.
Sanger likens the intellectual takeover of Wikipedia’s content to the “long march through the institutions,” a communist tactic of taking over a society by gaining control of essential institutions, including media, education, and government.
“Wikipedia is one of the institutions that the left marched through,” Sanger said.
Wikipedia did not respond to The Epoch Times’ request for comment.
The way Wikipedia is organized creates a self-perpetuating cycle that Sanger described as an “irrational bureaucracy.”
He said the application of Wikipedia’s editorial rules has become a way to enforce ideological conformity and that some rules need to be revived and others abolished.
One problem is the platform’s policy of preferring secondary sources over primary or original sources. This is contrary to the approach of journalists and higher education institutions, who favor original sources, such as direct quotes from public figures, documents written by historical figures, and original research.
Wikipedia, by contrast, favors sources that have already interpreted original sources, such as magazines and newspapers.
“As a former academic, I find that to be absurd,” Sanger said.
He recalled an incident in which Roth told Sanger he asked Wikipedia to correct its page mentioning the origin story of a character in his book “The Human Stain.”
Though Roth told Wikipedia directly how he created the character, the site’s editors refused to update the page, preferring to rely on a speculative account published in The New York Times. Roth then wrote an article about the matter in The New Yorker, Sanger said, giving Wikipedia a secondary source for what the author had told them directly.
“There’s something really ridiculous about that,” Sanger said.
Novelist Philip Roth in 1967. Roth is among a list of public figures that Sanger mentioned who have complained to him that they have been misrepresented on Wikipedia. Bernard Gotfryd/Public Domain
The anonymity of the majority of Wikipedia’s 62 most influential editors perpetuates the problem, Sanger said, noting it creates a situation in which no one is held responsible for the potential harm the site’s content may cause.
“Eighty-five percent of them are anonymous. So you can’t sue them,” Sanger said.
Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 shields companies from lawsuits related to user-generated content, meaning the Wikimedia Foundation cannot be sued either.
On his website, Sanger outlines a series of ideas for returning Wikipedia to its original stance on fairness and free speech. A handful of his ideas center on increasing transparency into site management, such as revealing who Wikipedia’s leaders are, allowing the public to rate articles, ending decision-making by consensus, and adopting a legislative process for determining editorial policy.
Wikipedia’s current policies effectively make Wikipedia insular and ideologically exclusive, according to Sanger, who believes determining policies in an open forum could expose the site to other viewpoints.
Sanger’s other suggestions focus on free speech, such as enabling competing articles on the same subject, abolishing source blacklists, reviving the original neutrality policy, and ending the indefinite blocking of some editors.
Sanger also calls on the site to repeal the “ignore all rules” policy, which he created in Wikipedia’s early days. The rule was intended to encourage editors who were nervous about amending articles to simply focus on the task at hand.
“That was since made into a rule that is used by insiders to exert control over the newbies. So it’s, again, entirely inverted,” Sanger said.
A computer screen shows Larry Sanger’s website on Oct. 16, 2025. Sanger said the way Wikipedia is organized creates a self-perpetuating cycle that he described as an “irrational bureaucracy.” Oleksii Pydsosonnii/The Epoch Times
More broadly, Sanger said change could come in one of three ways.
First, the Wikimedia Foundation could voluntarily end the ideological monopoly.
“Centrists and libertarians and Republicans and conservatives, religious people, religious Hindus and Jews and Christians, Falun Gong, they should all be able to participate,” Sanger said.
Failing that, Sanger said a public campaign seeking fairness might move the site to change.
“I’m going to set up a letter of protest,” Sanger said. “I’m going to try to circulate this to a lot of prominent people who have been wronged in various ways by Wikipedia.”
He invites others to contact the Wikimedia Foundation directly to make their feelings known.
As a last resort, Sanger said Congress could intervene by creating an exception to Section 230 that would enable a site to be taken down if it published defamatory material. A precedent exists, according to Sanger, who cited a 2018 law that created a similar exception for websites used to organize human trafficking.
“Even if the people who run the website aren’t doing the human trafficking, if it’s being organized on the website, they can still be sued,” Sanger said.
“Wikipedia really does need some reform,” Sanger said.
Though he’s hopeful the site may adopt his proposals, he acknowledged it may not happen.
“They might find ways that are more palatable to them,” he added. “[If so,] I’d be all in favor of that.”
IMBD‘S look and layout do suck .
I watch primarily Asian entertainment, Korean, Japanese and Chinese.
There is a website , MyDramalist , that caters to that entertainment field.
They have an excellent resource database, covering Asian film and television works.
It puts Wikipedia and IMDB to shame in layout, content and ease of use.
