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Larry Sanger, one of Wikipedia’s cofounders, was banned from editing the site indefinitely after other editors determined he was canvassing, or in other words, calling on his followers off platform in order to influence Wikipedia’s content.

Sanger has spent more than a decade criticizing Wikipedia for what he claims is an ideological, left-wing bias on a variety of topics, and on X has framed this recent ban as further proof of everything that’s wrong with Wikipedia. The New York Post took that bait and last night published an article with the headline “Left-leaning Wikipedia blocked founder from editing site—after he campaigned to make it more balanced.”

Wikipedia editors obviously reject that framing and say that Sanger was banned for wielding his followers to sway discussion and decision making on Wikipedia. The discussion that led to the decision to ban Sanger concluded with what an editor called a “clear consensus” to ban Sanger.

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[-] innermachine@lemmy.world 25 points 9 hours ago

Wikipedia is a great start point. You read the wiki, then check the references. Just like reading the news, you should never take one source at face value! Engage your ✨ CRITICAL THINKING ✨

[-] Bread@thelemmy.club 1 points 2 hours ago

Wikipedia is pointless. You can ask any AI your question and ask for sources. It's more reliable than wikipedia.

[-] ilinamorato@lemmy.world 4 points 1 hour ago

Not sure if troll or...

...ok, I'll bite. This is maybe the stupidest thing I've ever seen. You know that Wikipedia comprises one of the largest publicly-accessible sets of meticulously-curated natural-language data on the planet, right? And so when you're training up a new model, you're naturally going to start with that massive, freely-available repository?

Every major AI model has been trained, at least partially, on Wikipedia. This insane viewpoint is essentially saying that you don't think Wikipedia is reliable, but if some linear algebra chews it up for a few minutes, then it's ok. You're turning up your nose at tap water, but drinking your inside dog's urine.

[-] Bread@thelemmy.club 1 points 1 hour ago

Do you know how many living people are unable to get probable lies about themselves removed from wikipedia? Wikipedia is barely better than just taking random reddit comments as truth.

this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2026
468 points (100.0% liked)

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