In his famous novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell described a "ministry of truth", a division of the government that dictates to the people which narrative to believe in. In the real world, nothing comes closer to it than Wikipedia. It almost always occupies the leading spot in search engine results and is used as the source of information by voice assistants. To the average eye, this seems innocent and not in need of questioning. "Everyone uses Wikipedia and it is freely editable, so it must be reliable", right?
But no, as will be shown later, that doesn't necessarily mean so. Yet, the impression of reliability that Wikipedia gives would let a person (or a small group of people) who managed to gain control over it, wield great power to shape public opinion. And that is exactly what has happened. Under the hood, Wikipedia is severely manipulated on any topic where controversy and lots of money and power are involved. You will only get the whitewashed point of view approved by the mainstream media, the pharmaceutical industry, the World Health Organization, and associated powerful organizations. Anything that diverges from their point of view is promptly purged or labelled as "fringe", "alternative", and variations thereof.
Given that Wikipedia only allows mainstream sources, Wikipedia is in effect an extension of the elite-owned mainstream corporations that serve to protect those in power and prevent us from ever questioning the nonsense that they spout all day, under the pretense of an "openly editable encyclopedia".
Wikipedia describes itself as solid as a rock
against polarization, disinformation, misinformation
in its omnipresent donation banners (archive) (local). In reality, it is the elites' good little parrot that is able to squeak nothing but the ruling opinion.
It strongly appears that Wikipedia was designed with the goal of being infiltrated - or at least an opening was purposely left for it. And infiltrated it was. Let's first explore how Wikipedia's supposed principles are actually covers for its job of protecting mainstream narratives. Then, we will give examples. And finally, we will track the various steps of infiltration over the years. So let's begin:
Wikipedia promises us neutrality (archive) (MozArchive):
All encyclopedic content on Wikipedia must be written from a neutral point of view (NPOV), which means representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic.
What does neutral
mean for them, though?
Neutrality requires that mainspace articles and pages fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in the published, reliable sources.
Now let us see what does neutral
mean in a real dictionary (archive) (MozArchive):
not saying or doing anything that would encourage or help any of the groups involved in an argument or war
And in another one (archive) (MozArchive) (definition 1):
not taking part or giving assistance in a dispute or war between others
And definition 2:
not aligned with or supporting any side or position in a controversy
Let's throw in a third dictionary (archive) (MozArchive), because their definition is so good:
Not aligned with, supporting, or favoring either side in a war, dispute, or contest
Can we get anymore clear than the above? We now have enough to understand what neutrality
is all about in the real world. When two parties are fighting (whether it's a war or an argument), you don't take sides. Can you take that impression out of the Wiki definition? Wiki obviously takes the side of the reliable source
; it is a total 1984-style redefinition. Some synonyms for neutral
are unbiased
, impartial
and non-aligned
, which (especially the last one) should make it even more clear that the reliability
of one of the sides has no bearing whatsoever on whether supporting it becomes neutral
. Every dictionary is in agreement, that all sides of a conflict are equal as far as neutrality
is concerned.
But not Wikipedia. According to them, neutrality
comes down to what the reliable sources
have to say. So let's let Wikipedia itself explain what those even are:
I've always understood the word reliable
to mean generally solid
or something like that. But a reader reminded me that another possible meaning is someone you can count on to do what you want them to
. E.g a reliable dealer for drugs in a country that disallows them, etc. A dictionary like Cambridge's (archive) (MozArchive) confirms this with the first definition being Someone or something that is reliable can be trusted or believed because he, she, or it works or behaves well in the way you expect
. Though the difference might be subtle, it exists; my understanding was more about objectivity (or the properties of something) and Wiki's is about subjectivity (following their wishes). When I realized this, it put the Wikipedia situation into an entirely different light for me. Like those pictures that you can look at in two ways, and you finally find the second one and the flower becomes the old woman. By choosing the word reliable
, Wikipedia is telling us exactly what it's doing. It is picking the sources that will confirm the Ministry's biases. They could have used the words quality
or accurate
or professional
or anything else that's concerned with properties other than blind obedience. But they didn't. Because the Ministry wants exclusively sources that it can rely
on to say what it wants them to. Even though on their page explaining reliable sources (archive) (MozArchive) they pay lip service to qualities like a reputation for fact-checking
, accuracy
or error-correction
, when you examine their list of reliable sources (archive) (MozArchive), it is obvious those only provide a cover for allegiance to the Ministry.
On that list, spreading conspiracy theories
(which really means "crimes done by the people at the top") is enough to get sources (such as NaturalNews or ZeroHedge) banned. Another reason is (alleged) propaganda
from Russia or China (however, USA's from their myriad of sources that spread it, is completely acceptable). The funniest case is that of Newsmax, with the rationale for its dismissal being: Newsmax lacks adherence to journalistic standards, launders propaganda, promulgates misinformation, promotes conspiracy theories and false information for political purposes, and promotes medical misinformation such as COVID-19-related falsehoods, climate change denialism, conspiracy theories, and anti-vaccination propaganda
. Haha. All the favorite Ministry boogeymen are here. And look at the utter contempt with which they are stated. Can it get any clearer that whether a source is accepted by Wiki has nothing to do with a reputation for fact-checking
, accuracy
, or error-correction
- but only which specific views it holds?
Another piece of evidence to show it's all about shilling certain positions can be found by seeing what kinds of sources get unquestioningly accepted, and why. Snopes, PolitiFact and Reuters have spread a lot of nonsense during the "pandemic", which I have shown a few times in my Corona report. Funnily, there is not a lot of "fact-checking" in the "fact-checker's" offices. But, Wikipedia isn't phased, because those sources were commited to supporting the mainstream Corona narrative at all costs (as in, they were reliable
for doing so). Oh, and additional points are given because they're endorsed by some shady International Fact-Checking Network
- which actually receives funding (archive) (MozArchive) from the...wait for it... Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation :D - and is even owned by the same entity as PolitiFact, one of the bullshitting sources. No conflicts of interest there, at all :D. It's the blind leading the blind on Wiki - or maybe the same criminals being the judges, jurors and executioners.
