Is Wikipedia Biased?
Is Wikipedia Biased?
"Encyclopedias are finished. All encyclopedias combined, including the redoubtable Britannica, have already been surpassed by the exercise in groupthink known as Wikipedia." James Gleick
Wikipedia is truly enormous and an important source of information for many netizens — it is ranked 13th on the Alexa Ranking of websites.[1] But how well does Wikipedia represent a 'neutral point of view' [NPOV] and how objective is it? 
[Two other pages on this website deal with bias: they are 'Media Bias' and 'Unconscious Bias'.]
Page Content
1   How Big is Wikipedia?
There are many ways in which to measure the size of Wikipedia, for example, the number of articles, the number of words, the number of pages and the size of the database. The English edition is by far the largest in the Wikipedia family, but as versions in other languages proliferate and grow in size, the overall percentage of articles in English is steadily decreasing.
As of 7 Nov. 2020, there were 6,186,254 articles in the English Wikipedia containing 51,867,717 pages and over 3.7 billion words — an average of ~600 words per article .

If all the pictures were removed and the text compressed, the database would be about 19 GB in size.
The graphic shows a treemap-like breakdown of Wikipedia's topic areas (as of Feb. 2016) based on a random sampling of 1000 articles.[2]
2   Independent Assessment
Carrying out an assessment of possible bias on Wikipedia is, to say the least, challenging! MediaBiasFactCheck rates Wikipedia ‘mostly factual’. It doesn't get the ‘high factual’ rating because of “some entries lacking comprehensive sourcing,” but it notes that “several studies have revealed acceptable accuracy of information.”

“In general, most Wikipedia entries cover both positives and negatives and link to mostly credible sources of information to support their claims. Since bias varies from entry to entry and line to line, we rate them least biased as many perspectives are found on Wikipedia.” [3]
And whilst it notes that Wikipedia is edited essentially by anyone, the fact checker notes that a 2005 study published in Nature showed that Wikipedia was just as accurate as the Encyclopedia Britannica, when it comes to scientific information.[4] Whether a similar study carried out today would come to the same conclusion remains to be seen...
"In the media age, everybody was famous for 15 minutes. In the Wikipedia age, everybody can be an expert in five minutes. Special bonus: You can edit your own entry to make yourself seem even smarter."    Stephen Colbert
3   Critical Self-Analysis
Wikipedia is very open about the criticism it has received over the years and concedes that some aspects of its coverage are not balanced. It notes that, while it strives for a neutral point of view in its coverage of subjects, both in terms of the articles that are created and the content, perspective and sources within these articles, “this goal is inhibited by systemic bias created by the shared social and cultural characteristics of most editors, and it results in an imbalanced coverage of subjects and perspectives on the encyclopedia.”
“The principal criticism," it says, concerns "the online encyclopedia's factual reliability, the readability and organization of the articles, the lack of methodical fact-checking, and its exposure to political and biased editing. Systemic, gender, racial, and national biases have all been criticized, while corporate campaigns and other conflicts of interest have been highlighted." 

Did you know that there is a an English-language version of Wikipedia that is written at a basic level of English? The 'Simple English Wikipedia' was created in 2001 and uses shorter sentences and easier words / grammar than the regular English version.

"Further concerns include the vandalism and partisanship facilitated by anonymous editing, clique behavior, social stratification between a guardian class and newer users, excessive rule-making, edit warring, and uneven application of policies.”  And it quotes the 2014 edition of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's official Student Handbook which:
“informs students that Wikipedia is not a reliable academic source, stating, 'the bibliography published at the end of the Wikipedia entry may point you to potential sources. However, do not assume that these sources are reliable – use the same criteria to judge them as you would any other source. Do not consider the Wikipedia bibliography as a replacement for your own research'."
“As a result of this systemic bias, some cultures, topics and perspectives tend to be underrepresented on Wikipedia. [These] include gender bias, racial bias, and social class bias. [Women, who make up less than 15% of active contributors – note 5] Wikipedia tends to underrepresent the perspectives of people who lack access to the Internet, use mobile devices to access Wikipedia, or do not have free time to edit the encyclopedia. Topics for which reliable sources are not easily available (i.e. online) or available in English are systematically underrepresented, and Wikipedia tends to show an American or European perspective on issues due to the prominence of English-speaking editors from Anglophone countries.”
"On my Wikipedia page, it used to say I was born in Belfast, Ireland, then it said Belfast, Northern Ireland, and then it said Belfast, U.K. So there was a little war going on about where Belfast is located."   Adrian McKinty
Bias is also manifested in additions to and deletions from articles. It takes two major forms: a dearth of articles on neglected topics; and perspective bias in articles on many subjects. Wikipedia editors are self-selecting, and only a relatively small proportion of the world's population has the necessary access to computers, the Internet, and enough leisure time to edit Wikipedia articles. “Articles about or involving issues of interest to other social classes are unlikely to be created or, if created, are unlikely to survive a deletion review on grounds of notability.”
Other criticisms include ‘recentism’ — “current events, especially those occurring in developed, English-speaking nations, often attract attention from Wikipedians, and articles discussing particular current events are edited out of proportion with their significance.” The tendency towards recentism is enhanced by difficulties in sourcing topics from the pre-Internet era and the fact that some key institutions have ceased to exist.

Arbitration Committee

Penalties for bad behavior on the English Wikipedia are typically determined and meted out by the community itself, often represented by the Arbitration Committee, the 15-person all-volunteer body elected by fellow Wikipedians,  commonly referred to as 'Wikipedia Supreme Court.'

