Jimmy Wales

Since Donald Trump’s surprise 2016 presidential election victory, Wikipedia editors have been gradually purging conservative media from the site claiming to fight “fake news” and leading to the recent suppression of the New York Post’s Biden corruption revelations. The Wikimedia Foundation, which owns the site, has leaned into these efforts to tout Wikipedia’s reliability, which has been echoed by mainstream media. This messaging followed a strategy recommended to the Wikimedia Foundation in 2016 by Minassian Media, a firm run by the Clinton Foundation’s Head of Communications.

Silicon Valley has repeatedly proclaimed that Wikipedia is the best way to deal with “fake news” on their platforms. Co-founder Jimmy Wales and the Wikimedia Foundation that owns the site have touted its sourcing policies in agreement and been amplified by establishment media. Yet just as Big Tech suppressed prominent conservative media following President Donald Trump’s election, most recently censoring New York Post revelations regarding alleged Biden family corruption, Wikipedia’s community of editors has done the same by slowly purging conservative outlets from use as sources.

For years, the corporate media have touted Wikipedia as a tool against “fake news” and “conspiracy theories” in line with the messaging of the Wikimedia Foundation, owners of the site. Media recently praised the site’s handling of political controversies, where editors favor establishment media narratives such as when censoring and downplaying recent Hunter Biden revelations. The media also advanced Wikipedia as a credible source on the coronavirus pandemic and even as a general medical source, prompting wide use by Big Tech and a partnership with the World Health Organization, But in reality, Wikipedia comes up short in all categories.

Wikipedia users are no longer allowed to include “userboxes” on their profile page that express opposition to gay marriage following a discussion where predominantly left-wing editors argued such a stance was “discriminatory” and against site policy. Most userboxes pre-dated a U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing gay marriage and were used by hundreds of editors. This included one expressing a personal view favoring traditional marriage, but advocating for states to decide.

The Wikimedia Foundation, which owns Wikipedia, recently announced that it will impose a “universal code of conduct” on the site and others owned by the Foundation to make them “safe spaces” and improve the “diversity” of the community. The move comes a year after the Foundation took the unprecedented step of banning a veteran administrator, breaching the traditionally self-governing nature of Wikipedia’s community and sparking a revolt that ultimately saw the ban overturned.

Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales wasted no time in criticizing President Donald Trump for his recent executive order relating to social media, calling the President a “lunatic.”

Even as the criticism of Wikipedia’s left-wing political bias intensifies, including from the site’s co-founder Larry Sanger, the major tech platforms continue to use the online encyclopedia in their services and rely on it as a model for addressing “fake news” concerns. Rather than improving their services, the integration of Wikipedia into Big Tech platforms has, instead, made them disseminate false or biased information.

Larry Sanger, the co-founder of Wikipedia, published a blog post this month declaring that the online encyclopedia’s “neutral point of view” policy is “dead” due to the rampant left-wing bias of the site. Noting the article on President Donald Trump, Sanger contrasted its extensive coverage of presidential scandals with the largely scandal-free article on former President Barack Obama.

In June, the Foundation that owns Wikipedia banned “Fram” who was one of the site’s veteran administrators, prompting an editor revolt with administrators resigning en masse and some using their advanced privileges to override the Foundation’s actions. The Foundation eventually backed down and allowed Wikipedia’s community-elected Arbitration Committee to review the ban, which they lifted, giving the revolt a notable victory — but Fram’s adminstrator privileges were not restored.

After the Wikimedia Foundation, which owns Wikipedia, took the unprecedented action of banning a veteran administrator from the site for a year, the site’s editing community revolted with mass resignations and repeated efforts to overturn Wikimedia’s actions. The Foundation, at the urging of its board, has relented by referring the ban back to the Wikipedia community-elected Arbitration Committee for review.

In an unprecedented move mid-June, the foundation that owns Wikipedia banned one of the site’s long-time administrators for one year over unspecified complaints of harassment. Many of the site’s most influential users accused the Wikimedia Foundation of undermining the editorial independence of the traditionally self-regulating online encyclopedia and called for the ban to be lifted, including by attempting to remove the ban themselves.

Fandom, which hosts fan-run wiki sites on the Wikia domain, briefly banned the term “SJW,” an abbreviation of “Social Justice Warrior,” across its sites. Contributors to any Fandom-hosted wikis who used the term or any term containing the letters together, such as in a quotation, were unable to complete their edits. The ban was in place for several days before it was apparently lifted.

Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales believes the Wikipedia model can help salvage journalistic integrity, but in the year since Donald Trump took office as President of the United States, the online encyclopedia has instead proven unable to even restrain its own biased editing community.

Last month a preview article shared by WikiTribune, the recently launched London-based journalism project of Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, was criticized for blatant anti-Trump bias in its coverage promoting a conference on the United Nations-linked Global Goals campaign.

Istanbul authorities have withdrawn an invitation to Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales to attend a major conference in the city, officials said Tuesday, after Turkey blocked access to the online encyclopedia.

In a move that social media users called censorship, a Turkish court on Saturday blocked access to Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia, enforcing an earlier restriction by Turkey’s telecommunications watchdog.

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales is opening a unicorn reserve where he will breed baby unicorns with rainbow coloured fur to spread peace and love around the world.

Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales has announced the launch of a new online publication called Wikitribune which aims to fight “fake news” on the internet.

A Wikipedia editor who was banned from editing articles after unsubstantiated charges of “off-site harassment” says admins have changed their initial reasoning for banning him, over a year after the fact.

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales describes his vaunted online encyclopedia as “unbiased” and “neutral. We’re not so sure about that.

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales condemned the Leave campaign for stoking anger against migrants.