[8] A 2012 study by Shane Greenstein and Feng Zhu of the Harvard Business School examined a sample of 28,382 articles related to U.S. politics as of January 2011, measuring their degree of bias on a "slant index" based on a method developed by Matthew Gentzkow and Jesse Shapiro in 2010, to measure bias in newspaper media.
[9] This slant index purports to measure an ideological lean toward either the Democratic or Republican parties, based on key phrases within the text such as "war in Iraq", "civil rights", "trade deficit", "economic growth", "illegal immigration" and "border security".
[1][12][13] A study published in 2015 focusing on the English edition of Wikipedia examined the removal of positive or negative information in biographies of U.S. senators.
However, when a similar test was conducted on the Wikipedia pages of recently retired and deceased senators, the same discrepancy in the removal of positive and negative content was not observed.
The authors concluded that information generated through collaborative projects such as Wikipedia may be susceptible to an editorial bias that favors politically active individuals.
[16] A 2024 study published in Online Information Review found that Wikipedia tended to cite news sources with more liberal-leaning than conservative-leaning Facebook followers, which the authors interpreted as a "moderate yet significant liberal bias".
[18] In a 2016 working paper focusing on the English Wikipedia, researchers investigated the behavior of users who contribute to articles related to US politics.
The study also indicated that the quality of articles, as recognized by the Wikipedia community, improves as the diversity of political orientation among contributors increases.
Politically polarized groups engage in frequent disagreements, stimulating focused debates that result in higher quality, more robust, and comprehensive edits.
[19][20] In a 2012 study focusing on edit wars within Wikipedia, it was suggested that consensus can often be reached within a reasonable timeframe, even in controversial articles.
It was observed that most edit wars are carried out by a small number of users who are frequently engaged in conflicts, despite their low overall productivity.
In these debates, resolution is often reached not based on the merits of the arguments but rather due to external intervention, exhaustion, or the evident numerical dominance of one group over the other.
Conversely, if the friction within a community of contributors becomes excessively high, it can lead to the dismissal of respective ideas or even the division of the group, similar to how an individual may struggle to adapt and learn when confronted with an overwhelming amount of novelty.
"[23] In 2017, Wired magazine noted on article featuring views on alternative of Wikipedia as follows;[1] "It’s true that the reach and impact of right-wing encyclopedias like Infogalactic and Metapedia remains muted, for now.
[26] The Boston Globe opined, "A Wikipedia editor's interest in an article sprouts from their values and opinions, and their contributions are filtered through their general interpretation of reality.
This had meaningful consequences, turning an organization that used to lend credence and false balance to pseudoscience, conspiracy theories, and extremism into a proactive debunker, fact-checker and identifier of fringe discourse....
[38]American lawyer and Christian conservative activist Andrew Schlafly founded an online encyclopedia named Conservapedia in 2006 to counter what he perceived as a liberal bias present in Wikipedia.
[39] Conservapedia's editors have compiled a list of alleged examples of liberal bias on Wikipedia, including assertions it is "anti-American", "anti-Christian" and "anti-capitalism".
And that, by the way, goes across all kinds of fields.From 2011 to 2020,[47] the user-generated editing model of Croatian Wikipedia was co-opted by far-right nationalists who falsified and promoted biased content on a variety of topics: fascism, Serbs of Croatia, as well as the Ustaše and LGBTQ community.
[58] In February 2023, Jan Grabowski and Shira Klein published a research article in the Journal of Holocaust Research accusing a number of English Wikipedia editors of engaging in a campaign to "[promote] a skewed version of history on Wikipedia", claiming that their actions "[whitewash] the role of Polish society in the Holocaust and [bolster] stereotypes about Jews".
[59][60][61] The English Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee subsequently opened a case to investigate and evaluate the actions of editors in the affected articles.
[60] Ultimately, the Committee ruled to ban two editors from contributing to the topic areas, although Klein criticized the proposed remedies as "[lacking] depth and consequence".
The manifesto was signed by Juan Carlos Girauta, Álvaro Vargas Llosa, Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo, Joaquín Leguina, Albert Rivera, Daniel Lacalle and Toni Cantó, among other personalities.
[68][better source needed] The Spanish Wikipedia has been criticized for offering a whitewashed coverage of the president of Argentina Cristina Kirchner.
[69][70][71] In a July 2022 article, Claudia Peiró from Infobae criticized the Spanish Wikipedia's entry on Cuba for describing the country as a "democracy without parties" with a "free, direct and secret vote".
[72] In April 2008, The Electronic Intifada published an article containing e-mails exchanged by members of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA).