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In the media

Larry is at it again

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By Bri, Ganesha811, and Smallbones
External videos
video icon Larry Sanger on Wikipedia's bias, LockdownTV, 31:50
video icon Jimmy Wales on safe spaces, TED Radio Hour on NPR, 19:48

In some months all the stories in the media about Wikipedia seem to be related to one bigger story. This month the bigger story is that Larry Sanger has yet again accused Wikipedia of bias. It is not the case that this is a new story. The real news is that right-wing news outlets keep repeating it at every chance. Stephen Harrison's July 1 article on Wikipedians deprecating the Daily Mail as a reliable source appears new again. A rehash of Jimmy Wales's 2005 TED talk on NPR gains relevance as a counter argument to Sanger. Even events in Hong Kong take on a new light. This is not the news anymore, it's not really about how Wikipedia covers the news. It's about how right-wing media covers how Wikipedia deals with the right-wing news coverage. Larry, was "propaganda" the right word to use? "Disinformation" is the more popular word now. Could we apply that term to your interviews? –S

Larry Sanger on bias in Wikipedia – with opinion orthodoxy, truth becomes more elusive

Co-founder of Wikipedia Larry Sanger has a history of speaking out about its shortcomings. A flurry of press coverage followed his comments on LockdownTV concerning bias and nefarious information shaping by powerful nations and corporations.

Typical headlines were "Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger blasts site for left-wing bias: 'The word for it is propaganda'" (Fox News), and "Nobody should trust Wikipedia, says man who invented Wikipedia – He says there’s a complex game being played to make an article say what somebody wants it to say", from The Independent.

In a more nuanced review of Sanger's concerns of "sinister motives" for a left-leaning bias, the conservative National Review said "those with center-left opinions, which constitute the prevailing 'establishment', are [not] necessarily sinisterly motivated by selfishness in suppressing dissenting opinion. They may simply genuinely think that the opposition is wrong and does not deserve a platform for their erroneous view...the repercussions of shrinking intellectual diversity are real. As John Stuart Mill argued, when we are left with only one set of opinion that is deemed acceptable, not only may we never know whether that narrative is in fact correct, but we may also no longer be incentivized to thoroughly understand that set of opinion and how it had come by. Hence, truth becomes more elusive."

A story in The Wall Street Journal did not reference Sanger specifically but said in "How Science Lost the Public’s Trust" that science writer Matt Ridley held "Wikipedia long banned any mention" of heterodox topics like the Wuhan lab leak theory. –B

Who are we to judge?

Stephen Harrison in Wikipedia's war on The Daily Mail in Slate reviews what is, at first glance, a very much settled question. The Daily Mail is a seriously unreliable newspaper that generally should not be used as a source on Wikipedia. At least that is the consensus among Wikipedians that is unlikely to change soon. The story covers how that consensus was reached at WP:Reliable sources/Perennial sources and how there is a general system of evaluating the reliability of individual news outlets. Editors had different opinions on the matter, but a consensus was reached. This judgement was briefly a news story on its own. Media expressed their opinions of Wikipedians sitting in judgement of the media. The Daily Mail focused on what they thought of Wikipedia's reliability. This last section is the most interesting part of the article. Who are we to judge? Who should we trust to make a better judgement? Surely not The Daily Mail. –S

The rotting web

An extreme example of link rot: Will the whole Internet look like this someday?

In The Atlantic, Jonathan Zittrain writes that The Internet Is Rotting. Zittrain dives into the issue of link rot, and the common misconception that once something is on the Internet, it is forever. Citing Wikipedia as a chief example, he lays out what he calls the "Procrastination Principle", arguing that too much planning ahead can burden a project, stopping it from getting off the ground. In essence, he has hit upon what has been oft-said before – that Wikipedia works in practice, but not in theory. The article is also a useful reminder that Wikipedia can do its part to keep important links alive and unrotted by using User:IABot to create Internet Archive backups of any cited webpages. –G

Who Gets To Be Notable And Who Doesn't

When women go missing from Wikipedia, that absence goes reverberating through the 21st century.
— Francesca Tripodi

