Examples of Bias in Wikipedia

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Here is a growing list of examples of liberal bias, deceit, silly gossip, and blatant errors on Wikipedia.

Wikipedia: the National Enquirer of the Internet.


  1. Wikipedia uses guilt-by-association far worse than Joseph McCarthy ever did. Wikipedia smears numerous persons and organizations by giving the false impression that they are associated with the John Birch Society (JBS). Examples include:
    • pro-life Congressman Jerry Costello, merely because JBS gave him a favorable rating[1]
    • anti-communist Fred Schwarz, merely because JBS agreed with him[2]
    • the conservative Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, by repeating a baseless newspaper claim from over 40 years ago that some of its leaders once belonged to the JBS [3]
    • conservative baseball pitcher Dave Dravecky, a cancer survivor, merely because a newspaper claimed he once belonged to JBS[4]
  2. In response to this criticism, Wikipedia removed ... only the first reference above, to protect the Democrat Jerry Costello. Wikipedia left all three other references, even though the comments here indicated that the other three references were worse and less-justified smears.
  3. Wikipedia's last sentence on Human Life International claimed that a killer "confessed that pamphets (sic) from the group led" him to kill. This is a complete lie designed to smear a conservative group. But this was approved by Wikipedia and remained for over a month.[5]
  4. A devastating critique of Wikipedia by Fox News describes the impact of Wikipedia smears on popular golfer Fuzzy Zoeller.[6]
  5. Smears in Wikipedia's entry on U.S. Congressman Steve LaTourette were totally false.[7]
  6. "Larry Sanger, who founded Wikipedia in 2001 with Jimmy Wales only to leave shortly afterwards, said that even as far back as 2001 the Wikipedia community 'had no respect for experts.'"[8]
  7. Wikpedia's entry on liberal former Vice President Al Gore contains no mention of the drug charges against his son.[9] But Wikipedia's entry on conservative Vice President Dick Cheney prominently mentions his adult daughter's sexuality.[10]
  8. Wikipedia's entry for seven weeks about Thad Cochran,[11] a conservative Republican member of the U.S. Senate, smeared him with an offensive, unsupported quotation not of Cochran, but of a Democratic Mississippi governor for whom Cochran's mother campaigned when Cochran was age 14. The unsupported quote was never spoken or endorsed by Cochran, but Wikipedia featured it near the top of Cochran's entry to mislead the reader into thinking Cochran is somehow a racist.
  9. Wikipedia smears prominent Christian conservatives, including James Dobson and D. James Kennedy, with an allegation that they are part of a grand scheme Wikipedia calls "Dominionism".[12] The term was made up by liberals and this conspiracy theory has no factual basis, but Wikipedia smears these conservatives with elaborate templates in their own entries depicting them as part of this fictional scheme.[13]
  10. Wikipedia's entry about the anti-Christian and anti-Semitic H.L. Mencken praises him profusely because he, Wikipedia's words, "notably assaulted America's preoccupation with fundamentalist Christianity."[14] After 3,500 words of adulation, Wikipedia then buries a concession that Mencken "has been referred to as anti-Semitic and misogynistic."[15] Wikipedians like Mencken's hostility to religion too much to admit that his biographer (Terry Teachout) and his close Jewish friend (Charles Angoff) described him as racist and anti-Semitic.[16]
  11. Wikipedia's entries about the 2007 Masters[17] and its champion Zach Johnson,[18] who won an upset come-from-behind victory against Tiger Woods, omit any reference to Johnson's public statements crediting his faith in Jesus Christ for strengthening him as he overcame enormous odds to prevail.
  12. Wikipedia asserts that "One 1987 estimate found that more than 99.84% of almost 500,000 US scientists in the earth and life sciences supported evolution over creation science."[19] This statement is false, but Wikipedians won't correct it and it has been repeated thousands of times by other liberals in reliance on Wikipedia.[20][21] The truth is that 700 scientists signed a statement rejecting evolution, but evolutionists then made the illogical claim that every other scientist must support evolution.[22] Under that reasoning, if 1000 persons signed a statement opposing President George W. Bush, then nearly 300 million Americans must support him! Funny how Wikipedia does not claim that.
