From Conservapedia

This list covers a wide range of bias in the English Wikipedia website. Although Wikipedia claims to have credibility because anyone can edit it, in fact, the website represents the viewpoint of its most strident and persistent, and that is, liberal editors. On Christmas Day 2016 (NYC time), Wikipedia's entry for U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Maryanne Trump Barry prominently and falsely declared: "Her younger brother is loan shark and liar Donald Trump,"[1] something which remained for an unusually-long forty-eight minutes before it was corrected.[2]

Wikipedia is also heavily influenced by paid public relations professionals who do not disclose their conflicts of interest. This list, together with the sublists linked below, provide a wide variety of examples of the resulting bias.

A cabal of editors exists who work together to bias articles and to hide embarrassing facts about left-wing political figures, while at the same time smearing conservatives. Scandals involving left-wing personalities are labeled "conspiracy theories", for example, Spygate (conspiracy theory by Donald Trump) or "controversies" such as IRS targeting controversy or Hillary Clinton email controversy, whereas those involving conservative personalities are labeled "scandal", for example Trump-Ukraine scandal.

Biased editors' standard tactics include claiming conservative-leaning sources as being unreliable (non- RS ). This also applies to centrist sources that are simply being truthful. The best way to observe Wikipedia is by reading an article's Talk page. One can see editors disparaging sources contrary to the mainstream media talking points. You will see scandals involving left-wing figures are typically dismissed as conspiracy theories. You will also see many derogatory comments about conservative figures, especially Donald Trump and Republican congressmen, senators, and judges. Editors who fight for balanced coverage eventually get permanently blocked, as well as a months-long IP block.

On August 23, 2011, David Swindle published an article at FrontPage Magazine detailing how Wikipedia has been taken over by the political left; he cited statistics relating to Wikipedia's articles on Ann Coulter, Michael Moore, Glenn Beck and Keith Olbermann, which helped demonstrate that Wikipedia has a leftist bias, and he discussed the liberal/leftist cultural foundations of Wikipedia.[3]

For example, Swindle wrote:

"Consider Ann Coulter versus Michael Moore. Coulter’s entry (on August 9, 2011) was 9028 words long.* Of this longer-than-usual entry, 3220 words were devoted to “Controversies and criticism” in which a series of incidents involving Coulter and quotes from her are cited with accompanying condemnations, primarily from her opponents on the Left. That’s 35.6 percent of Coulter’s entry devoted to making her look bad. By contrast, Moore’s entry is 2876 words (the more standard length for entries on political commentators), with 130 devoted to “Controversy.” That’s 4.5% of the word count, a fraction of Coulter’s. Does this mean that an “unbiased” commentator would find Coulter eight times as “controversial” as Moore?"[3]

The project was initiated by atheist and entrepreneur Jimmy Wales and the agnostic philosophy professor Larry Sanger on January 15, 2001.[4] An irony of Internet history is that Jimmy Wales, despite being an atheist, refers to himself as Wikipedia's "spiritual leader".[5] Despite its official "neutrality policy," Wikipedia has a strong liberal bias. In his article titled Wikipedia lies, slander continue journalist Joseph Farah stated Wikipedia "is not only a provider of inaccuracy and bias. It is wholesale purveyor of lies and slander unlike any other the world has ever known."[6] Mr. Farah has repeatedly been the victim of defamation at the Wikipedia site.[6] In December 2010, Christian apologist JP Holding called Wikipedia "the abomination that causes misinformation".[7] Although Wales "made his original fortune as a pornography trafficker", he has since tried to clean up his image and demands retractions when people report this fact.[8]

Mark Dice has dedicated chapters of at least two of his books to examples and analyses of the rampant left-wing bias in Wikipedia.[9]

Co-founder Larry Sanger, who left the site, later acknowledged that Wikipedia does not follow its own neutrality policy.[10][11]

Most examples have been moved to the sublists. Please visit the sublists to learn about the variety of bias in Wikipedia.

List of examples of liberal bias in Wikipedia

Below is a growing list of around 300 examples of liberal bias, deceit, edits stemming from corrupting conflicts of interest, frivolous gossip, and blatant errors on Wikipedia. The atheist Jimmy Wales was the leading founder of Wikipedia. Christian apologist JP Holding called Wikipedia "the abomination that causes misinformation".[7] Because the list of examples is so long, it is divided into sublists based on subject matter. Some of the most egregious examples are in these sublists, which are well worth reading. At risk of duplication, some of the most interesting examples from the sublists are also repeated on this main list to give an overview. (We limit this main list to up to three examples from each sublist.)

Examples of Bias

Abortion

See Examples of Bias in Wikipedia: Abortion

Wikipedia's articles on genocide,[12] murder,[13] and homicide[14] have absolutely no mention of abortion,[15] even though it has killed way more people than any other genocide.[16] Wikipedia has a large article detailing anti-abortion violence committed around the world,[17] but there is no article about pro-abortion violence. There is no article for "Pro-choice violence"[18] and "Pro-abortion violence" bizarrely redirects to the "Abortion debate" article.[19] Before being redirected, the "Pro-abortion violence" article was biased towards downplaying the reality of violence committed by supporters of abortion.[20] For example, while the "Anti-abortion violence" article matter-of-factly begins: "Anti-abortion violence is violence committed against individuals and organizations that provide abortion." ... the "Pro-abortion violence" article dismissively began: "Pro-abortion violence (or pro-choice violence) is a term used in the pro-life movement to characterize acts of violence committed by abortion practitioners or abortion advocates against those who oppose abortion or against pregnant women. The former is regarded as factual while the latter is just "a term used in the pro-life movement." Wikipedia falsely claimed that conservatives opposed to abortion are described as "anti-baby" or "anti-family". Wikipedia removed this bias only after it was identified here.[21]

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

She is heavily praised by Wikipedia for trying to decriminalize illegal immigration, abolishing prisons, decreeing the Green New Deal which would cost $100 trillion from taxpayer, corporate, and bank money, and for supporting " democratic" reforms that are actually Communist.

