Examples of Bias in Wikipedia

This list covers a wide range of bias in the English Wikipedia website. Although Wikipedia claims to have credibility because anyone can edit it, in fact the website represents the viewpoint of its most strident and persistent editors. This list together with the sublists linked below provide a wide variety of examples of the resulting bias.

On August 23, 2011, David Swindle published an article at FrontPage Magazine detailing how Wikipedia has been taken over by the political left; he cited statistics relating to Wikipedia's articles on Anne Coulter, Michael Moore, Glenn Beck and Keith Olbermann, which helped demonstrate that Wikipedia has a leftist bias, and he discussed the liberal/leftist cultural foundations of Wikipedia.

For example, Swindle wrote:

"Consider Ann Coulter versus Michael Moore​. Coulter’s entry (on August 9, 2011) was 9028 words long.* Of this longer-than-usual entry, 3220 words were devoted to “Controversies and criticism” in which a series of incidents involving Coulter and quotes from her are cited with accompanying condemnations, primarily from her opponents on the Left. That’s 35.6 percent of Coulter’s entry devoted to making her look bad. By contrast, Moore’s entry is 2876 words (the more standard length for entries on political commentators), with 130 devoted to “Controversy.” That’s 4.5% of the word count, a fraction of Coulter’s. Does this mean that an “unbiased” commentator would find Coulter eight times as “controversial” as Moore?"

The project was initiated by atheist and entrepreneur Jimmy Wales and the agnostic philosophy professor Larry Sanger on January 15, 2001. An irony of internet history is that Jimmy Wales, despite being an atheist, refers to himself as Wikipedia's "spiritual leader". Despite its official "neutrality policy," Wikipedia has a strong liberal bias. In his article entitled Wikipedia lies, slander continue journalist Joseph Farah stated Wikipedia "is not only a provider of inaccuracy and bias. It is wholesale purveyor of lies and slander unlike any other the world has ever known." Mr. Farah has repeatedly been the victim of defamation at the Wikipedia website. In December of 2010, Christian apologist JP Holding called Wikipedia "the abomination that causes misinformation".

List of examples of liberal bias in Wikipedia

Below is a growing list of around 300 examples of liberal bias, deceit, frivolous gossip, and blatant errors on Wikipedia. The atheist Jimmy Wales was a lead founder of Wikipedia. Christian apologist JP Holding called Wikipedia "the abomination that causes misinformation". Because the list of examples is so long, it is divided into sublists based on subject matter. Some of the most egregious examples are in these sublists, which are well worth reading. At risk of duplication, some of the most interesting examples from the sublists are also repeated on this main list to give an overview. (We limit this main list to up to three examples from each sublist.)

Examples of Bias

Abortion

See Examples of Bias in Wikipedia: Abortion

1. Wikipedia has a large article detailing anti-abortion violence committed around the world, but there is no article about pro-abortion violence. There is no article for "Pro-choice violence" and "Pro-abortion violence" bizarrely redirects to the "Abortion debate" article. Before being redirected, the "Pro-abortion violence" article was biased towards downplaying the reality of violence committed by supporters of abortion. For example, while the "Anti-abortion violence" article matter-of-factly begins: "Anti-abortion violence is violence committed against individuals and organizations that provide abortion." ...the "Pro-abortion violence" article dismissingly began: "Pro-abortion violence (or pro-choice violence) is a term used in the pro-life movement to characterize acts of violence committed by abortion practitioners or abortion advocates against those who oppose abortion or against pregnant women. The former is regarded as factual while the latter is just "a term used in the pro-life movement."
2. Wikipedia changes the meaning of a key quote from an abortion-breast cancer article in the Lancet medical journal (Beral, et al.), falsely stating that it "concluded that abortion does not increase a woman's risk of developing breast cancer." The Lancet article said no such thing about a woman's decision to have an abortion, which does increase the woman's risk of breast cancer. Rather, the Lancet article limited its assertion to a claim about the overall effect of a pregnancy that terminates early.
3. Wikipedia's entry on Benazir Bhutto has nearly 8,000 words on all aspects of her life, and yet not one word acknowledging that she led the movement against the United Nations' creating a new international right to abortion.