  13. The 5,400-word Wikipedia entry on The John Birch Society[23] attempts to smear unrelated conservatives who had nothing to do with the society, simply by calling them "allies". Under that reasoning Ronald Reagan, Pope John Paul II, and George W. Bush should also be in that entry! And this is by a resource that criticizes McCarthyism???[24]
  14. Wikipedia has a substantial anti-intellectual element, as reflected by silly administrator names and nonsensical entries. Check out Wikipedia's entry for "duh": "Duh is an American English slang exclamation that is used to express disdain for someone missing the obviousness of something. For example, if one read a headline saying 'Scientific study proves pain really does hurt' or 'New reports show death is bad for one's health', the response might be 'Well, duh!'"[25] How about a new slogan: Wikipedia: well, duh!
  15. Wikipedia recently moved further away from Judaeo-Christian beliefs by complaining that "[t]he average Wikipedian ... is from a predominantly Christian country" and that Wikipedia was built on Christian encyclopedias and "the Jewish Encyclopedia."[26] At the same time, Wikipedia complains about the "enormous significance" given by entries to "Al-Qaeda attacks on the U.S., UK and Spain, killing slightly over 3,000 people."[27]
  16. Wikipedia has a banner to criticize an American treatment of a topic: "The examples and perspective in this article or section may not represent a worldwide view of the subject."[28] "A worldwide view" is fictional liberal terminology for globalists.
  17. Though Wikipedia is non-profit, the Wikia project of its co-founder is very much for-profit and has raised millions of dollars in investments. Already Wikipedia has been criticized for favoring Wikia. When Wikipedia community voted 61-39% percent to treat all links to other sites equally by removing nofollow (Google-ignored) tags for all of them, the Wikipedia co-founder overruled this decision and Wikipedia now favors Wikia in its treatment of nofollow tags.[29]
  18. Wikipedia is sympathetic to Fidel Castro in its entry about Cuba.[30] Wikipedia blames President Dwight Eisenhower for choosing "to attend a golf tournament" rather than meet the revolutionary Castro in 1959, and then Wikipedia claims that Castro became a communist because of the American-backed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. Conservapedia tells the truth up-front: "Cuba has been ruled by a communist dictator named Fidel Castro since 1959."[31]
  19. Often Wikipedia's biased assertions are unsupported by its citations. For example, the Wikipedia entry about Conservapedia states that it "has come under significant criticism for alleged factual inaccuracies."[32] But check out Wikipedia's cited source for that statement: its citation does not identify a single factual inaccuracy on Conservapedia.[33] Thus Wikipedia relies on a factual inaccuracy to accuse someone else of factual inaccuracies!
  20. Liberal icon Bertrand Russell receives glowing adoration on Wikipedia, which calls him "a prophet of the creative and rational life," "one of the world's best-known intellectuals" whose "voice carried great moral authority, even into his mid 90s."[34] After 7,700 words about Bertrand Russell, Wikipedia finally mentions Russell's support of the communist revolution, but pretends that Russell quickly opposed it. Instead, Russell wrote that "I believe that Communism is necessary to the world, and I believe ... Bolshevism deserves the gratitude and admiration of all the progressive part of mankind."[35]
  21. Conservapedia allows greater and easier copying of its materials than Wikipedia does, but Wikipedia's entry about Conservapedia claims that its policy "has led to some concerns."[36] And who supposedly had these concerns? In Wikipedia's citation, it was only the founder of Wikipedia in trying to find a way to criticize Conservapedia![37]
  22. April 24th was the anniversary of Operation Eagle Claw, which was President Jimmy Carter's failed attempt to rescue American hostages in Iran. The Conservapedia entry explains Carter's political motivation for this. But the Wikipedia entry omits Carter's political motivation and instead implies that this bad luck cost Carter the election.[38] In fact, Newsweek did not even mention this after July 14th, and Reagan beat Carter for reasons other than bad luck.