"The user who visits Wikipedia... is rather in the position of a visitor to a public restroom. It may be obviously dirty so that he knows to exercise great care, or it may seem fairly clean, so that he may be lulled into a false sense of security. What he certainly does not know is who has used the facilities before him."
Robert McHenry [former Editor-in-Chief, Encyclopædia Britannica]
Disagreements between volunteer editors sometimes break out into fierce 'wheel' or 'culture wars' — see Further Reading below.[6] You may want to look at Wikipedia's page on vandalism and or find out a little more about the Wikipedia Community.
  • Advice to Wikipedia Editors

    To minimise or avoid some of the problems identified, Wikipedia recommends that editors:

    • read about the perspectives and issues of concern to others and attempt to represent these in their editing;
    • invite others to edit;
    • be respectful of others' points of view;  
    • work to understand their own biases  and avoid reflecting them in your editing;
    • avoid topics or discussions where they expect they may be biased or where they "don't wish to make the effort to overcome those biases."

    Editors should also:

    •  read newspapers, magazines, reliable websites, and other versions of Wikipedia in whatever non-English language or languages they know -- where English-language press is not available, automated translation, though  imperfect, can enable people to instantly and freely access articles in many languages.
4   Personal Attacks
In May 2020, Larry Sanger [image right], who co-founded Wikipedia with Jimmy Wales [image left], made a withering attack on the platform. His article: ‘Wikipedia Is Badly Biased’ begins “Wikipedia’s ‘NPOV’ is dead’[7] and goes on to rail against the site's unflattering coverage of President Trump (which he contrasts with that for Obama) and its coverage of a range of controversial issues, from alternative medicine to religion. Here are a couple of short extracts:
“Wikipedia can be counted on to cover not just political figures, but political issues as well from a liberal-left point of view. No conservative would write, in an abortion article, “When properly done, abortion is one of the safest procedures in medicine,” a claim that is questionable on its face, considering what an invasive, psychologically distressing, and sometimes lengthy procedure it can be even when done according to modern medical practices. More to the point, abortion opponents consider the fetus to be a human being with rights; their view, that it is not safe for the baby, is utterly ignored.”

“The global warming and MMR vaccine articles are examples; I hardly need to dive into these pages, since it is quite enough to say that they endorse definite positions that scientific minorities reject. Another example is how Wikipedia treats various topics in alternative medicine—often dismissively, and frequently labeled as 'pseudoscience' in Wikipedia’s own voice. Indeed, Wikipedia defines the very term as follows: 'Alternative medicine describes any practice that aims to achieve the healing effects of medicine, but which lacks biological plausibility and is untested, untestable or proven ineffective.' In all these cases, genuine neutrality requires a different sort of treatment.”
Whether on not you agree with Sanger, these comments illustrate the extraordinary difficult path that all diligent editors and bona fide publications tread when they try to provide and maintain a reasoned, objective and bias-free view of world events.
5   Further Reading
Here's a small selection of articles dealing with editorial disputes and culture wars on Wikipedia:
●     'Larry Sanger: ‘I wouldn’t trust Wikipedia — and I helped to invent it’' (Madeleine Spence, Sunday Times; 1 Aug 2021)
●     'A vicious culture war is tearing through Wikipedia' (Omer Benjakob, Wired; Nov 2020)
●     'The Culture War Has Finally Come For Wikipedia' (Joseph Bernstein, BuzzfeedNews, Jun 2019)
●     'Wikipedia: Friend or Fraud?' (Helen Buyniski, Natural Blaze, Aug 2018)
●     'How gun buffs took over Wikipedia’s AR-15 page' (Russell Brandom, The Verge, Mar 2018)
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Notes
1     Alexa ranks websites based on a combined measure of page views and unique site users, and creates a list of most popular websites based on this ranking time-averaged over three-month periods. The top five on the ranking are: Google Search, YouTube, Tmall, Facebook & Baidu. [As of Nov 2020, the Fighting Fake website is ranked 8,451,050 in the world... Tell your friends about it and help us move up the rankings!]

2    English Wikipedia, imagined as 1000 volumes, divided into broad categories after random survey of 1000 articles. The large categories of biography, geography, culture & arts, and Society have been further subdivided. Biographies: into Biographies of Living Persons, Male (BLP, M); Biographies of Deceased Persons, Male (BDP, M); Biographies of Living Persons, Female (BLP, F); Biographies of Deceased Persons, Female (BDP, F). Geography: into Geography, Western Hemisphere (GEO, W); Geography, Eastern Hemisphere (GEO, E). Culture & Arts: into 1991-present (CA, 1991+); 1990 and prior (CA, 1990-). Society: into Sport-related (includes some overlap with Biographical articles); Education/Schools/Universities (SOC, E); other Society (not labeled).

3    The category ‘least biased’ refers to sources that have “minimal bias and use very few loaded words... The reporting is factual and usually sourced. These are the most credible media sources.”

4    As Nature points out: "A solar physicist could, for example, work on the entry on the Sun, but would have the same status as a contributor without an academic background. Disputes about content are usually resolved by discussion among users."
5    The issue of women being unrepresented on Wikipedia is discussed in this article in The Guardian.

6    A 'wheel war' is when two or more administrators repeatedly undo each other’s changes. Note: there is a Forum where ardent Wikipedians and their detractors can air their differences/criticisms. Wikepedocracy exists to "shine the light of scrutiny into the dark crevices of Wikipedia and its related projects; to examine the corruption there, along with its structural flaws; and to inoculate the unsuspecting public against the torrent of misinformation, defamation, and general nonsense that issues forth from one of the world’s most frequently visited websites, the 'encyclopedia that anyone can edit'."

7    Wikipedia has a page on the NPOV Dispute. Sanger goes on to argue that “The world would be better served by an independent and decentralized encyclopedia network” and is currently trying to set up a new platform, Encyclosphere.

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