They mostly do present all the facts. If you can read through the biased presentation, there can still be value. But a query to an LLM to present different perspectives is more efficient.
a trad friend of mine pointed-out that LLM's seem awesome, but they are really just a modernized version of ask Jeeves. They are a search engine without the censorship and algorithm that throttles the internet... the fact they answer in language format is just theater.
On any issue where you are unsure whether you are reading a one-sided view, you can ask the LLM for what a critic would say, and are then in a better position to form your own informed view. I find it more efficient than googling the topic and reading through several webpages (since any given one may be biased)
The propagandists are just not that good though, certainly not as good as they think they are. It's generally not difficult to identify the bias and adjust for it.
Can you give some other examples where you thought it had bad coverage? I'm interested in why so many people from say this from completely different perspectives, Marxists complain about its bias from the other side and both complaints cant simultaneously be true.
Wikipedia mostly stays factual and impartial in my experience.
Marxists are idiots who think anything other than pure propaganda is insufficient, so they can be safely ignored. After all, look at every society they set up. 100% pure bullshit, all the time.
No, the critics are right. Wikipedia has taken us far, but anything that relies on crowdsourcing inevitably gets taken over by the left because it turns into a last-man-standing scenario and they're utterly fanatical about controlling messaging - they can't control reality, so controlling perception of it is the next best thing. They just have much more energy for stupid edit wars, taking over volunteer run things and the like.
Trace’s last article on the topic is a good place to start, but I admit my comment is hyperbole.
Wikipedia is a big site and no doubt many politically charged entries happen to be the fief of more scrupulous editors and are higher quality as a result. But the underlying system seems pretty broken to me, absent some serious investment from the Wikimedia foundation, which only seems to be interested in other projects at the moment.
I've heard (but not confirmed) that a lot of intelligence agencies like to manipulate political topics on Wikipedia. Yes, this includes Western agencies. It's an ancient game in a modern field.
This has happened to a lot of good and/or important institutions since the mid 2010s. People keep blaming the trust crisis on conspiracy theorists and misinformation, but it’s this. I know these institutions are essentially trying to trick me for political purposes, even when I don’t yet know how or even why. And I’m a liberal (or was in 2012), imagine how conservatives and the uncommitted feel.
Mao's wikipedia page is exactly the historiographical outcome you would expect from any criminal that has a large team of intellectually formidable, highly motivated defence attorneys.
Indeed there's a case to be made that Wikipedia should restructure articles of figures that are singularly controversial in such a way that the "Legacy" page has two subsections ("positive appraisal" and "negative appraisal") each of which are locked and exclusive to Mao-supporting and Mao-detracting users respectively. Kind of like closing arguments of a trial.
I think you’re right on the merits, but I wonder how much of this might be CCP influence vs something wikipedia specific? I genuinely don’t know the answer, but given the enormous resources put into Chinese influence campaigns I wouldn’t be surprised to see that spillover here.
I was wondering the same thing. I'm sure there are plenty of Western Maoists also contributing to the change, but if I were a Wikipedia editor I think I would assume that any attempt to block CCP control of the page is a waste of time. They're simply more committed to the bit than me.
That’s an interesting question. It also reminds me of an article I read recently about people on a particular Discord recruiting people to edit Wikipedia in a “pro-Palestine” manner.
Yeah, the article wouldn't be terribly surprising in that regard. It's the addition of the normie, American, self-identified democrats that can't see the problem that makes it noteworthy.
Mao is literally George Washington or Abe Lincoln. It’s not Wikipedia or woke academics. When one of the largest nations with billions of people believe it, it becomes “truer”
Recently, I was trying to find information about a now-dead terrorist called Mohammad al-Adnani, who had, among other accomplishments, masterminded the killings at Bataclan and much else. I found his page on Wikipedia and was stunned to read its contents: basically a hagiography, including a collection of wonderfully inspired speeches he gave(!) Way down below, there is a sentence saying that oh yeah, there was a guy who said he had something to do with the burning death of that Jordanian pilot; move on... That's it! Truly amazing. And very, very sad.
The article is indeed biased, but not, I think, quite as much as you say. The intro starts by describing him as
> the official spokesperson and a senior leader of the Islamic State.[6][7] He was described as the chief of its external operations. He was the second most senior leader of the Islamic State after its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
which I expect most readers would consider negative. As for the part on his speeches (which I think is appropriate for someone whose influence was in large part as a propagandist: better to err on the side of including too much rather than too little information), it includes this description:
> Adnani's vitriolic speaking style established his reputation as the 'attack dog' of the Islamic State, especially for his denunciations of al-Qaeda and commands to commit terrorist attacks in Western countries.
& goes on to quote from one of his speeches:
> If you can kill a disbelieving American or European - especially the spiteful and filthy French - or an Australian, or a Canadian, or any other disbeliever from the disbelievers waging war, including the citizens of the countries that entered into a coalition against the Islamic State, then rely upon Allah, and kill him in any manner or way however it may be.
I agree that his involvement in terrorist attacks should be described in more detail; unfortunately, I have neither the time nor the background knowledge to do this myself. (I wonder whether this is a matter of convenience for the editors: his propaganda was spread online, & indeed the list of speeches includes citations of each one reproduced on some academic's blog, while his role in planning terrorist attacks happened in Syria & would probably be more difficult to find reliable information about.)
Thank you for your considered reply. Two general points stand out for me:
1) You say that Wikipedia's determination that Al-Adnani was "the second most senior leader of the Islamic State" would be automatically considered by most readers as negative. Indeed. BUT -- the fact that this fact is elided in the profile is extremely 'problematic'. That Wikipedia does not, or will not, make a simple moral judgement (as in, say, Franco, Stalin, Hitler, et al) is astounding, to me. It smacks of an unwillingness to confront the death mentality of Islamism. NOT Islam -- "ISLAMISM". That Wikipedia cannot make this distinction is, at the very LEAST, troubling.
2) You rightly dig into what these speeches consist of, which is DEATH. However, Wikipedia merely lists these speeches, with no inkling of what they consist of. Again, you may say, "but of COURSE these speeches preach what Islamist terrorism preaches!" -- but this Wikipedia profile does not make this clear, as in -- look what these 'inspirational speeches' exhort! No, Wikipedia seems, in this case , to be, if not cheerleading, then disingenuously putting out the terrorist's voice -- with absolutely NO judgement. Or rather, judgement on the side of the terrorist...
Sure, something at least like Stalin's entry: "One of the 20th century's most significant figures, Stalin has a deeply contested legacy." That's not here. Just because they started out with "absolute dictator by the 1930s," didn't mean we all then assume he murdered millions. It had to be "taught", yes? A whole lotta people don't understand "Islamic State" to be of course murderous. Yep, "TERRIBLE NO GOOD VERY BAD" is a good start, I'd say...
