If you have spent time in Wikipedia – especially if you have ever searched the work of the interior encyclopedia online – you will know that, almost every side, unlike tramp. This is not a statement of its policy. Thousands of volunteer editors who write and edit and verify the facts of the site to adhere to a remarkable way, at all, to one of its basic values: the neutral view. Like many Wikipedia principles and procedures, the neutral view is the subject of a practical but advanced epistemic article published on Wikipedia. Among other things, the article explains that NPOV means not mentioning opinions as facts, as well as, as important, not mentioning the facts as opinions. (Therefore, for example, the third sentence of input entitled “Climate Change”, with no equivalent, that “the current rise in global temperatures is driven by human activities, especially burning fossil fuels since the industrial revolution.”
If Wikipedia is the opposite of Trump – or, just as many people love to say, only half of the face, the only good place remaining on the Internet – it’s because of its principles and procedures. You may not find everything you want to know about a specific topic (“Ben Whishaw”, “SUEDE (BAND),” PULFACTory Bulb “, to name a few, but not limited to the last pages you visited). But Wikipedia articles – especially those related to large and controversial topics – are significantly imminent about the reason for their inclusion or deletion. Click on the “Talk” tab in the upper part of almost any high -level article (try the article for Robert F. Kennedy, Son, for example) and you can read long, civil and accurate discussions between the editors about terms (“conspiracy theory”, “anti -jasmine activists”, sources, and topics to confirm the entry. Click on the tab “view the record” and list with all The adjustments made on this page are launched in front of you. , And the sponsorship of sex, and the influenza vaccination, for example, were all dropped from the website of the CDC, although it was later restored; references to the transgender people, who were involved in the Stonnol uprising, were hurriedly cleaned from the Stonnol National Monument Monument page. This absence and rhythms on the same pages – although we know that it represents a disorganized surrender to Trump’s executive orders – in a way that Wikipedia is never done.
The site, twenty -four years of its existence, is still largely working as a cooperative democracy for unpaid shareholders who seek consensus and honesty. Tamzin Hadasa Kelly, a twenty -eight -year -old Wikipedia official who has contributed to the site since 2012, told me, “The vast majority of content on the site is completely volunteer. We do not have ranks, we do not have a written structure, and we have no custom topics.” Wikipedia has a jury, a type of Supreme Court that rules the rule of the base on the site, but to a large extent, Kelly says, says Kelly “We are only.” If you are forced to prevent people from liberating because their work is subpar constantly – they may not fall, but they tend to reformulate closely or chronicly in the martyrdom of sources – at least, “I am not concerned that I am getting rid of their livelihood.” (It can be painful in a different way: “When someone tries his best, he really hints them, and I know that you are doing your best and do not get salaries for that, but this is still not good enough. I will need to stop.”
Since the content is not liquidated, the site does not accept any ads, the articles rarely turn into Clickbait. What Yochai Benkler described as “unique tool” for Wikipedia that helped ensure its safety. At a time when she abandoned other social media sites for any guarantees that were in place against bad information and misleading-Meta canceled the verification of reality, X was immersed by free grumbling from the dark origin and purpose, a lot of tracking, and the concrete answers.
So it may not be a surprise that Elon Musk It recently took a time of his crowded agenda of dismantling the federal government, as well as many reliable information sources, to attack Wikipedia. On January 21, after the site updated its MUSK page to include a reference to the harsh armed greeting he made at the Trump opening event, X was published as “since ancient media propaganda is a” good “source by Wikipedia, it simply becomes an extension of the old media arrangement!” He urged people not to donate to the site: “Defund Wikipedia until the balance is restored!” It is worth seeing how the accident was described on the Musk page, very far, and judge yourself. What I see is a paragraph describing firstly the physical gesture (“Musk has risen his right hand on his heart, and his fingers spread widely, then his right arm stretched out, categorically, at an ascending angle, and they fall and his fingers together) denies them. (There is now a separate and Wikipedia article,” Elon Musk’s controversy, a greeting, “which inspects in detail about the full range of reactions.)
This is not the first time that musk has followed after the site. In December, posted on X, “stopped donating to Weepedia”. This was not even the first bad Wikipedia game. “I will give them one billion dollars if they changed their name to Dexepide,” he wrote, in October 2023. It seems that it is the ego in the beginning. Musk objected to his description on his page as an “early investor” in Tesla, not as a founder, which is preferred to get to know him, and he seemed frustrated because he could not only buy the site. But beef recently merged with a general condemnation on the right that Wikipedia – which, like all encyclopedias, is a triple source based on the original reports and research conducted by the media and other scientists – biased against conservatives.
Heritage Foundation, Research Tank behind Project 2025 Political scheme, has plans to reveal Wikipedia editors who maintain their privacy using pseudonyms (these names of users are displayed in the history of the article, but it does not necessarily facilitate the identification of the people behind them) and whose contributions to Israel consider anti -hostility. (This story was reported before forward In January, he was based on the leaked heritage documents. Mike Hugal told me, from the heritage, that the “investigation” in Wikipedia, which, as he said, “is the place where information is washed”, and it will be “shared with policymakers appropriate to help inform the strategic response.” mail An editorial in February with “Big Tech should prevent Wikipedia in order to stop censorship and pay misleading information.” The opening article cited a new report of the bomb “from something called the Media Research Center, which defines itself as a leader of the conservative movement in” combating the left’s efforts to manipulate the electoral process, silence opposing votes online, and undermining American values. “
The “bomb” was that Wikipedia maintained what mail It was described as a “black list” of the sources. But the list it seems to be not a black list or a secret. You can find it, along with many discussions between the editors, under the introduction of “Wikipedia: reliable sources/permanent sources. The list is classified as a number of sources of reliability, and includes those that occupy the lowest conservative ports category such as newsmax and Breitbart News, on the basis that they have strengthened unintended conspiracy theories. It warns against using the things that were done on Fox News as “real data”, but it indicates that they can sometimes be used for “attributed opinions.” It urges doubts on some other sources because they allow customers to pay the coverage costs, or to run press data or other content created by users with a little supervision, or they work mainly as party forums for activists from various political lines. They make a variety, including Amazon user reviews, Broadwayworld, and daily progressive site KOS. The pressures are not the pressure, which aims to work as a list of “previously approved sources that can always be used without looking at the regular editing rules”, nor as a list of prohibited sources that can never be used or must be removed on the horizon. “
Amy Brockman, an interactive computing professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, published a book in 2022 called “Do you should believe Wikipedia?: Online societies and knowledge building“Brockman told me that the answer to the title question can depend on the article itself. An introduction on a mysterious topic has not been available to a few editors an opportunity to check, or it may be missing multiple martyrdoms, it may be of little value. Many Wikipedia’s articles come with a head warning that it does not yet fulfill the site standards of the sources. (If the editors discover the missing conflicts and repair them,” The head will be removed.) “One thing you can say with confidence,” Brockmann. Of course, you should examine the categorical – you should not take you to a person’s blog post. It should be published by a respectable journalist or scientific paper, or anything else you can trust. “But when it comes to the main articles,” there are literally hundreds of people who examine them every day, and there is little political bias. It is amazing for me how many controversial topics lead to balanced articles. “