Religion

Anti-Christianity

See Examples of Bias in Wikipedia: Anti-Christianity

Islam

See also: Rape jihad

An editor included the June 2016 Orlando shootings on the List of Islamic terrorist attacks and an edit war ensued. [29]

ACT! for America is classified under Wikipedia's section on "Islamophobia."[30]

Bestiality/zoophilia

Domestic sheep

See Wikipedia on bestiality

As of July 18, 2012, Wikipedia's article on zoophilia/bestiality has an entire section on "arguments for zoophilia" plus pictures depicting zoophilia as well as a section on "arguments against zoophilia". No worthwhile encyclopedia in existence has an article on zoophilia/bestiality with an entire section on "arguments for zoophilia" plus pictures depicting zoophilia. As of September 24, 2011, Wikipedia has a "Zoophilia and the law" article which has a section on the impact of zoophilia laws where eight alleged negative impacts of zoophilia laws are given, but no positive impacts of the laws are given.[31]

Conservapedia smears

See Examples of Bias in Wikipedia: Conservapedia smears

Wikipedia displays pervasive bias in making liberal statements with citations that do not support the statements, as illustrated by its entry about Conservapedia.[32] Wikipedia states that "Conservapedia has asserted that Wikipedia is 'six times more liberal than the American public', a statistic which has been criticized for its poor extrapolation and lack of credibility." But the two citations for this claim of "poor extrapolation and lack of credibility" are to articles that say nothing about extrapolation or credibility and instead tend to confirm the liberal bias on Wikipedia. For nearly two months, from at least as early as July 15 through September 9, 2007, Wikipedia classified its critics, including Conservapedia, as "Fanatics and Special Interests."[33] In 2011 Wikipedia User Σ organized systematic vandalism of Conservapedia using the English Wikipedia IRC. This only came to light when he was nominated to be a Wikipedia Administrator and users there debated whether his actions were a good or bad thing to do.[34]

Conservative personalities and politicians

Hannah Giles

See Examples of Bias in Wikipedia: Conservative Personalities

Coronavirus

Wikipedia's Coronavirus articles have no criticism of China, instead, they blame Trump. They say that China warned the world and that Trump waited too long. The reality is, Chinese doctors were silenced by Xi Jinping just for trying to spread the truth, and Wikipedia calls this a "hoax". They even said that Trump wants to force the nation to inject dangerous chemicals to get rid of coronavirus! They also make Biden look anti-China, but he would never hold China accountable for the coronavirus. Trump, on the other hand, looks like pro-China, even though he will hold China accountable for the coronavirus. Whenever Trump criticizes China, they [Wikipedia and the mainstream media] call it "coronavirus misinformation", basically sympathizing with China.

Trump Family Separation Policy

Such family separations have occurred under previous Presidents, and therefor the article should not be specifically named after Trump. [42] Trump has never had any specific “Family Separation Policy”, another reason why this article title is highly misleading. Contrary to common misrepresentation in the media, the “Zero Tolerance Policy” had nothing to do with family separations, but was only about following the law, to prosecute those who break the law by entering the country illegally. [43] The family separations discussed in the article were a direct consequence of a court ruling on the Flores Settlement on July 6th, 2016, while Obama was President. Trump had no role or involvement in that. [44]

Criminals and mentally ill editors

See Examples of Bias in Wikipedia: Criminals and mentally ill editors

Adam Lanza, who conducted a mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in December 2012, has been identified as editing Wikipedia particularly regarding guns and other mass murders.[45] Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik edited English Wikipedia under the username "Conservatism". He also edited the Norwegian Wikipedia.[46] The the United States Federal Government claimed, among other things, that Bruce Edwards Ivins, a suspect in the 2001 anthrax attacks who apparently committed suicide in July 2008, had edit-warred on Wikipedia under the username Jimmyflathead.[47][48]

Ethnic and racial bias

See Examples of Bias in Wikipedia: Ethnic and racial

In 2008, two 15-year-old students wanted to harass a third student named "Azid", so they edited a Wikipedia article on Korma (an Eastern food) to add Azid as a synonym for the dish.[49] This meaning was then added to hundreds of Web postings about mid-eastern cooking. On July 16, 2014, one of the students confessed his stunt on Reddit,[50] but so many Azid references copied from Wikipedia had emerged in the meantime that Wikipedia did not delete the vandalism as untrue[51] until four months later.[52] For over a year, the article on Glen A. Wilson High School contained threats against an Asian student and made ethnic slurs against the school's primarily Asian badminton team.[53] Wikipedia has developed a series of history articles outlining the struggles of Jews, Catholics, Orthodox Christians, the LGBT community, Asians and blacks against discrimination and the Ku Klux Klan. These articles are now called "African-American Civil Rights Movement" despite being formerly called "American Civil Rights Movement."[54][55][56][57][58]

