Yes in many areas it is. In other areas it is fine.
For instance it is pretty good on Climate Change which is a tricky area to summarize. I’m particularly involved in science so in that topic area they do have some excellent articles. But others are really awful. I also have one example from religion, Buddhism.
I’m not answering here about systemic bias. I can understand it would have that also. But what I’ve noticed far more is that different articles have different biases just depending on their editors.
I think the most vulnerable articles here are the ones with fewer editors. I can give a few examples to show the problem. I can answer this as a long term wikipedia editor myself, so this is about the problems editors face who try to correct biases in wikipedia - they often fail. I have been told about similar experiences of other editors.
MICROBIAL LIFE ON THE SURFACE OF MARS
First, I often write science articles for Science20 on life on Mars and planetary protection issues. Mars is of special interest for the search for life. Until 2008 most scientists thought that if there is present day life there, it has to be deep underground because the surface is a near vacuum.
In 2008 the Phoenix lander made the surprising discovery of droplets of liquid that formed on its legs, grew and fell off, seem to be deliquescing salts thrown up during the landing. This got scientists interested in the question of whether there could be habitats on the surface of Mars and they have come up with many that are possible in theory, and also some lifeforms that could survive just using the 100% night time humidity without water at all.
So, this is one of the biggest topic areas in astrobiology today. Could Mars have present day life? The possibility is good enough so that when they discovered possibly seasonal changes on Mount Sharp that may be due to liquid salty brines flowing, this lead to questions about how close they can drive with Curiosity - since it is not sufficiently sterilized to approach a habitable region on the surface of Mars.
But go to the Life on Mars article in wikipedia and this is what you read.
Although pure liquid water does not appear at the surface of Mars, there is conclusive evidence of hydrated perchlorate brine flows on recurring slope lineae, based on spectrometer readings of the darkened areas of slopes. Astrobiologists are keen to find out more, as not much is known about these brines. Some geologists think that brines may provide a potential habitat for terrestrial salt and cold-loving microorganisms (halophile psychrophilic). Several biologists argue that although chemically important, thin films of transient liquid brine are not likely to provide suitable sites for life, as the activity of water on salty films, the temperature, or both are less than the biological thresholds across the entire Martian surface and shallow subsurface.
The damaging effect of ionizing radiation on cellular structure is one of the prime limiting factors on the survival of life in potential astrobiological habitats. Even at a depth of 2 meters beneath the surface, any microbes would probably be dormant, cryopreserved by the current freezing conditions, and so metabolically inactive and unable to repair cellular degradation as it occurs. Also, solar ultraviolet (UV) radiation proved particularly devastating for the survival of cold-resistant microbes under simulated surface conditions on Mars, as UV radiation was readily and easily able to penetrate the salt-organic matrix that the bacterial cells were embedded in. In addition, NASA's Mars Exploration Program states that life on the surface of Mars is unlikely, given the presence of superoxides that break down organic (carbon-based) molecules on which life is based.
The first paragraph there is more or less accurate, though not very well expressed. Nobody knows if the water activity is suitable for life in the warm seasonal flows yet. You can devise mixtures of salts that would be okay but the question is what salts actually occur there, and they they don’t know.
So, it doesn’t really explain that properly. It is not a difference of opinion between some biologists who point out that water activity is too low for life against others who ignore those objections. All the astrobiologists agree that a low enough level of water activity would make it uninhabitable at least for life that is like Earth life. Rather it’s a difference in opinion about how cold and or salty the water is likely to be in these potential habitats on Mars. Also there are many other potential habitats suggested, not just the RSLs.
The second paragraph though is really poor. The ionizing radiation levels on the surface of Mars are the same as those inside the ISS and are not capable of sterilizing humans, never mind microbes on short timescales. It is indeed true that over millions of years the ionizing radiation does sterilize but only if the life is dormant. This is an old argument from before astrobiologists realized that there might be habitats for present day life on the surface. It is wrong to apply this argument to those habitats because obviously they would contain viable reproducing self repairing microbes, not millions of years old dormant microbes.
As for UV light, it is just light and is blocked by a shadow, or a paper thin layer of dust. They omit mention of the experiments in algae that are able to survive in simulated Mars conditions in partial shade.
There are many papers on this topic and an entire conference on the “Present Day Habitability of Mars” which focused mainly on the habitability of the surface of Mars.
I actually wrote an entire article for wikipedia on the present day habitability of Mars, which summarizes some of the main research done in the field. You can read it here
They would not publish the article. So I published it on my science blog instead and as a kindle booklet and have had good comments about it by astrobiologist friends who even say they find it useful themselves :).
