Trying to identify and remove bias in any direction is a worthy goal. That said, an evenhanded and factual approach to doing this may result in more negative sentiment towards people or organizations that deny facts; push fringe ideas without the benefit of widespread public support, or evidence, or academic consensus; or who have similarities with historical people or organizations who have come to be viewed negatively with the benefit of hindsight.
Wikipedia needs some 'right wing' to offset the heavy 'left-wing' bias on nearly every article which has some political tangent, no matter how distant. It was supposed to be an encyclopedia, not an activist manual or propaganda organ but in many ways it has turned into the latter. You may - for some unfathomable reason - agree with the lefties who rule the roost among the editors so you may not realise just how much resistance the site has against publishing things which go against whatever desired narrative there happens to be but that does not make it right. Just like Michael Jordan realised 'Republicans buy sneakers too' it is time for Jimmy Wales (et al) to realise conservatives use encyclopedias too or it will end up not being known as an encyclopedia but as a political platform. There's plenty of those already and it would be a damn shame if Wikipedia remained stuck in that mire. Come on, Wales, wake up and smell the coffee (or tea or whatever you prefer) and realise the 'progressive' grip on the media is weakening. The site should be neither 'left' nor 'right' but 'factual' as facts neither care about your feelings nor about your ideology.
> It was supposed to be an encyclopedia, not an activist manual or propaganda organ but in many ways it has turned into the latter.
Can you give examples where it's an activist manual or a propaganda organ? My impression is that everything is well-sourced and fairly reliable. At least, more so than the vast majority of information sources on the Web.
Although I suppose on some level, there is something inherently left-wing about a free, common, public source of information that's accessible and editable by anyone, whereas conservatives would probably prefer to privatize and commercialize it.
But I guess it's good that conservatives also see the value it in.
I can give you some links to articles discussing the problems with biased Wikipedia articles which should answer any questions you have on this subject. If you want examples you an just look for anything related to the current US administration for a good start.
As to the claim that Wikipedia articles are 'well-sourced and fairly reliable' this is true for articles which are not in any way related to politics but misleading or sometimes even downright false where it concerns politically charged subjects, partly due to the (ab)use of the 'Perennial Sources' list which in for the most only allows sources which abide to the 'progressive' narrative. By banning sources which do not follow the narrative it is difficult to sometimes impossible to add corrections to biased articles since those corrections relate to facts only published on such sites. This often leads to lengthy discussions on the Talk pages for those articles where editors defend their deletion of such corrections by claiming the sources are banned or untrustworthy - this based on the Perennial Sources list [1] which lists heavily biased propagandist sources like MSNBC, ABC, CNN, Al Jazeera, SPLC, ADL, the Atlantic and many others as 'reliable'. In this way Wikipedia treats sources like pseudo-democratic countries treat parties: just ban the parties and candidates which don't tow the line and let the world marvel at your party or candidate 'winning' every election 'fair and square'.
The problem with Wikipedia's bias is very well known, just point a search engine at the question 'does wikipedia have a political bias' (or something along those lines) for examples. Articles on politically charged subjects - and there seem to be more and more of those - end up like talking points for the desired narrative instead of informative overviews of the subject matter. Such articles are then used as 'proof' of the position espoused in the narrative, as 'teaching material' to further the narrative, as input for LLM training runs which leads to those models ending up being more biased and more.
Yes, Wikipedia has a significant political/ideological bias towards the 'left' or 'progressive' side.
As to there being something 'left-wing' about a 'free, common, public source of information that is accessible and editable by anyone' I beg to differ. I consider this to be neither left-wing nor right-wing, liberal nor libertarian. Where ideology comes in to play is when someone with an ideological bias starts removing viewpoints which do not fit some desired narrative, especially when this is done in an organised fashion so as to crowd out dissenting viewpoints. As it stands now on Wikipedia it is those with a left-wing bias who are largely responsible for such activities. I won't claim that there is something inherently left-wing about the desire to silence those with dissenting views because I know this not to be true. I do claim this is inherently authoritarian and that this behaviour is what has dragged down Wikipedia. It would be a good thing for those in charge of keeping the project alive to realise that it stands or falls by its general reliability which has been severely affected by the actions of these activist editors.
A long-ish answer but that's because I've been around Wikipedia for a long time - since its inception - and consider it a damn shame that the project has been subject to ideological capture.
Can you provide some examples? I often see this FUD and then something like, “they don’t even include the conservative viewpoint” and then I click on the link and see the conservative viewpoint.
Readit News
"We are building Grokipedia @xAI.
Will be a massive improvement over Wikipedia.
Frankly, it is a necessary step towards the xAI goal of understanding the Universe."
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1972992095859433671
Dead Comment
Dead Comment
Can you give examples where it's an activist manual or a propaganda organ? My impression is that everything is well-sourced and fairly reliable. At least, more so than the vast majority of information sources on the Web.
Although I suppose on some level, there is something inherently left-wing about a free, common, public source of information that's accessible and editable by anyone, whereas conservatives would probably prefer to privatize and commercialize it.
But I guess it's good that conservatives also see the value it in.
https://thecritic.co.uk/the-left-wing-bias-of-wikipedia/
https://www.allsides.com/blog/wikipedia-biased
As to the claim that Wikipedia articles are 'well-sourced and fairly reliable' this is true for articles which are not in any way related to politics but misleading or sometimes even downright false where it concerns politically charged subjects, partly due to the (ab)use of the 'Perennial Sources' list which in for the most only allows sources which abide to the 'progressive' narrative. By banning sources which do not follow the narrative it is difficult to sometimes impossible to add corrections to biased articles since those corrections relate to facts only published on such sites. This often leads to lengthy discussions on the Talk pages for those articles where editors defend their deletion of such corrections by claiming the sources are banned or untrustworthy - this based on the Perennial Sources list [1] which lists heavily biased propagandist sources like MSNBC, ABC, CNN, Al Jazeera, SPLC, ADL, the Atlantic and many others as 'reliable'. In this way Wikipedia treats sources like pseudo-democratic countries treat parties: just ban the parties and candidates which don't tow the line and let the world marvel at your party or candidate 'winning' every election 'fair and square'.
The problem with Wikipedia's bias is very well known, just point a search engine at the question 'does wikipedia have a political bias' (or something along those lines) for examples. Articles on politically charged subjects - and there seem to be more and more of those - end up like talking points for the desired narrative instead of informative overviews of the subject matter. Such articles are then used as 'proof' of the position espoused in the narrative, as 'teaching material' to further the narrative, as input for LLM training runs which leads to those models ending up being more biased and more.
Yes, Wikipedia has a significant political/ideological bias towards the 'left' or 'progressive' side.
As to there being something 'left-wing' about a 'free, common, public source of information that is accessible and editable by anyone' I beg to differ. I consider this to be neither left-wing nor right-wing, liberal nor libertarian. Where ideology comes in to play is when someone with an ideological bias starts removing viewpoints which do not fit some desired narrative, especially when this is done in an organised fashion so as to crowd out dissenting viewpoints. As it stands now on Wikipedia it is those with a left-wing bias who are largely responsible for such activities. I won't claim that there is something inherently left-wing about the desire to silence those with dissenting views because I know this not to be true. I do claim this is inherently authoritarian and that this behaviour is what has dragged down Wikipedia. It would be a good thing for those in charge of keeping the project alive to realise that it stands or falls by its general reliability which has been severely affected by the actions of these activist editors.
A long-ish answer but that's because I've been around Wikipedia for a long time - since its inception - and consider it a damn shame that the project has been subject to ideological capture.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Per...