Business - Written Wednesday, May 27, 2009 by Jeff DeChambeau - 0 Comments

Can Wikipedia be Neutral?

As I often do in my day to day life, this past weekend I got into a rather spirited discussion about Wikipedia. At the core of the argument was the idea that asking a question like “Is Wikipedia neutral?” is jumping the gun a bit. A crucial first question is: “Can Wikipedia be neutral?”

Wikipedia goes to great lengths on it’s NPOV (Neutral Point of View) policy page to explain how and when an article can be considered “neutral:”

The neutral point of view is a means of dealing with conflicting verifiable perspectives on a topic as evidenced by reliable sources. The policy requires that where multiple or conflicting perspectives exist within a topic each should be presented fairly. None of the views should be given undue weight or asserted as being judged as “the truth”, in order that the various significant published viewpoints are made accessible to the reader, not just the most popular one.

This sounds great, but I’m concerned that the Wiki system as a whole might have considerable bias built-in. First, consider what Wikipedia is. It’s the “free encyclopedia that anyone can edit,” but not anyone does — instead, most prefer just to read (it’s the 7th most visited site online). Just as visiting the site is an opt-in process, so is editing it; the community that creates and polices content is very much self-selecting. This is where I think the problem arises. Continue…