And so, since Wikipedia only accepts sources that state its prefered views, and has redefined neutrality
to mean "extreme favoring of the views stated by those sources" - it can then pretend to be neutral while in reality executing the shill campaign for the ruling elites. How despicably fraudulent. And yet that's still not enough defense against unwanted views; sometimes a source that's on the reliable
list will say something it shouldn't. It will of course end up on the unreliable / banned list during the next review (archive) (MozArchive); but in the meantime, the Ministry needs to keep the conspiracy theories
and pseudoscience
from slipping through the cracks. They achieve this through the Due weight
principle:
Giving due weight and avoiding giving undue weight means articles should not give minority views or aspects as much of or as detailed a description as more widely held views or widely supported aspects. Generally, the views of tiny minorities should not be included at all, except perhaps in a "see also" to an article about those specific views.
Ensure that the reporting of different views on a subject adequately reflects the relative levels of support for those views and that it does not give a false impression of parity, or give undue weight to a particular view.
So the beliefs the Ministry likes take the center stage, and daring to put any others on equal footing is really, really bad. By its own admission Wikipedia is just a shill outlet for its chosen theories. But the reality is even worse than the stated principle - all unwanted views on Wikipedia are dumped into separate articles (which then shit on them). So there isn't even a distinction between significant
and tiny
minorities - both receive the same treatment. The one where they get ignored in the main article and sent to the wolves' den for the inevitable ripping. So, any view that the Ministry doesn't like is not given due weight
- as the Ministry says - but no weight at all, or even negative weight. The stuff about relative levels of support
is just a bluff, since any view the Ministry dislikes receives zero support in its articles (I will show all this with several examples later). The Ministry's utter hate against challenging the ortodoxy is easily seen in the following quote:
While it is important to account for all significant viewpoints on any topic, Wikipedia policy does not state or imply that every minority view or extraordinary claim needs to be presented along with commonly accepted mainstream scholarship as if they were of equal validity. There are many such beliefs in the world, some popular and some little-known: claims that the Earth is flat, that the Knights Templar possessed the Holy Grail, that the Apollo Moon landings were a hoax, and similar ones. Conspiracy theories, pseudoscience, speculative history, or plausible but currently unaccepted theories should not be legitimized through comparison to accepted academic scholarship.
Suddenly any pretense of neutrality poofs into the ether when it concerns conspiracy theories
or pseudoscience
. Do they even have statistics on whether their hated views are minority
? If not, then there is no basis for rejecting their inclusion from main articles about a topic. Remember that Wikipedia doesn't claim to reject minority
views completely - but represent them proportionally according to their prevalence. In that case, why isn't the view that the Moon landing was faked included as a section of the Moon landing (archive) (MozArchive) article? After all, 16% of British people believe that (archive) (MozArchive). If it is about the opinions of scientists only, then well, do they even have the statistics for those? We know 3500+ architects and engineers question the official 9 / 11 story, and yet that is not enough to give the alternative view a section in the Wikipedia hit piece (archive) (MozArchive). If the Ministry's definition of significance
isn't based on the numbers, then on what? Aside from the Ministry simply not liking certain views, of course. None of this is ever explained in any Ministry page, so the most obvious assumption is that it is - indeed - about the Ministry's preferences.
The only way out of this conundrum is to settle on the prevalence of a view in reliable sources
, but the reliable sources
are handpicked in terms of whether they have the views prefered by the Ministry itself - so it's just a self-referencing claim ("I am the greatest person in the world, because I have eliminated everyone but myself from the competition"). Even if we let them define the terms of the competition, they still don't have statistics for which views are actually significant
in their chosen reliable sources
(nor what level of prevalence is required), so it all ends up being based on the Ministry's imagination. Literally - set the rules of the competition, then write down the scores themselves, and finally declare yourself the winner. All hail, the Ministry of Truth! Anyway, let's check out some other rules Wikipedia is supposed to follow (which really are just extensions of NPOV that they have already shown to not care about):
Wikipedia describes disputes. Wikipedia does not engage in disputes. A neutral characterization of disputes requires presenting viewpoints with a consistently impartial tone
And:
There are no forbidden words or expressions on Wikipedia, but certain expressions should be used with care because they may introduce bias. For example, the word claim, as in "Jim claimed he paid for the sandwich", could imply a lack of credibility. Using this or other expressions of doubt may make an article appear to promote one position over another. Try to state the facts more simply without using such loaded words; for example, "Jim said he paid for the sandwich". Strive to eliminate flattering expressions, disparaging, vague, or clichéd, or that endorse a particular point of view (unless those expressions are part of a quote from noteworthy sources).
The following ones are particularly funny, because almost every article Wikipedia has on anything even mildly controversial violates them:
Avoid stating opinions as facts. Usually, articles will contain information about the significant opinions that have been expressed about their subjects. However, these opinions should not be stated in Wikipedia's voice. Rather, they should be attributed in the text to particular sources, or where justified, described as widespread views, etc.
Avoid stating seriously contested assertions as facts. If different reliable sources make conflicting assertions about a matter, treat these assertions as opinions rather than facts, and do not present them as direct statements.
Their About page (archive) (MozArchive) also contains this gem:
Editors' opinions and beliefs and unreviewed research will not remain.
Oh, and from another page (archive) (MozArchive):
All quotations, and any material whose verifiability has been challenged or is likely to be challenged, must include an inline citation to a reliable source that directly supports[2] the material
Remember this one when you examine the upcoming examples.
