OP focuses on extremely contentious issues, but these are (as OP and other commenters note) exactly where our own biases can make it most difficult to accuratel

OP focuses on extremely contentious issues, but these are (as OP and other commenters note) exactly where our own biases can make it most difficult to accurately decide whether a source is being truly neutral. I think the clearest evidence of distortions in Wikipedia is found in less-contentious (although still politically coded) topics. A couple months back I encountered a striking example: the Wikipedia article on "Balance of trade" [1]. An important object-level question is "are trade deficits bad?". (I have no real opinion on this question, because hey, I'm not an economist --- none of this is about the object-level question!) For those who live under an even larger rock than I do, Trump sided with "yes", causing a predictable sorting of opinions in US politics. The article leans very strongly in the direction of "no", stating above the fold: > The notion that bilateral trade deficits are bad in and of themselves is overwhelmingly rejected by trade experts and economists. There follow 5 citations, of which 4 are articles about Trump. (Three mention Trump in the title.) The claim is repeated in the body of the article; it's the first sentence in the section "Views on Economic Impact". But the very next sentence is > According to the IMF trade deficits can cause a balance of payments problem, which can affect foreign exchange shortages and hurt countries. The paragraph structure makes it seem like this is a sentence in support of the thesis, but it's really not. And the very next sentence, again, is on negative effects of trade deficits: > On the other hand, Joseph Stiglitz points out that countries running surpluses exert a "negative externality" on trading partners, and pose a threat to global prosperity, far more than those in deficit. Note that this specific claim of "negative externalities" is very similar to the strongly politically coded claim that this article and its citations are so keen to claim is "overwhelmingly rejected". The following sentence is on negative effects of eurozone imbalances, but I'll stop quoting here. I've seen similar patterns on other articles, but this is the clearest example. The article actually reads as something that was once a representative hodge-podge of arguments for and against, and then had to be "fixed" in the days of Trump and brexit to avoid confusing hapless readers. It's relatively petty, but note another sentence above the fold: > The notion of the balance of trade does not mean that exports and imports are "in balance" with each other. This sort of pre-emptive heading off of common misconceptions is not encyclopedic. There are only seven sentences above the TOC, and one of them is this! (For instance, I checked the article on "quantum superposition", and no similar sentence is included, despite the obvious and common misconceptions.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balance_of_trade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balance_of_trade