Tag: wikipedia

Why We Should Be Wary of Wikipedia

If you’re like me, and pretty much the rest of humanity, when you want to know something, you Google it. Invariably, at or near the top of the results, is a Wikipedia finding with your answer. 

That is an astounding amount of power and influence for Wikipedia. 

Wikipedia claims to be the place for us to understand… everything, quickly and simply. 

Apparently we trust Wikipedia… why? 

For one thing, Wikipedia is a nonprofit. 

And it says that: 

Wikipedia is a place to learn, free from bias or agenda… Show the world that access to independent and unbiased information matters to you.” — The Wikimedia Foundation

How does Wikipedia provide this “independent and unbiased” information?

Wikimedia, the foundation that hosts Wikipedia, allows anonymous individuals whose identity it does not know — and whose expertise or agenda it has not vetted — to create its content. 

Some of these anonymous editors are relentless about creating negative perceptions of certain individuals and entities — and they are experts at it, rendering their subjects powerless to correct false or slanted information. 

This is a serious issue that needs to be addressed and widely discussed. But is it? Not that I can see. I searched Google to see how much this has come out in major media.  

I found a 2021 article in The Washington Post, written by Samuel Baltz, “a PhD candidate in political science and scientific computing and an MS student in applied mathematics at the University of Michigan.” He asserted: 

Wikipedia is one of the few socially driven websites where, even though anyone can contribute information about breaking news, misinformation is largely suppressed. And Wikipedia’s coverage of current events often directs attention to its pages about ideas in political science, giving readers context for the news…

Wikipedia has developed an impressive record of political and ideological neutrality.

He then goes on to state that it “has serious biases in its coverage.” But what strikes me is that those biases are in the interests of the establishment media like The Washington Post. And, like the fox in the hen house, those media serve as the actual arbiters for whether information on Wikipedia should be trusted. Baltz writes:

From the gender gap in its biographies of scientists to its disproportionate focus on politicians from wealthy countries, Wikipedia’s coverage of people is particularly skewed. And these biases are rampant on the pages that people visit to understand political events.

But because anyone can become a Wikipedia editor, these biases can be corrected.

In other words, the problem with Wikipedia is that it is not politically correct enough, from a kind of establishment liberal perspective. This means women, minorities, and non-Americans are underrepresented — which, as we all know, is hardly a problem limited to Wikipedia alone. The Washington Post has its own problems around this issue. 

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New browser extension replaces Wikipedia pages in search results with Encyclosphere pages

Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger has announced the launch of a browser plugin that adds Encyclosphere results, while offering the possibility to remove those from Wikipedia – when performing a search using Google or DuckDuckGo.

Other search engines will be added soon, according to the plugin’s page on Chrome Web Store (also works with Brave). The description also notes that Wikipedia results are removed when there are relevant ones from the Encyclosphere.

Another feature, which Sanger admits in one of the tweets announcing the launch of the extension is likely to be “properly appreciated” only by “techies” is the inclusion of a built-in peer-to-peer encyclopedia reader, which opens articles from WebTorrent, in this way rendering the browser into a network node.

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Wikipedia’s ‘Recession’ Page Shows 41 Edits In One Week, Attempts At Changing Definition

A Wikipedia administrator has placed a pause on edits to Wikipedia’s “Recession” page by unregistered users until early August to stop “vandalism” and “malicious” content after the page was edited 41 times in the past seven days with repeated attempts to alter the historical definition of a recession.

On Thursday, the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) estimated that the U.S. economy shrank for the second straight quarter at a 0.9 annualized rate. In recent weeks, the Biden administration had argued that there is no agreed-upon definition of a recession, despite economists consistently saying a recession can be signaled by two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth. The plethora of Wikipedia revisions come as the Biden administration attempts to go around the commonly held definition of the term.

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Wikipedia Removes Entry for Hunter Biden’s Firm “Rosemont Seneca” Because It Risked Becoming a “Magnet for Conspiracy Theories About Hunter Biden”

Wikipedia erased the entry of Rosemont Seneca from its site recently.  The online encyclopedia known for its far-left bias, goes soft on Democrats and their allies while it does the opposite with conservative, America-loving sites like TGP.

Newsmax reports:

Wikipedia editors earlier this week removed an entry on Hunter Biden’s investment firm Rosemont Seneca Partners because it was “not notable,” archived comments from the Talk Page revealed.

The censoring of information happened Wednesday. The company co-founded by Hunter Biden has been at the heart of controversy lately.

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Wikipedia Contemplates Deleting Article On ‘Mass Killings Under Communist Regimes’

Wikipedia is asking its users to weigh in on the platform’s article discussing “Mass killings under Communist regimes.”

The article discusses mass killings perpetrated by communist regimes throughout the 20th century, including the Soviet Union, China, and Cambodia.

Two warnings appear on the article, one asking for comments on the possible deletion of the article and one noting that the article may be biased or unverifiable.