Wikipedia dismisses sources that it arbitrarily decides are not reliable
solely because they have views that go against the Ministry, instead of the quality of research. Then, even the sources that remain are only allowed to cover topics the Ministry likes, in ways the Ministry likes, lest they eventually end up on the unreliable list. After all this, Wikipedia pretends to have a bunch of rules that allegedly ensure the neutrality of its articles, but in reality does not care about any of them at all. Let's move on to the examples which show that:
Link - Archive - MozArchive
Parapsychology is the study of alleged psychic phenomena (extrasensory perception, telepathy, precognition, clairvoyance, psychokinesis (also called telekinesis), and psychometry) and other paranormal claims, for example, those related to near-death experiences, synchronicity, apparitional experiences, etc.[1] Criticized as being a pseudoscience, the majority of mainstream scientists reject it. [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9]
Right in the first paragraph we have a loaded word (alleged
), another loaded word (claims
; hey, remember that thing about how the word claim [...] could imply a lack of credibility
, and should be avoided?), and an insult (pseudoscience
). The claim that the majority of mainstream scientists reject it
has 8 (!) references, but none of them provide any statistics supporting it, so it is just a bluff (and violates All quotations, and any material whose verifiability has been challenged or is likely to be challenged, must include an inline citation to a reliable source that directly supports[2] the material
). It is of course impossible for the editors to not have noticed that their main claim is completely unsupported - therefore the whole article has been written as a hit piece from the start. Either way, if they cannot prove that mainstream science actually rejects parapsychology, then there is no basis for making skepticism the prominent view according to Wikipedia's own principles. It is also funny how they cite Richard Wiseman, when the same Wiseman has admitted (archive) (MozArchive) that psychic ability is proven. Of course, that quote didn't find its way into the Wiki hit piece. Also look at the huge right sidebar where parapsychology is lumped in with things like fringe science
, urban legend
or fallacy
. This article doesn't even sniff the neutral
label.
Link - Archive - MozArchive
Cosmologists and astrophysicists who have evaluated plasma cosmology reject it because it does not match the observations of astrophysical phenomena as well as current cosmological theory. Very few papers supporting plasma cosmology have appeared in the literature since the mid-1990s.
This claim is completely unsourced. Literally editor's opinion, which Wikipedia supposedly disallows.
The Electric Universe refers to a related set of ideas that are also not supported by observations
The source for this claim is a rant about pseudoscience (archive) (MozArchive) from the fucking Michael Shermer. Is this what Wikipedia considers a reliable source
? Shermer is not a physicist, nor any kind of scientist - just a random who has made a career out of denying everything non-mainstream. And yet, this is the guy Wikipedia chose to debunk a claim. What a joke. Yet another Ministry piece that is utterly non-neutral.
Alternative medicine is any practice that aims to achieve the healing effects of medicine despite lacking biological plausibility, testability, repeatability, or evidence from clinical trials.
No reference given for this editor's opinion.
Alternative therapies share in common that they reside outside of medical science and instead rely on pseudoscience.
Neither for this one. In fact, there isn't a single reference given for any of the bullshit said in the entire first paragraph. Or the second. Or the third. Or the fourth. I'm serious - go check it for yourself. The Ministry threw at you a screed taken entirely out of its ass. Then, on the right sidebar, they call alt med the alternative to reality-based medical treatments
of conventional medicine. Totally neutral, totally not loaded, totally not just an opinion of a shill for the medical industry. The principle of Wikipedia describes disputes. Wikipedia does not engage in disputes. A neutral characterization of disputes requires presenting viewpoints with a consistently impartial tone
just looks funny reading this piece, in which every sentence violates it.
I don't think there's a need to go through all the claims this trashy article makes. I mean, there are thousands of alternative therapies and they include foods, exercise, herbs, etc. that have been used for thousands of years and are known to work. There is no need for the Ministry's approval to realize this. But they dismiss it all in principle, because you are supposed to act only according to the information coming from the Ministry.
Serious adverse events associated COVID‑19 vaccines are generally rare but of high interest to the public.[15] The official databases of reported adverse events include the World Health Organization's VigiBase, the United States Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) and the United Kingdom's Yellow Card Scheme. Increased public awareness of these reporting systems and the extra reporting requirements under US FDA Emergency Use Authorization rules have resulted in an increased volume of reported adverse events.
The rarity of side effects is emphasized all over the article, but they never tell you about the 12 times increase of their prevalence at VAERS. What they do try to do is dismissing the relevance of the reporting system (with a link to a "fact-checking" site), without ever telling you the actual numbers. Because if they told you the numbers, you would have realized that their explanations don't work. They also say that up to 20% of people report a disruptive level of side effects after the second dose of an mRNA vaccine
, but actually half of vaccine takers get a systemic reaction according to V-Safe - which Wikipedia completely ignores. The fact that they dismiss both VAERS and V-Safe (remember, these are government sources) shows that they are not only not neutral
, but nothing more than shills for the vaccines.
Link - Archive - MozArchive
One of the worst cases on Wikipedia, for sure - pretty much perfectly showcasing how the Ministry doesn't give a shit about any of the noble principles they advertise.
The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11,[c] were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by the militant Islamic extremist network al-Qaeda
Sounds like a violation of Avoid stating opinions as facts
and Avoid stating seriously contested assertions as facts
. But of course, anything is allowed if the alternative is to give space to the dreaded conspiracy theories
:
9/11 conspiracy theories have become social phenomena, despite lack of support from expert scientists, engineers, and historians.