The NPR news show All Things Considered featured a four minute interview "Who Gets To Be Notable And Who Doesn't: Gender Bias On Wiki" with researcher Francesca Tripodi, whose work identifies some of the ways women's biographies face differential hurdles in both becoming created and then remaining posted here. See further Signpost coverage of Tripodi's work at Recent research. – B

Murderous mistakes in Google knowledge panels

How well does Google summarize Wikipedia articles for their Knowledge panels? Not very well in some cases. In Got the same name as a serial killer? Google might think you’re the same person, Vox Recode reports that that a knowledge panel for Hristo Georgiev contained correct information from the now-deleted Wikipedia article Hristo Georgiev (serial killer), but omitted that this Georgiev was executed in 1980. Google's algorithm also added a non-Wikipedia photo from a living person of the same name, who was not amused. The Signpost notes that the serial killer is also not a canoeist or the historical patron of Sofia University. Google explained to Vox how difficult the problem was to solve, but did not explain how they would fix it. Might we suggest not including a photo that's not from a Wikipedia article when they summarize any Wikipedia article about a criminal?

The Atlantic gave similar examples, one involving a mass murderer without a photo, in a 2019 article. The examples also included some odd photos, some antisemitism and slurs originating from Wikipedia's infoboxes, and some just-plain-weird coincidences. – S

In brief

Just what the doctor ordered?
  • Wikipedia and a pint of gin (Desert Review): A Wikipedia editor recounts their attempts to change "erroneous" to "controversial" in the description of public testimony about ivermectin prophylaxis for COVID-19 in a doctor's biography.
  • Wikipedia wars - Hong Kong / China editing Hong Kong Free Press reports that mainland Chinese editors are allegedly threatening to turn in Hong Kong editors to the National Security police. Get further coverage in our Special report.
  • The answer to vanished institutional authority: A member of Stanford Internet Observatory said in a piece published in The Atlantic that "The same model [used by Wikipedia]—tapping distributed expertise rather than relying on institutional authority—could be useful for other government agencies [like CDC] that find themselves confronting rumors."
  • "Make NO Mistake – Wikipedia is at WAR with the Jews", written by David Collier, was posted on the 22nd of July. The blog post is hosted by The Jewish Press, a 60 year old NYC-based newspaper with >2M online views per month.



Do you want to contribute to "In the media" by writing a story or even just an "in brief" item? Edit next month's edition in the Newsroom or leave a tip on the suggestions page. You may find further information on media coverage of Wikipedia at WP:PRESS 21.


