Wikipedia's policies on this are https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_vie... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability

These are the same policies Wikipedia has had for over a decade, with only relatively minor changes. Are you saying they're being interpreted differently? Could you give an example?

Larry Sanger, who co-founded Wikipedia, provides many examples of how Wikipedia articles are heavily biased towards mainstream viewpoints. https://larrysanger.org/2021/06/wikipedia-is-more-one-sided-...

> with only relatively minor changes

Relatively minor changes have huge effect on the content of articles. The linked article also addresses how Wikipedia has banned conservative sources from Wikipedia including Fox News, the Daily Mail, and the New York Post. "In short, and with few exceptions, only globalist, progressive mainstream sources—and sources friendly to globalist progressivism—are permitted."

Every claim in a Wikipedia article must be accompanied with a source. Claims that are only covered by conservative media and not covered at all by mainstream (liberal) media, cannot be referenced as a source in a Wikipedia article. This leads to conservative viewpoints being removed from articles. Which directly causes articles to become biased towards mainstream viewpoints.

In other words, facts that can only be cited to unreliable sources are not allowed in Wikipedia.

That checks out.

That is not at all what I, nor the author, is claiming, and instead of retorting with a shallow dismissal I recommend you review the HN guidelines.

practice is how policy is applied, and wikipedia in practice is not the same as wikipedia policy by rote.

Exactly. Policy is implemented by people. Eventually those who put extraordinary amount of time online will takeover editor/moderator positions and win editor wars. Most of those people are definitely not real experts in the field. Because real world experts wouldn't have time / motivation to engage in online fight.

Can you give an example of how you see this changing?

For one thing all media sources should be on equal footing. Let the community decide what is bullshit. It is ridiculous that BBC is considered a reliable source but RT is not. Both have a specific point of view that they promote, reliably, Wikipedia is not supposed to have a point of view. If BBC is allowed but RT is banned then Wikipedia POV will tend toward BBC simply because a contrasting POV is censored. Same would hold for allowing an Israeli newspaper but banning an Iranian one as an unacceptable source. All media outlets should be on equal footing.

RT is state propaganda. Not an accurate equivalence at all.

what do you think BBC is? or CBC? Also state funded 'journalists' who push agendas. You just like their agenda better.

at least US intelligence agencies used to hide behind private news sources until they started hiring the intelligence people outright.

The CBC has a viewpoint, but it is definitely not state propaganda.

No I disagree. They're state propaganda it's just the current journalist profession is so activist left they won't do anything for a right leaning government, but they will sue over a plainly fairly use video before an election to try to create chaos. They're too entrenched in their brand of leftist ideology to be used by the right.

They're a state backed propaganda machine pushing the state's narrative, but resisting any other narrative when the current opposition in power because they've been entirely staffed by activist journalists.

Just as Al Jazeera is Qatari state propaganda, BBC is British state propaganda. You can pull the wool over your eyes and disagree, but they're all state backed narrative machines.

The BBC works directly with the UK Foreign Office to push propaganda to destabilise other countries: https://thegrayzone.com/2021/02/20/reuters-bbc-uk-foreign-of...

Bellingcat and Radio Free Europe are considered reliable sources, while Wikileaks is not...

Bellingcat is obviously an MI6 PR outlet. To believe otherwise is ludicrous. Some stay at home dad who used to sell women's underwear has an independent insight on world class covert activities? Give me a break!

Bellingcat was started by a Something Awful poster/moderator called Brown Moses, you can look at his old posts to see his evolution from discussion board member to journalist by reading his old posts.

FWIW I don’t think it’s an MI6 backed site

Bellingcat participated in a covert UK foreign-office funded program with the BBC to "weaken Russian": https://thegrayzone.com/2021/02/20/reuters-bbc-uk-foreign-of...

Anyone suggesting Bellingcat is more reliable than Wikileaks is regurgitating establishment talking points.

See here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/P...

We've banned this account for using HN primarily for political/ideological battle. That's against the site guidelines because it destroys this place for its intended purpose—and for that reason, we ban accounts that do it, regardless of which politics/ideology they're battling for.

Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules with. Single-purpose accounts are not cool in general, because pre-existing agendas aren't sympatico with curiosity, which is the core value of this site.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html