Ha-ha. What about the Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth (archive) (MozArchive)? Who are not mentioned even once in this whole excuse of an "encyclopedic" article. If Wikipedia was even close to neutral
, there would be a whole "Criticism" section in the article, that would honestly present the views of the AE911 folks. I mean, this is clearly a significant
view by any sane definition of significant
(they have over 3500 architects and engineers who question the official story; August 2022 stats). But of course - since the point of the Ministry is propaganda - it can't be mentioned. The only way you'd know that alternative views even exist is if you clicked the 9 / 11 conspiracy theories (archive) (MozArchive) page (one single link in the middle of the article; can easily be missed) - where they are promptly shat on.
One of the arbiters on the 9 / 11 arbitration page (archive) (MozArchive) said this:
This is my first participation in an arbitration case, although I have participated in a successful mediation. I was really hoping to see a more dispassionate and rational discourse. Unfortunately, from the barely-concealed vitriol of some of the preceeding statements, we can clearly see why we have ended up at this stage. Potential new editors are forced to deal with a handful of self-appointed wardens of the site who have summarized the events of 9-11 in their minds, and refuse to consider anything outside of those summaries. Any attempt to add content to the article outside of the government-prescribed record of events is met with scorn and ridicule. Editors who attempt to add such are called, (as noted above), "Truthers" or "Conspiracy Theorists" at best, and more commonly "morons" and similar. The attempt to rename "9-11 Conspiracy Theories" to "9-11 Alternative Theories" was defeated by editors entrenched in their beliefs, despite the obvious logical fact that a non-mainstream theory is NOT necessarily a conspiracy theory, and the attempt to portray it as such is obvious bad faith.
Having said that, I (like others above) am also not sure what the goal of arbitration would be in this case.
Perhaps you were thinking that "Since Wikipedia is open, we can just fix the bad articles!"; well, this should bury that idea. They didn't even let people fix the fucking name, much less the contents of their propaganda pieces.
Link - Archive - MozArchive
The United States' Apollo 11 was the first crewed mission to land on the Moon, on 20 July 1969.[4] There were six crewed U.S. landings between 1969 and 1972, and numerous uncrewed landings, with no soft landings happening between 22 August 1976 and 14 December 2013.
Same old, same old. Opinions as facts, no criticism, dismissal of alternatives with the conspiracy theory
label. The thing that makes this one unique is that the moon landing is so easy to disprove. Like, a single Bart Sibrel video - for example this one (CF) or this one can do it in less than an hour. And then nothing remains of all the fluff they've included in this Ministry propaganda piece. Look, people - the chance that the moon landing was real is zero. Absolute zero. And there is no way the Wiki editors don't know they're bullshitting you, proving Wiki is evil to the core.
About Bart Sibrel, the Ministry shits on him too (archive) (MozArchive), of course.
Bart Winfield Sibrel (born 1964/1965)[1][2] is an American conspiracy theorist who has written, produced, and directed works in support of the false belief that the Apollo Moon landings between 1969 and 1972 were staged by NASA under the control of the CIA
The standard conspiracy theorist
smear and a false belief
dismissal (isn't this just a direct violation of Avoid stating opinions as facts. [...] However, these opinions should not be stated in Wikipedia's voice.
?) right in the first sentence of a neutral
encyclopedia. Totally shameless.
Due to its high levels of saturated fat, numerous health authorities recommend limiting its consumption as a food.
Took them until just the third sentence to throw this predictable nonsense at the readers. And then there's this:
Marketing of coconut oil has created the inaccurate belief that it is a "healthy food".
Inaccurate belief
= another direct violation of Avoid stating opinions as facts. [...] However, these opinions should not be stated in Wikipedia's voice.
This is so tiring. Anyway, this sorry piece of medical industry propaganda that pretends to be an encyclopedic article has a section titled Health concerns
- but nothing whatsover about the shitloads of health benefits (archive) (MozArchive) that coconut oil has been shown to have in scientific studies. From that section we can fish out this gem:
Although lauric acid consumption may create a more favorable total blood cholesterol profile, this does not exclude the possibility that persistent consumption of coconut oil may actually increase the risk of cardiovascular diseases through other mechanisms
"Although our primary theory has been convincingly refuted, we don't want people to get healthy so we still pretend coconut oil is somehow harmful, with zero evidence". By the way, whenever coconut oil is compared to vegetable oils in terms of cholesterol, consider this quote from Ray Peat:
The cholesterol-lowering fiasco for a long time centered on the ability of unsaturated oils to slightly lower serum cholesterol. For years, the mechanism of that action wasn't known, which should have suggested caution. Now, it seems that the effect is just one more toxic action, in which the liver defensively retains its cholesterol, rather than releasing it into the blood.
Hey, they even have a Clinical research
section! Is this where we finally find a mention of the numerous health benefits? Or maybe some information about the healthy populations (archive) (MozArchive) that eat extreme amounts of coconut with zero negative effect (Vascular disease is uncommon in both populations and there is no evidence of the high saturated fat intake having a harmful effect in these populations.
)? No, it's just more whining about cholesterol. Because this is the only point the Ministry could have latched on to to make coconut oil seem negative at all costs. But to do that, they had to ignore everything else, which can only be called neutral
in clown world.
An author who had significant and sustained contact with Burusho people, John Clark, reported that they were overall unhealthy.[16]
The source for this claim is Bible Life (archive) (MozArchive), a Christian creationist site that has hundreds of "alternative" theories in it. This is exactly the kind of a source which the Ministry would have dismissed immediately... if it didn't help them "prove" what they wanted to. Does it not seem like Wikipedia does everything to make you not be healthy - by denying that healthy populations exist? The stuff about reliable sources
evaporates when Wikipedia really needs to dismiss something. Either way, this account totally contradicts McCarrison's from the 1920s, described in the book The Wheel of Health:
My own experience provides an example of a race unsurpassed in perfection of physique and in freedom from disease in general.
During the period of my association with these people, I never saw a case of asthenic dyspesia, of gastric or duodenal ulcer, of appendicitis, of mucous colitis, of cancer...Among these people the abdomen oversensitive to nerve impressions, to fatigue, anxiety or cold was unknown.