Anti-Christianity

See Examples of Bias in Wikipedia: Anti-Christianity

1. Wikipedia's article on Extremism specifically points out Christians are commonly called extreme, "It is also not uncommon to necessarily define distinctions regarding extremist Christians as opposed to moderate Christians, as in countries such as the United States" [2]
2. Wikipedia has a lengthy entry on "Jesus H. Christ," a term that is an idiotic mockery of the Christian faith. Wikipedia calls the term "often humorous," "joking" and "comedic", and relishes in repeating disrespectful uses of the term, without admitting that the phrase is an anti-Christian mockery. Meanwhile, Wikipedia does not describe mockery of any other religion as "humorous".
3. Arguments for atheism are prominently featured in Wikipedia's atheism article, but Wikipedia's Christianity article does not mention Christian apologetics.

Bestiality/zoophilia

See Wikipedia on bestiality

As of July 18, 2012, Wikipedia's article on zoophilia/bestiality has an entire section on "arguments for zoophilia" plus pictures depicting zoophilia as well as a section on "arguments against zoophilia". No worthwhile encyclopedia in existence has an article on zoophilia/bestiality with an entire section on "arguments for zoophilia" plus pictures depicting zoophilia. As of September 24, 2011, Wikipedia has a "Zoophilia and the law" article which has a section on the impact of zoophilia laws where eight alleged negative impacts of zoophilia laws are given, but no positive impacts of the laws are given.

Conservapedia smears

See Examples of Bias in Wikipedia: Conservapedia smears

1. Wikipedia displays pervasive bias in making liberal statements with citations that do not support the statements, as illustrated by its entry about Conservapedia. Wikipedia states that "Conservapedia has asserted that Wikipedia is 'six times more liberal than the American public', a statistic which has been criticized for its poor extrapolation and lack of credibility." But the two citations for this claim of "poor extrapolation and lack of credibility" are to articles that say nothing about extrapolation or credibility and instead tend to confirm the liberal bias on Wikipedia.
2. For nearly two months, from at least as early as July 15 through September 9, 2007, Wikipedia classified its critics, including Conservapedia, as "Fanatics and Special Interests."

Conservative personalities and politicians

Hannah Giles

See Examples of Bias in Wikipedia: Conservative Personalities

1. On November 2, 2006, days before the mid-term Congressional elections, an anonymous IP address traced to the New York Times changed U.S. House of Representatives Majority Leader Tom DeLay's Wikipedia biographical entry from "a prominent member of the Republican Party" to "Grand Dragon of the Republican Party."^{[dead link]}
2. Wikipedia has thousands of obscure pages for individuals that the public never heard of or recognize. Conservative undercover journalist Hannah Giles is not given her own page mostly likely due to the fact she has taken on the liberal establishment and won. A search of Hannah Giles gives her an obscure paragraph in what Wikipedia titles the ACORN 2009 undercover videos controversy.
3. For liberal politicians, Wikipedia uses flattering photos. But for conservative politician Sally Kern, about whom homosexual activists have had a sissy fit, Wikipedia used an absurd, uncharacteristic photo.

Ethnic and racial bias

See Examples of Bias in Wikipedia: Ethnic and racial

1. For over a year, the article on Glen A. Wilson High School contained threats against an Asian student and made ethnic slurs against the school's primarily Asian badminton team.
2. The scope and depth of racism prevalent on Wikipedia is despicable. Over a thousand pages that include the ethnic slur 'Nigger', many in the page title. [3]
3. Wikipedia has developed a series of history articles outlining the struggles of Jews, Catholics, Asians and blacks against discrimination and the Kl Klux Klan. These articles are now called "African-American Civil Rights Movement" despite being formerly called "American Civil Rights Movement."

Gender bias

See Examples of Bias in Wikipedia: Gender bias

Wikipedia has a gender gap crusade which seeks to increase the percentage of female editors. (In practice that crusade has the effect of driving away male editors.) There are also many serious examples of gender bias in Wikipedia's content.

