Wikipedia Co-Founder: Site’s Neutrality Is ‘Dead’ Thanks to Leftist Bias
By Paul Homewood
h/t Dennis Ambler
Well, there’s a surprise!!
Larry Sanger, the co-founder of Wikipedia, published a blog post this month declaring that the online encyclopedia’s “neutral point of view” policy is “dead” due to the rampant left-wing bias of the site. Noting the article on President Donald Trump, Sanger contrasted its extensive coverage of presidential scandals with the largely scandal-free article on former President Barack Obama.
Sanger also criticized Wikipedia’s coverage of religion and other controversial topics. After Fox News reported on his blog post, many Wikipedians ignored the bias Sanger identified and instead responded by attacking the conservative outlet as well as Sanger.
On May 14, Sanger published a blog piece titled “Wikipedia Is Badly Biased” and started by declaring Wikipedia’s “Neutral Point of View” policy dead. Having founded the online encyclopedia with Jimmy Wales and having been involved in the original drafting of the policy, Sanger offered particular insight into its development and its practice in recent years. On the current policy’s rejection of providing “equal validity” to different views, Sanger stated this went directly against the original policy’s intent and that “as journalists turn to opinion and activism, Wikipedia now touts controversial points of view on politics, religion, and science.”
Full story here.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
I get the impression that almost every source of information suffers from a left bias. Thank god for the few, like here, that remain. Sadly I have cancelled my subs to Spectator and Telegraph, given up on Julia Hartley Brewer and am left with Paul and Guido.
PP: I try to live by the stricture that, when Churchill was seen reading the Manchester Guardian his response to his interlocutor was, ‘It is my belief that one should always read at least one newspaper that does not agree with your point of view.’ But I do find the Guardian and the Daily Mirror far too far from my POV.
‘Sources of information’ tend to be in the domain of academics, who tend to be left-biased and in an echo chamber of like-minded colleagues.
So Wikipedia is going to be stuck with these biases unless/until it goes out of its way to do something about them.
I commented yesterday on the article about Naomi Siebert, urging some caution on just accepting what you read. (some flak for that). But the control of information and news is always the first target of any uprising. In all revolutions and coup d’etats the first thing to take over is the radio and TV stations, Now it is the internet. I just urge all us climate change deniers not to sink to the tactics employed by green alarmists.
Hi! I would prefer the term Anthropogenic Global Warming Sceptic (AGM Sceptic) as climate has, is and will change as long as there is an atmosphere and the big shiny yellow thing in the sky radiates energy which hits the Earth. Climate change has been occurring for 4.5 billion years. Hope pointing that out does not make me a pedant! 🙂
Agreed AGM Sceptic much better term…….
Climat change Realist even better
Sad but I can confirm this. Just look at anything which is a topic of debate and see how left wing the narrative is. I have been wondering for a while what has been going on. I come from the UK and “suddenly” noticed that clearly political statements were being made by bodies particularly ones with charitable status. Statements which not only would you not expect because the subject matter was clearly outside of their knowledge base but most damming of all their charters specifically forbid. . My now dead father resigned from the British Medical Association because it began making political and specifically left wing statements,.something he repeatedly challenged them on in writing as totally against their charter. It is difficult to prove a conspiracy but given the number of previously august organisations now spouting left wing politics you have to wonder is this random or have they been deliberately targeted. Targeted statements on climate together with left wing solutions are being put out there every day by supposed charities with absolutely no ability to judge climate but they do so all the same. This also goes for the BMA and the Lancet medical sources , The RSPB, Save the Children, Oxfam and incredibly Christian Aid all advertise climate spokesmen/women/things and my suspicious is aroused because the language and the detail are common and certainly way out of the knowledge base of those organisations. My theory? The boards of these bodies are being infiltrated deliberately by left wingers and once on the boards they push for statements to be made on a range of hot political issues I suppose sugaring it with claims that funding will come much more easily if they show allegiance for example to the climate circus. However, the common feel of the wording suggests a single or at most a couple of activist sources for the content. I expect they take a simple statement produced by the organization based on its knowledge, edit the statement filling it out in the case of climate BS with their usual propaganda and giving the statement back to the charity/organization for publication. This really does need serious investigation because the rabid left are clearly serious in their intentions and the scale of organization has to shout conspiracy to subvert the normal running of the country and public opinion. In the UK successive Conservative Governments have failed to address the political appointments of previous left wing governments right across the Civil Service and Quango world. Is it any wonder that those “independent bodies fight tooth and nail and spout left wing politics in response to anything from the Government they do not like?