Thanks for taking the time to point this out. I recently came across a similar case regarding "subsidies." The article describes various forms of subsidies. It includes a paragraph stating that "While conventional subsidies require financial support, many economists have described implicit subsidies in the form of untaxed environmental externalities." It links to an article in Nature by an environmentalist, not an economist.
It then includes a section on fossil fuel subsidies, where most of the claimed subsidies are externalities. This entire section was added to the page some time in 2022, and its tenor is clearly intended to make the most expansive claims of "fossil fuel subsidies," which claims support many activists' justifications for subsidies for renewable energy. Again, a contestable claim, but slipped into Wikipedia without nuance.
It reminds me of two concepts:
From Orwell: He who controls language controls thought, he who controls thought controls the future.
From a source I can't quickly find: All institutions end up controlled by people whose primary focus is on preserving the institution.
I continue to go to bat for Wikipedia as an institution, however flawed, for the same reason I still believe in the virtues of democracy, despite all of... [gestures around]. As a system that crowdsources knowledge from around the world, built completely by volunteer labor without a profit motive, it's an utter miracle that Wikipedia is as useful as it is.
Could you honestly trust the for-profit journalistic institutions to make a more accurate depiction Mao? I can hardly dismiss the chance that someone involved in that process would have communist sympathies that bias the result just as much as this Wikipedia page, or have other ideological motivations that bias the result in a completely different direction. The free market will give you a version of the article you want, but it will also give you many other versions that you don't.
The dispute resolution systems on Wikipedia are imperfect and have a number of failure modes. One, which you've documented with the Gerard article, is that a power user who has many constructive contributions can leverage clout over first time contributions from many other users trying to de-bias the power user's hobbyhorse. The power user has a systemic advantage navigating the byzantine rules around the MoS and NPoV and all the rest of the institutional defense systems that have evolved against vandalism.
I see a lot of criticism of Wikipedia that follows the pattern of a first time editor seeing something that offends their sensibilities, making an edit that they think fixes the bias, and then being met with quick reverts and intimidating boilerplate walls of text about how to properly contribute. It's hard in this situation for the first time contributior and the power users huddling defensively to see each other as anything but ideologically motivated actors because of the nature of the situation. So of course bad faith and good faith contributions alike get easily dismissed, while power users who cultuvated a reputation for following the rules get a lot of leeway to make changes that would get immediately reverted if they came from a first time user.
At a glance of the edit history you cited, this may be one of those cases, though I'd want to do a deeper dive before making a final diagnosis. The good faith edits that tried to contextualize e.g. the 70-30 quote were met with some constructive feedback on the talk page before a power user with an extensive history of writing on Chinese topics comes in and reverts the whole thing with a casual dismissal of the contributions as starting an "edit war". If I have time I can try to load the page history into a "git blame" style tool to try to distill the patterns behind the overall tonal shift in the Mao article since 2011.
The ability to actually track the sentimental change in content over time, see the discussion that went into it, and attribute changes to individual participants in the process, is a big reason I'm still bullish on Wikipedia. These are tools we can use to audit the process in ways that we just can't with most other media. I'm far more interested in the systems behind how the article got like this than the content of the article itself.
It’s maybe a reason for optimism though. I readily admit I don’t have statistics, but anecdotally it seems as though Wikipedia’s ideological bias (and the structural issues upstream of this bias, eg the reliable sources policies, susceptibility of the system to abuse by admins and power users, etc.) are being taken more seriously these days.
I hear you, but I'm really skeptical this makes a significant difference. Sure, someone can do a huge amount of work on a specific case. But that's an enormous amount of energy, and my initial critical reaction is, so what? The fact that someone can document dysfunction in gory detail doesn't solve the dysfunction. People regularly do media analysis of the New York Times, it doesn't change anything. It's somewhat like saying "With Google, you *can* fact-check things now, isn't that amazing? And you couldn't do that before!". Sure, but the effect has proven insignificant in practice, swamped by everything else.
Now consider doing Trump's Wikipedia article. I, like probably most of us here, detest the man. But his Wikipedia page is obviously written entirely by his opponents, who have steadfasted refused to let a single positive accomplishment in, or even try to neutrally explain why some people might support him (for non-odious reasons). The entire article can be summarised as a prosecutor's case for the end of its lede:
"After his first term, scholars and historians ranked him as one of the worst presidents in American history."
Case in point: even liberal pundits like Ezra Klein give Trump some credit for Operation Warp Speed. Yet, despite there being a COVID-19 section of the article, it's not mentioned.
Or take one of the major reasons why people approved of Trump's first term: the economy did well until COVID. You can debate how much of that was due to other factors, but the article has one line where it clearly attributes all of the credit elsewhere:
"Trump took office at the height of the longest economic expansion in American history,[166] which began in 2009 and continued until February 2020, when the COVID-19 recession began."
It's not even just a Wikipedia bias against right-wing populists. Even proto-Trump Berlusconi has a "supporters say" segment in the lede.
It says something about Wikipedia editors that Trump has to be presented as a one-dimensonal villain, while presenting Mao this way.
Well, it partially says that Mao is ancient history to some Wikipedia editors, and in a faraway land as well. If his article was being written during the middle of the Cultural Revolution, and maybe mostly from Taiwan, I think it would look different. Inversely, I suspect an article on Trump written in China several decades from now would also be significantly different from the current one. That is, time and space are two big variables here.
Lots of folks here are enlightened centrists who "reluctantly" support him, because they demonize liberals absolutely.
So & so is seeking headpats from the Birchers and the Heritage Foundation, by writing slop articles joining their crusade against Wikipedia at a time like this.
Lots of folks here are enlightened centrists who "reluctantly" support him, because they demonize progressives absolutely.
Writing is on the wall when Rome is burning, and so & so is seeking headpats from the Birchers and the Heritage Foundation, by writing slop articles joining their crusade against Wikipedia at a time like this.
I think the people who are defending the article like me, don’t think the article is just technically correct. It’s not as critical as it could be, but it’s not misleading in any way that I can notice. It is after all entirely and uncomplicated true that most of the deaths caused were due to starvation, although 3 to 4,,000,000 were targeted political persecution, and the article is clear that they were caused by his policies. It’s also true that he was an important figure and a strategist, et cetera. He was just also very bad. I would equally be fine saying that Hitler was important and a strategist et cetera. The article is less critical than I would be if I was writing it, but fundamentally people like me who defended it as right don’t think it’s only technically true. We think it’s entirely true, and not even all that biased.