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  • Stop giving this guy attention. He has not been a representation of what Wikipedia is for almost two decades now. – The Grid (talk) 23:22, 25 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • This stuff with Sanger is just nuts considering that a) he hasn't been part of Wikipedia for, what, 19 years now and b) this "left-wing bias" charge acts like all English Wikipedia editors are from the U.S. which isn't true (anyone have the numbers?). Some of the most active editors on American politics articles are from other countries where I'm not sure this right-left distinction fits. I think this debate in U.S. right-wing media probably involves a handful of articles that present summaries of subjects they take issue with. It's ridiculous to state that there is a political bias in 6M+ articles unless suddenly science, civility and information verifiability are a political stance. Liz Read! Talk! 23:24, 25 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    • @Liz Here's the numbers: [1] Note that "active editors" is defined as having made more than 5 edits in the last month. US-based editors make up a plurality, but not the majority. AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 00:36, 26 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
      • I wish that was given in percentages but it's definitely less than 50% of active editors are from the U.S. Liz Read! Talk! 03:02, 26 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
        • The right-left distinction fits in most places. The right-wing media may take issue with it for good reason if it is left-wing but pretends to be neutral. What is more dangerous than news organisations which spout blatantly political dogma is organisations which spout it but claim it to be neutral which is done by much of left-wing publications such as this one. DukeLondon (talk) 11:57, 26 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
          • I am one of the 190 portuguese listed on that list of active users. I stay away from US politics articles, quite frankly, one, I don't care much about US politics, and two, surely not enough for the trouble it takes. I bet some (many?) non-US editors do the same, more than US editors. Meaning that it is likely that editors involved in US politics' articles probably are a (clear?) majority from the US. I do feel WP has some US-left bias, we even actively campaigned for one side (Wikipedia:SOPA initiative). - Nabla (talk) 18:24, 26 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
            • I don’t think SOPA was a left-right issue. X-Editor (talk) 20:37, 26 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
              • Quoting our article on it: Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) expressed opposition to the bill, as well as Representatives Darrell Issa (R-CA) and presidential candidate Ron Paul (R-TX), who joined nine Democrats to sign a letter to other House members warning that the bill would cause "an explosion of innovation-killing lawsuits and litigation". If it brought together Nancy Pelosi and Ron Paul, it's not a left-right issue in any obvious way. XOR'easter (talk) 20:41, 26 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
                • As I said, I don't care about US politics :-) so I might got it wrong (but I definetely do not want WP - with all its non US editors and users - dragged into US politics, left or right). But I note that just because someone "from the left (or right)" oppose some law, it does not prove the law is right (or left) wing. The same if they support. - Nabla (talk) 17:15, 29 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
          • When has Wikipedia ever claimed that it is unbiased and neutral? We do have NPOV, but it only says Wikipedia tries to be neutral and unbiased and not that it is neutral and unbiased. X-Editor (talk) 20:28, 26 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
          • I haven't heard of anyone referring to Wikipedia as a "publication", I usually think of that applying to media like newspapers, magazines and books, not user-generated content websites. Liz Read! Talk! 04:04, 27 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
            • While there exist downloadable snapshots and sometimes curated derived products that are released, usually by third parties, WP is indeed more always in flux versus a published product. —PaleoNeonate – 06:00, 27 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I find the section about link rot to be particularly interesting.--🌀Locomotive207-talk🌀 23:54, 25 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    • Apropos, InternetArchiveBot has just been approved for global bot status, meaning that it will be able to combat link rot on 250 smaller wikis beyond the 65 projects where it had been enabled so far. Regards, HaeB (talk) 00:27, 26 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
      • We tried unsuccessfully to persuade Wikimedia to acquire the Internet Archive. As it is, it falls well short of our needs. In Rio in 2016 I tried to get the IOC to keep the Rio2016 site, but the domain registration was paid for only until 2017. It was archived and sent to the IOC, but what happened to it then I don't know. We tried to grab everything we could for Wikipedia; our experience of London 2012 was that the Internet Archive would not correctly or completely archive the site. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 05:48, 26 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    • @Hawkeye7: Did you see the story about the NTV (Russia) archive at News and notes? If I'm not mistaken this is a hugely important archive of 1+ million news stories that was uploaded (with proper licensing) by a pretty small project Russian Wikinews. If they can do that, why can't Wikisource, Commons, or just about any other project? Unfortunately there are many news outlets that are in danger of closing with there archives in danger of being lost. We may have just lost Apple Daily's archive in Hong Kong - and there may be other papers in HK soon to be in a similar position. I've got my eye on another newspaper in Russia that may be in a similar position - but how would I even approach them to ask for permission to upload 150,000 articles?
      Yes I did. Russian Wikinews is a surprisingly active project - far more so than its moribund English-language counterpart. I once wrote an article on a dam opening in Australia, and it was quickly translated into Russian. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 02:26, 28 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    • Locomotive207, yes, it was a fascinating piece. The other comments about newspaper archiving make me think - I've heard that some archivists are now encouraging the creation and storage of certain types of long lasting microfilm. The big advantage to microfilm, evidently, is that it's not very technologically difficult to rig up a projector to read it, so we can be confident that future generations won't be scuppered by a lack of VCRs or DVD players or whatever technological gizmos they've long since left behind. Ganesha811 (talk) 18:19, 26 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
that article also seems to equate anti-semitism with opposition to the present government of the State of Israel. All of the instances he give are those dealing with recent politics, not with coverage of any other aspect of Jew or Judaism. DGG ( talk ) 03:33, 27 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Not... quite. He claims the Balad al-Shaykh massacre ~70 years ago (not really recent politics) is "fake history", but this is a position so bizarre I don't even see anyone speaking up for it on the talk page. (And as usual, even if his homebrew history was actually correct, then the WP article still properly covers the "wrong but mainstream" view, verifiability not truth etc.) SnowFire (talk) 23:02, 28 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Non-random break