While the RNC August, 2020 has rightfully eliminated Mary Ann Mendoza after revealing she retweeted[59] recycled ludicrous old canard anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, yet, at the time, infamous wikipedian racist Nishidani is still on Wikipedia. As part of anti-Jewish campaign since 2006: Nishidani sugarcoated Hitler's buddy Grand Mufti of Jerusalem; pushed for Farrakhan's conspiracy-theories rubbish on July 2020 just before Nick Cannon's apology; supported the Islamic Republic of Iran's proxy anti-US/anti-Israel Houthis in Yemen in its use of human shields; whitewashed terror entity Palestinian-Arab Hamas and its use of own people as human shields in order to aim at Israeli civilians (and at children whenever they can[60]) as well as jihadi terror Hezbollah.[61]

Foreign hackers

Wikipedia has a very long article of "Cyberwarfare by Russia", heavily criticizing the Russian government, which they say that it is "confirmed", but their article of "Chinese cyberwarfare" doesn't really criticize to the Chinese government, and they say that it is "claimed". Russia is already a declining power and it is slowly becoming a democracy, but China is getting even worse, and it is becoming more powerful than ever. In their "Cyberwarfare and Iran" article, they do say that Iran's hacking is "confirmed", but they praise to Obama for "trying to abolish" the hackers, even though they [Iran] got American national bank access and taxpayer money from the Iran nuclear deal.

Gender bias

See Examples of Bias in Wikipedia: Gender bias

Wikipedia has a gender gap crusade which seeks to increase the percentage of female editors. (In practice that crusade has the effect of driving away male editors.) There are also many serious examples of gender bias in Wikipedia's content. When a New York Times op-ed criticised feminist Wikipedia editors for moving women from Category:American Novelists to a separate category,[62] the article about the author was attacked and watered down, restored[63] and attacked again.[64]

Global warming

See Examples of Bias in Wikipedia: Global warming

A recent charge is that U.K. scientist and Green Party activist and Realclimate.org member William Connolley functioned as a Wikipedia editor and website administrator, repressing information that militated against Climate Change. As such he "rewrote Wikipedia’s articles on global warming, on the greenhouse effect, on the instrumental temperature record, on the urban heat island, on climate models, on global cooling. On Feb. 14, he began to erase the Little Ice Age; on Aug.11, the Medieval Warm Period."[65] Michael Mann is a well known global warming alarmist who is ridiculed for his so-called scientific work on tree ring temperature data, the Hockey Stick theory and was the subject of fraud in the Climategate scandal. Wikipedia decides to allow mention of his involvement with Climategate. Attempts to add the mention were repeatedly undone,[66][67] though some mention of Climategate was eventually added on Mann's page.[68]

Homosexuality

See Examples of Bias in Wikipedia: Homosexuality

Wikipedia editors regularly and fiercely alter the use of the terms "he" or "she" in articles regarding cross-dressing/transsexual figures. Male to Female transexuals are near-universally referred to as "she" while women attempting to pass as men are referred to as "he", despite this usage absolutely incorrect in both scientific and legal senses. When NBA Basketball player Jason Collins announced that he was a homosexual, his Wikipedia biography was altered to say that he was a "faggot." When an editor attempted to change the word to "gay" Wikipedia's anti-vandalism robot changed it back.[69][70][71] An editor replaced his photo with a poster for "Gay N-word".[72] After the page drew criticism on the Huffington Post, Wikipedia locked the page to editing and the changes have been hidden from public view. The article on the 2012-13 Washington Wizzards season had similar problems.[73] After an edit war,[74] Wikipedia changed the Bradley Manning article to Chelsea Manning and gave the article subject female attributes, even though Manning had yet to legal change his name or begin any sex reassignment treatments or therapies.[75] The article was moved between "Chelsea Manning" and "Bradley Manning" six times in one day as Wikipedia administrators fought among themselves. Wikipedia's article on "Homophobia," dignifies the use of what is actually a pejorative slur word to turn readers against those who oppose the posterior orifice intercourse of men-lying-with-men. The use of this word is an attempt to classify those who oppose such sodomy as having a mental disorder, a phobia. An attempt to demonstrate that opposition to sodomy is neither a fear nor an irrational fear (phobia) supported by the absence of such a phobia in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, will not be tolerated in the article. The existence of this article is a violation of the Wikipedia NPOV standard, as the use of such slur words is an obvious attempt to win a debate by changing the vocabulary (as in changing from fornication to sexually active).[76]

Ideological terrorism

Wikipedia has an extremely long article of Right-wing terrorism, but their Left-wing terrorism is short and doesn't even criticize to leftists that much as they do to rightists. Their Right-wing terrorism article says they are "Nazis" and "racists", but their Left-wing terrorism just says they are "fighting" against the racists and fighting for so-called democratic reforms. Even though left-wing terrorism is way larges than right-wing terrorism and is expanding quicker, Wikipedia says that left-wing terrorism disappeared by the mid-1990s, even though it has grown dramatically through the rising power of China. The right-wing terrorism article has a gigantic list of right-wing terrorism occurences, but their left-wing terrorism has none, it even sympatizes with those terrorism by saying they are fighting for democratic reforms. Their article "Left-wing authoritarianism redirects to Right-wing authoritarianism, which has another gigantic list of right-wing dictators.