Jonathan, I agree with every word. I hope that matters might be coming to a head for the current Government, with Dominic Cummngs leading the charge to overhaul the UK’s ‘Deep State’. This includes parts of the Civil Service, mostly at its senior levels, all Quangos, the Climate Change Committee. the Police Service, those promoting ‘Common Purpose’, the Academic Industry and last, but certainly not least, the British Broadcasting Corporation.
The Cummings affair is another example of BBC blatant biased, trying to alter public opinion and pressure/influence the government, rather than just report the natural state.
If it wasn’t for the saturated and highly negative coverage of the matter, most people would never have given a hoot. Personally, yet again reading the guidance on childcare and vulnerable persons, he acted reasonably and within the spirit of the law.
Yet we have the BBC fomenting public anger with all these false equivalences, exploiting the upset and anger of people missing deaths, funerals etc., and giving hours of airtime to antagonists with hate twisting their faces as badly as Kuenssberg’s.
One tiny admission of BBC guilt, or rather an ‘innocent mistake’, but in an ocean of bias, what a joke.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-52824508
I see no reason to disagree with one single word! It must be 10 years ago that I blogged about the money — either charitable donations or government support — that Oxfam was spending on “climate change” officers. Two of the attendees at the notorious “28-gate” BBC seminar were from Tearfund and one activist, whether for Oxfam or Christian Aid I can’t recall, officially represented Bolivia at one climate gabfest, pushing for pollution reduction in shipping. The fact that Bolivia is land-locked just adds to the surreality of the whole farce!
On the bright side:
Every victory is a lost victory; and every tide turns.
If we had a conservative government they might do something about it but it has been decades since we had one of those. Currently we have Blue Labour in charge and led by a metropolitan liberal who is having to fight hard to save his puppet master.
I was disappointed to see the Institute of Highway Engineers state that it would be championing biodiversity. No, I couldn’t see how the members would have any expertise or knowledge in this either. Other than screeching ‘climate change’ many working in that field struggle to find out what causes certain changes as there can be so many variables. Of course they might want to deliberately ignore some. Small bird numbers reduced – anything to do with the promoted increase in raptors such as Red Kites perhaps? Hedgehog numbers declining – increase in badger population anyone?
Haven’t seen a hedgehog in my village for over 10 years. The last one I saw was being merrily eaten alive by a pair of badgers. I can still recall its’ blood curdling, terrified screams. Badger numbers over the same period have quadrupled. Ditto ground nesting birds such as the willow warbler. On my local loch, the otters have blazed a trail through this spring’s crop of goslings and ducklings, having chomped their way, mostly for fun over winter, through the stocks of native specimen fish. Our last group of cygnets went the same way. Many naive individuals won’t realise that otters tend to eat very little flesh of the bigger fish and animals that they catch and torture their prey just for the fun of it. Not something I expect Kate Humble or Chris Packham showing you on telly anytime soon, methinks.
As badgers and otters are apex predators in their particular domains with very broad appetites, it is interesting how little thought is given by our green friends to the control of these creatures. I’m all for natural balance but allowing certain animals to run amok and then blaming the absence of their natural prey on ‘climate change’ or farming practices is a tad perverse.
Johnathon: I don’t know what country you now live in but your reading of the UK/Europe situation is grossly over-simplified. There are not a few “activists” undermining our society, the contagion is far more sinister and more deeply rooted. It encompasses our media but more particularly our schools where are children are brainwashed from the earliest age. Don’t underestimate it – it ain’t going anywhere soon.