  • For info, on page 12 of the latest issue of Private Eye (#1552) has a piece on Sanger/Daily Mail/WP. Lugnuts Fire Walk with Me 11:26, 26 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • It's times like this that make me wish we could obtain gag orders against Sanger and some anti-Wikipedia news sites (or at least make a press release publicly disowning Sanger just for the sake of it). I am aware that it could mean stifling one's freedom of speech, but there should be a limit to even that right. Criticising real issues like incomplete articles? Sure, that's sensible. Exaggerating things clearly for entertainment? Hey, Hamilton exaggerates some things (and makes other things up) and I love it. Yapping about a non-existent global conspiracy to make Wikipedia leftist? That's not sensible. Tube·of·Light 13:34, 26 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Sanger has also boosted QAnon, calling the Q drops an "information source" [2] rather than, you know, garbage. Yesterday he was retweeting PragerU and yammering about a massive left-wing and mainstream media movement to cancel the Bible [3]. The day before that, he called Tucker Carlson, noted employer of white supremacists, election-fraud conspiracist and anti-vaccination activist, one of the most effective bulwarks against the insanities and evil of the left [4]. A few days before that, he was dismissing the delta variant by sharing a story from the New York Post. I could keep scrolling, but I think I'll content myself by quoting the advice I formulated for a hypothetical journalist last summer: It is against our policy to indulge in speculation that Larry Sanger has been desperately grasping for relevance since the year of Super Troopers, Star Trek: Nemesis, and Blade II. However, if you make that comparison, we are allowed to report that he has, according to reliable sources, been trying to ice-skate uphill. XOR'easter (talk) 20:26, 26 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • A story in The Wall Street Journal did not reference Sanger specifically but said in "How Science Lost the Public’s Trust" that science writer Matt Ridley held "Wikipedia long banned any mention" of heterodox topics like the Wuhan lab leak theory. It's a bit awkward, then, that the article COVID-19 lab leak hypothesis exists. To be scrupulously honest, I should note that I argued for deleting that page, but only because it looked like a disruption magnet that would be redundant with pages like Investigations into the origin of COVID-19, COVID-19 misinformation, Wuhan Institute of Virology ... XOR'easter (talk) 20:37, 26 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The other articles have discussed the topic for over a year. (For example, when COVID-19 lab leak hypothesis was a redirect, the section it redirected to was 500+ words long, not including references. And Wuhan Institute of Virology already had content on the subject in February 2020.) The draft was deleted because it was a POV fork of content that already existed in mainspace. Not having an article dedicated to something is a far cry from banning "any mention" of it. XOR'easter (talk) 23:31, 26 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I was about to discuss this WSJ opinion source: it appears to be a press release for a book that is more about advocacy than science... —PaleoNeonate – 04:13, 27 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The earlier presentations about the lab leak hypothesis presented it as a fringe conspiracy theory, which might not be NPOV coverage for something discussed extensively in the most reliable general sources and is a political as well as medical issue. Personally I think we're in danger of looking as silly as we did with Donna Strickland. DGG ( talk ) 03:48, 28 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for adding that. I was trying to think of a way to put my thoughts into words on this. It seems like we've swatted some things aside as redirects to "things only obvious idiots believe in". Allowing the heterodox to be presented only as something worthy of derision is constructively banning any mention of it, and is likely to drive away tons of GF editors. As described in the now-defunct WP:WikiProject Alternative Views, alternative views [are] at risk of neglect, misrepresentation, and a level of coverage not in keeping with their relative notability. Preventing development of a neutral article in draft space seems like the icing on the cake to me. ☆ Bri (talk) 18:37, 28 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I will repeat what I wrote on the "Wikipedia Weekly" Facebook page: He (Sanger) was very influential in the first year of Wikipedia and that's his little claim to fame. Then he slunk away nursing his wounds (an anarchist was mean to him!), and has spent the last 19 years being consistently and spectacularly wrong about every single issue related to online free encyclopedias. Now, this "philosopher" has gone over to the MAGA cult and Qanon. So sad. He and The Devil's Advocate will spend years interviewing each other. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 04:14, 30 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
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