This source is - of course - completely ignored by the Ministry.
Definitely the most egregious example of Wikipedia's non-neutrality (this probably means the elites want to keep this buried the most; I will let you guess the reason).
The white genocide, white extinction,[1] or white replacement conspiracy theory,[2][3][4] is a white supremacist[5][6][7][8] conspiracy theory which states that there is a deliberate plot, often blamed on Jews
White genocide is a political myth,[22][23][15] based on pseudoscience, pseudohistory, and ethnic hatred
I'm being blinded by all this neutrality.
White people are not dying out or facing extermination.[26][27][28][21]
Do not be fooled by the four references, because none of them discuss the numbers. The Conversation (archive) (MozArchive) (one of the sources considered reliable
by Wikipedia) - on the other hand - does. And guess what:
The proportion of whites in the U.S. population started to decline in 1950. It fell to gradually over the years, eventually reaching just over 60% in 2018 – the lowest percentage ever recorded.
The numbers support the theory. The same is done by the Washington Post (archive) (MozArchive), another reliable source
:
The most touted set of projections adopts the most exclusive definition, restricting the white population to those who self-identify as white and also no other race or ethnicity. Under this definition, whites are indeed in numerical decline.
Mixed-race parentage is growing more common, and a rapidly growing number of people choose more than one racial or ethnic category to describe themselves on the census.
Though the article calls it a myth
, the actual quotes inside it support the white genocide theory. The same trend is also seen in the UK (archive) (MozArchive):
The white British proportion is officially below 50 per cent in Leicester, Luton and Slough.
London’s 3.7 million white Britons were already a minority – 44.9 per cent of the population – and researchers said the same could be true in Birmingham within seven years.
And yet, none of those sources can be found anywhere in the 323 ones cited by Wikipedia - all while the article is filled with ones whining about hate
, neo-nazism
, white supremacy
, white nationalism
, conspiracy theories
and Donald Trump. Now why not at least mention the numbers once in such a long article about a topic for which the numbers should form the base? But of course, they can't teach their readers why those dirty neo-nazis
, conspiracy theorists
, and white supremacists
believe in the theory in the first place, since enlightenment is not on the Ministry's menu. This article is so valuable, because it violates pretty much every single rule Wikipedia pretends to follow - even reliable sources
are completely ignored here.
Link - Archive - MozArchive
At this point I'm used to enduring the Wiki talking shit about all kinds of conspiracy theories or alternative science. In those cases, even if you buy the Ministry's bullshit - at worst you will end up as a normie; confused, manipulated and controlled by dark forces - but without real physical harm done. What I will not tolerate is them shamelessly toying with people's lives by lying about a nutrient that is extremely safe and the lack of which affects pretty much every disease process in the body. If there is ever a time where words can kill, it is right here. Hold on to your seats, because the biggest conspiracy of all time is about to be exposed:
Wikipedia first tries to reel you in by mentioning some generic positive effects of vitamin D, such as the maintenance of calcium and phosphorus levels in the blood
, bone remodeling through its role as a potent stimulator of bone resorption
and vitamin D also affects the immune system and VDRs are expressed in several white blood cells
. The ones everyone knows and accepts and they couldn't really argue against. That is the bait, and once you're on the hook - they can begin to devour their catch.
The first fraud is in the way they define vitamin D deficiency
and insufficiency
. Their definitions are based on the USA government's definitions stated here (archive) (MozArchive):
So, they define deficient
as the level which fails to prevent rickets, and insufficient
as that which fails to support overall health in healthy individuals
. Amazing. Now we'll do a thought exercise. Ask yourself how you would define a deficiency
in a nutrient. My answer is: let's say that the human body has a need for some nutrient to do some things. If the nutrient is lacking to do "job X" then some bad effect - that can be detected - happens (analogically, if a city lacks a fire department - or enough firemen - when a fire happens, stuff just burns and this can be detected). And so, a sufficient
(or not deficient) amount of a nutrient is that which prevents all the bad effects due to lack of its availability (or, a sufficient amount of firemen is the one that can reach all the fires that happen and douse them in the required time). Do you follow me here? Deficiency
- to me - ends when additional doses of the nutrient do not provide anymore good effects and / or prevent bad ones. Sufficiency
is when you have enough to fulfill all the jobs the relevant nutrient is supposed to do. Lack of deficiency = sufficiency (the term insufficiency
, that they try so hard to shove in there, seems like another fraud to me. Just a distraction to make it seem that a small or moderate deficiency is fine in the minds of people. The more honest terminology would be deficient
for what they call insufficient
and extremely deficient
for what they call deficient
). For another example, there exists some amount of protein with which you ensure the maximum possible amount of muscle growth as a weighlifter. Less than that would be deficient
assuming that muscle growth is one of the effects you're considering. Hell, let's give another example - the sufficient
amount of clothing is the one that fully protects you from outside temperature, e.g a jacket in winter. Anything that doesn't and makes you feel cold (e.g only a sweater in winter) is deficient
. I want to hammer on this point, because it is fundamental to show how the government (and Wiki by extension) lies to you. So I hope this was clear enough. Now look at this chart with all of this in mind:
Notice the trick yet? They arbitrarily picked out a single (worst) effect of a lack of vitamin D to focus on (rickets) and are claiming that - if that effect is prevented - you're not anymore deficient
in vitamin D. Yet in this case they failed even according to their own standards, because you need 18ng / ml - and not 12 - to fully prevent rickets. Anyway - as the chart shows - vitamin D prevents many diseases in much higher amounts than are recommended. But Wiki and the gov say fuck all those, go suffer, you plebeian and tell you that you are sufficient
with only the rickets prevention. This is like deciding that you're sufficient
in protein if you're not sarcopenic. Screw all the other effects of additional protein on hormones or anything else, those are irrelevant. Or it's like deciding that you're sufficient
in clothing if you're not so hypothermic that you die. And so, if you wear just enough to prevent death in winter (let's say jeans and a shirt), that's sufficient
even if you're shivering. This is how they make it seem like you're having enough of something, even if in reality more would heavily improve your situation. Another easy to understand example would be defining poverty. Screw electricity, clothes or gas - you're sufficient
