Interesting article from a serious source. The paywall-free quota is 1 article so you should be able to read it. If not, others can post an archive link. Or else consider subscribing if you can afford it. Democracy needs independent journalism as well as independent encyclopedias.
While I generally agree (obviously), the critics are technically correct that there is a problem of (lacking) viewpoint diversity among WP editors. Which has led to some unfortunate cases which are easy to point to. For example, the dismissal of the lab-leak hypothesis as “conspiracism” during Covid. Or, very recently, the coverage of what’s going on in Gaza, and specifically the casual use of the G-word. That coverage is blatantly written from a biased perspective, as the WP founder himself has been (very rare event) complaining about. He understands that credibility is everything. It’s not enough to be “right”, you have to be trusted. Sometimes that means phrasing things in a more neutral way so as to accommodate good-faith objections. I really worry about this because it feels like many people do not understand it, or want to understand it.
The lab leak IS a conspiracy theory and israel IS carrying out a genocide in Gaza. These are not opinions. It seems like you are trying to reach a definition of ‘neutrality’ in good faith, but you’re currently saying that the truth should be hidden/altered to accommodate people who refuse to believe the truth. Opinions go under a subheading in a wikipedia article - there is no reason to give opinions the same amount of screen space as facts. Credibility is not everything - credibility is just credibility. If the point of a website is to publish facts then it is enough to just be ‘right’.
Yeah the Gaza article freeze really bothered me because by all objective measures, it’s a genocide. Jimbo didn’t need to fucking freeze the article just to tell it’s authors “State this in terms of the objective measures instead of Wikipedia’s voice, and put the opinions under their own header”. His selective treatment wreaks of bias or political pressure, both very dangerous things for a credible source.
On the lab-leak theory, the current state of opinion among experts is somewhat different from a few years ago. You seem not to be aware of that. On the Gaza issue, I can hardly be bothered to get into it, it’s impossible to have a rational discussion about this subject (which I find deeply sad). Suffice to say that a lot of people disagree with your view (including me? I dunno - who cares?). The role of Wikipedia is to describe that discussion calmly, not to bark at readers that they’re wrong and should correct their wrongthink.
“If we prove that the sky is blue, but I say it’s red, Wikipedia should say the sky is purple”
What is currently happening in Gaza is a genocide, by exact definition of the word. Nobody contests that, and even the UN has called it genocide.
https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/09/israel-has-committed-genocide-gaza-strip-un-commission-finds
The Covid lab leak is also a conspiracy theory, and no reputable scientist doubts it. The latest reports about it have come from the Trump administration taking control of government websites to post misinformation. They also said climate change doesn’t exist and vaccines and tylenol cause autism, which is another conspiracy that has been proven to be false. One should not give credibility to such articles.
By “g word” do you mean genocide? Like the genocide being openly conducted in Gaza?
Don’t stoop to self censorship, this isn’t instagram.
The fact is that in this case the term is not the object of consensus. It involves an aspect of intent, which is always somewhat unfalsifiable, and certainly so here. It Wikipedia’s job to describe that state of opinion, not to dictate what people must think.
Adding to what other people said, the only way to be “unbiased” about genocide is ignorance. To quote The Canary, anyone who claims to be unbiased about what’s happening in Gaza is fucking lying.
How is the gaza genocide article not neutral? It reads the same as other genocide articles like the Rohingya genocide.
Stating objective facts that all of us have seen in the news isn’t biased.
If right wing dipshits get offended by objective truth, that’s their problem. Not the rest of ours.