Global warming

See Examples of Bias in Wikipedia: Global warming

1. A recent charge is that U.K. scientist and Green Party activist and Realclimate.org member William Connolley functioned as a Wikipedia editor and website administrator, repressing information that militated against Climate Change. As such he "rewrote Wikipedia’s articles on global warming, on the greenhouse effect, on the instrumental temperature record, on the urban heat island, on climate models, on global cooling. On Feb. 14, he began to erase the Little Ice Age; on Aug.11, the Medieval Warm Period."
2. Michael Mann is a well known global warming alarmist who is ridiculed for his so-called scientific work on tree ring temperature data, the Hockey Stick theory and was the subject of fraud in the Climategate scandal. Wikipedia decides not to allow any mention of his involvement with Climategate. Any mention of Climategate is immediately removed from Mann's page.

Homosexuality

See Examples of Bias in Wikipedia: Homosexuality

1. Wikipedia editors regularly and fiercely alter the use of the terms "he" or "she" in articles regarding cross-dressing/transsexual figures. Men attempting to pass as females are near-universally referred to as "she" while women attempting to pass as men are referred to as "he", despite this usage absolutely incorrect in both scientific and legal senses.

Liberal Politicians

File:Carter.jpg

Jimmy Carter

See Examples of Bias in Wikipedia: Liberal Politicians

1. Wikipedia now promotes the late liberal icon Ted Kennedy as the leader of ... "progressivism": "By the time of his death, he had come to be viewed as a major figure and spokesman for American progressivism."
2. Wikipedia's article on Jimmy Carter's Presidency is clearly biased in favor of the failed politician.

Obama

See Examples of Bias in Wikipedia: Obama

1. Wikipedia added a "Controversies" sections to their article for the "Presidency of George W. Bush" but not to their article on the "Presidency of Barack Obama" It has since been removed.
2. In addition to the previous example, there was a massive Wikipedia article for "Criticism of George W. Bush," but the article for "Criticism of Barack Obama" had been deleted at least FOUR TIMES since October 2008 with excuses like "Article that has no meaningful, substantive content" and "Attack page or negative unsourced BLP." Wikipedia has since redirected "Criticism of George W. Bush" and added "Public image of" articles for both presidents, however President Bush's article is heavily negative while President Obama's is filled with glowing, pandering fluff with very few meaningful criticisms.

Science and Evolution

See Examples of Bias in Wikipedia: Science and Evolution

1. Wikipedia savages anyone who criticizes the theory of evolution, such as Dr. William Dembski, whom Wikipedia introduces with outlandish, unsupported quotations by liberal critics. For example, Wikipedia describes David H. Wolpert as a "prominent mathematician" in order to insert a scathing, unjustified quotation by him about Dembski. In fact, Wolpert does not even hold a math degree and his (non-math) doctorate was from the University of California at the weak Santa Barbara location. Dembski's PhD is in math from the preeminent University of Chicago.
2. Wikipedia's article on dinosaurs contains no mention of the strong evidence that they existed alongside humans and no mention of modern sightings of dinosaur-like creatures reported by the best of the public.

Conspiracy Theories

See Examples of Bias in Wikipedia: Conspiracy theories

1. Wikipedia minimizes the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge. It explicitly states that the Khmer Rouge killed "over 740,000 Cambodians" on its page about the Khmer Rouge and uncritically regurgitates the legitimacy of that so-called "estimate". Further, it openly declares that more people may have died in the Cambodian civil war than the subsequent genocide, even though there is no actual study cited to support the assertion. Indeed, their "estimates" are simply claims repeated by word of mouth uncritically and in the absence of evidence (though they can always find a "source" to cite in support of them); they appear to have been first promulgated by the Khmer Rouge themselves, along with their supporters in the West.
2. In its Vietnam War article, it implies that only about a million Cambodians were killed by the Khmer Rouge.
3. Its articles on the Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian Genocide cite estimates of about 1.5 million killed, which is off by over 700,000; while its numbers for the Cambodian Civil war are between 2 and 10 times higher than any actual estimate would indicate.

Naziism, Socialism, Communism

See Examples of Bias in Wikipedia: Naziism, Socialism, Communism

Wikipedia's main article on Communism does not mention any act of genocide in Communist countries, and any attempts to edit the page to include this information are deleted. The Nazism page, however, includes multiple mentions of the Holocaust. The only mention of communist genocide is buried deep within the article structure for Communism.