in money if you can afford food, according to Wiki's and the gov's reasoning. Anyway, the chart shows that 54ng / ml is the amount that achieves all possible good effects (there could be some more not shown in this chart, and so the real needed amount might be even higher, but let's keep this simple for now) of vitamin D, and so is the actually sufficient
amount according to a sane, non-arbitrary definition. Anyway, Wiki takes their shitty definition and runs with it to claim that:
An estimated one billion adults worldwide are either vitamin D insufficient or deficient
Yet the reality is that... are you ready for this? EVERYONE is deficient! I know my audience will not simply buy this truly outrageous claim, so I have of course prepared an extremely strong proof (local):
Look at the 95th Percentile
column. This means that 95% of people have less vitamin D in their blood than what's listed. The conversion from nmol/L (European unit) to ng/ml (American unit) is 2.5. And so - if you look at e.g the LASA (Netherlands) study, 95% of people living there have less than 103.9 nmol/L (41.56 ng/ml) of vitamin D in their blood. Look back at the chart above and see, that many diseases are still not prevented at that level! And that's the highest result out of all the studies! Hey, I have no idea what even is the difference between Original
and VDSP-Calibrated
but it doesn't change anything. Neither one of those allows countries to reach the levels required to maximally prevent kidney or ovarian cancers, or fractures. When I told you everyone was deficient, I meant it. And that's still the best faring country, remember! Most of them are at the level of like 80 nmol/L (32 ng/ml) or even less, which is really abysmal - failing to even maximally prevent heart attacks.
But hey - for thoroughness sake - let's clarify that maybe it's not literally everyone
in the world that's deficient, since I just know some nitpicker will harp on this point. Some wild people in Africa that haven't yet been shoved into the city lifestyle, actually come close to the optimal level, but even they don't reach it. I think the only ones actually not deficient are those that either take supplements in high enough dosages (e.g 10K per day for at least most of the year) or sunbathe naked during the entire summer, or maybe work construction shirtless for many hours per day. But this is a fraction of a fraction of all people, and not at all relevant to the many hikikomoris of today (an office worker is effectively a hikikomori at least when Vit D intake is concerned). And still, I suspect that even those enjoying lots of sun exposure during the vitamin D months might still be deficient during winter in Europe, since the amount they have stored in their bodyfat will be falling every day then, and not being replenished. So supplements will still be essential unless you're a white man in Africa (the cheat code).
So, Wiki lies about the amount of deficient people. Then they also downplay the effects of the lack of vitamin D:
Severe vitamin D deficiency in children, a rare disease in the developed world, causes a softening and weakening of growing bones, and a condition called rickets.
Deficiency results in impaired bone mineralization and bone damage which leads to bone-softening diseases,[29] including rickets in children and osteomalacia in adults.
They can do that only because they've defined all other effects out of existence! See the previous paragraphs for a refresher. Hey, this isn't the first time they've played that game. They - actually - do that every time they dismiss a source because it's not on their list of reliable
ones. But here it is much more blatant. Then - when they finally decide to focus on something other than bones - they spit nonsense such as:
vitamin D3 supplementation has been tentatively found to lead to a reduced risk of death in the elderly,[11][56] but the effect has not been deemed pronounced, or certain enough, to make taking supplements recommendable.[13]
vitamin D supplements do not alter the outcomes for myocardial infarction, stroke or cerebrovascular disease, cancer, bone fractures or knee osteoarthritis.[13][57]
vitamin D supplementation is not associated with a reduced risk of stroke, cerebrovascular disease, myocardial infarction, or ischemic heart disease.[13][79][80]
[13] is their favorite source, it seems. I decided to take a look at it (local). Check this:
Do you see anything funny? The dosages used in those studies were pathetic. 800 IU? 400?! What the fuck is that? That's - of course - not going to prevent or treat any disease. They didn't even manage to raise the levels of vitamin D in the bloods of participants to levels sufficient according to the above chart (54 ng/ml or 135 nmol/L as refreshers). See how the one using 9000 IU actually got results in terms of the blood levels, at least? So why not gather the studies where actually relevant dosages were used? In most of the studies Wiki's meta-analysis included, people started with a vitamin D level of a corpse (55 nmol/L = 22 ng/ml, or even less), and got it raised only a little (e.g Meyer 2002, level raise of 18.8 ng/ml to 25.6, whereas the amount needed to prevent fractures minimally is...38!! Of course it didn't work!) with the puny dosages used. No wonder there weren't results in terms of disease incidence. Yet Wikipedia uses this shitty meta-analysis to dismiss vitamin D treatment altogether. Do not - also - get tricked by the massive per year
amounts used, because when calculated - the per day dosage ends up being just as puny (500 000 per year = 1369 per day, and failed to raise blood levels AT ALL!). Look at the amounts positive studies use (archive) (MozArchive), then you will understand the fraud easily. They can be 10 or even more times higher than the Wiki ones (e.g many using 50000 weekly
, which is over 7K per day). And so, the shiny statistical graphs shown in Wiki's meta-analysis later mean nothing whatsoever, since they're based on studies with mouse dosages. The entire source [13] is a hit piece, and not actually meant to investigate anything. But hey, maybe Wiki has simply made a mistake with that one source. Mistakes happen! No one is perfect. So let's investigate some others, starting with source [79] (local), which supposedly proves that vitamin D supplementation is not associated with a reduced risk of stroke, cerebrovascular disease, myocardial infarction, or ischemic heart disease
. In this meta-analysis, out of 21 included studies:
The increases in blood vitamin D levels were not measured. But from [13] we know that such dosages are not enough to even come close to the optimal levels (e.g 1369 failed to raise it AT ALL!). And the starting levels were low in all studies where such data was available - except Sanders (where the participants started with already optimal levels, pretty much - meaning additional vitamin D would not have done anything, anyway). So, it's almost certain that the treatments simply didn't raise the blood vitamin D levels high enough to prevent cardiac events (in [13] the only dosage which accomplished that was the 9000 IU per day; nothing close to that was used here). Yet another shoddy hit piece cited by Wiki. Hey, I also looked at source [80] (local), and it suffers from the same issues as [79] (corpse initial levels and low treatment doses). No need to repeat the analysis, I guess. Anyway, let's read further...