Obviously, I would be unlikely to notice if I was making mistakes due to bias, but that seems unlikely since I don’t actually like Mau I think he was among the worst people to ever exist. Honestly, I don’t think I would consider this article problematic, even if it had been about Hitler, although I do admit that it would be way likelyer to get cancelled in that case.
That is precisely what we disagree about. To me only going by the paragraphs quoted in the post it doesn’t sound like it paints, a particularly rosy picture and post seems to be basically quibbling about minor things like the paragraph about his importance being before the paragraph about all the millions of people that died thanks to him. It’s less critical than I would be if I was writing, but the difference is not substantial and the complaint amounts to complaining that minor details were not as hostile as they could be, even though to me, the quoted text does not sound especially positive. After all tens of millions of deaths is a huge deal and being important and strategist have slight positive associations, but our value neutral and being a mass murder on this scale is definitely important. I would probably have mentioned that China’s economy only started booming after the reforms following his death, but then to be fair. If I was writing, I probably would not have included a bit about him decreasing poverty. If you would not have counted me excluding the bit about poverty as bias, I’m not sure it makes sense to count a bit about excluding the fact that the boom only happened after his death as bias, especially since it’s only the introductory paragraphs.
If anything, the Wiki article is closer to Imperialist counter-revolutionary propaganda. It doesn’t even mention how Fearless Hero Mao could swim the Great China Sea and fly without the aid of machinery.
Basically, the article is reads like a Rational Wiki hit piece and is mainly about Hanania's former white supremacist views and the supposed consensus views from "journalists" that he remains an unreconstructed white supremacist who has falsely moderated his views for public consumption. Anything I attempt to change that this represents the arguments of several journalists rather than the current language of "journalists state" is met with an immediate revert.
Contrast this with the near hagiography of Taylor Lorenz and the deep page protection there from even the slightest bit of criticism.
I could also cite a major battle a couple of years ago to try to inject some balance into the hit piece article on E. O. Wilson, where one far-left editor had decided to "be bold" and remove all mention of his assault by Progressive Labor Party goons back in the 70s, something mentioned prominantaly in practically every obituary of Wilson as an example of the backlash that his writing on sociobiology got. It was like pulling teeth to re-include that content and a whole lot of resistance and blatant POV mongering by the clique who have put themselves in charge of the page.
I could go on. There's a script that's repeated in all of these cases as well. The blatant slant of these articles simply represents "journalistic consensus", though how that reading is arrived at is never actually spelled out. Any attempt to inject some balance and hold true to the original definition of "Neutral Point of View" is met with accusations of "false balance" and that it's actually POV pushing to aspire toward a balanced presentation of the subject. These people don't even try to hide their point of view, which is basically that the world view of the progressive left is objective fact and any deviation from that point of view is pushing falsehood. Not to mention the constant rule lawyering and hand-wringing over x or y is actually a reliable source, which seems to often come down to a particular editor's subjective interpretation. I've even encountered several editors claim that statements in current newspaper articles are as valid a source as a scholarly work, even where the newspaper article contradicts the scholarly source!
And these assholes have the nerve to claim that that they're simply trying to reach "consensus" and are working in a "collaborative" manner, all the while blatantly chasing off anyone who questions the slant of the article.
I'm an active Wikipedia article mainly on historical and scientific topics that seemingly no one else cares about, and so I get a free hand with most of the articles I'm interested in. But I sometimes wonder if it's good that I'm actively helping a project that promotes blatant political bias on many topics that I happen to care about. I like the articles that I've done a lot of work on, but the larger project has turned into a shitshow, and I question what I'm doing there.
And it's unfortunate that as of 2025, there really isn't an alternative and that AI's like ChatGPT treat it as a primary go-to. Traditional encyclopedias like the Encyclopedia Britannica are clinging on for dear life and, unfortunately, lack Wikipedia's depth. Conservipedia is certainly no alternative, which is simply the mirror image of Rational Wiki. But it would be good if there was an alternative Wiki that still took the idea of NPOV seriously and that could get anywhere near the same level of participation and readership.
Is all the data still there for wikipedia circa 2010? That may be the alternative Wiki that we seek (for pre 21st century historical articles at least).
It's still there. Unless there's specific reason to block an old edit (rare), all previous edits of existing Wikipedia articles are publically available.
Hey, it's Wikipedia user Remsense. Firstly, I didn't write a word of the relevant section this article, and I will not be held responsible for it. I'm only speaking on behalf of the discussion that was cited to make a point here. We grovel piecemeal as editors, trying to shape and shine so much shoddy material into something useful, and that's just how it is.
What my failure here was was not bothering to explain my entire logic why I was so adamant about the 70:30 thing—it's an inherently embarrassing pericope, not just for Maoists (of which I'm not) but for everyone who tries to understand the world using building blocks that dumb, angular and misshapen. We should be careful when handling these highly ideological phrases, because they're just as toxic to your brain as to an eager Red Guard's. That's why giving it some sort of elevated status in the prose above what it already has is the wrong move editorially. Sorry I didn't bother saying all this before, as I didn't think my unlucky rando roll this time meant a guy with scores of followers who might've even given a shit for what I had to say. We're all on the same team, I just wanted to defend my honor and that of others I've worked with editing Wikipedia. Have a good one.
Hey—appreciate you stopping by to defend your honor and explain in more detail. I’ll edit the article to note your reply and link to your comment.
I think “we’re all on the same team” is a worthwhile attitude to take towards editing Wikipedia, but “worthwhile” and “accurate” are distinct. When some editors come with the mindset that everyone’s on the same team while others come in with adversarial mindsets aimed at crafting particular narratives, the result is a frame that favors the adversarial users. Once a specific status quo has locked in shaped by adversarial decisions, keeping a high barrier to change that status quo winds up being something other than neutrality, even when well-meaning.
The power dynamics are peculiar here. On the one hand, me with scores of followers, you as—I have no doubt—a sincere and well-meaning volunteer aiming to build an encyclopedia. On the other hand: me, a nobody outside the institutions; Wikipedia, the first place people go for info on any given topic, with a section that I stand by my description of “propaganda” for, an editing process that is arcane and frustrating to outsiders, and a sense that the section has been deliberately shaped into that propagandistic form over time. I don’t want to pin my frustration with this article on you-the-unlucky-rando-roller who happened to edit an article I was looking at. But I stand by the frustration, and the sense that it’s not clear to me that the editorial zeitgeist is unhappy with the article.
