Leftist roots of Wikipedia

Co-Founder of Wikipedia, atheist Jimmy Wales

The Wikipedia project was initiated by atheist and entrepreneur Jimmy Wales and the agnostic philosophy professor Larry Sanger on January 15, 2001.[1] An irony of internet history is that Jimmy Wales, despite being an atheist, refers to himself as Wikipedia's "spiritual leader".[2] Despite its official "neutrality policy," Wikipedia has a strong liberal bias. In his article entitled Wikipedia lies, slander continue journalist Joseph Farah stated Wikipedia "is not only a provider of inaccuracy and bias. It is wholesale purveyor of lies and slander unlike any other the world has ever known."[3] Mr. Farah has repeatedly been the victim of defamation at the Wikipedia website.[4] In December 2010, Christian apologist JP Holding called Wikipedia "the abomination that causes misinformation".[5]

David Swindle writes at FrontPage Magazine:

“  |  There was not a single ideological vision driving Wikipedia’s founders and core contributors as they launched the project. Jimmy Wales​, who would become the face of the project and its “benevolent dictator,” according to Andrew Lih’s The Wikipedia Revolution​, is a libertarian and Ayn Rand​ian Objectivist. Also important in shaping Wikipedia was the so-called “hacker ethos,” the culture that has developed amongst computer programmers over the last 40 years and been shaped by the Left, the counterculture, popular culture, and anarchist thought.

What binds together these ideologies is a utopian ideal that human beings are more prone to altruism rather than self-interest. In Wikipedia Revolution Wales is quoted as saying, “Generally we find most people out there on the internet are good… It’s one of the wonderful humanitarian discoveries in Wikipeda, that most people only want to help us and build this free nonprofit, charitable resource.” Ward Cunningham was the programmer who created the wiki concept and software. According to Lih, he believed in the Wiki because “People are generally good.”

Lih explains how this philosophy is embedded within Wikipedia’s rules:

A core idea Wikipedia embraced.. was to assume good faith when interacting with others. The guideline promoted optimistic production rather than pessimistic nay-saying, and reads, “Unless there is strong evidence to the contrary, assume that people who work on the project are trying to help it, not hurt it; avoid accusing others of harmful motives without particularly strong evidence.

But as it worked out, Wikipedia in practice has strayed from these utopian ideas because of the ease with which political and social bias trumps altruism.

After almost a decade of rapid growth and free-wheeling experimentation the situation at the site by the Summer of 2009 was chaos. Political operatives would sabotage one another in electoral contests by vandalizing pages. More malicious misinformation filtered in freely, with living historical figures accused of involvement in conspiratorial plots.[6]

|  ”

|
|

## References[edit]

1. ↑ http://www.nndb.com/lists/288/000092012/
2. ↑ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05/09/wikimedia_pron_purge/
3. ↑ http://wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=83640
4. ↑ http://wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=83640
5. ↑ http://tektonticker.blogspot.com/search/label/Wikipedia
6. ↑ http://frontpagemag.com/2011/08/23/how-the-left-conquered-wikipedia-part-1/