Posted on 04/27/2022 4:13:24 AM PDT by Kaslin
I love Wikipedia. I donated thousands of dollars to the Wikimedia Foundation.
Before Wikipedia, all we had were printed encyclopedias -- out of date by the time we bought them.
Then libertarian Jimmy Wales came up with a web-based, crowd-sourced encyclopedia.
Crowd-sourced? A Britannica editor called Wikipedia "a public restroom." But Wales won the battle. Britannica's encyclopedias are no longer printed.
Congratulations to Wales.
But recently I learned that Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger now says Wikipedia's political pages have turned into leftist "propaganda."
That's upsetting. Leftists took over the editing?
Sadly, yes. I checked it out.
All editing is done by volunteers. Wales hoped there would be enough diverse political persuasions that biases would be countered by others.
But that's not what's happening.
Leftists just like to write.
Conservatives build things: companies, homes, farms. You see the pattern comparing political donations from different professions:
Surgeons, oil workers, truck drivers, loggers and pilots lean right.
Artists, bartenders, librarians, reporters, and teachers lean left.
Conservatives don't have as much time to tweet or argue on the web. Leftists do. And they love doing it. This helps them take over the media, universities and, now, Wikipedia.
Jonathan Weiss is what Wikipedia calls a "Top 100" Wikipedian because he's made almost half a million edits. He says he's noticed a new bias. "Wikipedia does a great job on things like science and sports, but you see a lot of political bias come into play when you're talking current events."
Weiss is no conservative. In presidential races, he voted for Al Gore, Ralph Nader, and Barack Obama. Never for a Republican. "I've really never identified strongly with either political party," he says.
Maybe that's why he notices the new Wikipedia bias.
"People on the left far outweigh people on the center and the right...a lot (are) openly socialist and Marxist." Some even post pictures of Che Guevara and Lenin on their own profiles.
These are the people who decide which news sources Wikipedia writers may cite. Wikipedia's approved "Reliable sources" page rejects political reporting from Fox but calls CNN and MSNBC "reliable."
Good conservative outlets like The Federalist, The Daily Caller and The Daily Wire are all deemed "unreliable." Same with the New York Post (That's probably why Wikipedia called Hunter Biden's emails a conspiracy theory even after other liberal media finally acknowledged that they were real).
While it excludes Fox, Wikipedia approves even hard-left media like Vox, Slate, The Nation, Mother Jones, and Jacobin, a socialist publication.
Until recently, Wikipedia's "socialism" and "communism" pages made no mention of the millions of people killed by socialism and communism. Even now, deaths are "deep in the article," says Weiss, "treated as an arcane academic debate. But we're talking about mass murder!"
The communism page even adds that we cannot ignore the "lives saved by communist modernization"! This is nuts.
Look up "concentration and internment camps" and you'll find, along with the Holocaust, "Mexico-United States border," and under that, "Trump administration family separation policy."
What? Former President Donald Trump's border controls, no matter how harsh, are very different from the Nazi's mass murders.
Wikipedia does say "anyone can edit." So I made a small addition for political balance, mentioning that President Barack 0bama built those cages.
My edit was taken down.
I wrote Wikipedia founder Wales to say that if his creation now uses only progressive sources, I would no longer donate.
He replied, "I totally respect the decision not to give us more money. I'm such a fan and have great respect for you and your work." But then he said it is "just 100% false ... that 'only globalist, progressive mainstream sources' are permitted."
He gave examples of left-wing media that Wikipedia rejects, like Raw Story and Occupy Democrats.
I'm glad he rejects them. Those sites are childishly far-left.
I then wrote again to ask why "there's not a single right-leaning media outlet Wiki labels 'reliable' about politics, (but) Vox, Slate, The Nation, Mother Jones, CNN, MSNBC" get approval.
Wales then stopped responding to my emails.
Unless Wikipedia's bias is fixed, I'll be skeptical reading anything on the site.
Talk about being a couple of decades late to the party. This investigative journalist is just NOW noticing Wikipedia’s far-left bias on any political topic (or basically ANY topic)?
Stossel, you’re really, really late figuring this out.
Jimmy Wales = NWO
In other breaking news, Generalisimo Francisco Franco is still dead.
I find it very hard to take Stossel seriously. He has a good gig being a certain type of media personality. He’s not actually contributing much of anything. Of course, neither am I, but I don’t get paid, and he does — for basically being an actor.
.
Wikipedia is so unreliable that colleges will fail a paper that uses it as a reference.
Wikipedia has long been known as a liberal cess pot.
Why would right leaning people bother wasting time anywhere near libs?
Awesome link! 👍
Wow. Since when did Conservapedia become a Russian propaganda site?
My first thought too, then I thought, shit, I’m 68 and have been watching Stossel since I was a youngster, maybe John should consider hanging up his press pass, he’s decades behind the curve?
👍
As others note here this has been true of Wiki for quite a long time.
It used to be that mainly political topics were biased. Exceptions were things like global warming. That area was for a long time controlled by a guy named Connolly, and he enforced the leftist point of view with a ruthlessness that would have done the Inquisition proud. At some point even the Wiki crowd had enough and he was deposed if I understood correctly.
But now that almost everything is politicized the leftist point of view overwhelmingly predominates on Wiki. One has to be very careful using it.
Wikipedia is not trustworthy on science. For instance, all that global warming stuff is given a wide berth. And their information on fusion is heavily biased.
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2053398/posts
Before Wikipedia, all we had were printed encyclopedias — out of date by the time we bought them.”
We have a 1958 set of Britannica in a bookcase including a world atlas that used bookstore didn’t want and the local homeschool foundation said no.
I’ve found Wiki to be a useful tool as long as you stay away from anything controversial. It is good for giving you an introductory basic understanding of topics you know nothing about. But it is only a basic introduction and starting point. It should not be used as a citation or source.
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