Kerby Anderson

You know things have gone from bad to worse when the co-founder of an Internet website is criticizing his own site as an enemy of democracy. I have been doing radio commentaries on the bias and inaccuracies in Wikipedia since 2008. But an interview with co-founder Larry Sanger illustrates why you shouldn’t depend on this Internet site for information. “Wikipedia is more one-sided than ever,” he explains. And he believes the site “has made itself into a kind of thought police that has de facto shackled conservative viewpoints with which they disagree.” For example, citations from news outlets like the Daily Mail and Fox News have been banned. Alternative perspectives on controversial issues are often ignored. University students often discover that Wikipedia is not accepted as a source for academic papers. That is due to the open source, collaborative nature of the site. Errors and inaccuracies abound in the articles. But Sanger is now pointing to a bias that resembles what you find on most university campuses today. Leftists monitoring Wikipedia maintain a strict control over what is published and reject diversity of opinion in issues ranging from race relations to climate change. They work to maintain that every article is on what they say is “the right side of history.” The bias may even have an influence in elections. To illustrate his concern, Sanger cites the Wikipedia article on Joe Biden. There isn’t anything that “remotely resembles the Republican take on Biden.” And the paragraph on a possible Ukrainian scandal “reads like a defense attorney brief.” And there is no mention of the Hunter Biden laptop. Most of us have known the problems with Wikipedia. Now the co-founder provides even more examples of why you shouldn’t trust the Internet site.