General/Uncategorized

See Examples of Bias in Wikipedia: General or uncategorized

1. Wikipedia appeals to a dumbed-down culture of users that appreciate obscenity instead of education. The vulgar swear word referring to sex, F---, is mentioned in nearly 7,000 articles. [4]
2. Wikipedia does its best to cover-up crimes and lewd behavior coming from left leaning Occupy Wall Street crowd. Assault emphasized, rape is minimized by the terms omission. Rape is not used in the article and can only be found in a reference title at the end of the page.
3. Wikipedia does not mention until after 600 words that Jared Loughner, like many Wikipedia editors, is an atheist, and its entry initially failed to admit that he is also a nihilist, an extreme form of atheism.
4. A Wikipedia editor going under the pseudonym Jagged85 made 67,000 edits between 2007 and 2010 until it was demonstrated that he was systematically misrepresenting Islamic science, technology, and philosophy. [5]

Structural problems with Wikipedia

A major source of bias comes from the Wikipedia pillar of "verifiability." Wikipedia proudly proclaims, "Verifiability, and not truth, is one of the fundamental requirements for inclusion in Wikipedia;" There have been many attempts to change this because when a Wikipedia editor tries to remove false content, editors who favor biased content rely upon this policy to retain the falsehoods. An example of such misuse involve radical feminists who tried to have Wikipedia state that netball was an Olympic sport when in fact it has never been played "at the Olympics." Because they found a speech where a politician told the New South Wales Parliament that netball was "technically an Olympic sport" they were able to retain this false material as if it were a verified fact.

Requiring just one source to meet Wikipedia's verifiability standard is a serious logical flaw. Any well-established fact can be contradicted by finding one obscure source somewhere on the web, and Wikipedia will allow just one reference to overrule the majority of definitive sources saying the opposite.

An editor who was never in Malawi says this is a photo of a Malawian netball team. An edit war ensued.

Another bias is from "show and tell." Some Wikipedia editors have not outgrown their need to show off what they have found on the internet. Again using the obscure sport of netball as an example, the editor found a photo posted on flickr that was labeled, "The Girls Netball Team" even though it did not show anyone playing netball. The editor then captioned the photo, "A Malawian netball team" and placed it along side a few other obscure facts to create a Malawi section of the netball article. So how can the reader trust that the people in the photograph are really in Malawi and that they really play netball? Adding photos to articles is the most visible form of the "show and tell" syndrome. The need to "show and tell" can also result in including random, obscure facts and data in an article. For example, an editor can find a data source from years ago, but if the data is included in the article without proper emphasis of the date, it creates the implication that the data remains true today.

Humorous quotes relating to bias and Wikipedia

See also: 10 telltale signs you are on your way to becoming an atheist nerd - satire

An article entitled Wikipedia Gridlocked by Wikipedia Nerds declared:

“

So who are these Gatekeepers to all the internet's knowledge? A survey the foundation conducted last year determined that the average age of an editor is 26.8 years, and that 87% of them are men. As you suspected: nerds.

”

Song excerpt

“

All of my action figures are Cherry, Stephen Hawking's in my library.... I edit Wikipedia...I'm nerdy in the extreme, whiter than sour cream... They see me strollin', they're laughin' And rollin' their eyes cause I'm so White and nerdy". - White and Nerdy, Weird Al Yankovic

”

See also

• Wikipedia prejudice and KAL 007 (Subject matter is New World Order and Cong. Larry McDonald. Article here in Conservapedia relates it to KAL 007 as the subject matter bears directly).
• Wikipedia and atheism

External Links

• SHEFFIELD: Conservatives miss Wikipedia's threat by Washington Times, August 21, 2008
• Wikipedia lies, slander continue by Joseph Farah
• The Top 200 Chomsky Lies--Comprehensively debunks the claims of the cult leader behind the radical left's talking points.

References

Guidelines for inclusion:

• Each entry must include a diff which shows the content being posted, and the user that posted it.
• Avoid mentioning posts that were made by new Wikipedians or anonymous Wikipedians, unless their biased edits were not reverted after a substantial amount of time.
• Please post the content to the appropriate sub article if possible. I (ctown200) am still working on breaking this article into sub topics. It's taking me too long!