That's an interesting claim. Where's your evidence?

I'll also note you must have missed my question, as I don't think you have answered it.

disclaimer: Yes the grayzone hires RT reporters and has a strongly anti-us take on pretty much everything. Please don't spout "russian propagandist" takes. They've been heard plenty. This is the lack of truth I'm talking about. These are investigative journalists--a dying breed that western propagandists are attempting to make extinct.

https://thegrayzone.com/2020/06/10/wikipedia-formally-censor...

That's not evidence, that's a series of disconnected vague complaints from a publisher who is salty that they're not considered a reliable source. They complain about conflicts of interest, but I didn't see them even acknowledging their own. I also couldn't find any financial transparency, so it's not clear to me who is funding this or their other writing.

And I'll point out for the last time that you still haven't answered my initial question. If you're just going to keep dodging, I think I'm done here.

I thought the article answered your question pretty well and they clearly state on their about page that they are not backed by any government and rely on donations.

The entire internet points to wikipedia and its consensus mechanism is inherently vulnerable to editors for hire, as clearly demonstrated with scores of links.

So my answer is "pick any publication from 1980 and it is better because its bias can be audited and it is not polluting every search query I make"

They claim they are not backed by any governments, but decline to say who is backing them. Just as an example I came across yesterday, the San Francisco Standard is "not backed by any government and rely on donations", but their funding comes from a billionaire venture capitalist. The same claim could be truthfully made by a site backed by a Russian oligarch just as well. And regardless, there's no evidence.

I agree that Wikipedia's mechanism has its challenges; anybody who knows the site does. But it's vastly better than "any publication from 1980" because every edit is tracked, the citations should be available for all to see, and people can object to and/or edit bad content.

Just as an example of how a book from the olden tymes could go wrong, consider Trump's "The Art of the Deal". It sold more than a million copies, but its ghostwriter took 20 years to admit that it was a lot of horseshit: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/07/25/donald-trumps-...

Wikipedia is way more auditable than that book or most books from that era. And way more auditable than The Gray Zone that you've chosen to cite.

The former Wikimedia CEO is now on the Atlantic Council and currently serves on the US Department of State’s Foreign Affairs Policy Board:

https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/expert/katherine-maher/

Then-US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sent a representative of the Office of eDiplomacy to the 2012 Wikimania conference, who at the time was "leading an ambitious State Department initiative that uses social media and online platforms to change the way employees communicate and reach outside their boundaries to advance U.S. foreign policy interests."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/federal-fac...

His Wikimania speech is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0NsY48OQdc&t=457s

A few years later, the person put in charge of facilitating the Wikimedia Strategy 2030 process was Hillary Clinton's former Trips Director, Whitney Williams:

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/...

The PR company that has looked after Wikimedia for the past decade or so is Minassian Media, run by the chief communications and marketing officer of the Clinton Foundation, who formerly was assistant press secretary and director of television news in the White House for President Bill Clinton:

https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/wikipedias-d...

The Chief Advancement Officer at Wikimedia is the politically very well connected lady here:

https://sfgov.org/civilservice/sites/default/files/Documents...

The current CEO is Maryana Iskander; she has been a speaker at the Clinton Global Initiative and presented her work to Bill Clinton in South Africa.

Wikimedia also partners extensively with the Tides Foundation and Tides Advocacy ... So there are very significant political connections.

Since I can't post the Pepe Silva/Red String Guy meme here directly, I'd be much obliged if you'd just imagine it for me. Thanks!

Each of the above is true and verifiable by the links posted.

You can make of it what you will.

Yes and what I make of it in relation to information quality on Wikipedia is the red string meme. Classic conspiracy-theory boogeyman nonsense, all allusion and vaguery.

The Wikimedia Foundation does not edit Wikipedia. So what I said above has got little to do with the information quality on the level of an individual article.

I still find it interesting though that the organisation attracts so many politicos. And as far as the Wikimedia Foundation's Strategy 2030 is concerned, it's absolutely relevant. A lot of people in the volunteer community felt that the result of the strategy discussions was kind of preordained, rather than a reflection of the community's will. ("By 2030, Wikimedia will become the essential infrastructure of the ecosystem of free knowledge, and anyone who shares our vision will be able to join us ..." etc.)

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/...

There is more indirect influence on content by the Wikimedia Foundation nowadays, where they fund community organizers to increase coverage in a particular topic area.

An early example that taught them how not to do this (as well as a clear example of undue donor influence) was the Belfer Center scandal:

https://thewikipedian.net/2014/04/02/bats-in-the-belfer-a-be...

That was a scandal only because the Wikipedia volunteer community paid attention.

https://www.dailydot.com/debug/wikipedia-paid-editing-scanda...

A more recent example that seems unobjectionable is this one:

https://diff.wikimedia.org/2022/09/22/join-the-organizer-lab...

> what I said above has got little to do with the information quality

In that case I wish you luck in finding the right place to discuss it.

It was you who introduced the topic of government backing above ... that just triggered my memory. Never mind.