Wiki is pretty good on things NON POLITICAL. All that is political WILL BE BIASED!
Wikipedia still thinks Russia helped Trump get elected in 2016.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_2016_United_States_elections
So does AI, btw.
It is strange that you have to scroll down to get information on even basic topics.
That’s what I use it for also.
He supported the liberalization and censorship on wiki, suffered massive losses in donations, and now wants to claim he is all for free speech. BS.
Go Woke, Go Broke!
Everything is political eventually.
I pulled my contributions several years ago when they got too obvious about it. Politics has oozed into what are, by any exercise of reason, non-political topics. The editors appear incapable of helping themselves.
Twenty years ago I had the experience of being defamed and called a liar by a screwball female editor from Massachusetts who would change every favorable or accurate contribution by others or me about George Bush’s National Guard services.
I had to get founder Jimmy Wales involved to stop her lies, and slanders deluging him with facts and documentation before she was banned forever.
But she was typical of the far left biases prevailing on Wikipedia.
My main use of Wikipedia is also for looking up old movies I find on Rumble and Youtube and going down those rabbit holes.
His second administration has been criticized for its targeting of political opponents and civil society.
Many of his administration's actions have been found by judges to be illegal and unconstitutional, and have been criticized as authoritarian and contributing to democratic backsliding.
Trump is the second U.S. president to serve nonconsecutive terms and the first with a felony conviction.
Which in my experience has meant that all sorts of perversions of the Bible have been allowed but not what it actually says.
Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 shields companies from lawsuits related to user-generated content, meaning the Wikimedia Foundation cannot be sued either.
But do we really want FReepers to be prosecuted for their statements, though many are careless. “That was since made into a rule that is used by insiders to exert control over the newbies. So it’s, again, entirely inverted,” Sanger said.
Government is necessary, and according to the Biblical principle in which the less people are controlled from within by God and sound conscience then the more rules and rulers are required, it follows the WP requires such. However, as a reflection of academia which is overwhelmingly liberal, then in my experience so are WP editors (as well as those that WP judges to be "Reliable Sources"), and some of the multitudinous WP policies and guidelines can be cited and interpreted by a cadre of seasoned editors and admin as justification for their censorship, resulting in WP often becoming too much like some HOAs.
Having some experience in attempting to add balance to certain WP articles (such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_in_Portland,_Oregon) then I asked Poe.com,
what is the term for the form of government which is characterized by control by a cadre of persons who maintain censorial control by invoking a myriad of imprecise policies and rules which they interpret as supporting them, and thereby ban dissent?
It (AI) answered,
The term you are describing is often referred to as "oligarchy." An oligarchy is a form of government where power is concentrated in the hands of a small group of individuals or a specific class. This group often maintains control through policies and rules that can be vague or open to interpretation, allowing them to suppress dissent and maintain their authority. In some contexts, this can also resemble a "totalitarian regime" if the government exerts extreme control over many aspects of life and actively censors opposition.
Wikipedia sent me an email recently, proposing to list our consulting business. This occurred shortly after I was listed on “Who’s Who in America”.
I initially said Yes. But then they said that it would cost me over $1000. So then I said No.
With Wikipedia, it’s “all about the Benjamins”. No wonder they’re losing credibility!
Thanks for the info about Wikipedia pay to play—I learn something new every day here.
I learned “something new” after my email exchange with Wikipedia!
In the area of science and technology the bias is still there.
They are (like all Marxists) scientific materialists.
What that means in practice is that they either ignore or seek to debunk anything science related that does not neatly fit into their world view.
They do so despite openly acknowledging that modern physics is a hot mess:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsolved_problems_in_physics
Interestingly their philosophy section is surprisingly fair—and they give lots of details of philosophical views opposed to scientific materialism.
I guess the leftists don’t think philosophy section is worth tampering with—a symptom of their materialistic world view.
Thanks for posting the specifics of the Wikipedia scam, Serb, I avoid them as a source as much as possible, and usually post a Liberal - Leftist Bias disclaimer when I do.
I just found out that the person who contacted me and asked for money was not from Wikipedia, but from this PR agency:
......Avelon PR is the world’s leading PR marketplace that guarantees coverage in over 900 media outlets. The platform allows clients to select their desired publications, providing transparent pricing and effortless service from request submission to publication. Targeted towards individuals and startups looking to enhance their brand visibility and credibility, Avelon PR helps clients control their narrative and achieve effective media placements. With a promise of guaranteed results, Avelon PR prioritizes customer satisfaction with a full refund policy if placement goals are not met.......
Phooey! Perhaps the real Wikipedia (which charges nothing for listing) will get to me or our company eventually. Or not!
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