Internet policies

Iran nuclear deal

Even though the Iran nuclear deal allowed Iran to have access to taxpayer money and national banks, and also allowing Iran to create nuclear weapons, Wikipedia said the deal helped prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons. Now, because of Obama, Iran is more powerful than ever, thanks to Obama's loyalty to unfree governments.

Journalists

See, Examples of Bias in Wikipedia: Journalists, Examples of Bias in Wikipedia: Sun News Network

In early October 2005, a prominent and respected journalist John Seigenthaler Sr., contacted Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales about false and libelous content in his biographical entry. Instead of correcting the false allegations that Seignthaler was involved in the Kennedy assassinations, Wales and other editors turned it into a wikidrama with attacks on Seigenthaler for trying to defend his own good name.[88][89][90][91][92] Israeli journalist Gideon Levy's Wikipedia Biography has been frequently vandalized with false facts, including allegations that his father was a Nazi collaborator.[93] So many slanderous statements have been posted that the revisions to the article have been hidden from public view at least 22 times.[94] After the Seigenthaler revelations, Wikipedia moved toward requiring in-line citations but still stresses "verifiability" over factual material. BBC presenter Lynn Parsons wrote Wikipedia claiming that her biography was false—including her birth date. Her request to have her article deleted was voted down.[95]

Liberal politicians

Jimmy Carter

See Examples of Bias in Wikipedia: Liberal Politicians

The Wikipedia article on the liberal former President of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva[96] makes a passing reference to the mensalão scandal as if Lula was not personally involved, but fails to report that convicted conspirators testified that Lula himself knew of and approved of the vote buying.[97] Instead, Wikipedia depicts Lula as a widely admired politician. Wikipedia's article on Jimmy Carter's Presidency is clearly biased in favor of the failed politician.[98] Various attempts have been made on Wikipedia to emphasize the controversial fact that Elizabeth Warren[99] claimed on many occasions to be a Native American and a "person of color" despite a lack of documented evidence. Due to the revival of this controversy by Donald Trump in the 2016 election, attempts were made to create a separate paragraph about the issue. However, a cabal of administrators instead insisted that the controversy remain buried in the bottom of a section about her 2012 campaign where many readers said they were unable to find it.[100]

Mathematics and engineering

See Examples of Bias in Wikipedia: Mathematics and Engineering

Subjects such as Mathematics and Engineering require a precision of thought that is more than the group-think of Wikipedia editors can muster.

The Wikipedia article Elementary proof was proposed for deletion in October 2009 and the debate turned on what Conservapedia had written on the subject. The article was kept and not deleted.[101] A Wikipedia editor going under the pseudonym Jagged85 made 67,000 edits between 2007 and 2010 until it was demonstrated that he was systematically misrepresenting Islamic science, technology, and philosophy. [2]

Musicians and actors

A Wikipedia editor by the pseudonym "Ronz" called Nofel Izz's singing and acting a "hobby", despite his work being featured in Bollywood films.[102] The same user removed citations from the article that met Wikipedia's guideline on reliable sources.[102]

Obama

See Examples of Bias in Wikipedia: Obama

Wikipedia added a "Controversies" sections to their article for the "Presidency of George W. Bush"[103] but not to their article on the "Presidency of Barack Obama"[104] The section on Bush has since been removed.[105] In addition to the previous example, there was a massive Wikipedia article for "Criticism of George W. Bush,"[106] but the article for "Criticism of Barack Obama" had been deleted at least FOUR TIMES since October 2008 with excuses like "Article that has no meaningful, substantive content" and "Attack page or negative unsourced BLP."[107] Wikipedia has since redirected "Criticism of George W. Bush" and added "Public image of" articles for both presidents, however President Bush's article is heavily negative[108] while President Obama's is filled with glowing, pandering fluff with very few meaningful criticisms.[109] The edit summary of the redirect says, "so the conservatards won't get their knickers in a twist."

Osama

Wikipedia praised Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama many times for killing Osama bin Laden, but they didn't even release footage of the death. George W. Bush, however, was heavily criticized for "doing nothing", even though he sent soldiers to fight terrorism. They call Osama a terrorist, which is true, but they just say this to honor liberals for "killing" terrorists. They are trying to make it look like that the Republicans are ignoring to terrorists, and that Democrats are fighting against them. If a user reads Wikipedia, the results are that Bush did "nothing" to kill Osama, even though there was many attempts, in which they make Bush look "irresponsible".

