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Wikipedia Tag

Long understood to be a an unreliable resource by serious academics, journalists, and bloggers, Wikipedia has more recently gained a broader reputation for leftwing bias. Indeed, one of its co-founders notes that Wikipedia entries on socialism and communism are little more than propaganda and that he is launching a competing free-speech encyclopedia site.

Long-time Legal Insurrection readers will recall the controversy over the ever-changing Elizabeth Warren Wikipedia page.  Here's an overview from 2013:  Elizabeth Warren Wikipedia page ethnically cleansed (Update — partial restoration). In the wake of the controversial and hypocritical decision of the New York Times to keep Sarah Jeong despite her racist tweets, the same sort of cleansing of Jeong's Wikipedia page is underway.

I did not know who Richard Sherman was until last night. When Twitter exploded with Twit-rage over something Sherman said, I didn't know what everyone was talking about because I didn't watch the end of the San Francisco-Seattle football game. So I searched Sherman's name and then clicked on his Wikipedia page, and saw this (highlighting added): Richard Sherman Wikipedia Page Piece Human Garbage Close Up Highlighted Well, that certainly caught my interest, and it wasn't too hard to find out what happened. By the time I clicked back on Wikipedia, the "human garbage" entry was gone, replaced by a more neutral analysis. Looking back at the Edit History of the page, it's easy to see that the moment after the interview, there were numerous attempts to "vandalize" the page (times are expressed in GMT):

The primary goal of ElizabethWarrenWiki.org was to serve as a resource for people who don't have the time to search dozens of websites and blogs. So when I stumbled on this at HuffPo the other day, it was one of those moments. The accusation was about Republicans...

We are pleased to announce the launch of Elizabeth Warren Wiki (ElizabethWarrenWiki.org), the most comprehensive source of information and documentation with regard to Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth A. Warren. The site originally was conceived, days before the 2012 election, as The Elizabeth Warren File, a place where...

Genealogist Megan Smolenyak is quoted in The Wall Street Journal article about common misperceptions about family lore, “Grandma Did What?” Digging Up the Roots of Family Lore. One of those common misperceptions, according to Smolenyak, is as follows: “Great grandma was a Cherokee.” Many people with high...

Via Boston Herald, Liz won’t beat drum: Despite repeated claims she is “proud” of her Cherokee heritage, newly minted U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren is keeping that pride under wraps and won’t be taking advantage of a chance to officially list herself as the Bay State’s first...

In my post yesterday, Elizabeth Warren Wikipedia page ethnically cleansed, I noted that the lengthy explanation of Elizabeth Warren's false claim to be Cherokee had been almost entirely purged from Warren's Wikipedia page. My post set off some pretty vigorous debate among editors at Wikipedia. One of the...