Vernon. I spend most of my time in the country dubbed “the last communist state in Europe” by a frustrated Swedish Foreign Minister some 10 years ago…. Norway. 🙂 You are absolutely correct. The infiltration goes very deep. My comments were regarding the highly suspicious climate focussed output from charities etc who have neither the knowledge or remit to be spouting such rubbish but they do it constantly and the message is always the same which is why I speculate (I am a scientist and I dislike speculation :)) because the very similar feel to all of the statements they make all full of apocalyptical “fears” and the solution…. is always socialism. It is like a teacher reading two test papers and both read the same way, not all words the same but a lot of critical ones are and there is a and a common feel. You want my long view? Jordan Peterson mentions this quite often. The Frankfurt School and Critical Theory. That is where it all goes back to. A marxist agenda for the destruction of Western Civilization which was conceived in Frankfurt in the 1930s by if I am not mistaken by two marxists, one Italian and the other Hungarian who decamped to the US when Hitler was getting too hot on their heels. Everything else, neo marxism and post modernism I would offer stems from that or at least post dates it. Ever wonder why political correctness which is a product of Critical Theory started in the USA? Now you know. The infiltration there and in the UK started with higher education and filtered down. You find ANYONE in the UK who is not in fear of their job teaching or lecturing who publicly announces themselves as being politically on the right. It is suicide to do that anywhere in academia. How is that possible in a balanced and democratic society? I will not even go near the hundreds of millions of pounds poured in to worthless and scientifically unsound research via the grant system supporting research proposals with “climate change inserted almost like sixpences in a Christmas pudding. . Almost every grant application has “climate change” somewhere in the title regardless of its relevance to the subject. All this nonsense is public funded..we are all paying to destroy ourselves! Cheers JonS
Google “climate scepticism” and you will be offered as first choice, not a certain blog of that name, but the Wiki article on climate denialism. With Google and Wiki combining their forces to redirect your desires and redefine the meaning of words Orwell’s nightmare is realised.
Not if you use ‘DuckDuckGo’ (https://duckduckgo.com/) as your search engine. Then you get a certain blog as your first choice, followed by two articles from the Guardian (say no more), one from HowStuffWorks that tries to take a balanced position, then Wikipedia and then an article ‘Have we won?‘ from you know where. Not so bad – although it does have a side box at the top with a long quotation from Wikipedia headed ‘Climate change denial‘.
I have been using DuckDuckGo for several years.
“O’Sullivan’s first law” (O’Sullivan’s law): All organizations that are not actually right-wing will over time become left-wing.”
Rush Limbaugh has cited this a number of times.
The following, new, information has major implications for the rate at which ‘excess’ carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is being scrubbed out by the ocean. Because of biological activity, any spike is removed and mixed into the whole ocean in fifty years, not the five hundred years which the thermohaline circulation would require:
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2018GL081514
This is too true; just surprised he has admitted it. Wikipedia’s leftist bias is terrible. For example, the article on Catholic Communist Dorothy Day, now up for sainthood, is propaganda for her. All negative information and references previously in the entry have been removed by the “editors.” An alternative view of Day is at “Dorothy Day Another Way, “https://dorothydayworker.blogspot.com/
One of the few things I trust about Wikipedia is their treatment of plants. They will give the scientific names, families, orders, etc. in a very organized way. It is the first place I go when looking up a plant name or about one.
As for the rest of Wikipedia, “let the buyer beware,” and beware and ……. Several years ago I was looking up George Soros’ real name and found that they had completely whitewashed him to be just a nice old man who like to give his money away…..WOW!! As I recall they did not have anything about his past with the Nazis or even that he was Jewish (Georg Schwartz) from Hungary.
By coincidence, i made a comment on the https://lockdownsceptics.org/ site a couple of days ago (superb site.. Toby Young does for covid lockdown hysteria what Paul does here for Climate change realism) as Toby’s wiki entry had just been updated to show a left wing critical comment .
Like all such sites, one now expects some bias and so any opinion related comment needs to be taken with a pinch of salt. However wikipedia still remains my go to site for cheating with the sunday general knowledge crosswords!
I used to contribute on a regular basis but was blocked without an explanation a few years ago. Oh well!