Paid editing

See Examples of Bias in Wikipedia: Paid Editing

In theory, Wikipedia articles are supposed to be written by disinterested volunteers based on reliable secondary sources. However, because Google will rank a Wikipedia article as the first result when a person searches on the article's title, public relations firms and "reputation management" companies work hard to remove any negative or controversial facts from Wikipedia articles relating to their clients. Although such paid editing is not allowed, Wikipedia does little to enforce its rules against paid editing and there are numerous examples of paid editors introducing biased content on behalf of their clients. Wikipedia selectively fails to enforce its ban on paid editing when the payments come from its large donors.[110] Many organizations that visit the WMF Headquarters also engage in undisclosed paid editing to promote themselves.[111]

Perhaps one of the extreme examples is the Indian Institute of Planning and Management (IIPM), an unaccredited business school in India. Even though the IIPM was in regulatory problems, an editor(s) Wifione managed to keep the Wikipedia article on IIPM and its President positive while adding negative items to IIPM's competitors. Adding to the problem is that Wifione is a Wikipedia administrator. The Wikipedia Arbitration Committee allowed this to continue for years before taking action.[112][113]

It appears that Burger King itself tried to fix the Wikipedia problem. The first sentence changed to a suspiciously glowing description of the Whopper, authored by user “Fermachado123" — a name that sounds similar to Fernando Machado, Burger King's senior vice president for global brand management.[117][118]

Pornography and sexuality

English Wikipedia embeds the full length video of pornography movies "Debbie Does Dallas" and "A Free Ride" in the English encyclopedia articles about those films.[119] Wikipedia Commons, which collects public domain images, has drawn extensive criticism for sexually explicit material, including nude photos and photos of various acts. The editors of Wikipedia Commons have created a "Hot Sex Barnstar" to reward those people who upload particularly explicit images. When a former member of Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee asked to have it removed, many people opposed his suggestion.[120] The Wikipedia article Body parts slang had an elaborate list of definitions. It was subject to two controversial deletion debates, and finally merged into Slang.[121][122] Many of the definitions were moved to Wikitionary. The deleted article was also copied to Wikibooks.[123] The Wikipedia article "Brazil v Germany (2014 FIFA World Cup)" included a section society's reaction to the soccer match, which stated that many people had uploaded video excerpts from the match to a pornography website with sexually suggestive titles. A long debate and edit war ensued over whether the explicit words should remain in the article.[124] When the WMF Board of Directors voted to implement an image filter so that pornographic images would not be shown to children or people who wished to avoid them, Wikipedia volunteers rebelled and Fox News reported that WMF had abandoned its plans to address the problem.[125] A Wikipedia editor who edited both WP and Wikia using the same account name was caught as a child predator by a Wikia sting in July 2011. He was allowed to continue editing Wikipedia for another three years before being banned.[126]

Public policy in the United States

In April 2017, Burger King devised a television commercial designed to trigger Google's voice-activated Home smart speaker and have the device advertise the Whopper by reading the start of the Wikipedia Whopper article.Google quickly reprogrammed the system to respond only if the user asked for the definition of a "Whopper burger." But before the fix was implemented, Wikipedia editors changed the article to include "horse meat", "cyanide","rat droppings", "dinosaurs" and other foul ingredients.The project is an example of a company trying to use Wikipedia to lend credibility to a commercial product.

See Examples of Bias in Wikipedia: Public Policy in the US

Wikipedia's entry for the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act (NCVIA) reads like an advertisement for vaccine manufacturers, including unsupported and implausible claims about vaccination.[127] Unsupported claims featured there include "Vaccine makers indicated they would cease production if their proposal for the NCVIA was not enacted" and "concern that the NCVIA may not provide an adequate legal shield." Wikipedia's entry omits references to leading pro-parent websites concerning vaccination,[128] and instead Wikipedia's entry lists pro-government and pro-vaccine-manufacturer websites. Wikipedia's entry even includes this entire paragraph, which is unsupported and is little more than an advertisement for drug companies: Public health safety, according to backers of the legislation, depends upon the financial viability of pharmaceutical companies, whose ability to produce sufficient supplies in a timely manner could be imperiled by civil litigation on behalf of vaccine injury victims that was mounting rapidly at the time of its passage. Vaccination against infectious illnesses provides protection against contagious diseases and afflictions which may cause permanent disability or even death. Vaccines have reduced morbidity caused by infectious disease; e.g., in the case of smallpox, mass vaccination programs have eradicated a once life-threatening illness. The Wikipedia article on the Haymarket Riots and subsequent trial of the labor terrorists claimed, "The prosecution, led by Julius Grinnell, did not offer evidence connecting any of the defendants with the bombing. ... " A college professor who wrote a book about the trial knew that a lot of evidence was presented during the lengthy trial and tried to correct the article. His account in the Chronicle of Higher Education shows the contempt that Wikipedia holds for scholarly experts.[129]

Russia and China

Russia's article is heavily criticized along with the Republicans for "helping" them, but China's article is praised for being "diligent" and becoming the 2nd largest economy, and has absolutely no mention of Democrats, who are actually helping them.

Election interference

In Donald Trump's article, Russia is mentioned hundreds of times, but in Joe Biden's article, there is no mention of China.

Science and evolution

See Examples of Bias in Wikipedia: Science and Evolution

Wikipedia savages anyone who criticizes the theory of evolution, such as Dr. William Dembski, whom Wikipedia introduces with outlandish, unsupported quotations by liberal critics.[130] For example, Wikipedia describes David H. Wolpert as a "prominent mathematician" in order to insert a scathing, unjustified quotation by him about Dembski.[130] In fact, Wolpert does not even hold a math degree and his (non-math) doctorate was from the University of California at the weak Santa Barbara location.[131] Dembski's PhD is in math from the preeminent University of Chicago. Wikipedia's article on dinosaurs contains no mention of the strong evidence that they existed alongside humans and no mention of modern sightings of dinosaur-like creatures reported by the best of the public.[132] Additionally, for a period of time in 2016, the Wikipedia articles for Answers in Genesis and Creation Museum called the substantiated view "erroneous".[133][134] The wording was only removed from the articles by a bot when an image to which the wording was attached was deleted.[135][136] Wikipedia has separate articles on many small wikis, for instance, LGBT History Project with a WikiFactor of 6, but does not have an article on CreationWiki with a WikiFactor of 45. Articles on CreationWiki are repeatedly deleted.

