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You really aren't supposed to, though. Wikipedia is an awesome tool. It will provide generally useful, broadly accurate, basic information on most topics. But

You really aren't supposed to, though. Wikipedia is an awesome tool. It will provide generally useful, broadly accurate, basic information on most topics. But accuracy and freedom from bias isn't guaranteed. Anything highly technical can suffer from inaccuracy. Anything political will generally not be bias free (not least because it's essentially impossible to construct a concept of "objective truth" or "neutrality" in any remotely political topic). It's still a useful starting point for basically any research. If you subsequently need to rely on those facts – you'll need to do more research. And I think that's okay.

close04 8y ago
I don't expect a bias-free guarantee especially from a free service. But this is definitely going beyond "bias". There are articles that don't just "lean" off the neutral point, they are propaganda. And especially when they portray current day topics they're just as powerful as the fake news appearing on Facebook or Twitter. The "you'll need to do more research" defense didn't help them either. I'll give you an example (some names may have been changed and all that...): imagine a businessman being presented in a favorable light even after he's convicted of embezzlement, bribery, the whole 9 yards, basically his whole career turned out to be a sham wrapped in a web of illegality. Any attempts to include this official info in his profile gets promptly shot down. Years later the guy is still squeaky clean and with the "right to be forgotten" he'll eventually stay that way. It's natural to find mistakes in a highly technical article. It's bias to find situations when the truth will be bent a little to give more importance to one player of a team. When you realize the mistakes you just have correct them. When you refuse to correct them then you crossed into a whole different problem. Keeping in place mechanisms that impair efforts to correct the errors, or not putting mechanisms in place to mitigate the issues is way beyond bias. It's negligence at best and when money is involved it's likely more than that.

close04 8y ago

I don't expect a bias-free guarantee especially from a free service. But this is definitely going beyond "bias". There are articles that don't just "lean" off the neutral point, they are propaganda. And especially when they portray current day topics they're just as powerful as the fake news appearing on Facebook or Twitter. The "you'll need to do more research" defense didn't help them either. I'll give you an example (some names may have been changed and all that...): imagine a businessman being presented in a favorable light even after he's convicted of embezzlement, bribery, the whole 9 yards, basically his whole career turned out to be a sham wrapped in a web of illegality. Any attempts to include this official info in his profile gets promptly shot down. Years later the guy is still squeaky clean and with the "right to be forgotten" he'll eventually stay that way. It's natural to find mistakes in a highly technical article. It's bias to find situations when the truth will be bent a little to give more importance to one player of a team. When you realize the mistakes you just have correct them. When you refuse to correct them then you crossed into a whole different problem. Keeping in place mechanisms that impair efforts to correct the errors, or not putting mechanisms in place to mitigate the issues is way beyond bias. It's negligence at best and when money is involved it's likely more than that.