Beware Wikipedia

Wikipedia as a source of propaganda? Just read the Wikipedia article titled "COVID-19 Lab Leak Theory." From the Wikipedia article, would think that there is no legitimate clashing version of this story.

Glenn Greenwald describes what has happened to Wikipedia in recent years, demonstrating by looking at various Wikipedia pages that demonstrate almost comedic bias. What kind of information is reliable according to Wikipedia? It is weighed heavily in favor of established corporate media sources. See Wikipedia: Reliable Sources. Consider further, this article: "Wikipedia: The Corrupt Encyclopedia: Wikipedia formally censors The Grayzone as regime-change advocates monopolize editing."

Larry Sangar, co-founder of Wikipedia, appeared on System Update to discuss his own concerns.  According to Sangar, during the period of 2006-2012,  Wikipedia became a biased pro-establishment website. He gave examples that he noticed from 2010-2015. Wikipedia became severely biased against Eastern/holoistic medical traditions. He sensed that it "got over the top" around 2013-2018, when  Wikipedia increasingly moved onto the radar of the political establishment. Google began investing many millions of dollars in to Wikipedia.  According to Sanger, "No encyclopedia has ever been as biased as Wikipedia is now."

Sanger mentioned that there are alternative encyclopedias, such as Ballotpedia, which he describes as "fairly neutral" and Conservapedia (on the conservative side).  To read 35 encyclopedias at once, Sanger recommended using encyclosearch.org or encycloreader.org  These sites us open source software, with digitally signed results.  These are two attempts to try to strike a blow against censorship and control. Sanger also mentioned that there will soon be a Wordpress plugin that will allow people to aggregate their own website articles in a mega collection.

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The Corruption of Wikipedia

In 2021, the co-founder of Wikipedia warned that the website has become hopelessly corrupted. The article appeared in the New York Post: "Wikipedia co-founder says site is now ‘propaganda’ for left-leaning ‘establishment.’" Here is an excerpt:

Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger has warned that the website can no longer be trusted — insisting it is now just “propaganda” for the left-leaning “establishment.”

Sanger told UnHerd’s Lockdown TV Wednesday that he started the “encyclopedia of opinion” in 2001 purely on the basis it would offer true neutrality and offer “multiple points of view” on “hot button issues.”

Now, he insisted, conservative voices are “sternly warned if not kicked out” if they try to add a different take on establishment views — which Sanger deemed “propaganda.”

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About Trusting Wikipedia

I just learned about a 2021 article titled "Nobody should trust Wikipedia, says man who invented Wikipedia."

Excerpt:

"Larry Sanger, the man who co-founded Wikipedia, has cautioned that the website can’t always be trusted to give people the truth.

He said it can give a “reliably establishment point of view on pretty much everything.”

“Can you trust it to always give you the truth? Well, it depends on what you think the truth is,” said Mr Sanger, who co-founded Wikipedia in 2001 alongside Jimmy Wales.

He told Lockdown TV that “if only one version of the facts is allowed 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. And they do that.”"

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