Engagement with fact-checked posts on Reddit
Say what you will about Wikipedia and its unreliability or bias. There are many topic areas that are well-covered and neutral (especially rabid fandom such as wrestling, Simpsons, and dispassionate subjects like astrophysics or biological species.)<p>However, despite Wikipedia&#x27;s vaunted neutrality policy, there were plenty of ways to adequately skew its bias in the &quot;proper&quot; direction, and those forces have taken hold in a very real way.<p>The first battle is to collect editors who all share certain viewpoints about political, social, medical issues, etc. This was accomplished because of where Wikipedia originated and the culture from which it springs. It is also accomplished because when editors of opposing viewpoints come into conflict with the &quot;Cabal&quot; as it were, the former editors are the ones at a disadvantage through ignorance, lack of seniority, or poor temperament, and so get themselves banned much more often.<p>The second of two battles (and there may be other battles I omit from this summary) is the cultivation of sources. In order to skew Wikipedia properly, undesirable sources must be eliminated from the pool. See the MEDRS policy for an example: nothing but Western establishment &quot;scholarship&quot; is permitted to support any statement about biomedical facts. Therefore, alternative medicine such as Chinese or Ayurveda, naturopathic or homeopathic, acupuncture or yoga, these are all relegated to what&#x27;s called &quot;FRINGE&quot; territory. You may find alternative medicine facts hidden on individual pages about herbs or chemicals in the &quot;Traditional uses&quot; sections and there are usually prominent disclaimers that nobody in their right mind would use these ridiculously ineffective remedies.<p>Beyond MEDRS, among the sources that have been systematically excluded are right-leaning politics, journalism, and religious scholarship. With FOX News hanging in by a thread, all of the acceptable major English news outlets are left-wing and progressive. The policing of non-English sources may be less vigilant, but likewise is their usage in mainstream articles.<p>Biblical scholarship is invalid unless it comes from modern (&lt;100 years) secular (atheist) Ivy-league scholars. You&#x27;re not allowed to quote Church Fathers or prominent bishops or theologians in matters of the Christian religion (of course it&#x27;s different for non-Christian faiths).<p>So you see, by control of the major inputs (editorial board and sourcing) Wikipedia is easily able to control truthiness in the Western world. And its wild popularity doesn&#x27;t care about being forbidden in the classroom or denigrated by conservatives. Wikipedia is a source of truth for millions who don&#x27;t know or care about [citation needed].