Wikipedia is being lost to ideological bias.

I'm skeptical. It's always had a viewpoint similar to mainstream media and academia as that's the main source. I don't think it's changed much.

It gets accused of that more now because of the rise of MAGA and the like.

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datsci_est_2015 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I find moreso that certain ideologies are more and more rejecting the foundation on which Wikipedia is built: knowledge and rationality. When a movement discards truth in the pursuit of power, it's no surprise that there becomes a disconnect with sources of truth.

Pray tell - from where do you get your ideologically neutral information?

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bad_username 20 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Which is why it is not really open.

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Viliam1234 14 hours ago | parent [-]

Anyone can edit it.

And then the admins decide what gets deleted and what is allowed to remain.

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nephihaha 13 hours ago | parent [-]

Not even that's the case. Wikipedia blocks shared IPs. They even blocked the National Library of Scotland which has an official Wikipedian.

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tim333 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Then use a different IP or register an account?

Almost anyone can edit it though they seem to have blocked Larry Sanger the co-founder for being a pain.

	▲	nephihaha 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Most of the IPs are used are blocked before they even start. If you do get in there, an editor without a clue will challenge your edits even if he (nearly always a "he") knows nothing about the given subject.

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roenxi a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That is a less useful observation than you might think; Wikipedia is fundamentally an ideological project. Obviously there is a bias.

The question is whether it is a bias to honest citation of sources that are expected to be factual. As long as they maintain that culture they are doing the best they can.

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8bitsrule a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> being lost to ideological bias.

The currently accepted 'knowledge' framework has been vigorously defended in WP since its beginning. When the label 'pseudoscience' appears in the first few paragraphs, you can usually depend on content highly critical of any threats to the orthodox (if they're even allowed mention).

Academics are more likely to defend the current paradigm. Traditionally, anomalies often go unmentioned in published papers.

All evidence for the existence of meteors was denied for centuries after Newton declared that outer space is empty - until the late 18th century, when ignoring the evidence became too burdensome.

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EA-3167 a day ago | parent [-]

Do you have some examples of heterodox ideas that are de facto banned on Wikipedia?

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datsci_est_2015 9 hours ago | parent [-]

No, he's probably alluding to something involving race science or "socialism" though. These people often are.

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AuthAuth 7 hours ago | parent [-]

Kind of. I'm referring to pages on communism or communism adjacent topics, socialism and the middle eastern conflicts involving Isreal. I find that they make a claim about a state of the world and they use quotes from well known people to support it but those well known people aren't historians and they are very often misrepresenting the state of the world at the time. I'll see stuff that frames an action in a positive way and then uses a quote from someone who 'gives the Marxist perspective of history' but a Marxist perspective on history is ahistorical.

	▲	tim333 5 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Some of that stuff, rather than deliberate ideology may be the writers doing what they can but not getting it quite right. You can always try correcting it yourself if there is a factual error and you have a suitable source to cite.
	▲	datsci_est_2015 5 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I feel like you're one of the only people reading about Marxist topics on Wikipedia, given that most (intelligent) people genuinely interested on the topic will engage with primary sources. Very rarely do I read "below the fold" on any topic, but especially on topics concerning sociopolitical issues is my scrollbar completely untouched. You may be raising criticism genuinely, but you're fighting a very uphill battle because many of the people who cry about Wikipedia bias would want, e.g., the article on Communism to start as it does on Conservapedia: > Communism is a left-wing anti-democratic and violent ideology dedicated to overthrowing capitalism, replacing it with an unelected "dictatorship of the proletariat" by technocrats and an atheist elite. which is, for lack of a more honest and concise word, retarded.

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EA-3167 a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The funny to me is that without context there’s no way to know which ideological bias you mean. Just looking at the parts of Wikipedia I routinely use I don’t see much of a bias beyond one that favors more verbose articles.

I’ve routinely heard “Wikipedia is becoming ideological,” and it’s usually action flip as to whether they thinks it’s too far to the left or right.

