Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

Posted by leotravis10 9/4/2025

Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks(www.theverge.com)

601 points | 458 commentspage 6

jandrusk 9/4/2025|

They’ve always have had a leftist bias like most of big tech.

https://x.com/therabbithole84/status/1957598712693452920?s=4...

hulium 9/4/2025||

That's a fake Wikipedia screenshot! That line doesn't exist in the actual article and didn't at the time when that tweet was written, and does not even fit in the context. To me, this is at best an example for how much higher the quality is on Wikipedia than in average social media like X.

BenjiWiebe 9/5/2025|||

Amazing. And it's listed as having 23.7K views. I suppose far less than 1% of those people would have taken the time to see if that was real or fake.

EDIT That line did exist in the past. It was there one year ago. Can someone more skilled in Wikipedia find and link the revision where it was removed? Bonus points for finding when it was added. Thanks in advance.

Agraillo 9/5/2025|||

The edit did exist. So the phrase "Multiple studies have found a left-wing bias at Wikipedia" can be found last in the edit (4 February 2025) [1] and was removed by the editor Aquillion with the explanation [2]

     Not seeing anything in this source that supports this language; they summarize no other sources that I could see, and their own conclusions are more complex than this (as covered further down the article.)

I think that the one who previously introduced the phrase should have either not stated 'Multiple studies' or provided information about other studies. I suspect that a single research is usually not enough to be mentioned in an article

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ideological_bias_...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ideological_bias_...

hulium 9/6/2025||

I am not surprised that the sentence existed once. But "Wikipedia once said this during the time August 2024-Februrary 2025" is not the same as "Source: Wikipedia" because of the way Wikipedia evolves. It's especially bad if you disregard the entire much more nuanced discussion in the remaining article.

slater 9/4/2025|||

aka, biased towards reality

pityJuke 9/4/2025||

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/?redirect=no&title=Reality_has_a_...

pavlov 9/4/2025||

[flagged]

PathOfEclipse 9/4/2025||

[flagged]

fnikacevic 9/4/2025|||

The only specific example from that nypost article is about Fox News not being allowed as a source. Fox news has been found in court to be guilty of defamation and has argued in court that it cannot be considered news, only entertainment.

So do you want reality or reality TV on Wikipedia? Should we consider Ancient Aliens as a source?

Clamchop 9/4/2025|||

Fox News argued in court that their political commentary programming isn't news. They didn't argue that none of their programming is news.

fnikacevic 7 days ago|||

They defamed Dominion so much on their "news" programs that they have to pay hundreds of millions of dollars. Great "news" source.

Clamchop 7 days ago||

I don't disagree that Fox News is problematic for lots of reasons and I also have personal grievances with how they and similar outlets have affected several members of my family. That said, it's become folk knowledge that Fox News doesn't even think they're news, but that's simply a misunderstanding of the case. There's a tiny bit of irony that there are those who are patting themselves on the back for being above misinformation and getting this important detail wrong.

I've seen the actual news that comes from them and while it's certainly biased rightward, particularly in what they choose to report on, it's not outrageously so.

rsynnott 9/5/2025|||

I mean, given how inclined they are to blur the lines, a certain amount of caution seems reasonable. They're a tabloid, essentially.

PathOfEclipse 9/5/2025||

It takes an incredible lack of awareness or intellectual honesty to hold Fox news to this standard, but not CNN, MSNBC, NBC, CBS, and ABC, or, if we include print media, the NYT, the Washington Post, the Guardian, Reuters, AP, Axios, LA Times, and the Atlantic.

PathOfEclipse 9/4/2025|||

You're not trying very hard to see a side that's different from yours, are you? You are responding to a comment saying "leftist != realistic", yet you seem to be pretending my intent was to say "here's proof Wikipedia is left-leaning." Neither of my links were given to "prove" bias, either, only to show that accusations of leftwing bias are accusations that Wikipedia is valuing propaganda over truth and objectivity.

Anyways, to get off-topic from my original comment, here's some evidence for you to ignore:

https://larrysanger.org/2021/06/wikipedia-is-more-one-sided-...

https://media4.manhattan-institute.org/wp-content/uploads/is...

https://www.allsides.com/blog/wikipedia-biased

https://stophindudvesha.org/the-myth-of-wikipedias-neutralit...

fnikacevic 7 days ago||

Look if you'd rather trust Fox News than Wikipedia feel free. None of those 4 sources are much convincing of your point.

gdulli 9/4/2025|||

Larry Sanger literally does not understand what the concept of bias is. He has said: "you aligned yourself with one side, against another side, in a debate. That makes you biased, not neutral."

He's so unable to engage with ideas he doesn't agree with that he's conflated having a stance with "bias".

PathOfEclipse 9/4/2025||

It sounds to me like you're just nitpicking his words. I can't find this quote anywhere, but he's probably saying Wikipedia is taking "stances", to use your word, on subjects where it should instead be trying harder to be neutral and provide multiple perspectives in a balanced manner. Sincerely trying to understand and convey the perspectives of two opposing sides looks vastly different from taking one side, amplifying their talking points, and suppressing or refuting those of the other side.

The counter-arguments to all this all tend to boil down to some form of condescending tone or moralizing:

* left-leaning is just reality-leaning. LoLoLoL right-wingers are sooo stupid!

* Wikipedia should take the left-leaning stance because it is good, moral, noble, and righteous, while the right-leaning stance is vile, evil, unconscionable, and despicable.