“This article is being considered for deletion in accordance with Wikipedia’s deletion policy,” the first warning reads. “Please share your thoughts on the matter at this article’s deletion discussion page.

Feel free to improve the article, but do not remove this notice before the discussion is closed and do not blank the page. For more information, read the guide to deletion.”

According to Wikipedia’s deletion policy, users are encouraged to “explain their opinion” on whether the article should be deleted.

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Wikipedia Co-Founder Criticizes Site, Says It Has Slid Into ‘Leftist Propaganda’

Wikipedia has in recent years drifted away from neutrality and slid into “leftist propaganda,” according to its co-founder Larry Sanger.

Sanger, who parted ways with Wikipedia almost two decades ago over the project’s direction, told EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders” that the online encyclopedia, which turned 20 years old earlier this year, has gradually shifted to follow the narrative of “the news media.”

“Wikipedia made a real effort at neutrality for, I would say, its first five years or so,” said Sanger. “And then … it began a long, slow slide into what I would call leftist propaganda.”

Wikipedia has around 125,000 active volunteer editors who work on crowdsourced articles, and more than 1,000 “administrators” who can take actions such as blocking accounts or restricting edits on certain pages.

Sanger told EpochTV that particularly in the past five years, any individual who is “on the right,” or “even contrarian,” often finds themselves with an article on Wikipedia that “grossly misrepresents their achievements, often just leaves out important bits of their work, and misrepresents their motives.”

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Wikipedia’s Quiet, Big-Tech-Funded Grip On Internet Knowledge Gives It Too Much Power

Wikipedia’s quiet dominance over internet knowledge and close ties to authoritarian big tech companies is giving the online encyclopedia site too much unchecked power.

In one recent example, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who is under federal and state investigation for mishandling the COVID-19 pandemic and growing list of scandals, is described on his Wikipedia page in a positive light while Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a potential GOP frontrunner for the 2024 presidential election, is painted as a partisan hack who ignored the science.

Anyone who searches for information about both of these governors’ pandemic responses will be given this information that isn’t necessarily true, and Wikipedia doesn’t seem to do anything about it. As a matter of fact, any user who wanted to manipulate a page to fit his agenda could as long as it slipped through Wikipedia’s editing process. That happened seven years ago when a Wikipedia user overlooked The Federalist’s long list of “featured-in” publications and important interviews to try to delete our publication’s entry because, according to the user, it “does not pass the threshold for notability.”

Wikipedia’s move to the left, especially when echoing narratives found in corporate media, is not a sudden one. Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger is just one of the many people who recently called attention to Wikipedia slowly but surely kissing its neutrality goodbye. In an interview in February, Sanger said the 20-year-old website’s shift towards the left is “disheartening” and “troubling.”

“Wikipedia’s ideological and religious bias is real and troubling, particularly in a resource that continues to be treated by many as an unbiased reference work,” Sanger said.

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The left-wing bias of Wikipedia

Wikipedia is the most widely used source of information in the world, and a great deal has been written about its impact on public perception of certain topics. Wikipedia shapes both scientific research and real-world economic outcomes, and is the top source of medical information for both doctors and patients. The widespread reliance on Wikipedia would not be a problem if it were a neutral and authoritative source, but earlier this year Wikipedia’s co-founder Larry Sanger declared that “Wikipedia’s ‘NPOV’ (neutral point of view) is dead.” Is Sanger’s statement correct?

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Wikipedia Editors Label Biden Corruption Allegations ‘Conspiracy Theory’ After Censorship Attempts

Despite efforts on Wikipedia to censor any mention of the New York Post’s bombshell revelations about Joe and Hunter Biden’s alleged involvement in potentially corrupt foreign business dealings, claiming the Post is an “unreliable” source, editors have since reluctantly allowed mentioning the story provided the Post is not cited. However, coverage has been largely confined to an article labeling the allegations a “conspiracy theory,” and editors have sought to portray the story as discredited or even as “Russian disinformation” in the article and in a “FAQ” on its discussion page.

Editors have rejected mentioning Fox News reports confirming some of the Post’s reporting due to the outlet being discouraged as a source for politically contentious content since a Wikipedia discussion in July. The claims have so far been kept out of the page for Hunter Biden entirely, where corruption allegations are characterized as “debunked” conspiracy theories.

After the Post published e-mails obtained from a laptop purportedly owned by Biden suggesting he introduced an adviser for the allegedly corrupt Burisma energy firm to his father, Vice President Biden, social media sites Facebook and Twitter began censoring or suppressing posts about the story with Twitter locking accounts and blocking links to the Post’s article. On Wikipedia, editors added the allegations to the article on “Conspiracy theories related to the Trump–Ukraine scandal” citing the Post, Fox News, and the Daily Mail, yet their edits were repeatedly removed mainly citing a discussion last month declaring the Post an “unreliable” source. Citing Daily Mail has similarly been prohibited on Wikipedia and the same is true for numerous other conservative media outlets, including Breitbart News.

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