Maybe I should respect the spirit of Christmas and post something nice to celebrate it. We could all use a little nice. I most certainly could.
For many years, when these reminders came up, I actually did donate, but not anymore. A few years back I just had enough of the bias.
I like the Wikipedia concept. Crowdsourcing the world’s wisdom makes a ton of sense, but like any good idea, it can be an easy target for ideologues, corruptors, special interests and petty politicking.
To paraphrase Benjamin Franklin’s quip “a republic, if you can keep it”, Wikipedia gave us a storehouse of wisdom, if we can keep it.
So far, it is not looking good. It has been captured by ideologues, corrupted by money from the likes of George Soros, heavily influenced by special interest, the model it was built upon turned into a dysfunctional petty politicking by cliques of editors.
Wikipedia was founded by the idealist geek Larry Sanger and the more ‘business oriented’ Jimmy Wales.
A very typical setup, just think other tech startup duos: Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak (Apple), Bill Gates & Paul Allen (Microsoft), Pierre Omidyar & Jeffrey Skoll (Ebay), Larry & Sergey Brin (google)
Sanger left Wikipedia in in 2007 over disagreements of its direction and he remains highly critical of it in articles like this one: Wikipedia Is More One-Sided Than Ever.
He lists several issues with a plenty of evidence of bias. More than what could reasonably be listed here.
The bias is very consistently on the left of any and every issue that divides us on culture and politics.
Everyday politics, geopolitics, globalization, the woke agendas of gender and race, the sciences like climate biology and medicine; wars and political conflicts and so on. Name any issue of contention and you will find Wikipedia talking about it with a clearly leftist bias.
Some of the vulnerabilities are exposed in this article: Paid editors on Wikipedia – should you be worried? But it does not go nearly far enough in exploring the questions.
The focus of the article is paid contributions, but mentions only the most obvious: business interest buying contributors to manipulate perception of their products and interests.
The question then is, what constitutes being paid? If a research scientist writes an article about the subject of his research, is that a paid contribution? Assuming, of course, that he is paid to do the research.
If I chose to write about the intertwined nature of the Kabbalah and Tarot, who and how can it be decided that I am an expert? What if I make a living as a card reader?
Jimmy Wales became a fervent supporter of the World Economic Forum after being named a Young Global Leader. While I could not find the actual number of the events he attended, it seems that he is a regular attendee of the yearly meetings. A strange position from a self-declared Ayn Rand libertarian.
Jimmy Wales seems to be all in with the WEF globalist agenda and the Various AI/LLM projects.
The question isn’t simply whether Wikipedia is biased, but whether its propensity to be biased can be remedied. I seriously doubt that it is possible.
In this article, for example: We analysed 35,000 Wikipedia entries about Australian places. Some of them sanitize history, the author is asking for MORE woke bias.
Wikipedia is a symptom of the illnesses of our dying Western civilization.
The overall problem of the culture war is perception, interpretations, narratives, twisted definitions, glaring omissions, Newspeak and Bullspeak, a generally woke language and approach, none of which can be fixed with simple remedies.
Wikipedia is a reflection of the left in the culture war; we shouldn’t therefore be surprised that it became a weapon in their hands.
You can tell me in the comments whether you see it (Wikipedia) as a victim or as a weapon in the culture war.
You can also tell me whether you consider it reformable. I do not. Not without a fundamental reform of our societies and the ways we see science, truth and reality itself. Wikipedia is the symptom.
We are shaping it just as much as it is shaping us.
I am still using it, but I have ZERO trust in its reliability and refuse to pay for it. Not even the Christmas spirit can change my mind.
But to you, I wish a merry Christmas!
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You cannot make this up:
Just hours after I posted the above, I found this in the
📜 Wikipedia spent almost a third of its annual budget on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion ·
And this issue of the Tom Woods newsletter:
The Wikipedia fundraiser scam
READ IT! here is a quote from it:
As one commentator puts it, "In the West, an advanced industry of NGOs, charities, and foundations has evolved which funds so much of the weirdness in our daily lives. A caste of activist-professionals have emerged, which inevitably capture any non-profit with spare cash."
It is eerie how information in this new information universe have the tendency of emerging all around the same time.
References
Ivermectin during the COVID-19 pandemic - Wikipedia
Anti-vaccine activism - Wikipedia
Wikipedia Is More One-Sided Than Ever – LarrySanger.org
'Fake news has had almost no impact on Wikipedia' - The Interview
NBCUniversal at the 2024 World Economic Forum in Davos | NBCUNIVERSAL MEDIA
Capturing Biases In the Age Of AI - The Interview With The Founder Of Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales
I lost my respect for Wikipedia when I saw its biased entry on ivermectin in the context of COVID-19. Its position was affirmed when I tried to correct some of its factual errors and found that my amendments were reversed shortly after I made them. I believe that Wikipedia has ruined a great idea and it is now not possible to change its direction. There has been a cultural change that has accepted an ideology and jettisoned objectivity.