A Wikipedia co-founder — who left shortly after its launch and became one of the site’s most vocal critics — believes he has a solution to fix the bias and misinformation plaguing what he calls an “engine of defamation.”Larry Sanger has long been one of Wikipedia’s fiercest critics since he left the organization in 2002 but says that since 2020 he has observed a significant increase in bias, describing a “syndrome of perspectives” favoring globalist, academic, secular, and progressive views. He believes he’s uniquely positioned to propose the reforms needed to address what he sees as the site’s left-leaning tilt.“I have been criticizing Wikipedia since 2004, essentially. I actually have been trying to get out of the business of criticizing Wikipedia, or at least I had been because I felt ultimately, I had said my piece,” Mr. Sanger said to the New York Sun. “A thing that nobody has ever done before that I am uniquely positioned to do, and that is to make a proposal to reform Wikipedia.”“I’m a co-founder of one of the biggest, most, most influential websites online, if I don’t do something to reform it, then I actually bear some moral responsibility if I don’t at least make an effort to have it fixed.”Mr. Sanger recently published what he has dubbed the “Nine Theses on Wikipedia” naming them after the 95 theses written by Renaissance era theologian Martin Luther in 1517 that credited for launching the Protestant Reformation, which was in response to what he saw as systematic abuse and corruption by the Roman Catholic Church’s clergy.His list of nine theses focuses on three areas of reform, improving editorial standards by reviving the site’s original neutrality policy, increasing community governance, and addressing concerns of how Wikipedia engages with the public.“The 62 most powerful editors in Wikipedia are anonymous,” Mr. Sanger said to the Sun. “They need to allow the public to rate articles right on Wikipedia, not just for their own benefit, but also for the benefit of the rest of the public.”Unrelated to Mr. Sanger’s release of his “Nine Theses,” Billionaire Elon Musk announced that he was creating a less biased alternative to Wikipedia.“We are building Grokipedia @xAI,” Mr. Musk said in a post on his social media platform, X. “Will be a massive improvement over Wikipedia.”“Frankly, it is a necessary step towards the xAI goal of understanding the Universe.”His announcement was a response to comments made by David Sacks, a tech investor who had accused Wikipedia of being “hopelessly biased.”“An army of left-wing activists maintain the bios and fight reasonable corrections. Magnifying the problem, Wikipedia often appears first in Google search results, and now it’s a trusted source for AI model training. This is a huge problem,” he wrote on X.According to a 2024 Manhattan Institute study, Wikipedia demonstrates a tendency toward political bias in its coverage of conservative public figures. The research found that articles about right-leaning individuals frequently employ more critical language than those describing left-leaning counterparts.This trend appeared consistently across multiple subject areas examined by researchers, spanning U.S. presidents and Supreme Court justices to members of Congress, state governors, Western world leaders, and influential American journalists and media outlets.Officials with the Wikimedia Foundation, which operates Wikipedia did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding Mr. Sanger’s proposal.He says that has not heard from his former colleagues either but hopes they will take his “Nine Theses” under consideration.“I worry that Wikipedia will simply become less and less credible. More and more biased and more inclined to engage in libel,” he said. “Right now it is an engine of defamation really, and I would worry that it would become even more so if changes aren’t made.”