It gives you an idea of how much material is kept out of Wikipedia on the basis of this decision that present day surface life is impossible, based on a spurious argument by a wikipedia editor who doesn’t understand the topic area well. In this case the editor didn’t try to get me banned, and it is not a community decision. Instead, every time I comment on the talk page for Life on Mars suggesting they change it, giving cites to the latest academic research or news stories, he hides my comments and posts a troll icon saying “Don’t feed the trolls” to warn off other wikipedia editors from interacting with me.
The reason they got confused there is because ionizing radiation is deadly for dormant life on Mars over time periods of millions of years. But at the same time, it is not at all harmful over time periods of years or centuries. I don’t know if they are unable to understand this or if it is just an excuse to keep the material out of wikipedia for some other reason.
For details see UV & Cosmic Radiation On Mars - Why They Aren't Lethal For The "Swimming Pools For Bacteria"
Presumably if one of our rovers actually finds life on Mars they will change the article. I’m not sure if anything much else would lead to them accepting new material on the topic.
This editor watches all the articles where it would make sense to mention life on Mars so it’s no solution to try to mention it somewhere else instead.
See the talk page here: Talk:Life on Mars - Wikipedia (you have to click Show on the “Not a forum or spam” and do that twice to get to the troll icon)..
Or more recently here, I tried to get them to include a mention of the RNA world hypothesis for the tiny cell like structures in the Mars meteorite ALH84001 - though researchers have found ways they could form without life, they haven’t proven that it is not life and there are researchers who still think they could be RNA world cells - I edited the article to include that hypothesis and this editor removed the mention of the RNA world hypothesis from my edit. On no good grounds at all as it is cited peer reviewed research. Their arguments are just ad hominem that it needs to be deleted because I’m a troll. See the very disfunctional conversation here: Talk:Allan Hills 84001 - Wikipedia
CURRENTLY SERVING A BAN ON THE TOPIC OF THE FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS
Then, there’s a particularly worrying trend, that recently some editors on wikipedia are quick at just topic banning editors they don’t agree with, just for expressing their views on a talk page, not even for editing the articles. And the admins approve those bans.
I am currently just reaching the end of a six month topic ban for an episode on the Four Noble Truths article just for speaking forthrightly and honestly on the talk page about what I consider to be serious mistakes and omissions on that article.
One of the mistakes is that they say that the four noble truths (central teaching in Buddhism) were not taught by the historical Buddha. This is a minority view of very few scholars. I tried to get them to mention the many other views on the historicity of the Buddhist teachings. I just said that it needs this on the talk page, never tried to edit the article itself.
I also challenged the article on another couple of points, but you’d need some background in the main Buddhist teachings before I could say what they were. You can read more here: Buddhist sources on the Four Noble Truths by Robert Walker on Some ideas about Buddhist teachings
The outcome was that I was topic banned and forbidden from mentioning the “Four Noble Truths” anywhere on wikipedia for six months. That is just for answering back to all the reasoning the other editors gave on the talk page for keeping the article as is.
Wikipedia is as a result inconsistent with itself as the Pali Canon page still presents the entire range of scholarly views, exactly as I wanted them to present it on the four noble truths article.
Quite a few scholars actually think that the teachings may date back to the time of the Buddha in their entirety, memorized in a similar way to the way the very ancient Veda Indian sutras were memorized. See Origins of the Buddhist Sutras - were they the Teachings of the Buddha? by Robert Walker on Some ideas about Buddhist teachings
I joke with my friends that editors like this have become like the Borg. They want to assimilate you to their views. If you resist being assimilated, they topic ban you.
I also did this “wanted” poster for fun after that episode, after I’d been topic banned:
c MORGELLONS ARTICLE
This article just says that Morgellons is a form of delusional parasitosis. I wanted them to add this paragraph somewhere:
"Not all scientists agree that the CDC closes the book on Morgellons. There is research still continuing by a number of scientists based on the hypothesis that it is a disease similar to bovine Digital dermatitis which is a known disease of cattle. These researchers report discovery of spirochetes in the wounds and fibres containing a mix of keratin and collagen as for bovine dermatitis. [cites]. This research is minority view and controversial."
The article mentions the hypothesis of a connection with Lyme disease - but in a throwaway sentence along with a list of conspiracy theories and cited to an article in the Atlantic of all things. What’s more, the cite is to a news article which in turn is based on google searches and summarizing what people said in online forums and youtube videos. How is that any better than just doing a google search yourself and summarizing what they are saying about it in online forums? If anything journalists tend to sensationalize such things.