Looking at the talk page now, I’ll note that a user on it is currently disparaging my writing based on their false, inflammatory claim that Substack “promotes Nazis” and accusing me of canvassing despite my explicit request that people stay away from doing so. I’m not “on the same team” as that individual in any meaningful way and I have no reason to expect fair treatment or consideration from them. That’s fine for what it is—I stay in my corner and let Wiki editors stay in theirs for a reason—but it’s worth noting.
I don’t think your micro-level edits indicate anything but your own good faith judgment. I do think that the consensus on that article has been shaped by the sorts of people who do and don’t get along with the community that shapes it, that the collection of some good-faith and some bad-faith (and yeah, AGF, but I’m not editing, I’m analyzing as an outsider) edits has resulted in a propagandistic section, and that individual edits that keep it as it is have the effect of maintaining that propagandistic frame.
Anyway, I’m glad to have a clearer view of your thought process and I do want to be clear that my critique is aimed at the article, not at you personally. You have a good one as well. Thanks again for stopping by.
Let me focus on just one bit of the current Wikipedia article
"His policies resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of people in China during his reign, mainly due to starvation, but also through persecution, prison labour in laogai, and mass executions."
There's a clear order of magnitude thing missing in this bland statement. Mao's regime resulted in more total deaths than any other government ever in the history of mankind. Worse Mao's deaths were his own populace and occurred mostly in peacetime, not (see e.g. Ghingis Khan) those of foreign countries he invaded and conquered. The runner up is Stalin while Hitler is a relatively distant third. You can argue whether Mao's regime resulted in 40M dead or 140M but it's still the most. If I wanted to get involved in editing wikipedia I'd add that as a follow on sentence with cites that are probably already in the longer article
The wiki article has the energy of: “yeah yeah yeah… he killed directly or indirectly millions and established a political regime that has fundamental issues to this day… but think of the ideas! The aspirations! The HOPES of a PEOPLE!!!”
There is a challenge for communist or “tanky socialists” that they have little to no real example of success. In fact, unless im mistaken, all of the large scale examples are quite tragic and dramatically horrifying in many aspects.
This creates a defensive posture off the bat, and everything becomes theoretical which then leads to “but communism/socialism” has never been truly tried. It also leads to their own version of revisionist history because otherwise they (and a bit of me) have very little compelling actual precedent to stand on.
The so what here, to me, is that this stuff only undermines an otherwise worthy discussion of how we can social/economically reform. It makes the avid side seem to fall into the “but my communism would work” which the falls into the greatest weakness of communism, authoritarian dictators.
Well, the problem is that communist ideas are broadly appealing, whereas capitalist ones are deeply unintuitive. Surely all those billionaires would be just fine with "only" a hundred mil and just one yacht? The crucial point is that capitalism directs people's vices into productive direction, whereas communists want to get rid of vices altogether, which is naive and unrealistic, and reliably leads to famines and death camps.
Communism is what happens when you take a primitive tribal economy and attempt to apply it to a modern government of millions. It's incredibly intuitive because it's what our brains evolved for. We evolved to be in small groups, to have strong feelings of unity and solidarity, and to react to failures in coordination or organization with moral panics and condemnation.
By default we're kind of like architects who've only built single family homes attempting to build a skyscraper without ever having seen one in person. We emphasize some really weird stuff, propose solutions that make no sense, and entirely ignore concerns that are significant in skyscrapers. Like wind, elevators, or fire safety.
Because we can't intuitively understand why these large buildings need things like expensive blow-through sections for wind, for example, we might declare a blow through section a waste, a great injustice! To reach Utopia the residents need only seize the means of construction and turn the blow-through into more office building.
But for some (entirely unrelated) reason the building keeps collapsing before the project can be complete! Because of this, we don't truly know the merits of no-blowthrough-ism, it's never been properly tried!
I don’t think your argument about ideological capture is persuasive, especially since you’re only referencing the first few paragraphs of the Legacy section. This is 3/4ths of the way through the article, which previously discusses (adequately, in my non-scholarly opinion) Mao’s faults in great detail. Moreover, you seem to imply that there are no traces of the 2011 article in the 2025 version, but the majority of its content is still incorporated into the article. In fact, the “historical criminal” and “monster” quotes are used just a few paragraphs after the ones you included in your screenshot (for the In China subsection). This isn’t a Ship of Theseus problem; a lot of the critical stuff is still there, including the quote you reference at the end.
I’m in agreement with you. Most of the material remains the same. I don’t actually think there’s a drastic difference in tone.
Even if there were changes, the current Wikipedia introduction brings Mao more in line with how the Chinese view him: as a great, terrible, nuanced leader. I think the author doesn’t quite understand how ambivalent the Chinese perspective is on Mao. Perhaps one can make the argument that the western perspective is the only one worth considering on Wikipedia—in which case, sure, go ahead with that—but I’d like to think that Wikipedia strives to balance multiple world views.
I... don't know how to start with how wrong that statement is. Most reasonable Chinese aren't dedicated Mao fanboys, but even if a miniscule percentage is, it would eclipse westerners. You are severely underestimating the size of the Chinese population.
Girl... you're the one that wrote "on Wikipedia and IRL." If it's just Wikipedia, then of course.
Also, my comment was acknowledging that Wikipedia is a western perspective. That's why I'm saying the rewrite brings it more in line with a Chinese perspective.
Theres a difference between what you call the “Chinese perspective” - nuanced, great, terrible leader, and the Mao-fans, the kind that idolize the guy and cant deal with the fact that he killed millions
These days I assume Wikipedia will be completely useless if the topic has an iota of political salience.
They mostly do present all the facts. If you can read through the biased presentation, there can still be value. But a query to an LLM to present different perspectives is more efficient.
a trad friend of mine pointed-out that LLM's seem awesome, but they are really just a modernized version of ask Jeeves. They are a search engine without the censorship and algorithm that throttles the internet... the fact they answer in language format is just theater.
A lot of this is specifically China
On any issue where you are unsure whether you are reading a one-sided view, you can ask the LLM for what a critic would say, and are then in a better position to form your own informed view. I find it more efficient than googling the topic and reading through several webpages (since any given one may be biased)
The propagandists are just not that good though, certainly not as good as they think they are. It's generally not difficult to identify the bias and adjust for it.
Can you give some other examples where you thought it had bad coverage? I'm interested in why so many people from say this from completely different perspectives, Marxists complain about its bias from the other side and both complaints cant simultaneously be true.
Wikipedia mostly stays factual and impartial in my experience.
Marxists are idiots who think anything other than pure propaganda is insufficient, so they can be safely ignored. After all, look at every society they set up. 100% pure bullshit, all the time.
