I'd like to take this opportunity to rant about Wikipedia since I don't have anywhere else to vent. I always loved open wikis because they allow for complete freedom of information, virtually no bias, and the ability to get any information you want without worrying about what is the intent of the post. Unlike news networks, whose goal is to manipulate you for the sake of clicks by relying on sensationalism and provocation, something like Wikipedia is theoretically immune to this, since anyone can edit and write whatever they want. The problem is that the admins have been becoming considerably more strict in regards to citations and sources which essentially turn the website into nothing more than a hosting platform for those same news networks. Just because CNN, BBC, CBC, MSNBC, Fox, or whatever other 20 million networks spout the same garbage calling someone by some fancy buzz-word name does not make the content of the article reliable. Just because a hashtag is popular on Twitter does not make whatever it's referring to any more valuable or correct. Just because multiple politicians said the exact same garbage doesn't mean that their opinions become the absolute truth. Because of this mentality, Wikipedia articles have gotten extremely biased to the point of being consistently incorrect. Of course you could say "why don't you just edit it". Well I could but if a majority follows the mentality of external sources over everything else then my edit will be reverted within minutes. And that assumes that I or someone else even could do the edit, since anything that's controversial is immediately protected. This means that those who have enough history to edit protected articles are at a risk of being banned from the same admins who protected the pages in the first place. At no point can you engage in a genuine discussion, due to the fact that anything that's posted by some news website is the absolute indisputable truth, or because a majority thinks something means it's objectively correct. Another great example is the "current events" section. All articles posted are externally sourced. Which means that as long as a subject is being talked about by some mob somewhere, it's going to be mentioned on Wikipedia, even if it has zero substance whatsoever. I should also point out that it's never discussed what qualifies as a reliable news network, and what doesn't. It seems that only the most popular websites have the authority in this regard, if they label a certain alternative network as "propaganda", then the next day the first sentence of that network's Wikipedia entry becomes "X is a propaganda[1] fake news[2] website that blah blah blah." Oh yeah, here's a more direct example. Back in late 2017 I reverted a Net Neutrality edit that showed MEO's addon packages (as the "intro" image of the article) as a consequence of removing NN. This is due to the source of this being literally nothing more than news network sensationalism quoting some guy on Twitter. Anybody can go to their website, run it through Translate and see that it's literally false. But no- because it's accepted within the news and Twitter that this is an accurate representation of the NN debate, Wikipedia ended up finalising the choice of keeping the image, and an admin accused me of being "[not] constructive" (on the talk page) despite explaining my reasoning in the edit summary.
With that said, this is why Wikipedia in its modern state pisses me off. As long as its policy encourages exclusively posting content that is featured in external sources, the diversity of which is very limited to the most popular news networks, Twitter, and the highest-ranking politicians, there will never be a truly open, bias-free wiki that allows for complete freedom of information. And as long as the authority of the administrators remains as extreme as it currently is, people will never want to challenge claims they disagree with, voice their beliefs, or in general try to contribute, for fear of being shunned or banned. In any case, thanks for reading this. Of course nothing will happen from this but I had to vent.