Why the other editors there think that this is a reasonable cite while Marrianne Middleveen’s research and Harry Schone’s MSc thesis for University College London should not be mentioned, goodness knows.
For more about this see my answer to How do I get infected with Morgellons disease? and my answer to What research is being done on the potential pandemic of Morgellons?
This is another example where another editor threatened to ban me just for speaking on the talk page of the article. Even for mentioning my views on the article on my own wikipedia talk page! Said they were going to take me to AE and expected it to be easy to ban me.
They could have done that by claiming that I was promoting fringe science in a medical article, which can get you a swift topic ban on Wikipedia. The admins that judge those cases are never specialist in the topic area, don’t follow up cites, make their judgements swiftly, and will just accept what the majority of editors on the talk page say about whether it is fringe science.
They backed down when I hid my comments on my talk page critical of the article and told them I would not be continuing the conversation there or present my views on the article even on my own talk page.
It is not an idle threat as the very same editor who made that threat has already taken another editor to Arbitration Enforcement to try to get them banned just for speaking honestly and forthrightly on the talk page of another article on wikipedia. They were not banned - the decision on their case says that they have voluntarily stopped editing wikipedia for six months. If they hadn’t done that I’m sure the admins would have approved a topic ban. All that just because they are forthtright in saying things that the other editor disagrees with on a talk page.
This is their comment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wi...
"I'm honest, forthright, and speak what i see. In editing articles i've improved greatly since i began, and i think i understand the policies well. I edit according to policies. I speak honestly. I want good article -- nothing more. I want good articles that follow the best sources.
Other people have issues that i speak to problems in Wikipedia. Are you going to shoot me for speaking? If so then it's on your hands."
Jytdog is also the same editor (not an admin) who was involved in this bizarre case of Clarawood123 who was warned that it is a conflict of interest to write about the place where you live! Especially if you happen to have property in the area (e.g. own a house there) which would turn it into a financial conflict of interest, according to Jytdog - now - possibly they thought that Clarawood123 was a property developer - but if so - they never thought to ask them to see if they were or not before voting to ban them from writing about the Clarawood housing estate in Ireland. Here in the UK then estates like that are typically built by the government rather than by private developers: Robert Walker's answer to What are the most frustrating aspects of being a Wikipedia editor?
PLANETARY PROTECTION
I first got involved in controversy by writing about planetary protection issues for human missions to Mars in the Human mission to Mars article where it appeared as a “Concerns” section. I didn’t start that section, it was started by others but was very short. I got involved when I noticed a request to expand it which I did. I discussed my edits on the talk page and at that time the other editors were happy with my work.
I also contributed an article on back contamination risks for a sample returned from Mars to Earth. After it was deleted from Wikipedia I started up a blog on Science20. And one of my early posts there was just a direct copy of the article they deleted from wikipedia which I included as reference material. Mars Sample Receiving Facility and sample containment
As you can see it is written in encyclopedic style, has loads of citations, and I did not present any particular view there. I cover the whole range of views on the topic with cites, from those who think there is no need for any precautions at all to those who thing that more precautions are needed than the ones suggested in the official studies of the topic.
My own view has changed several times and I’m not sure what it was then, but currently my view is that the sample should be returned to an unmanned spacecraft in a very high orbit above geostationary orbit for preliminary study, and any material returned to Earth should be sterilized until we know what is in it. This view is never mentioned in the article as I believe it is original to me.
Anyway, wikipedia editors lead by one particular person got very worked up about that article on Mars sample return back contamination issues. He claimed that by writing it for wikipedia I was trying to scare people and that I was propagating nonsense pseudoscience ideas. He also said he thought I needed mental treatment.
None of that is true of course. The article summarizes material from the United States National Research Council, the European Science Foundation, the Office of Planetary Protection and other mainstream studies.
Why do they get so worked up about this on wikipedia? The thing is that if you need to protect Earth from Mars microbes, it could potentially mean you can’t land humans on the surface as they would take the microbes with them back to Earth when they return. So that then might cast doubt on whether we should send humans to the Mars surface which many space enthusiasts are keen to do. So - it doesn’t matter how highly cited it is, even if it is an ESF or NRC study, they just don’t want to read it and don’t want to see it in wikipedia and are easily persuaded that it is fringe science.
Then in the forward direction, the problem is that if you introduce life to Mars, it is irreversible, and it could mess up major discoveries in biology, perhaps as significant to our understanding of biology as the discovery of the double helix. Planetary protection is a central topic originally started by the likes of Carl Sagan and it is central to all exploration to Mars with planetary protection officers in the US and ESA for instance.