No, the critics are right. Wikipedia has taken us far, but anything that relies on crowdsourcing inevitably gets taken over by the left because it turns into a last-man-standing scenario and they're utterly fanatical about controlling messaging - they can't control reality, so controlling perception of it is the next best thing. They just have much more energy for stupid edit wars, taking over volunteer run things and the like.
https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/reliable-sources-how-wikipedia-admin
Trace’s last article on the topic is a good place to start, but I admit my comment is hyperbole.
Wikipedia is a big site and no doubt many politically charged entries happen to be the fief of more scrupulous editors and are higher quality as a result. But the underlying system seems pretty broken to me, absent some serious investment from the Wikimedia foundation, which only seems to be interested in other projects at the moment.
Read wikipedia's article on Gamergate and then compare it to the version from 2014
And that is exactly want they want to achieve... no solid grounds to stand on! Only fake news
I've heard (but not confirmed) that a lot of intelligence agencies like to manipulate political topics on Wikipedia. Yes, this includes Western agencies. It's an ancient game in a modern field.
This has happened to a lot of good and/or important institutions since the mid 2010s. People keep blaming the trust crisis on conspiracy theorists and misinformation, but it’s this. I know these institutions are essentially trying to trick me for political purposes, even when I don’t yet know how or even why. And I’m a liberal (or was in 2012), imagine how conservatives and the uncommitted feel.
I have 3 words for you: Austere Religious Scholar
Mao's wikipedia page is exactly the historiographical outcome you would expect from any criminal that has a large team of intellectually formidable, highly motivated defence attorneys.
Indeed there's a case to be made that Wikipedia should restructure articles of figures that are singularly controversial in such a way that the "Legacy" page has two subsections ("positive appraisal" and "negative appraisal") each of which are locked and exclusive to Mao-supporting and Mao-detracting users respectively. Kind of like closing arguments of a trial.
This is exactly what I thought of too! I wonder what that would look like.
I think you’re right on the merits, but I wonder how much of this might be CCP influence vs something wikipedia specific? I genuinely don’t know the answer, but given the enormous resources put into Chinese influence campaigns I wouldn’t be surprised to see that spillover here.
I was wondering the same thing. I'm sure there are plenty of Western Maoists also contributing to the change, but if I were a Wikipedia editor I think I would assume that any attempt to block CCP control of the page is a waste of time. They're simply more committed to the bit than me.
That’s an interesting question. It also reminds me of an article I read recently about people on a particular Discord recruiting people to edit Wikipedia in a “pro-Palestine” manner.
Yeah, the article wouldn't be terribly surprising in that regard. It's the addition of the normie, American, self-identified democrats that can't see the problem that makes it noteworthy.
Mao is literally George Washington or Abe Lincoln. It’s not Wikipedia or woke academics. When one of the largest nations with billions of people believe it, it becomes “truer”
Recently, I was trying to find information about a now-dead terrorist called Mohammad al-Adnani, who had, among other accomplishments, masterminded the killings at Bataclan and much else. I found his page on Wikipedia and was stunned to read its contents: basically a hagiography, including a collection of wonderfully inspired speeches he gave(!) Way down below, there is a sentence saying that oh yeah, there was a guy who said he had something to do with the burning death of that Jordanian pilot; move on... That's it! Truly amazing. And very, very sad.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Mohammad_al-Adnani
The article is indeed biased, but not, I think, quite as much as you say. The intro starts by describing him as
> the official spokesperson and a senior leader of the Islamic State.[6][7] He was described as the chief of its external operations. He was the second most senior leader of the Islamic State after its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
which I expect most readers would consider negative. As for the part on his speeches (which I think is appropriate for someone whose influence was in large part as a propagandist: better to err on the side of including too much rather than too little information), it includes this description:
> Adnani's vitriolic speaking style established his reputation as the 'attack dog' of the Islamic State, especially for his denunciations of al-Qaeda and commands to commit terrorist attacks in Western countries.
& goes on to quote from one of his speeches:
> If you can kill a disbelieving American or European - especially the spiteful and filthy French - or an Australian, or a Canadian, or any other disbeliever from the disbelievers waging war, including the citizens of the countries that entered into a coalition against the Islamic State, then rely upon Allah, and kill him in any manner or way however it may be.
I agree that his involvement in terrorist attacks should be described in more detail; unfortunately, I have neither the time nor the background knowledge to do this myself. (I wonder whether this is a matter of convenience for the editors: his propaganda was spread online, & indeed the list of speeches includes citations of each one reproduced on some academic's blog, while his role in planning terrorist attacks happened in Syria & would probably be more difficult to find reliable information about.)
Thank you for your considered reply. Two general points stand out for me:
1) You say that Wikipedia's determination that Al-Adnani was "the second most senior leader of the Islamic State" would be automatically considered by most readers as negative. Indeed. BUT -- the fact that this fact is elided in the profile is extremely 'problematic'. That Wikipedia does not, or will not, make a simple moral judgement (as in, say, Franco, Stalin, Hitler, et al) is astounding, to me. It smacks of an unwillingness to confront the death mentality of Islamism. NOT Islam -- "ISLAMISM". That Wikipedia cannot make this distinction is, at the very LEAST, troubling.
2) You rightly dig into what these speeches consist of, which is DEATH. However, Wikipedia merely lists these speeches, with no inkling of what they consist of. Again, you may say, "but of COURSE these speeches preach what Islamist terrorism preaches!" -- but this Wikipedia profile does not make this clear, as in -- look what these 'inspirational speeches' exhort! No, Wikipedia seems, in this case , to be, if not cheerleading, then disingenuously putting out the terrorist's voice -- with absolutely NO judgement. Or rather, judgement on the side of the terrorist...
Do you want the article to say "the second most senior leader of the Islamic State, WHICH IS TERRIBLE NO GOOD VERY BAD"?
Sure, something at least like Stalin's entry: "One of the 20th century's most significant figures, Stalin has a deeply contested legacy." That's not here. Just because they started out with "absolute dictator by the 1930s," didn't mean we all then assume he murdered millions. It had to be "taught", yes? A whole lotta people don't understand "Islamic State" to be of course murderous. Yep, "TERRIBLE NO GOOD VERY BAD" is a good start, I'd say...
Thanks for taking the time to point this out. I recently came across a similar case regarding "subsidies." The article describes various forms of subsidies. It includes a paragraph stating that "While conventional subsidies require financial support, many economists have described implicit subsidies in the form of untaxed environmental externalities." It links to an article in Nature by an environmentalist, not an economist.
