The first thing one needs to understand about Wikipedia is not just its size, but how all-encompassing, culturally unprecedented, and surreptitiously influential it is.
Even if one doesn’t specifically seek out Wikipedia, a Google search will immediately display an information box filled with Wikipedia information, a Google Nest Hub, Alexa, or Siri will parrot Wikipedia blurbs to satisfy you, and a Safari search will automatically return—you guessed it—a Wikipedia answer. (And you will basically get the same regurgitated results on any search engine, although the order may differ.)
How Accurate Is It?
Australia’s Sydney Morning Herald compiled a short list of “studies” as the basis for claiming that Wikipedia was “accurate and reliable.” Their 2022 article declared that “Scientists have actually done a lot of work looking at how accurate Wikipedia is across all sorts of topics.” But most of what they referenced was vastly outdated and limited in scope. Most readers probably didn’t follow the reference links and left impressed that Wikipedia was the pinnacle of accuracy.I don’t doubt that Wikipedia can generally be trusted for its various entries that aren’t related to the religious or political, “generally” being the keyword here. It may even be the fact that cloaking itself in many apparently accurate articles is what makes it so dangerous: They lend it an air of gravitas that makes it easier to believe the lies and rubbish published elsewhere.
“We do not expect you to trust us ... some articles are of the highest quality of scholarship, others are admittedly complete rubbish. Also, since Wikipedia can be edited by anyone at any time, articles may be prone to errors, including vandalism, so Wikipedia is not a reliable source. So, please do not use Wikipedia to make critical decisions.”
Wikipedia Joined Forces With WHO
In 2020, the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit based in San Francisco that operates Wikipedia, joined forces with the World Health Organization (WHO) to control information related to COVID-19. This meant that Wikipedia entries were modified to combat what the WHO categorized as dis- or misinformation. Now, the online encyclopedia is replete with entries such as “COVID-19 vaccine misinformation and hesitancy,” “COVID-19 misinformation,” and “Great Reset.” Other articles such as “vaccine hesitancy“ leave no door open for people of good conscience who have serious medical concerns about other vaccines.Who’s Editing It?
Probably the best summary of who’s editing Wikipedia comes from Mr. McCullough. Although his background as a Washington Post columnist suggests he’d be an unlikely critic of Wikipedia, his video “Why I hate Wikipedia (and you should too!)” is a must-watch for everyone.He begins by reminding us that anyone can edit a Wikipedia entry without providing a real name, email, or registering for an account.
“This is worrying unto itself,” he says, adding that “in practice, the writing and editing of Wikipedia articles is done by an extremely tiny subculture of largely anonymous hardcore Wikipedia nerds.”
He also points out what many of us have found out the hard way: If you try editing a Wikipedia article yourself, the changes usually disappear as soon as you leave the page—there’s no “crowd” in crowdsourcing.
Is It Biased?
Many Wikipedia articles with accurate facts still obviously frame a subject in a biased manner. Any articles about former President Donald Trump (and anyone even remotely associated with him) are good starting points to explore this claim. Articles about conservatives or conservative causes seem to contain everything scandalous and negative ever reported about the subject, and others commit the sin of omission by purposely not reporting facts that would otherwise portray the subject in a positive light.Wikipedia’s bias also is well known on the geopolitical stage.
The View From All Sides
Allsides.com describes its website as one that “display[s] the day’s top news stories from the Left, Center and Right of the political spectrum—side-by-side so you can see the full picture.” It rated Wikipedia as “Center”—meaning it either didn’t show much political bias or displayed a balance of articles with left and right perspectives. But that all changed in 2021 when it removed the rating altogether.Julie Mastrine, director of marketing and media bias ratings at AllSides, told me that internal conversations about the Wikipedia rating were triggered by reader feedback.
“If only one version of the facts is allowed,” he said, “then that gives a huge incentive to wealthy and powerful people to seize control of things like Wikipedia in order to shore up their power.”
What’s the Fix?
The first step is admitting there’s a problem. Wikipedia is hiding behind a false transparency, pointing to its public list of Wikimedia Foundation donors and begging for money as it continues to grow into a monstrous data blob consuming everything around it.We have let Wikipedia and Big Tech influence a generation of Americans. If you want to see how that’s turned out, just take a look around. Demanding accountability from Wikipedia is just the first step toward exposing internet propaganda that has so far been given free rein to control the narrative of a nation and influence millions.