Perhaps the most important things about Wikipedia (and any published source for that matter) are being factual and neutral. Wikipedia obviously has a reputation as not always being factual, but I would argue that the neutrality aspect is often left ignored.

Being an open source, community driven project, Wikipedia has plenty of different viewpoints. Left-wing, right-wing, centrist, extremist, you name it. But opinions are like your buttocks - you can be proud of it, we all have one, but flashing it to others probably isn't the best idea.

This is especially important on those touchy topics. You know what I mean - gender identity, religion, politics (especially in the US!), regional/cultural wars. Current events as well, such as elections, disasters, living people. More people take Wikipedia as a news source as one may think, despite their knowledge that anyone can edit it.

Perhaps a way to make the project less opinionated is by reconsidering the biased sources policy. While the concept of it is understandable, the guideline in practice allows for the creation of one-sided articles. Many people fail to understand the point of it is to understand different viewpoints, not present an opinion as fact. Like the guideline states, they can play an important role in presenting facts, but they can be weaponized.

It's easy to roll your eyes at a page and criticize it for being biased or incorrect, but you have to be the one to change it. Seriously. With the same level of effort to share the issue online or make a tweet, you can click edit and change it. If it's too much work for you, shoot me a message at my talk page and (within a reasonable amount of time) I'll get back to you.




Le Mythe de Sisyphe

Backlog cleanup, visualized.