  23. Wikipedia's entry on James Monroe[39] omits any mention of how he was a conservative and omits Monroe's veto of a key appropriation on the Cumberland Road Bill, when Monroe stated that "congress does not possess the power under the constitution to pass such a law."[40]
  24. Polls show that about twice as many Americans identify themselves as "conservative" compared with "liberal", and that ratio has been increasing for two decades.[41] But on Wikipedia, about three times as many editors identify themselves as "liberal" compared with "conservative".[42] That suggests Wikipedia is six times more liberal than the American public.[43] See also liberal quotient.
  25. Wikipedia awarded "good article" status[44] to a biased description of liberal Balboa High School, saying it has "a progressively nurturing environment" undergoing "a steady renaissance marked by academic innovation."[45] Nowhere in Wikipedia's 4,468-word description does it admit that half the 9th graders lacked proficiency on a statewide English test.[46] Instead, Wikipedia editors apparently like how this public school converted its metal shop into a sex-based "health" clinic.
  26. One can confirm that sex-related entries are attracting many to Wikipedia, including young viewers, by viewing Wikipedia statistics. But Wikipedia gives no specific warning to parents or viewers about the pornographic images on popular pages, and Wikipedia would probably be disabled in many homes and schools if a proper warning were given.[47]
  27. Wikipedia's entry on the "Palestinian People" omits any mention of terrorism.[48] Click on the PLO and you'll find no discussion of its connection to the massacre of innocent athletes at the 1972 Olympics in Munich.[49] The Israel News Agency reports:
    No where will you ever find Al-Qaeda, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah described as terror organizations by Wikipedia. Wikipedia will quote the US State Department or the United Nations Security Council as saying that they are terror groups, but Wikipedia itself will only describe these organizations as "militants."
  28. Wikipedia features an entry on "anti-racist mathematics" that "emphasizes the sociocultural context of mathematics education and suggests that the study of mathematics (as it is traditionally known in western societies) does exhibit racial or cultural bias."[50]
  29. In the mid-20th century, a Soviet encyclopedia contained the assertion that Jesus was a myth.[51] Wikipedia's entry on Jesus has the following: "A small number of scholars and authors question the historical existence of Jesus, with some arguing for a completely mythological Jesus."[52] But no credible historian makes such a claim.
  30. Wikipedia's entry for the Renaissance denies any credit to Christianity, its primary inspiration.[53]
  31. About 60% of Americans accept the account of the Great Flood in the Bible.[54]. But enter "Great Flood" into Wikipedia and it automatically converts that to an entry entitled "Deluge (mythology)." That entry then uses "myth" or "mythology" nearly 70 times in its description.[55] Its entry on "Noah's Ark" is just as biased.[56]
  32. Wikipedia editors are about 4 times as atheistic or non-religious as the American public. In a Newsweek poll in 2006, 92% of Americans said they believed in God and only 8% said they did not believe in God or didn't know. But among Wikipedia editors responding to a request for identification of beliefs, 35% described themselves in the categories of "No religion, atheist, agnostic, humanist, secular, other."[57]
  33. Wikipedia's entry on abortion reads like a brochure for the abortion industry. Wikipedia denies and omits the results of 16 out of 17 statistically significant studies showing increased risk of breast cancer from abortion.[58] Wikipedia's entry also omits the evidence of abortion causing increased premature birth of subsequent children.[59]. Instead of providing these facts, Wikipedia blames women by declaring that "breast cancer elicits disproportionate fear in women"![60]
  34. The Wikipedia entry for homosexuality fails to mention the following: the many diseases associated with homosexuality, the high promiscuity rates of the homosexuality community, the higher incidences of domestic violence amoung homosexual couples compared to heterosexual couples, and the substantially higher mental illnes and drug usage rates of the homosexuality community. In addition, the Wikipedia article on homosexuality fails to mention that the American Psychiatric Association issued a fact sheet in May of 2000 stating that "..there are no replicated scientific studies supporting a specific biological etiology for homosexuality."[61]
  35. The Wikipedia entry for the Voting Rights Act contained (as of March 9-10) a call to participate in a political march to establish congressional representation for D.C.[62] This is a longtime liberal cause prohibited by the U.S. Constitution. A conservative entry like that would be deleted by Wikipedia editors within minutes, but that entry remained until after it was criticized here.
