Singer and right-wing activist Ted Nugent claimed in a recent Facebook post that a Wikipedia founder has decried the website’s liberal bias.
The post was marked as potential misinformation by Facebook’s fact-checking algorithm. It is, however, correct. Larry Sanger created Wikipedia with co-founder Jimmy Wales. Sanger left Wikipedia in 2002 and has been critical of the website since then, alleging issues with the management of the site, a “dysfunctional community” of contributors, and error-filled content. Sanger has discussed what he perceives as a bias in Wikipedia articles since 2010, when he told Slate:“I do think that there is a liberal bias on most topics where such a bias is possible, and I think that’s probably a reflection of the fact that, again, the people who work the most on Wikipedia tend to be really comfortable with the most radically egalitarian views. And those people tend to be either liberals or libertarians.”
Sanger made this claim again in interviews last year, in which he said that certain pages on Wikipedia have “become merely left-wing advocacy essays” and that you can trust Wikipedia to “give a reliably establishment point of view on pretty much everything.” He also called the website “propaganda.”
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