Sports

See Examples of Bias in Wikipedia: Sports

From 2008 until October 2014, the Wikipedia article on the 1978-79 Boston College Basketball Point Shaving Scandal named Joe Streater as one of the participating players.[137] However, he was not even on the team that year. He was inserted into the article by an anonymous IP address and the erroneous information was left until the press publicized the error.[138] Wikipedia's biographies of Scottish soccer players are so notoriously biased that the new General Manager of the Hiberian Football Club, Alan Stubbs, told the press, "We can't be scouting players any more on the back of a Wikipedia page and one individual's opinion. I’ll want background checks and medical histories."[139] On December 14, 2014, the Dallas Cowboy's Dez Bryant successfully played against Eagles' defensive back Bradley Fletcher. In response, Wikipedia changed Fletcher's biography to describe his position as "Dez Bryant's bitch" and added a paragraph, which said, Fletcher "displayed his poor mechanics, speed, and talent."[140][141][142][143][144] The University of Pittsburgh's athletic director, Steve Pederson, may be unpopular, but Wikipedia changed the infobox about its athletic program to list "Satan" as the athletic director.[145][146]

Conspiracy theories

See Examples of Bias in Wikipedia: Conspiracy theories

In Wikipedia's page on the ABC's docudrama The Path to 9/11, the page contains a section titles "Controversy and criticisms," which contains 19 sub-sections to support it, while the section titled "Controversy: support for The Path to 9/11" only contains four, despite the fact that the controversy was sparked by pro-Clinton liberals that failed to see the fact that the two-part miniseries criticized both Bush and Clinton administrations leading up to 9/11 and that writer Cyrus Nowrasteh stated that many of their consultants on it stated that the docudrama went easy on Clinton. It also fails to note John Ziegler's documentary on the censoring of the docudrama Blocking the Path to 9/11 [3], which contains interviews with many people on the topic, and points out how the MSM liberals and Clintons have smeared it so much that it has destroyed it from ever being shown on TV or being sold on DVD in the near-future. [4] The Wikipedia article "List of consipracy theories" ridicules and dismisses as "conspiracy theories" more hypotheses advanced by conservative thinkers than hypotheses advanced by left wing thinkers. The editor(s) of this page have an obvious liberal bias that hold in disfavor a number of ideas advanced by conservatives. For example, Water Fluoridation has been opposed by many conservative groups due to concerns about health impacts as well as a question of personal freedom and limits on the proper scope of government. Yet, the Wikipedia list dismisses these views as a "conspiracy theory" that draws on "distrust of experts and unease about medicine and science". In another example, peak oil is a theory advanced by many conservatives including geologist T. Boone Pickens. Yet, the page dismisses it, noting "There are theories that the 'peak oil' concept is a fraud concocted by the oil industries to increase prices amid concerns about future supplies."[147] The Wikipedia article "The Plan (Washington, D.C.)" is one of the conspiracy theories included on the official Wikipedia conspiracy list. However, the article cites few sources supporting the existence of the conspiracy to replace black residents with whites in Washington DC and no sources that refute the existence of the conspiracy. As of August 15, 2016, the article "Murder of Seth Rich" had a motion to delete template on it on grounds of not being notable, although at one point it was getting 1500 daily views. It was so allegedly unnotable that a strong debate was generated there on the talk page and on the Delete Articles section, where editors essentially "voted" to Keep vs. Delete, allegedly on the grounds of non-notability.[148] Among the arguments for deleting the article there was a repetitious reference to the talking point "conspiracy theory," though the article said nothing at all about a conspiracy theory. Also, as of August 17, 2016, the Wiki editor who started this article, was officially blocked by an administrator. His talk page said: "You have been blocked indefinitely from editing because it appears that you are not here to build an encyclopedia."[149] As of August 21, 2016, the motion to delete was denied on grounds of no consensus, although a derogatory false comment was attached attacking some of those who argued in favor of "Keep." Soon after, the article was summarily locked down until August 27, 2016, and a request for mediation was filed.

Despite the fact that the article was not deleted, several details about the murder were deleted from the article by the same editors who advocated for deletion,[150] leaving the article a rather short stub article. And as of August 24, 2016, there was a continuing debate and vote on the talk page of that article as to "Should this article mention the fact that WikiLeaks offered $20,000 in reward money for providing information regarding the perpetrator of this crime?" along with this template warning: "Template:Ds/talk notice," which warned: "This article is subject to discretionary sanctions." On September 18, 2016, less than a month after the previous motion to delete failed, a second motion to delete was started by the same editors who tried to delete it the first time, but once again, on October 4, the motion to delete was denied, as there was "no consensus."[151]