  36. Initially a Wikipedia admin named "Nearly Headless Nick" deleted, without explaining his decision, an entry about Conservapedia. Later, in response to publicity, Wikipedia posted a new entry about Conservapedia. Wikipedia's entry is filled with obvious bias, numerous errors, out-of-date citations, and self-serving false statements.[63] For example, the Wikipedia entry made the absurd claim that Conservapedia says the "General Theory of Relativity" has "nothing to do with physics." Wikipedia's claim was completely false and unsupported by its citations. After this example was posted here, Wikipedia removed its error but has left other false and outdated claims in its entry, reflecting Wikipedia's pervasive bias.
  37. Wikipedia's entry for conservative physicist Edward Teller promotes the liberal attempt to blame him for the government taking away the security clearance of J. Robert Oppenheimer. Teller testified, "If it is a question of wisdom and judgment, as demonstrated by actions since 1945, then I would say one would be wiser not to grant clearance." Wikipedia first called this statement "damning", and after criticism here replaced its term with "problematic".[64] In light of how multiple spies leaked secrets under Oppenheimer's supervision in the Manhattan Project and spying even worsened afterwards, Wikipedia's spin on Teller's statement is unjustified bias.
  38. Wikipedia's entry for the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, a conservative group, features a rant against the group by a British journalist who was a former press officer for the leftist Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.[65] The only cited credential for the journalist is that he works for a television "programme-production company," and there is no citation for any of the factual claims in his intemperate and misleading description of the group, which were prompted by an independent criticism in England of the journalist's own work. After receiving a complaint about this, Wikipedia trimmed this rant but still kept most of it, reflecting Wikipedia's bias. Preserving this unpublished diatribe is against Wikipedia policy (e.g., NPOV), but it Wikipedia administrators insist on keeping it. Wikipedia's entry also features another liberal journalist's swipe at AAPS from ... 40 years ago!
  39. There is a strong anti-American and anti-capitalism bias on Wikipedia. In its description of the post-war Bell Trade Act of 1946, in which the United States gave the Philippines $800 million in exchange for some free trade provisions, Wikipedia omits any mention of the $800 million dollars and instead lambasts the "wrath of Father Capitalism."[66] The agreement was approved by popular vote on the Philippines, but the Wikipedia article omits that fact also.
  40. Wikipedia distorts the youthful acceptance of deism by Benjamin Franklin by never acknowledging that he later abandoned it. Wikipedia fails to admit the significance of how Franklin, near the end of his life, proposed the saying of prayers at the Constitutional Convention for divine intervention and assistance in the proceedings,[67] an act contrary to the teachings of deism. Wikipedia also omits any acknowledgment of Franklin's praise of Pilgrim's Progress in his autobiography.
  41. Wikipedia's entry on the Intelligent Design court decision in Dover[68] distorts and omits the key facts that (i) the judge awarded over $2 million in attorneys fees to the ACLU's side (not $1 million),[69] (ii) the judge copied over 90% of his opinion from the ACLU's briefs,[70] and (iii) his opinion relied heavily on another decision that was subsequently reversed on appeal.[71]
  42. Gossip is pervasive on Wikipedia. Many entries read like the National Enquirer. For example, Wikipedia's entry on Nina Totenberg states, "She married H. David Reines, a trauma physician, in 2000. On their honeymoon, he treated her for severe injuries after she was hit by a boat propeller while swimming." That sounds just like the National Enquirer, and reflects a bias towards gossip. Conservapedia avoids gossip and vulgarity, just as a true encyclopedia does.
  43. Edits to include facts against the theory of evolution are almost immediately censored. On Conservapedia, contributions that meet simple rules are respected to the maximum extent possible.
  44. Wikipedia has as its official policy the following: "If we are going to characterize disputes neutrally, we should present competing views with a consistently fair and sensitive tone." [72] Yet what does Wikipedia do in relation to its article on Young Earth Creationism? It currently offers am article on the topic under the category "Pseudoscience". [73] What reputable encyclopedia uses such a non-encyclopedic tone for an article in regards to creationism? The log on the article shows that Wikipedia has a history of using the pejorative term "pseudoscience" to disparage young earth creationism. [74]
  45. Wikipedia removed and permanently blocked a page identifying its many biases. Wikipedia omits any meaningful reference to political bias in its 7000-word entry Criticism of Wikipedia.