If you land humans on Mars it is probably the end of planetary protection, especially if they crash. So that again is unwelcome news to those who want to land humans on Mars. They tend to read and share articles and reports that suggest it will not be a problem and ignore and don’t share articles that say it could potentially be a problem. As an example if any of you reading this are Mars colonization enthusiasts, there’s a good chance you know of the article “Over protection of Mars” which puts forward the strong view that humans on Mars have no planetary protection issues - but how many of you have heard of the rebuttal by the present and past planetary protection officers “Appropriate protection of Mars” in the very next issue of Nature magazine? It just doesn’t get shared by Mars colonization enthusiasts or even mentioned by them.
I do indeed have a strong personal view here, that we should send humans to Mars orbit and to the Moon but decide whether to land on Mars only at a later stage once we understand the planet better. I’ve done a number of articles on this:
President Obama, Why Humans On Mars Right Now Are Bad For Science
Mars Is Nothing Like The New World - Easier To Grow Your Tomatoes On Mount Everest
But I would never write like that for wikipedia
It is possible to have strong views and still write encyclopedic material and that is what I did in that Concerns section. Of course I didn’t present my own views. Instead I presented the views in various reliable sources, such as those two studies, one by the National Research Council and the other by the European Space foundation.
The editors believed him when he said that what I wanted to get included was minority view and fringe. It wasn't at all. It was mainstream. But of course none of the admins judging the cases is going to read those long documents about the risks associated with returning samples from Mars and ways that one could deal with those risks. So they just believed him that what I was presenting there was fringe. The article for deletion was a complete farce, it was judged by editors who had never done a single edit of the astronomical sections of wikipedia and most of it was actually a discussion of a version of the article as written by the editor who proposed the deletion! He edited the article first, removed most of the highly cited material from it, then rushed it to an Article for Deletion at that point, and edit warred, not letting me edit it until half way through the discussion so most of the votes to delete it were on his version of the article, not mine.
The same editor who deleted my back contamination article there - after getting other editors worked up by saying I needed mental treatment and was scaring people and drawing analogies with the Andromeda strain - which they all believed - went on to say “I can’t bear to see these Concerns sections any more” and after successfully deleting my article about back contamination risks for samples from Mars, took that as a mandate to delete all the planetary protection material from manned missions on Mars and elsewhere in wikipedia, as well as a lot of other material about issues with manned missions to Mars. They were either turned into “challenges to be overcome” or deleted completely.
As a result, the Human mission to Mars article now doesn’t have a Concerns section, just a Challenges section, and this is all that it says on the topic of planetary protection for human missions:
- Forward contamination of potentially habitable zones.
- Back contamination of Earth with possible Martian microbes. (Depends on mission design).
Eventually they were stopped by another editor when they tried to get rid of the main Planetary protection article which they hacked about and replaced by nonsense stuff (if you know anything about the subject) not even to do with planetary protection.
This other editor stopped them and I was able to restore that article to a decent shape again. But he warned me that if I start adding planetary protection sections back to the other articles I’m likely to encounter the same problems as before. So I have mainly kept my editing to that one article plus the linked Interplanetary contamination article.
DRAMA BEHIND THE SCENES
If you are just a reader of wikipedia you probably have no idea how much drama goes on behind the scenes. But this is not at all unusual. There are huge wars going on there, sometimes about the most minor things (metaphorical wars only of course).
When you read an article there, it might well be the result of a delicate compromise - reached with careful mediation after a long battle raging for years over the choice of a single word sometimes. For a humorous look on this see Wikipedia: Lamest Edit Wars
.
Container of gasoline? petrol? fossil fuel? gas?
One of many topics that lead to huge behind the scenes battles in wikipedia.
STATE OF FLUX
But it means that many articles are in a state of flux. Come back a few months later and it may say something totally different. Sometimes it is just a minor detail like petrol / gasoline. But sometimes it may be a complete change in slant or the article may be so changed that it is unrecognizable. If you want something from the old article - it is still there, you can go back through its edit history to find the old version, but the new article may have no points of resemblance at all with the old one. Same length, maybe even shorter, just totally different.
Some articles are excellent. I use Wikipedia a lot myself. It is really good on many topics to do with space flight and astronomy (apart from life on Mars and planetary protection for human missions obviously). There are many other topics where it is really good.
But you need to be aware that any article you are reading could potentially be biased, presenting only one view on a complex debate for instance. If you want to see if it has been controversial, it’s worth checking the talk page and the talk page archives.