It then includes a section on fossil fuel subsidies, where most of the claimed subsidies are externalities. This entire section was added to the page some time in 2022, and its tenor is clearly intended to make the most expansive claims of "fossil fuel subsidies," which claims support many activists' justifications for subsidies for renewable energy. Again, a contestable claim, but slipped into Wikipedia without nuance.
It reminds me of two concepts:
From Orwell: He who controls language controls thought, he who controls thought controls the future.
From a source I can't quickly find: All institutions end up controlled by people whose primary focus is on preserving the institution.
>From a source I can't quickly find: All institutions end up controlled by people whose primary focus is on preserving the institution.
Pournelle's iron law of bureaucracy
I continue to go to bat for Wikipedia as an institution, however flawed, for the same reason I still believe in the virtues of democracy, despite all of... [gestures around]. As a system that crowdsources knowledge from around the world, built completely by volunteer labor without a profit motive, it's an utter miracle that Wikipedia is as useful as it is.
Could you honestly trust the for-profit journalistic institutions to make a more accurate depiction Mao? I can hardly dismiss the chance that someone involved in that process would have communist sympathies that bias the result just as much as this Wikipedia page, or have other ideological motivations that bias the result in a completely different direction. The free market will give you a version of the article you want, but it will also give you many other versions that you don't.
The dispute resolution systems on Wikipedia are imperfect and have a number of failure modes. One, which you've documented with the Gerard article, is that a power user who has many constructive contributions can leverage clout over first time contributions from many other users trying to de-bias the power user's hobbyhorse. The power user has a systemic advantage navigating the byzantine rules around the MoS and NPoV and all the rest of the institutional defense systems that have evolved against vandalism.
I see a lot of criticism of Wikipedia that follows the pattern of a first time editor seeing something that offends their sensibilities, making an edit that they think fixes the bias, and then being met with quick reverts and intimidating boilerplate walls of text about how to properly contribute. It's hard in this situation for the first time contributior and the power users huddling defensively to see each other as anything but ideologically motivated actors because of the nature of the situation. So of course bad faith and good faith contributions alike get easily dismissed, while power users who cultuvated a reputation for following the rules get a lot of leeway to make changes that would get immediately reverted if they came from a first time user.
At a glance of the edit history you cited, this may be one of those cases, though I'd want to do a deeper dive before making a final diagnosis. The good faith edits that tried to contextualize e.g. the 70-30 quote were met with some constructive feedback on the talk page before a power user with an extensive history of writing on Chinese topics comes in and reverts the whole thing with a casual dismissal of the contributions as starting an "edit war". If I have time I can try to load the page history into a "git blame" style tool to try to distill the patterns behind the overall tonal shift in the Mao article since 2011.
The ability to actually track the sentimental change in content over time, see the discussion that went into it, and attribute changes to individual participants in the process, is a big reason I'm still bullish on Wikipedia. These are tools we can use to audit the process in ways that we just can't with most other media. I'm far more interested in the systems behind how the article got like this than the content of the article itself.
David Gerard was held accountable in the end. He got topic-banned and lost his moderator privileges.
I'd turn this around - given the long time it took, and all that happened along the way, it's a very sad commentary on lack of accountability overall.
It’s maybe a reason for optimism though. I readily admit I don’t have statistics, but anecdotally it seems as though Wikipedia’s ideological bias (and the structural issues upstream of this bias, eg the reliable sources policies, susceptibility of the system to abuse by admins and power users, etc.) are being taken more seriously these days.
I hear you, but I'm really skeptical this makes a significant difference. Sure, someone can do a huge amount of work on a specific case. But that's an enormous amount of energy, and my initial critical reaction is, so what? The fact that someone can document dysfunction in gory detail doesn't solve the dysfunction. People regularly do media analysis of the New York Times, it doesn't change anything. It's somewhat like saying "With Google, you *can* fact-check things now, isn't that amazing? And you couldn't do that before!". Sure, but the effect has proven insignificant in practice, swamped by everything else.
Now consider doing Trump's Wikipedia article. I, like probably most of us here, detest the man. But his Wikipedia page is obviously written entirely by his opponents, who have steadfasted refused to let a single positive accomplishment in, or even try to neutrally explain why some people might support him (for non-odious reasons). The entire article can be summarised as a prosecutor's case for the end of its lede:
"After his first term, scholars and historians ranked him as one of the worst presidents in American history."
Case in point: even liberal pundits like Ezra Klein give Trump some credit for Operation Warp Speed. Yet, despite there being a COVID-19 section of the article, it's not mentioned.
Or take one of the major reasons why people approved of Trump's first term: the economy did well until COVID. You can debate how much of that was due to other factors, but the article has one line where it clearly attributes all of the credit elsewhere:
"Trump took office at the height of the longest economic expansion in American history,[166] which began in 2009 and continued until February 2020, when the COVID-19 recession began."
It's not even just a Wikipedia bias against right-wing populists. Even proto-Trump Berlusconi has a "supporters say" segment in the lede.
It says something about Wikipedia editors that Trump has to be presented as a one-dimensonal villain, while presenting Mao this way.
Well, it partially says that Mao is ancient history to some Wikipedia editors, and in a faraway land as well. If his article was being written during the middle of the Cultural Revolution, and maybe mostly from Taiwan, I think it would look different. Inversely, I suspect an article on Trump written in China several decades from now would also be significantly different from the current one. That is, time and space are two big variables here.
"like probably most of us here, detest the man"
Lots of folks here are enlightened centrists who "reluctantly" support him, because they demonize liberals absolutely.
So & so is seeking headpats from the Birchers and the Heritage Foundation, by writing slop articles joining their crusade against Wikipedia at a time like this.
Goebbels would be proud!
But with friends like that, who needs enemies?
"like probably most of us here, detest the man"
Lots of folks here are enlightened centrists who "reluctantly" support him, because they demonize progressives absolutely.
Writing is on the wall when Rome is burning, and so & so is seeking headpats from the Birchers and the Heritage Foundation, by writing slop articles joining their crusade against Wikipedia at a time like this.
Goebbels would be proud.
One last thought, but does the whole “technically correct” thing bug the hell out of anyone here?
Right or left, I hate dismissive “technically correct” responses.
Technically, the pyramids are at least 100 years old.
I think the people who are defending the article like me, don’t think the article is just technically correct. It’s not as critical as it could be, but it’s not misleading in any way that I can notice. It is after all entirely and uncomplicated true that most of the deaths caused were due to starvation, although 3 to 4,,000,000 were targeted political persecution, and the article is clear that they were caused by his policies. It’s also true that he was an important figure and a strategist, et cetera. He was just also very bad. I would equally be fine saying that Hitler was important and a strategist et cetera. The article is less critical than I would be if I was writing it, but fundamentally people like me who defended it as right don’t think it’s only technically true. We think it’s entirely true, and not even all that biased.