  46. Wikipedia claims about 1.8 million articles, but what it does not say is that a large number of those articles have zero educational value. For example, Wikipedia has 1075 separate articles about "Moby" and "song".[75] Many hundreds of thousands of Wikipedia articles -- perhaps over half its website -- are about music, Hollywood, and other topics beneath a regular encyclopedia. This reflects a bias towards popular gossip rather than helpful or enlightening information.
  47. The Wikipedia entry for John Peter Zenger links to an incorrect Wikipedia definition of "Philadelphia lawyer", which Merriam-Webster defines as a lawyer knowledgeable in "even the most minute aspects of the law." Wikipedia claims the term comes from the Zenger trial, but Merriam-Webster puts the first use of that term at over 50 years later. Wikipedia is simply unreliable.
  48. Often key facts are missing from Wikipedia entries in favor of meaningless detail. Wikipedia's entry about Indentured Servitude is massive, but it omitted any reference to Bacon's Rebellion, which was the turning point for the use of indentured servants in the New World! Finally, weeks after this glaring omission was noted here, Wikipedia added one line to its entry: "Indentured servants in Virginia supported Bacon's Rebellion in 1676."[76]
  49. Unlike most encyclopedias and news outlets, Wikipedia does not exert any centralized authority to take steps to reduce bias or provide balance; it has a "neutral point of view" policy but the policy is followed only to the extent that individual editors acting in social groups choose to follow it. For example, CNN would ensure that Crossfire had a representative of the political right and one from the political left. In contrast, Wikipedia policy allows bias to exist and worsen. For example, even though most Americans reject the theory of evolution,[77] Wikipedia editors commenting on the topic are nearly 100% pro-evolution.[78] Self-selection has a tendency to exacerbate bias, as in mobs, where there are no restraints. Gresham's Law reflects the problem in economics of bad money driving out good in the absence of corrective action. As a result, Wikipedia is arguably more biased than CNN and other information sources.
    The above paragraph was posted on the Wikipedia entry for "Wikipedia", under bias, but its editors then illustrated their bias by replacing the above with this: "Ojective [sic], or neutrally biased, articles present different opinions as equally legitimate regardless of validity, while unbiased articles focus on accuracy and validity. For example, the evolution article is not objective because it does not present creationism, a counter argument to evolution, as a valid scientific theory. However, this does not make the article biased because evolution is an accepted scientific theory. CNN's Crossfire, on the other hand, was considered objective ... because it had representatives from the political right from the political left."
  50. Wikipedia has many entries on mathematical concepts, but lacked any entry on the basic concept of an elementary proof until this omission was pointed out here.[79] Elementary proofs require a rigor lacking in many mathematical claims promoted on Wikipedia.
  51. The Wikipedia entry for the Piltdown Man omits many key facts, such as how it was taught in schools for an entire generation and how the dating methodology used by evolutionists is fraudulent.
  52. Wikipedia allows the use of B.C.E. instead of B.C. and C.E. instead of A.D. The dates are based on the birth of Jesus, so why pretend otherwise? Conservapedia gives the credit due to Christianity and exposes the CE deception.
  53. Wikipedia's article on Feudalism is limited to feudalism in Europe and did not mention the feudal systems that developed independently in Japan and India until this defect was described here.[80]
  54. Wikipedia's article on the longest-serving and most powerful Maryland official in its history, William Donald Schaefer, contains about 1900 words, but over two-thirds of those words (1400/1900) are devoted to silly gossip, outright vulgarity and National Enquirer-type material.[81] 406 words, which is over 20% of the entire entry, is devoted to a silly dispute Schaefer had one day with the local newspaper!
  55. Wikipedia's article about the late Senator John Tower includes a mean-spirited story whose only point seems to be to indicate the degree of his ex-wife's bitterness toward him. The article spells his wife's name incorrectly, and cites no source for the item. The item has been in that state since it was first inserted in May 2006.[82] No real encyclopedia would print such silly gossip.