If there is some fact in the article that you want to know if it is correct - never rely on wikipedia as your primary source if it is important to you. The one good thing about wikipedia is that everything is cited, or should be (not always is) so you can read the cites. Quite often you find the cite contradicts what the article says it says. Wikipedia editors can make mistakes reading an article as much as anyone and once a mistake has got into an article, it’s rare for other editors to re-read the article to double check it. Except when it is a high profile article of course.
PLEASE DON’T TAKE PART IN ANY OF THE MENTIONED DISPUTES
BTW if any of you reading this are wikipedia editors, please don’t take part in any of the disputes I just mentioned as a result of reading this answer. I have to be very careful about that. Wikipedia ha a strict policy that you can’t canvas off wiki or encourage others to edit articles in your favour. If anyone reading this edits wikipedia to try to fix these issues I just mentioned as a result of this answer, especially in the direction that I obviously favour in this answer, it would be seen as canvasing.
The aim here is just to give examples to show how wikipedia is biased. As for how to fix that, I don’t know what the solution is. It’s a great shame I think. The wikipedia guidelines are good, I have no problem with those.
Thanks!
AVOIDING DRAMA ON WIKIPEDIA
There are things you can do to reduce the chance of this happening to you. Mainly - to realize that it helps a lot to have many editor friends working on the same topic.
You can’t do that once a controversy arises as that then is canvasing, not legitimately anyway. But it is perfectly reasonable to get together a lot of experts in a topic area and encourage them to work on wikipedia together. Try to get several enthusiastic editors working together, people you know and are friendly with, or experts in your topic area.
If a half dozen of you have worked on a new article, say, it is very very hard for an editor who is opposed to you to just demolish it. They would need good well argued reasons. Couldn’t just topic ban you, telling the admins you are a trouble maker, or hide all your posts on the talk page. All your colleagues who are experts in the topic area will see right through it and come in and support your material and support you legitimately in any attempt to ban you as well - they can join in those cases because they also are involved in editing the article. Wikibullying editors would probably just not try in that situation.
If I’d done that I could have saved a lot of trouble. It can be hard to get people to join you in editing wikipedia. It’s time consuming and also they may have had bad experiences with it in the past. But if you can do it, then you can work much more effectively together than as an individual there.
And if the article remains biased and you can’t do anything about it, well that’s a good time to take a break, stop and go somewhere else and find another outlet for your writing, e.g write a blog or write on quora.
More on this, see How to edit wikipedia without getting into trouble by Robert Walker on Random things
And about the sometimes “Alice through the Looking Glass” experiences of wikipedia editors: Robert Walker's answer to What are the most frustrating aspects of being a Wikipedia editor?
JUSTICE ON WIKIPEDIA FOR PROCESSES SUCH AS TOPIC BANS, BLOCKS ETC DOESN’T WORK LIKE A COURT OF LAW
I think the main thing here is that wikipedia admins are not trained in jurisprudence. They are just ordinary folk like you and me meting out justice and have no idea about e.g. the need to interrogate witnesses or the accused and accuser carefully and find out what the real story is before passing judgement.
Instead, my impression from all the arbitration cases / community judgements I've seen is that they judge very rapidly, in minutes, on the basis of instant gut feeling which is often wrong. That of course is not what real judges do. There are normally lots of checks and balances to stop that sort of thing from happening in a real process of justice.
I think something similar is needed in wikipedia to the processes of a court of law. Perhaps even with a judge and then the admins as the jury to judge the case guided by a judge with experience in jurisprudence - and with prosecutors and solicitors for the defense. Of course not with all the frills of a proper legal case. But something or other to take the place of all those things that are found to be necessary in ordinary justice.
But any attempt to do so would meet a lot of opposition from the admins as it would make their job harder - they are of course all unpaid volunteers doing this in their own time in order to improve wikipedia.
Wikipedia is very wealthy though, they have tens of millions of dollars worth of funds to dispose of. They could for instance afford to employ a full time judge, no problem at all. Or someone with jurisprudence experience to overview the arbitration cases and keep an eye on the processes there from a genuinely neutral and expert point of view. I don’t know if anything of such nature could work and be found consistent with wikipedia ideals?
WHAT YOU CAN DO ABOUT THIS RIGHT NOW!
If you are a reasonably experienced wikipedian, you can do a lot to help by working as an uninvolved commentator and voter on OCCASIONAL cases in WP:ANI. and other boards that permit participation by general editors.
See: What you can do about the Alice through the Looking Glass world of Wikipedia Editing - Right Now
See also Ideas for wikipedia reform for the long term
See also my answer to What are the most frustrating aspects of being a Wikipedia editor?
About the Author
