Wikipedia is riddled with curated edits by malicious editors who block any changes which doesn't suite their political agenda. Because it is not overseen by any board, there is no scrutiny
Over the years I have read countless stories, either through the freedom of information act, or other journalist investigations, that show what is clearly a widespread pattern of government agency infiltration into not-for-profit media based, or political based groups.
I wish I had saved them, but that pattern is always the same. The government agents are paid to be there, therefore they can be far, far more helpful than the 'real' members. This allows them to move quickly to the top, then move their own people in.
Then comes the fun part, they start acting like radical assholes. Annoying everyone and driving away any rational reasonable people. This toxic environment eventually destroys the movement, but not before giving them complete control to push it in whatever direction they wish.
To me it is incredibly obvious that this is what is happening at Wikipedia.
All slashdot style humour aside, the ongoing issue of petty fiefdom edit wars on the most inane topics is pretty well known. This and the acceptance of deletionist mindset despite the fact that there is so much automated tooling and maintenance helpers to negate the arguments around viewpoints purporting that without deleting things the wiki would become so big it couldn’t be maintained.
I don’t even bother fixing obviously out of date stuff anymore because I honestly can’t be fucked. I don’t want to play a game of Russian Roulette with my personal time/effort or engage in some pseudo-MMORPG by “grinding for rep” on Wikipedia. If I want to fix an old low profile article about a science mission and correct its launch date (which is still in the future) … it should take a few seconds to edit 2020 to 2023 … not a few minutes spread over several days
Wikipedia is more dangerous, because it appears as legitimate and credble when it is not. For the most part it is a more formal front-end for all newspapers and journaling sites, further promoting the already-prevalent western cultural biases and mouthpieces. Most of the edits are made the same people (organizations?), that are in the double digits.
I never trust anything I read on wikipedia, not even for so-called objective issues and common facts, because there are always interests hiding behind even the least controversial topics. Just read the sources it provides, and even then it's flawed because they pick and choose the ones that fit their narrative best.
On Facebook, articles that trend are those who received the most votes, shared by friends or family, or selected by by algorithms based on prior interests. Although truth/accuracy is said to be a goal, it's a "social network", not a "truth network" and is not a recognized purveyor of factual data.
On Wikipedia, reality is usually whatever some erstwhile editor can scrounge up that backs up their preferred narrative. As journalists overwhelmingly self-identity as liberal/progressive, it's trivial for a single, anonymous editor to shop around for MSM articles that back up the narrative. That, combined with WikiMedia actually hosting & funding "edit-thons" for progressive activist groups, it is no wonder why Wikipedia is viewed by many as having a liberal bent. Yet, it DOES hold itself as a trustworthy purveyor of factual information.
One of those seems a lot more democratic than the other, but it's the more democratic option that's usually used as the negative example.