William Connolley began editing Wikipedia in 2003 and served as a Wikipedia administrator from 2006 until 2009. He has been cited and quoted in the media regarding these activities, especially with respect to his editing in the area of climate change.
I am sorry sir but I don’t know who william connolley is. I know thw ronan and michael family of course but not william.
Wherever there is controversy there is bias. Each of us must do our own due diligence in our research. And even then a bias will remain. Peer-review is no exception. Peers have bias. We all do.
I don’t think most people understand how shallow peer-review actually is. They think it is a full work through not just a read through in a couple of hours. And then there is the global warmists favourite ‘pal-review’ where your mates probably don’t even read it before saying it is brilliant and handing it back to the pal who edits the journal.
The U.S. is, or should be, at a crossroads concerning Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, 1996.
“No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider” (47 U.S.C. § 230).
“Platform” providers are shielded from legal responsibilities that publishers face. They are not responsible for third party content. Made sense. At first. You wouldn’t expect the phone company to be liable for what people said over the phone.
a generation and see that “platforms” are no longer, they have become publishers. By controlling content. Twitter labels a Trump comment as false. Youtube bans videos they don’t like. Facebook . . . etc.
As they have voluntarily taken to regulating content, they should be viewed legally as publishers, and not subject to the protections of Section 230.
So how can this be changed? A change in the law isn’t necessary, but may be needed. I should think Trump could sue Twitter for lying, and when Twitter claims Section 230 protection, Trump’s team can easily show that Twitter is a publisher and not a platform.
As this avenue has always been available, and no one – that I know of – has sued on this basis, it appears it’s not going to happen.
So change 230. Amend a list of what content the “platform” provider can edit without becoming a publisher. There is nothing wrong with them banning solicitations to commit a crime.
The thing about content on real platforms is that IT DOESN’T MATTER IF IT’S WRONG. Nor misleading. Platform providers have no duty to edit, and should lose their designation as a platform if they do.
Just heard Rush Limbaugh saying that Sen. Marco Rubio unloaded on Twitter along the same line. Found this article:
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/rubio-warns-twitter-after-it-puts-fact-check-label-on-trump-tweet
‘The Florida Republican said Tuesday that Twitter “should no longer be shielded from liability” and treated as a publisher if it decides to deviate from its place as a social media forum.
“The law still protects social media companies like @Twitter because they are considered forums not publishers,” Rubio said. “But if they have now decided to exercise an editorial role like a publisher then they should no longer be shielded from liability & treated as publishers under the law.”
The law still protects social media companies like @Twitter because they are considered forums not publishers.
But if they have now decided to exercise an editorial role like a publisher then they should no longer be shielded from liability & treated as publishers under the law.
— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) May 27, 2020 ‘
Well, Marco, you are a Senator. What are YOU going to do? Your complaints are correct, but it is YOUR JOB to fix it.
BWTM:
https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2020/05/27/exclusive-matt-gaetz-drafting-bill-to-drop-big-techs-legal-immunity-over-one-sided-fact-checks/
A Congress critter actually doing something. From the headline, I’m not sure I agree with his solution. But it’s a start.
Also note, I have been making this rant for a year. Did Twitter just trigger their own demise?
That guy in the photo is Jimmy Wales, not Larry Sanger.
The third sentence in Mr Sanger’s article reads ‘There is a rewritten policy, but it endorses the utterly bankrupt canard that journalists should avoid what they call “false balance.”’ He links to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view#Giving_%22equal_validity%22_can_create_a_false_balance
So, just to be clear, Mr Sanger is arguing for a specific interpretation of “neutrality” that is not universally accepted. The polite name for it would be the “equal validity approach”.
Of course Wikipedia is not neutral, it never has been!
It relies on a ‘consensus’ of interpretations and option to give a single view of reality. They can not report the many views of reality as intolerance of counter views can not be allowed by the lefty editors.
Oops. try again …
Of course Wikipedia is not neutral, it never has been!
It relies on a ‘consensus’ of interpretations and opinions to give a single view of reality. They can not report the many views of reality as intolerance of counter views can not be allowed by the lefty editors.