The entire Excess
section is a sham. How dare you even have it when everyone is deficient and most people terminally so? Anyway, sometimes Wikipedia does admit a part of the truth there, but only to later bury it with lies, leaving the reader confused. Their first nonsense claim is:
The threshold for vitamin D toxicity has not been established; however, according to some research, the tolerable upper intake level (UL) is 4,000 IU/day for ages 9–71[157]
By the way, [157] (local) cites no research supporting this claim - so this is a violation of All quotations, and any material whose verifiability has been challenged or is likely to be challenged, must include an inline citation to a reliable source that directly supports[2] the material
. Fortunately, Wikipedia comes to the rescue and beautifully refutes it in the same sentence:
while other research concludes that, in healthy adults, sustained intake of more than 50,000 IU/day (1250 μg) can produce overt toxicity after several months and can increase serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels to 150 ng/mL and greater.[24][158]
Amazing. Obviously, if 50000 over many months is needed to produce overt toxicity
, then 4000 (over 10 times less) must be perfectly safe. They also post this crucial tidbit later, which makes their entire section irrelevant:
Published cases of toxicity involving hypercalcemia in which the vitamin D dose and the 25-hydroxy-vitamin D levels are known all involve an intake of ≥40,000 IU (1,000 μg) per day.
But after that, they come back to fearmongering about much lesser amounts:
Over 18% of the population exceeds the NIH daily recommended allowance (RDA) of 600–800 IU,[2] by taking over 1000 IU, which suggests intentional supplement intake.
Over 3% of the population exceeds the NIH daily tolerable upper intake level (UL) of 4000 IU,[2] above which level the risk of toxic effects increases.[167][166]
Fuck off! We have already established that there is no toxicity for any dosage under 40 fucking thousand, so why keep pretending that these tiny amounts are suddenly dangerous?! [167] (archive) (MozArchive), by the way, provides no support for 4000 IU being harmful in any way:
In this case, an intake value of 10,000 IU/day reflects a NOAEL. This NOAEL is initially adjusted for uncertainty to establish a UL of 4,000 IU/day, as described below..
NOAEL
= The highest intake (or experimental dose) of a nutrient at which no adverse effect has been observed
. Meaning, they admit that 10000 isn't toxic. They then literally use the "muh uncertainty" excuse to set the maximum recommended Vit D intake at 4000 IU per day. But that has nothing whatsoever to do with proven toxicity (which they admit only starts at 10000+; which is also wrong but more acceptable). And yet, Wikipedia tries to use this source to support the claim that 4000 IU is toxic
- violating All quotations [...]
again. They've also dreamed up this absolute insanity:
vitamin D overdose causes hypercalcemia, which is a strong indication of vitamin D toxicity – this can be noted with an increase in urination and thirst. If hypercalcemia is not treated, it results in excess deposits of calcium in soft tissues and organs such as the kidneys, liver, and heart, resulting in pain and organ damage.[24][29][168]
Other symptoms of vitamin D toxicity include intellectual disability in young children, abnormal bone growth and formation, diarrhea, irritability, weight loss, and severe depression.[24][168]
Nowhere in [24] (local) is there a single word about any of those alleged horrible effects (hey, another violation of All quotations [...]
). Somehow in their craftiness, Wiki has made [24] seem like an anti-Vit D paper, when it's anything but. In fact, the entire paper is about preventing effects of vitamin D deficiency such as the depression which Wiki claims is caused by... vitamin D excess! Quite the reversal of reality that is standard for the Ministry. I wonder if it's some kind of a game, trying to find the most pro-Vit D paper and seeing how they can make it appear to support their insane anti-health agenda. These quotes from [24] will certainly never find their way inside the Wikipedia hit piece:
For 10,366 children in Finland who were given 2000 IU of vitamin D3 per day during their first year of life and were followed for 31 years, the risk of type 1 diabetes was reduced by approximately 80% (relative risk, 0.22; 95% CI, 0.05 to 0.89)
In a study of patients with hypertension who were exposed to ultraviolet B radiation three times a week for 3 months, 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels increased by approximately 180%, and blood pressure became normal (both systolic and diastolic blood pressure reduced by 6 mm Hg). vitamin D deficiency is associated with congestive heart failure
Men and women with a 25-hydroxyvitamin D level above 35 ng per milliliter (87 nmol per liter) had a 176-ml increase in the forced expiratory volume in 1 second. Children of women living in an inner city who had vitamin D deficiency during pregnancy are at increased risk for wheezing illnesses
Another source cited to support their toxicity
bullshit is [158] (archive), which is quoted as such:
The main symptoms of vitamin D overdose are hypercalcemia including anorexia, nausea, and vomiting. These may be followed by polyuria, polydipsia, weakness, insomnia, nervousness, pruritus and ultimately kidney failure. Furthermore, proteinuria, urinary casts, azotemia, and metastatic calcification (especially in the kidneys) may develop.[158]
The source itself just repeats the claim, without proving any of those scary side effects. Pathetic. The other sources ([29] and [168]) for the alleged destruction caused by vitamin D are 600+ page books, which I'm sorry, but I'm not going to read (and I doubt the Wiki editors have, either). At least bring the actual quotations that you think prove your claims. Organ (or any) damage from vitamin D is obviously just pure imagination on the Ministry's part. And it has a very clear goal - to get you to avoid the one crucial nutrient your body craves, so that you get sick and dependent on the medical industry, which will only "manage" your disease and never cure, and get rich off you and millions of similar people. To really hammer the point that vitamin D toxicity is a complete illusion, check this (archive) (MozArchive):
In fact, in East Germany between the 1940's and 1960's, children would ROUTINELY get 6 doses of 600,000 IU's of vitamin D between birth and 18 months old.