Nazism, Socialism, Communism

See Examples of Bias in Wikipedia: Naziism, Socialism, Communism

Edits from Russian Government IP addresses removed statements in the Wikipedia article on Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 which said that Russia had provided the terrorists with the surface to air missile used to shoot down that civilian flight.[152][153] Wikipedia's main article on Communism does not mention any act of genocide in Communist countries, and any attempts to edit the page to include this information are deleted. The Nazism page, however, includes multiple mentions of the Holocaust. The only mention of Communist genocide is buried deep within the article structure for Communism. Kazakhstan, a dictatorship that used to be part of the Soviet Union, paid $13 million to Tony Blair's PR firm to polish its image. Jimmy Wales's new wife works for that firm, and the WMF accepted a government-front organization which is funded by the Kazakh government to be its local chapter. In 2011, Wales declared the founder of the chapter to be the "Global Wikipedian of the year" and promised to pay $5,000 of expenses toward his attending the 2012 Wikimania in Washington DC. Wales denies the government involvement and failed to make the promised payment.[154][155][156][157][158] Augusto Pinochet, who overthrew Communism in Chile and then restored democracy before voluntarily giving up power himself, is called a "dictator" by Wikipedia,[159] but Fidel Castro, the Communist dictator of Cuba for four decades, is instead called a "leader" or even a "president".[160][161] Wikipedia is sympathetic to Fidel Castro in its entry about Cuba.[162] Wikipedia blames President Dwight Eisenhower for choosing "to attend a golf tournament" rather than meet the revolutionary Castro in 1959, and then Wikipedia claims that Castro became a Communist because of the American-backed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. Conservapedia tells the truth up-front: "Cuba has been ruled by a Communist dictator named Fidel Castro since 1959."[163] Wikipedia's article on far-Left politics outright praises the dismantling of social structures and even goes on to say that the far-Left promotes "equality", while failing to mention the blatant anti-Semitism and anti-Israel hate speech among the far-Left, its racism against whites in the form of Jeremiah Wright, the blatant racism among groups like the Black Panthers. Conversely, its "far-Right" politics articles accuse conservatives of maintaining a social hierarchy and being "racist" and being "supremacists" that keep the "oppression" in check, while utterly failing to mention the black supremacist politics among the far-Left. It promotes the far-Left as bringing "equality", while failing to mention its supremacist racism by people like the New Black Panthers for example. Wikipedia's article on the National Socialist German Workers' Party lists its political position as "Far-Right"[164], however its page on the Communist Party of China does not even refer to the party as "Far-Left".[165]

Vaccines

See Examples of Bias in Wikipedia: Vaccination

Washington Post/Washington Times

Leftist radical newspaper Washington Post is praised by Wikipedia for "telling the truth, fact-checking lies", even though they make so much fun of Trump, and that it is a opinion newspaper. The Washington Times, however, is very heavily criticized for being pro-Russian, neo-Nazi, racist, anti-[atheist] science, and Anti-democratic reforms, that are Communist and not even democratic.

General/Uncategorized

Jens Stoltenberg.

See Examples of Bias in Wikipedia: General or uncategorized

Wikipedia falsely reported that the prime minister of Norway, Jens Stoltenberg, was a pedophile who had served time in prison.[166][167] Wikipedia appeals to a dumbed-down culture of users that appreciate uncensored obscenity instead of education. The vulgar swear word referring to sex, F---, is mentioned or uncensored in quotations in nearly 11,000 articles. [5] Ironically, it was once used in an article about Republican Senate candidate Michael Baumgartner when the article's sources did not spell out that word.[168] Wikipedia does its best to cover-up crimes and lewd behavior coming from left leaning Occupy Wall Street crowd. Assault emphasized, rape is minimized by the terms omission. Rape is not used in the article and can only be found in a reference title at the end of the page.[169] Wikipedia does not mention until after 600 words that Jared Loughner, like many Wikipedia editors, is an atheist, and its entry initially failed to admit that he is also a nihilist, an extreme form of atheism.[170]

Most examples have been moved to the sublists. Please visit the sublists to learn about the variety of bias in Wikipedia.

Structural problems with Wikipedia

Wikipedia claims to be "an encyclopedia that anyone can edit." That is both its strength and its biggest weakness. Although Wikipedia started as having all editors on an equal footing, it has evolved into a highly stratified structure where a large number of people cannot edit it. In order to edit Wikipedia, a person must master its wiki-markup language and a large number of complex rules. The number of people who edit Wikipedia on a regular basis has declined. Many editors left voluntarily, but many others have been "banned" or "blocked" by administrators or a community vote. In theory, people can edit Wikipedia without logging in, but in order to prevent "banned" users from editing, Wikipedia blocks various ranges of IP addresses, preventing persons who are not banned from editing from those locations, such as hotels, schools and libraries. Wikipedia's terms and conditions bar people with a conflict of interest from directly editing Wikipedia article. This prevents knowledgeable people who work for companies from editing articles relating to their work. Finally, because the administrator caste has certain political views, editors who do not conform to those beliefs are more likely to be "banned" or "blocked".

An editor who was never in Malawi says this is a photo of a Malawian netball team. An edit war ensued.