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Alpha3031 21 hours ago | parent | next [-]

If you find an article is too long to read comfortably, please consider adding {{too long|date=October 2026}} (or whatever the date at the time is) to the top so that people can figure out what to do with it.

	▲	EA-3167 21 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I don’t have any problem with the trend, it’s just notable to me. I think any encyclopedia with essentially unlimited space would eventually trend in the same direction.

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AuthAuth 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Sorry, I should have included this in my comment. I'm referring to pages on communism or communism adjacent topics, socialism and the middle eastern conflicts involving Isreal. I find a lot of the communist pages use sources that have 'a marxist perspective of history' which is ahistorical. The middle east articles involving Isreal use a lot of sources known to be unreliable like middleeasteye and Al-jazeera. They also receive a a ton of traffic from both sides as they're using wikipedia to fight over history.

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the_af a day ago | parent | prev [-]

What's the ideological bias you identify in Wikipedia? If you name it, we can discuss whether we agree with you or not.

Edit: wow, downvoted for asking this. Really, it's very simple: one should be able to make it explicit what bias they mean. If they don't, maybe they fear to show their own biases and be called out? Downvoting is the coward's way out.

Edit 2: I'm rate-limited, but I find this answer very puzzling:

> Rather, it's a recognition that it's not worth it to engage when the odds of the question being honest are slim.

That goes directly against HN guidelines. Assume the best version of a comment, not the worst. My question should be fairly straightforward to answer.

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Viliam1234 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This article only talks about some of Wikipedia's problems, but it was the best source I could find quickly:

https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/reliable-sources-how-wik...

	▲	the_af 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Spoiler: turns out the commenter I was asking about this had an issue with Wikipedia re: marxism and the Middle East / Israel. The mention of marxism is puzzling, but re: the Middle East / Israel, I think it's impossible for any kind of written publication to report anything relatively recent on this topic that won't make anyone enraged about bias. So it seems a bit unfair to claim this is how Wikipedia is "being lost to ideology", because this is a property of the various Middle East conflicts, not of Wikipedia. Let me emphasize: nothing that could be written anywhere about the Middle East or Israel, today or in recent years, can possibly avoid enraging a large number of people all over the world.

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Levitz a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Rather, it's a recognition that it's not worth it to engage when the odds of the question being honest are slim. If you are curious about bias on Wikipedia, the information is readily available. There's even a Wikipedia article.

	▲	datsci_est_2015 9 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It's a nice Wikipedia article, and highlights that the people most critical of Wikipedia are cranks (e.g. Larry Sanger, Elon Musk), and that most studies trying to objectively discover bias find very mild and isolated examples of bias.

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AuthAuth 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

	▲	the_af 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Thanks for the honest reply. Based on what you're saying, I think your real issue is that your own ideology and biases clash with whatever you perceive about Wikipedia. If Wikipedia had a less "marxist perspective of history" (!) or relied more on whatever you think is more reliable about the Middle East and Israel, then we'd have another commenter claiming Wikipedia is hopelessly biased in the opposite direction. Unfortunately this boils down to "I don't like it", which is very subjective and very hard to evaluate in a neutral way that everyone agrees must mean "Wikipedia is being lost to ideology", as you claimed. I think we all agree political and recent-ish history are mired in controversy and these divisive topics are problematic in Wikipedia, but ultimately hard to report on neutrally anyway. I guess they could settle for a insincere "neutral" tone that left everyone unsatisfied; Wikipedia supposedly tries to do that. > The middle east articles involving Isreal use a lot of sources known to be unreliable like middleeasteye and Al-jazeera. Good luck finding any written publication of any kind that everyone will agree is unbiased and reliable on this topic, and that won't upset a significant number of readers. Re: specifically Middle East Eye, Wikipedia's own article on it is critical and highlights controversies. As for using it on articles about the Middle East, it would only be a problem if it was the only reference, but this doesn't seem to be the case in a cursory search I did. So aren't you effectively asking they ban some sources but left others, which ironically would introduce bias? Same with Al-jazeera or any other news outlets you dislike.