  56. Wikipedia's entry for the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act (NCVIA) reads like an advertisement for vaccine manufacturers, including unsupported and implausible claims about vaccination.[83] Unsupported claims featured there include "Vaccine makers indicated they would cease production if their proposal for the NCVIA was not enacted" and "concern that the NCVIA may not provide an adequate legal shield." Wikipedia's entry omits references to leading pro-parent websites concerning vaccination,[84] and instead Wikipedia's entry lists pro-government and pro-vaccine-manufacturer websites. Wikipedia's entry even includes this entire paragraph, which is unsupported and is little more than an advertisement for drug companies:
    Public health safety, according to backers of the legislation, depends upon the financial viability of pharmaceutical companies, whose ability to produce sufficient supplies in a timely manner could be imperiled by civil litigation on behalf of vaccine injury victims that was mounting rapidly at the time of its passage. Vaccination against infectious illnesses provides protection against contagious diseases and afflictions which may cause permanent disability or even death. Vaccines have reduced morbidity caused by infectious disease; e.g., in the case of smallpox, mass vaccination programs have eradicated a once life-threatening illness.
  57. Wikipedia displays an obsession with English social distinctions, such as obscure royality, and with unexplained academic distinctions earned in the English college system, such as references to "double first degree." The entry on Henry Liddell illustrates this extreme form of Anglophilia that characterizes many entries in Wikipedia.[85]. That entry fails to tell us when Liddell was dean of Christ Church, Oxford and has a grammatical error in its first sentence, yet describes in painstaking detail four obscure royal titles for Liddell's relatives and his "double first degree" in college. The casual reader of that entry wouldn't even notice a buried reference (well after a description of all the royal lineage) to Liddell's primary claim to fame: his daughter Alice inspired Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. The arcane English descriptions in many Wikipedia entries may be due to its copying, verbatim, passages from the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica. This copying was not disclosed in the debate in late 2005 about whether Wikipedia was as reliable a resource as the Encyclopedia Britannica.[86]
  58. Robert McHenry, former Editor-in-Chief for the Encyclopedia Britannica, wrote about Wikipedia's bias and included this observation:[87]
    One simple fact that must be accepted as the basis for any intellectual work is that truth – whatever definition of that word you may subscribe to – is not democratically determined.
  59. Bob Schmidt observed on the Illinois Review:[88]
    I just spent some time in Wikipedia checking if my recollections of its bias are correct. The bias is much worse than I had remembered.
    I looked only at topics on business and information technology. Clearly there are enthusiasts for certain vendors who are spending a large portion of their time hyping technology in a way that makes their vendor look good in comparison to other vendors.
    They will set up a set of criteria for the definition of a product that their product will meet. They conveniently omit from the criteria anything that would detract from their favorite.
    In short, Wikipedia is not objective. It is accurate only within its selective use of facts that are convenient to promote a predetermined outcome.
    Even for just one area of knowledge, it would take a major time consuming effort for a person or group to have an impact on reducing the bias and improving the accuracy of the entries.
  60. Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, admitted the following understated bias in an interview in 2006:[89]
    "I would say that the Wikipedia community is slightly more liberal than the U.S. population on average, because we are global and the international community of English speakers is slightly more liberal than the U.S. population. There are no data or surveys to back that." [Conservapedia editor: why not? Wales admitted that only about 615 editors are responsible for over 50% of the edits on Wikipedia.[90] Why doesn't Wikipedia survey these editors? Is this deliberate indifference to bias?]
  61. Many people know how a prominent Tennessee journalist John Lawrence Seigenthaler was defamed for four months on Wikipedia before it was corrected. He described and criticized this in USA Today, concluding with the following:[91]
    When I was a child, my mother lectured me on the evils of "gossip." She held a feather pillow and said, "If I tear this open, the feathers will fly to the four winds, and I could never get them back in the pillow. That's how it is when you spread mean things about people."