A major source of bias comes from the Wikipedia pillar of "verifiability". Wikipedia proudly proclaims, "Verifiability, and not truth, is one of the fundamental requirements for inclusion in Wikipedia;"[171] There have been many attempts to change this, because when a Wikipedia editor tries to remove false content, editors who favor biased content rely upon this policy to retain the falsehoods.[172][173][174] An example of such misuse involve radical feminists who tried to have Wikipedia state that netball was an Olympic sport[175] when, in fact, it has never been played "at the Olympics". Because they found a speech where a politician told the New South Wales Parliament that netball was "technically an Olympic sport"[176] they were able to retain this false material as if it were a verified fact.

Requiring just one source to meet Wikipedia's verifiability standard is a serious logical flaw. Any well-established fact can be contradicted by finding one obscure source somewhere on the Web, and Wikipedia will allow just one reference to overrule the majority of definitive sources saying the opposite.

Another bias is from "show and tell." Some Wikipedia editors have not outgrown their need to show off what they have found on the Internet. Again using the obscure sport of netball as an example, the editor found a photo posted on flickr that was labeled, "The Girls Netball Team"[177] even though it did not show anyone playing netball. The editor then captioned the photo, "A Malawian netball team" and placed it alongside a few other obscure facts to create a Malawi section of the netball article.[178] So how can the reader trust that the people in the photograph are really in Malawi and that they really play netball?[179][180] Adding photos to articles is the most visible form of the "show and tell" syndrome. The need to "show and tell" can also result in including random, obscure facts and data in an article. For example, an editor can find a data source from years ago, but if the data are included in the article without proper emphasis of the date, it creates the implication that the data remain true today.[181]

Errors and bias can be introduced by robotic submissions. For example, many Wikipedia articles about populated places in the United States were created by robots using 2000 United States Census data. A standard paragraph on demographics that included 2000 Census data were automatically included in each article. Wikipedia has not been able to program a robot to update all of those statistics, so most articles about places in the United States do not have more recent data from the 2010 census. Robots tagged many Wikipedia articles that had an article name in common with those in an early edition of Encyclopædia Britannica as having that book as a source, even if nothing in the article was based on that book, and no human checked if the Wikipedia article was consistent with the Encyclopædia Britannica article.

Another level of error and bias comes from Wikipedia's reliance on poorly-trained volunteers, instead of paid professionals. For example, someone proposed that a copyrighted photo of Joseph Stalin taken by Margaret Bourke-White be deleted in 2009.[182] It was kept, because someone with a Gmail account sent permission claiming to be her son. She died without children[183] and the photo's copyright actually belonged to Time, Inc., but the mistake was not detected until 2012.

Accountability

Wikipedia relies upon volunteer administrators to maintain the accountability of the site and enforce its rules. The number of administrators continues to shrink. In January 2008, there were 1,011 administrators, but the number dropped to 661 in November 2012, and as of June 2016, the number stands at 539.[184] The number drops, because the process of selecting new administrators subjects each candidate to extensive abuse. If the actions of Wikipedia administrators appear very odd, there is a possibility that it is because they are the products of anonymous, very young people or, in certain cases, of mentally ill people. For example, sysop Altenmann was de-sysopped and community-banned in April 2010 for sockpuppeting and improper closure of deletion discussions over a period of several years. He admitted mental illness and has been unbanned.[185]

Fundamentally, the owner of a site is accountable for its governance and contents. To qualify for a tax exemption, Wikipedia is owned by the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) that has a Board of Directors and a paid professional staff of 146.[186] However, the WMF, its Board, and Staff disavow any accountability for the Wikipedia encyclopedia. Instead, co-founder Jimmy Wales claims ultimate authority for it and acts as the executive/monarch on whatever he chooses. For example, although the Wikipedia Arbitration Committee is selected in an election, Wales accepts the election results and appoints the new members. As recently as September 2013, Wales claims to have the right to overturn Arbitration Committee decisions.[187] If a person has a complaint about being the victim of false libel by Wikipedia, the WMF disavows any control of the matter and hides behind Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. So, the WMF has a legal incentive to maintain a "hands-off" approach to content disputes. Its Board and Staff collect the charitable donations and meet IRS requirements, but Wales and the volunteer editors maintain the biased, defamatory site.

There have been lawsuits against Wikipedia and its editors. For example, Theodore Katsanevas, a Greek politician sued a Wikipedia editor and the WMF to seek removal of allegedly defamatory materials from the Greek Wikipedia. A Greek Court granted a preliminary injunction requiring the removal of material, but other editors have added it back in and have translated the biography with the offending material into 20 other languages. A full trial was expected in 2016, and the WMF promised to pay all of the defendants' legal fees.[188]

A few Wikipedia editors develop a dislike for the author or the subject of an article; usually conservative authors are targeted. Rather than going through the ArticlesForDeletion procedure, such editors falsely claim that the offending author caused a "copyright violation." By doing this, they can kill an article within seven days without using ArticlesForDeletion. The author of the article is not notified that there is a "copyright violation." If the author has been blocked or banned, often on specious charges, he cannot provide a defense of the article. Sometimes the "copyright violation" is leveled even when no copyrighted material is used as a source.

Wikipedia is heavily oriented toward non-American countries and persons. A check of the WP obituary list each day repeatedly lists dozens of people from other countries than the United States. These people are mostly unknown in the USA, and many seem "non-notable" by Wikipedia's own standards of "notability." The same situation is also observable in the "Did You Know?" section on the WP main page, as foreign topics usually get top billing over American topics.

See also

References

Guidelines for inclusion: