"Wikipedia is more one-sided than ever”: Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger

In My Humble Opinion
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Also, when someone points out that e.g. person one says the earth is flat, person two says it isn’t, both viewpoints shouldn’t be given equal credence, he replies:

“This is the sort of arrogant jerk behind Wikipedia today. I’m too busy to respond, but perhaps someone out there will do the honors?”

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I haven’t seen it so much lately, but I remember at one time it seemed like a lot of Wikipedia articles had a paragraph at the end to the effect of “On other other hand, some people believe…” pretty obviously tacked on for the sake of “neutrality”.

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Here’s the summary of neutrality and balance from Wikipedia;

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Reviving this thread because of an interesting development: a political scientist has published a paper which argues that Wikipedia has become more sceptical of fringe theories and a “both sides” and “reliable sources” approach over the past 20 years; that the Neutral Point of View has become more rigorous, not in a “both sides” sense, but in increasing opposition to fringe theories, which in turn has driven away editors who supported fringe theories.

As well, as I outlined upthread, Wikipedia editors have been developing more rigorous standards for what counts as a “reliable source”. As the article mentions, the watershed moment was when the Daily Mail was delisted as a reliable source, after extensive review.

As I was reading it, I was struck by the similarity to the “Twice-told tales” rule that the SDMB implemented, to prevent endless threads rebutting goofy 9/11 theories, and so on.

There’s a summary of the article here:

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Responding to a two year old comment, but what the heck …

The “Did You Know?” feature on the front page is meant to highlight new articles, by putting forward a quirky or intriguing fact in the article in hopes that a reader will say “hmm, what’s that about?” and click on the link.

There’s a fairly rigorous review process, where the author of the new article nominates it, and gives proposed « hooks », the quirky statement, one of which will be selected to go on the front page. Before a “hook” is approved, it goes through two or three levels of review to ensure it’s properly sourced, accurately reflects the content of the source, and so on. Can’t be more than 200 characters long.

I’ve had a few articles on DYK, and have been involved in reviewing proposed articles by other editors.