  62. What most people don't know is how many Wikipedia editors savaged Seigenthaler afterwards on a Wikipedia talk page for publicly criticizing the falsehoods about him:[92]
    "Mr. Seigenthaler's attitude and actions are reprehensible and ill-formed," said one typical comment. "[He] has the responsibility to learn about his own name and how it is being applied and used, as any celebrity does on the Internet and the world-at-large. Besides, if there is an error whether large or small, he can correct it on Wikipedia. Everyone fails to understand that logic." Another wrote: "Rather than fixing the article himself, he made a legal threat. He's causing Wikipedia a lot of trouble, on purpose."
  63. The co-founder of Wikipedia, Larry Sanger, described "serious and endemic problems" in Wikipedia in a document entitled "Toward a Compendium of Knowledge" (Spet. 2006). Sanger observed that Wikipedia editors do not enforce their own rules consistently or effectively and that it has become an "arguably dysfunctional community" unattractive to traditional experts. Sanger declared the Wikipedia community's response to the Seigenthaler incident to be "completely unacceptable."[93]
  64. Wikipedia's errors spill undetected into newspapers. A Wikipedia entry falsely stated that Rutgers was once invited to join the Ivy League. Although that false statement was eventually removed from Wikipedia, it was not removed before the Daily News relied on it in this story:
    "You don't have to define your college with your football team, but Rutgers long ago decided to give it a try. Back in 1954, when it was considered a 'public Ivy,' Rutgers might have joined the fledgling Ivy League and altered its destiny. But the school declined the offer - arguably the dumbest mistake in its history. Ever since then, Rutgers has scrambled to prove itself worthy of playing football with the big boys." — Bondy, Filip. "They Can Finally Say They Belong Here", New York Daily News, 2006-11-10, p. 92. Retrieved on 2006-12-13.
  65. Wikipedia's entry for Johnny Appleseed, a Christian folk hero, omits a discussion of his strong faith and instead features baseless speculation about his health, a year of death different from that of his obituary, and a silly story designed to make a Christian preacher look foolish.[94]
  66. Wikipedia violates its own rules. The entry alleging Daniel Brandt's Public Information Research is politically profiled as being aligned with Holocaust denial and cited to Political Research Associates, a self published source. [5] The self-published source states these charges first appeared by the same author, Chip Berlet, in a questionable and extremist publication, the Guardian. [6] The questionable and extremist publication (Guardian) is the subject of Chapter 9, Nazis, Communists, Klansmen, and Others on the Fringe. [7], by a mainstream publisher Prometheus Books. The same author of questionable and defamatory material cited himself (Berlet) when inserting the questionable and extremist material into the Daniel Brandt article. [8]
  67. In an example of pro-Gay bias, the category allowing users to self identify as Heterosexual was deleted because it served no useful purpose, yet the exact same category for Homosexuals was kept.

References

  1. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jerry_Costello&oldid=142488803
  2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Schwarz
  3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_American_Physicians_and_Surgeons
  4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Dravecky
  5. [1] Only in response to Conservapedia's criticism was the smear removed.
  6. In addition to the Fox News report, numerous stories on the Internet describe the smears, which we will not repeat here. "The Wikipedia entry has since been cleansed of the remarks, first posted last August, then again in December before being removed January 2nd. However, several sites like Answers.com have copies of Wikipedia entries, and as of press time still had the defamatory content in place."[2]
  7. http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/news/1184402220217510.xml&coll=2
  8. http://www.siliconrepublic.com/news/news.nv?storyid=single8794
  9. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Gore
  10. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Cheney
  11. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Thad_Cochran&oldid=135420256 (revised only after being exposed on Conservapedia, but then the smear was reinserted again before being removed again)