If either of those thoughts cross your mind, then, congratulations, you are left-biased. You should try your hand at Wikipedia article editing. I'm sure they'll love you.

gdulli 9/4/2025||

https://bsky.app/profile/curious-maga.bsky.social/post/3loel...

He first invents a link between a topic being "complex" with not being able to take a side. Then he conflates taking a side with "bias".

This is detached from reality. That is not nitpicking words. This is a word salad that starts with a need to dismiss a viewpoint and works backwards.

This "co-founder" was let go from Wikipedia in its first year over 20 years ago. He's had a crusade against them ever since.

emsign 9/5/2025||

Oh, just wait til MAGA sycophants feel threatened by Wikipedia. It'll be a war against the online encyclopedia like none before. I'm actually anxious that might happen at any time. For instance when Trump runs out of enemies to scapegoat.

input_sh 9/5/2025||

Oh it already started, the ADL convinced House Republicans to launch an investigation into Wikipedia because of its "anti-Israel bias": https://thehill.com/homenews/house/5473331-wikipedia-bias-pr...

One of the requests in the letter (https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/08272...) is to de-anonymise some of the Wikipedia editors.

monksy 9/5/2025||

Once they do, I'm sure we'll see blackouts that are similar to most dictatorships. (i.e. metal themed pages in Turkey, FB/Google in China, etc)

ProllyInfamous 9/5/2025||

My blue-collar journey with LLMs began Summer 2022, after watching Yannic's GPT 4-chan video [0] — visiting simple GPT-2 iterations (e.g. http://www.thisworddoesnotexist.com — which still exists and is a fantastic linguist's homepage — &al CRAIYON &c).

My most-shocking LLM interaction so-far ties with when http://www.perplexity.ai cited my recent wikipedia edit (from my two decade+ account) in answering a question about transistor density... less than one day after I had made the update it cited [1]. Like I am nobody why tf are you listening to me?!?

This ties with having sat with a published author of a non-fiction war chronicle as we discussed his books, himself, and his world (with a computer, me typing / brainstorming).

Among many other reconfigurations of muh'brain.

[0] https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/efPrtcLdcdM

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor_count

I am just the electrician.

sharpshadow 9/5/2025||

To be very specific I was told that the hand does not go over the head when doing a nazi salute.

Quarrelsome 9/5/2025|

I just imagine a hypothetical future where a party funded by the richest man in the world goes full fascist and we trot out the "who could have known?". We get out the protractors or simply admit that it was a Nazi salute.

Its the lack of clarity or apology, he never said that it wasn't, he never apologised or said "oh yeah, i didnt mean that" or he even could have brushed it off as a joke or trolling to evoke a reaction. But he never did, he just said people were overreacting.

Combined with his public support for groups like AfD and Patriotic Alternative UK, it seems pretty obvious that he's a Nazi. If anything this subject shows a clear divide between US and European reaction, given how he's now overwhelmingly persona non grata in Europe since that. The US has this bizarre tribalism in its politics, where half its electorate deny the reality that an government official (as he started his doge role at the time) is glorifying the symbols of America's greatest adversary in the world's most destructive war.

alex1138 9/5/2025||

I can't defend Wiki any further after their politicization

How about not calling Peter McCullough or Ryan Cole or Pierre Kory misinformation spreaders about covid when they were right the whole time

Larry Sanger was correct

Edit: (I know we're not supposed to comment on downvotes but I seriously don't care) Those of you who insta-downvote stuff like this should not enjoy the privileges of the karma system on HN that allows you to downvote

(Further - how many of you actually work for big tech? Do you think it's ok to censor doctors like has been going on the last few years? Do you have any qualities of personal reflection, whatsoever?)

Antibabelic 9/5/2025||

The goal of Wikipedia has always been to summarize what mainstream secondary sources say, not what is "true" or "right" according to your or some other editor's personal opinion. See WP:DUE, WP:VNT and WP:RGW

lp0_on_fire 9/5/2025||

It literally styles itself as an encyclopedia, not a collection of summaries by "mainstream secondary sources".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Five_pillars

> Wikipedia combines many features of general and specialized encyclopedias, almanacs, and gazetteers. Wikipedia is not a soapbox, an advertising platform, a social network, a vanity press, an experiment in anarchy or democracy, an indiscriminate collection of information, nor a web directory. It is not a dictionary, a newspaper, an instruction manual, nor a collection of source documents or media files, although some of its fellow Wikimedia projects are.

intermerda 9/5/2025||

> How about not calling Peter McCullough or Ryan Cole or Pierre Kory misinformation spreaders about covid when they were right the whole time

What were they right about? I'm looking at Peter McCullough's Wikipedia article and some of the things he's claimed include young people don't need the vaccine, there is no evidence of asymptomatic spread of COVID-19, and COVID-19 pandemic was planned, etc.

Is this what you're saying they were right about the whole time? The pandemic was planned?

mediumsmart 9/4/2025|

Wikipedia broke some time ago in order to be allowed to survive. There are still things that can be looked up there and taken at face value.

soupfordummies 9/4/2025|

I read this comment three times and I still don't understand what you're trying to say. Not trying to be rude, just saying.

mediumsmart 9/4/2025||

In my opinion some years back Wikipedia broke meaning that it was no longer impartial by default. It’s no biggie and was to be expected given its scale and perceived authority. Just saying. You could watch manufacturing consent maybe to understand the comment but you don’t have to.