“Its not misleading in any way that I can notice.” There in lies the problem. Bias prevents one from noticing the obvious.
Obviously, I would be unlikely to notice if I was making mistakes due to bias, but that seems unlikely since I don’t actually like Mau I think he was among the worst people to ever exist. Honestly, I don’t think I would consider this article problematic, even if it had been about Hitler, although I do admit that it would be way likelyer to get cancelled in that case.
It’s tone, paints a far rosier picture than warranted.
That is precisely what we disagree about. To me only going by the paragraphs quoted in the post it doesn’t sound like it paints, a particularly rosy picture and post seems to be basically quibbling about minor things like the paragraph about his importance being before the paragraph about all the millions of people that died thanks to him. It’s less critical than I would be if I was writing, but the difference is not substantial and the complaint amounts to complaining that minor details were not as hostile as they could be, even though to me, the quoted text does not sound especially positive. After all tens of millions of deaths is a huge deal and being important and strategist have slight positive associations, but our value neutral and being a mass murder on this scale is definitely important. I would probably have mentioned that China’s economy only started booming after the reforms following his death, but then to be fair. If I was writing, I probably would not have included a bit about him decreasing poverty. If you would not have counted me excluding the bit about poverty as bias, I’m not sure it makes sense to count a bit about excluding the fact that the boom only happened after his death as bias, especially since it’s only the introductory paragraphs.
https://media1.tenor.com/m/De285fAXTuQAAAAC/futurama-technically-correct.gif
If anything, the Wiki article is closer to Imperialist counter-revolutionary propaganda. It doesn’t even mention how Fearless Hero Mao could swim the Great China Sea and fly without the aid of machinery.
Very biased.
Yeah, that's pretty much my experience to the letter with trying to edit any kind of politically contentious article on Wikipedia. Here's my attempt to inject some kind of balance into the article on Richard Hanania: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Richard_Hanania#%22Some_journlists_have_argued%22_[sic]
Basically, the article is reads like a Rational Wiki hit piece and is mainly about Hanania's former white supremacist views and the supposed consensus views from "journalists" that he remains an unreconstructed white supremacist who has falsely moderated his views for public consumption. Anything I attempt to change that this represents the arguments of several journalists rather than the current language of "journalists state" is met with an immediate revert.
Similarly, any attempt to add a balanced evaluation about Heterodox Academy as being anything other than a right-wing astroturfing effort: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Heterodox_Academy#Major_POV_shift And the editors who are doing this aren't shy about stating their POV on heterodox academy and cancel culture more generally: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Heterodox_Academy/Archive_5#Ideology_and_reception
Contrast this with the near hagiography of Taylor Lorenz and the deep page protection there from even the slightest bit of criticism.
I could also cite a major battle a couple of years ago to try to inject some balance into the hit piece article on E. O. Wilson, where one far-left editor had decided to "be bold" and remove all mention of his assault by Progressive Labor Party goons back in the 70s, something mentioned prominantaly in practically every obituary of Wilson as an example of the backlash that his writing on sociobiology got. It was like pulling teeth to re-include that content and a whole lot of resistance and blatant POV mongering by the clique who have put themselves in charge of the page.
I could go on. There's a script that's repeated in all of these cases as well. The blatant slant of these articles simply represents "journalistic consensus", though how that reading is arrived at is never actually spelled out. Any attempt to inject some balance and hold true to the original definition of "Neutral Point of View" is met with accusations of "false balance" and that it's actually POV pushing to aspire toward a balanced presentation of the subject. These people don't even try to hide their point of view, which is basically that the world view of the progressive left is objective fact and any deviation from that point of view is pushing falsehood. Not to mention the constant rule lawyering and hand-wringing over x or y is actually a reliable source, which seems to often come down to a particular editor's subjective interpretation. I've even encountered several editors claim that statements in current newspaper articles are as valid a source as a scholarly work, even where the newspaper article contradicts the scholarly source!
And these assholes have the nerve to claim that that they're simply trying to reach "consensus" and are working in a "collaborative" manner, all the while blatantly chasing off anyone who questions the slant of the article.
I'm an active Wikipedia article mainly on historical and scientific topics that seemingly no one else cares about, and so I get a free hand with most of the articles I'm interested in. But I sometimes wonder if it's good that I'm actively helping a project that promotes blatant political bias on many topics that I happen to care about. I like the articles that I've done a lot of work on, but the larger project has turned into a shitshow, and I question what I'm doing there.
And it's unfortunate that as of 2025, there really isn't an alternative and that AI's like ChatGPT treat it as a primary go-to. Traditional encyclopedias like the Encyclopedia Britannica are clinging on for dear life and, unfortunately, lack Wikipedia's depth. Conservipedia is certainly no alternative, which is simply the mirror image of Rational Wiki. But it would be good if there was an alternative Wiki that still took the idea of NPOV seriously and that could get anywhere near the same level of participation and readership.
Is all the data still there for wikipedia circa 2010? That may be the alternative Wiki that we seek (for pre 21st century historical articles at least).
It's still there. Unless there's specific reason to block an old edit (rare), all previous edits of existing Wikipedia articles are publically available.
Hey, it's Wikipedia user Remsense. Firstly, I didn't write a word of the relevant section this article, and I will not be held responsible for it. I'm only speaking on behalf of the discussion that was cited to make a point here. We grovel piecemeal as editors, trying to shape and shine so much shoddy material into something useful, and that's just how it is.
What my failure here was was not bothering to explain my entire logic why I was so adamant about the 70:30 thing—it's an inherently embarrassing pericope, not just for Maoists (of which I'm not) but for everyone who tries to understand the world using building blocks that dumb, angular and misshapen. We should be careful when handling these highly ideological phrases, because they're just as toxic to your brain as to an eager Red Guard's. That's why giving it some sort of elevated status in the prose above what it already has is the wrong move editorially. Sorry I didn't bother saying all this before, as I didn't think my unlucky rando roll this time meant a guy with scores of followers who might've even given a shit for what I had to say. We're all on the same team, I just wanted to defend my honor and that of others I've worked with editing Wikipedia. Have a good one.
Hey—appreciate you stopping by to defend your honor and explain in more detail. I’ll edit the article to note your reply and link to your comment.
I think “we’re all on the same team” is a worthwhile attitude to take towards editing Wikipedia, but “worthwhile” and “accurate” are distinct. When some editors come with the mindset that everyone’s on the same team while others come in with adversarial mindsets aimed at crafting particular narratives, the result is a frame that favors the adversarial users. Once a specific status quo has locked in shaped by adversarial decisions, keeping a high barrier to change that status quo winds up being something other than neutrality, even when well-meaning.