  12. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominionism
  13. See, e.g., D. James Kennedy
  14. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mencken
  15. Ibid.
  16. http://cjrarchives.org/issues/2003/1/mencken-payne.asp
  17. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Masters_Tournament
  18. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zach_Johnson
  19. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level_of_support_for_evolution
  20. http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070519145312AACvfJA&show=7
  21. Talk:Main Page
  22. "By one count there are some 700 scientists (out of a total of 480,000 U.S. earth and life scientists) who give credence to creation-science, the general theory that complex life forms did not evolve but appeared 'abruptly'." Martz, Larry & Ann McDaniel (1987-06-29), "Keeping God out of the Classroom (Washington and bureau reports)", Newsweek CIX(26): 23-24, ISSN 0028-9604
  23. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_John_Birch_Society
  24. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism
  25. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duh
  26. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Countering_systemic_bias
  27. Ibid.
  28. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campaign_finance
  29. http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/04/28/wikipedia-special-treatment-for-wikia-and-other-wikis/
  30. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuba
  31. Cuba
  32. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservapedia
  33. http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=1910
  34. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_Russell
  35. Bertrand Russell
  36. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservapedia
  37. http://www.thestar.com/sciencetech/article/190501
  38. Wikipedia states, "The operation was a failure, and had a severe impact on U.S. President Jimmy Carter's re-election prospects ...."entry
  39. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Monroe
  40. James Monroe
  41. http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/index.asp?PID=444
  42. Compare Liberal Wikipedians with Conservative Wikipedians
  43. "Liberal bias" can be defined as the ratio of liberals to conservatives in a group, such that no liberals would equate to zero liberal bias. Wikipedia's ratio of 3:1 for liberals to conservatives is six times the ratio in the American public of 1:2 for liberals to conservatives.
  44. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Good_articles
  45. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balboa_High_School_%28San_Francisco%29
  46. Jill Tucker, "Student Successes Defy Urban Trends," San Francisco Chronicle (Aug. 16, 2006).
  47. Wikipedia merely has a general disclaimer that avoids any reference to its sexual images, pornography, and adult content.[3]
  48. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_people (the entry also contained an unjustified picture of children for sympathy purposes, but that was removed after criticism here)
  49. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine_Liberation_Organization
  50. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-racist_mathematics
  51. http://www.bede.org.uk/books,jmyth.htm
  52. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus
  53. Wikipedia has since updated its entry with a backhanded reference to Christianity, but even then not for inspiring the Renaissance but rather for providing subject matter for the works.[4]
  54. http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040216-113955-2061r.htm
  55. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Flood
  56. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noah%27s_Ark
  57. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikimedians_by_religion
  58. http://www.jpands.org/vol8no2/malec.pdf
  59. http://www.jpands.org/vol8no2/rooney.pdf
  60. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion-breast_cancer_hypothesis
  61. http://www.cwfa.org/images/content/bornorbred.pdf
  62. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Voting_Rights_Act
  63. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservapedia
  64. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Teller
  65. The version criticized above; the note left by dpbsmith on the article's discussion page; the current version.
  66. This phrase was removed from Wikipedia only after this criticism was posted here. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Trade_Act
  67. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Deist_thinkers
  68. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitzmiller_v._Dover_Area_School_District
  69. ACLU
  70. Id.
  71. Id.
  72. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view
  73. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Earth_creationism
  74. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Young_Earth_creationism&action=history
  75. Simply search "Moby" and "song" together on Wikipedia.
  76. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Indentured_servant&diff=115675763&oldid=113879992
  77. http://www.religioustolerance.org/ev_publi.htm
  78. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Evolution
  79. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elementary_proof
  80. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feudalism
  81. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Donald_Schaefer
  82. John Tower, revision as of Jan 25
  83. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Childhood_Vaccine_Injury_Act
  84. http://www.909shot.com/
  85. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Liddell
  86. http://news.com.com/Study+Wikipedia+as+accurate+as+Britannica/2100-1038_3-5997332.html
  87. http://www.opendemocracy.net/media-edemocracy/wikipedia_bias_3621.jsp
  88. http://illinoisreview.typepad.com/illinoisreview/2007/01/conservapedia_w.html
  89. http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2006/04/email_debatewales_discusses_po.html
  90. http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2006/02/12/bias_sabotage_haunt_wikipedias_free_world/?page=2
  91. http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2005-11-29-wikipedia-edit_x.htm
  92. http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2006/02/12/bias_sabotage_haunt_wikipedias_free_world/?page=3
  93. http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/citizendium.ars
  94. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Appleseed