The right wing is coming for Wikipedia

https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2025/09/18/right-wing-wikipedia-editor-heritage

34•donsupreme•1h ago

Comments

stronglikedan•1h ago

FUD. Wikipdedia's always on the brink of disaster if you listen to them.

lazzlazzlazz•1h ago

Given the mountain of evidence for Wikipedia's left wing bias[1][2][3][4], it seems something ought to change, but hard to answer "how?"

[1]: https://davidrozado.substack.com/p/is-wikipedia-politically-...

[2]: https://www.piratewires.com/p/how-the-regime-captured-wikipe...

[3]: https://larrysanger.org/2020/05/wikipedia-is-badly-biased/

[4]: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5022797

unethical_ban•1h ago

Whatever the merits of those articles, the idea of calling editors "evil" for debating the sudden addition of Erika Kirk is not decent or neutral.

atmavatar•59m ago

Considering the right-wing mainstreams such ideas like holocaust denial, white replacement theory, that the civil war was fought about anything other than slavery, that immigrants secretly steal and eat household pets, etc., it quickly becomes apparent that reality has a left-wing bias.

sambeau•57m ago

Wikipedia is a global resource, edited by educated—often academic—people all over the world. Why would anyone expect it to conform to the US idea of what is left and right? For most of Europe the American Democrats are to the right of their mainstream right-wing parties.

There is no bias to the left. The USA has shifted so far to the right that balance now looks leftist.

beardyw•31m ago

Yes, it makes me despair that we in more tolerant societies may need to break away if things get too bad.

zb3•1h ago

Good, let's make it more balanced (but it won't happen anyway).

poszlem•1h ago

I’ll probably get downvoted (edit: already seeing that) just for pointing this out, but the best available estimates suggest that Wikipedia’s volunteer editor community leans heavily left wing politically. In the U.S., editors identify as Democrats at about three times the rate of Republicans. Make of that what you will.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedians

tehjoker•1h ago

One thing to consider is that Republican affiliation is a minority opinion, so it makes sense that they would be outnumbered in a random sampling, though I would expect 2:1 rather than 3:1.

poszlem•1h ago

According to Pew’s most recent National Public Opinion Reference Survey (Feb–Jun 2025), 46% of Americans identify with or lean toward the Republican Party, and 45% identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/fact-sheet/party-affili...

In a truly random U.S. sample you would expect Republican identifiers to be nearly as numerous as Democratic identifiers.

Not sure where you got your numbers from.

well_actulily•58m ago

Those in the United States who choose to contribute to a collaborative encyclopedia likely don't mirror the population as a whole; it's reasonable to assume they're more formally educated and more technically oriented, traits that tend, on average, to correlate with liberal or left-leaning political views.

mcphage•1h ago

Hmm, how many Democrats do you think should serve in Conservapedia’s editor community?

poszlem•1h ago

I don't know, does Conservapedia claim to have NPOV?

bryanlarsen•1h ago

More interesting to me is the study that shows that Wikipedia editors start off being very radical (who else is going to invest the effort required), but moderate significantly over time.

Can't find the link I wanted, it was on HN this year, IIRC.

notmyjob•1h ago

Exactly what you’d expect given any moderated system. Certainly you can learn what will not be accepted and moderate one’s approach without sctually shifting ideologically.

bryanlarsen•34m ago

Counter-evidence: the rest of the internet. Reddit and pretty much all other large Internet sites are highly moderated and radicalize people, they don't moderate them.

poszlem•1h ago

Could it be this one: https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w22744/w227...

unethical_ban•1h ago

My make of it is the Left wing social values and perceptions of reality are broadly more tolerated than those of the far right that is complaining.

Is an editor "evil" for deleting or debating the addition of a politically charged article? Come on.

I weep for this country: if we had a voting system that allowed multiple parties (>2) to really compete, we could have an intellectually honest right wing.

fulafel•56m ago

> editors identify as Democrats at about three times the rate of Republicans

This seems to presume that the desireable middle ground would be the average of two US parties. But Wikipedia is global. (Not to imply it would be fine for the US, but that's another argument)

twirlip•1h ago

There's a reason why Conservapedia sucks and isn't used by anybody.

stackedinserter•59m ago

The "right wing" means nothing now, since everything right to the most extremist and suicidal point of views is called "right wing".

Sanity and common sense, not "right wing" is coming for Wikipedia and for everything else.

As usual, it will overshoot and swing too much to the right and the cycle will repeat.

HanShotFirst•39m ago

Trying to identify and remove bias in any direction is a worthy goal. That said, an evenhanded and factual approach to doing this may result in more negative sentiment towards people or organizations that deny facts; push fringe ideas without the benefit of widespread public support, or evidence, or academic consensus; or who have similarities with historical people or organizations who have come to be viewed negatively with the benefit of hindsight.

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The right wing is coming for Wikipedia

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