The power dynamics are peculiar here. On the one hand, me with scores of followers, you as—I have no doubt—a sincere and well-meaning volunteer aiming to build an encyclopedia. On the other hand: me, a nobody outside the institutions; Wikipedia, the first place people go for info on any given topic, with a section that I stand by my description of “propaganda” for, an editing process that is arcane and frustrating to outsiders, and a sense that the section has been deliberately shaped into that propagandistic form over time. I don’t want to pin my frustration with this article on you-the-unlucky-rando-roller who happened to edit an article I was looking at. But I stand by the frustration, and the sense that it’s not clear to me that the editorial zeitgeist is unhappy with the article.
Looking at the talk page now, I’ll note that a user on it is currently disparaging my writing based on their false, inflammatory claim that Substack “promotes Nazis” and accusing me of canvassing despite my explicit request that people stay away from doing so. I’m not “on the same team” as that individual in any meaningful way and I have no reason to expect fair treatment or consideration from them. That’s fine for what it is—I stay in my corner and let Wiki editors stay in theirs for a reason—but it’s worth noting.
I don’t think your micro-level edits indicate anything but your own good faith judgment. I do think that the consensus on that article has been shaped by the sorts of people who do and don’t get along with the community that shapes it, that the collection of some good-faith and some bad-faith (and yeah, AGF, but I’m not editing, I’m analyzing as an outsider) edits has resulted in a propagandistic section, and that individual edits that keep it as it is have the effect of maintaining that propagandistic frame.
Anyway, I’m glad to have a clearer view of your thought process and I do want to be clear that my critique is aimed at the article, not at you personally. You have a good one as well. Thanks again for stopping by.
Let me focus on just one bit of the current Wikipedia article
"His policies resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of people in China during his reign, mainly due to starvation, but also through persecution, prison labour in laogai, and mass executions."
There's a clear order of magnitude thing missing in this bland statement. Mao's regime resulted in more total deaths than any other government ever in the history of mankind. Worse Mao's deaths were his own populace and occurred mostly in peacetime, not (see e.g. Ghingis Khan) those of foreign countries he invaded and conquered. The runner up is Stalin while Hitler is a relatively distant third. You can argue whether Mao's regime resulted in 40M dead or 140M but it's still the most. If I wanted to get involved in editing wikipedia I'd add that as a follow on sentence with cites that are probably already in the longer article
The wiki article has the energy of: “yeah yeah yeah… he killed directly or indirectly millions and established a political regime that has fundamental issues to this day… but think of the ideas! The aspirations! The HOPES of a PEOPLE!!!”
There is a challenge for communist or “tanky socialists” that they have little to no real example of success. In fact, unless im mistaken, all of the large scale examples are quite tragic and dramatically horrifying in many aspects.
This creates a defensive posture off the bat, and everything becomes theoretical which then leads to “but communism/socialism” has never been truly tried. It also leads to their own version of revisionist history because otherwise they (and a bit of me) have very little compelling actual precedent to stand on.
The so what here, to me, is that this stuff only undermines an otherwise worthy discussion of how we can social/economically reform. It makes the avid side seem to fall into the “but my communism would work” which the falls into the greatest weakness of communism, authoritarian dictators.
Well, the problem is that communist ideas are broadly appealing, whereas capitalist ones are deeply unintuitive. Surely all those billionaires would be just fine with "only" a hundred mil and just one yacht? The crucial point is that capitalism directs people's vices into productive direction, whereas communists want to get rid of vices altogether, which is naive and unrealistic, and reliably leads to famines and death camps.
Communism is what happens when you take a primitive tribal economy and attempt to apply it to a modern government of millions. It's incredibly intuitive because it's what our brains evolved for. We evolved to be in small groups, to have strong feelings of unity and solidarity, and to react to failures in coordination or organization with moral panics and condemnation.
By default we're kind of like architects who've only built single family homes attempting to build a skyscraper without ever having seen one in person. We emphasize some really weird stuff, propose solutions that make no sense, and entirely ignore concerns that are significant in skyscrapers. Like wind, elevators, or fire safety.
Because we can't intuitively understand why these large buildings need things like expensive blow-through sections for wind, for example, we might declare a blow through section a waste, a great injustice! To reach Utopia the residents need only seize the means of construction and turn the blow-through into more office building.
But for some (entirely unrelated) reason the building keeps collapsing before the project can be complete! Because of this, we don't truly know the merits of no-blowthrough-ism, it's never been properly tried!
Utter horse shit lol
I don’t think your argument about ideological capture is persuasive, especially since you’re only referencing the first few paragraphs of the Legacy section. This is 3/4ths of the way through the article, which previously discusses (adequately, in my non-scholarly opinion) Mao’s faults in great detail. Moreover, you seem to imply that there are no traces of the 2011 article in the 2025 version, but the majority of its content is still incorporated into the article. In fact, the “historical criminal” and “monster” quotes are used just a few paragraphs after the ones you included in your screenshot (for the In China subsection). This isn’t a Ship of Theseus problem; a lot of the critical stuff is still there, including the quote you reference at the end.
I’m in agreement with you. Most of the material remains the same. I don’t actually think there’s a drastic difference in tone.
Even if there were changes, the current Wikipedia introduction brings Mao more in line with how the Chinese view him: as a great, terrible, nuanced leader. I think the author doesn’t quite understand how ambivalent the Chinese perspective is on Mao. Perhaps one can make the argument that the western perspective is the only one worth considering on Wikipedia—in which case, sure, go ahead with that—but I’d like to think that Wikipedia strives to balance multiple world views.
Most of the Mao-fans, on Wikipedia and IRL, are westerners not Chinese
I... don't know how to start with how wrong that statement is. Most reasonable Chinese aren't dedicated Mao fanboys, but even if a miniscule percentage is, it would eclipse westerners. You are severely underestimating the size of the Chinese population.
… on Wikipedia. English language Wikipedia. Not out there in the world.
Girl... you're the one that wrote "on Wikipedia and IRL." If it's just Wikipedia, then of course.
Also, my comment was acknowledging that Wikipedia is a western perspective. That's why I'm saying the rewrite brings it more in line with a Chinese perspective.
Theres a difference between what you call the “Chinese perspective” - nuanced, great, terrible leader, and the Mao-fans, the kind that idolize the guy and cant deal with the fact that he killed millions
Meant to write "maybe not out there in the world"
"Full Cast" podcast episode for this post:
https://open.substack.com/pub/askwhocastsai/p/how-wikipedia-whitewashes-mao-by