A study called Intermittent High Dose vitamin D During Infancy questioning this practice's safety noted that, while many of the children developed transient high levels of blood calcium levels, "...all the infants appeared healthy and repeated inquiries... have failed to identify clinical vitamin d toxicity as a result of the prophylactic program...".
Boom. Myth sent into space. I'm going to swallow some 10K units of Vit D to celebrate :D. The reality is, you can barely find any supplement out there that is safer than vitamin D; I'd wager that one doesn't exist. All the fearmongers can come up with as a possible danger is hypercalcemia, and then try to connect that to actual side effects by pure imagination. Yet even that fails (archive) (MozArchive):
Each ampule contained 600,000 IU of vitamin D; therefore, the boy received a total of 2,400,000 IU over 4 days. The patient's hypercalcemia persisted for 14 days and was complicated by persistent hypertension. No renal, cardiac, or neurologic complications were noted.
Over two million fucking IUs! For a 2 year old! Resulting in 470 ng/ml blood levels! 20 times more than what a regular person has! And yet it did not cause any organ damage at all! Are you still scared of the puny 4K? Are you still trusting the Ministry? To recap, they lied about what being deficient
in vitamin D means. They lied about the amount of deficient
people. They tried to make vitamin D into a rickets-preventing nutrient, ignoring the bunch of other diseases (archive) (MozArchive) prevented by adequate amounts. Which they have also heavily understated (by a factor of 10 or even more). They lied about the amount of vitamin D that causes toxicity
. And they lied about what that toxicity
represents.
Imagine having the entire medical and scientific community at your fingertips, and you try to get them to produce a single bad effect of vitamin D (because it's just too fucking good, and threatens the medical industry's profits too much). So they dig and dig and pathetically, they can only come up with hypercalcemia
- which simply means a blood calcium level that is higher than their arbitrary norms. Then, they perform a magician's trick and assume that this hypercalcemia
will bring about disaster such as kidney failure. I have actually read all their sources that allegedly prove the damage, and they are all like this. Since it's impossible to show a direct connection between vitamin D and organ damage or any other bad effect - even with dosages a hundred times higher than what they think is toxic
- they have to settle for the phantom known as hypercalcemia
, and hope no one notices (Diggy did :D). I mean, don't you think that if they could actually prove such bad effects directly, they would have? But they can't, so you get the hypercalcemia
boogeyman. Really fucking pathetic!
Let's remember that they control the territory here. They could have structured the article however they wanted, cited whatever they wanted in a perfectly cherry picked way if they wanted to (as with [24]). You can bet that if they were able prove vitamin D to actually be bad, they would have left no doubt about it. But reality simply does not allow this, and no amount of fudging can change it so much as to reverse it completely. And so - if they can't fudge their way to victory - they move on to strategy #2: complete burial of the other (honest, empathetic) side. Imagine if their article was actually neutral
, and they let the vitamin D supporters speak. We'd smash the facade in just one or two paragraphs. And therefore Wikipedia can't and doesn't give us even that much - violating their own principles in the process. Because the Due weight principle still requires giving minority views the space. Even if it's only a little. But we get zero (they do link Michael Holick several times, but pretend he supports their bullshit). Because it has to be this way for the murderers in governments and medical institutions to succeed in killing us off. Anyway - if you want to learn something about vitamin D - visit the actually authoritative wiki: the Vitamin D Wiki. And prepare to lose a few nights of sleep :D.
Section written by an anonymous contributor.
Link - Archive - MozArchive
It is safe to assume that Wikipedia is one of the most heavily manipulated sources of information on the Internet when it comes to the topic of circumcision.
The history of the Circumcision
article is a rabbit hole in itself, littered with drama. Between its inception in November 2001 and as of writing in April 2024, it has been edited over 15.000 times (MozArchive) and has a discussion archive (MozArchive) that spans eighty-five (85) pages. Explaining it in its entirety would take all day, so here is a summary.
If you happened to browse Wikipedia on a summer day in 2004 and stumbled upon its "Circumcision" article (MozArchive), you would have encountered lots of criticism of circumcision. So much so that even the first phrase mentions that circumcision removes a highly sensitive part of the penis
:
Circumcision is the surgical removal of some or all of the prepuce or foreskin (including the ridged band), a highly sensitive part of the penis.
It is hard to believe that this comes from a publication that later became known for aggressively promoting circumcision. We find lots of criticism and negative information about circumcision in the 2004 version, such as:
some circumcised males retain a significant proportion of their nerve-rich penile skin and have an amount of mobile skin remaining on the erect penis, while others do not
The glans slowly becomes desensitized during the following month.
Many medical claims have been made to justify circumcision. These included the prevention of epilepsy, penile cancer and phimosis. Circumcision advocates today claim that it reduces urinary tract infections and HIV infection, but these claims are strongly disputed and argued against.
The "External links" section (MozArchive) at the bottom contained many sites critical of circumcision, far outweighing those in favour. There was even a separate article about the most sensitive part of the foreskin, the ridged band (MozArchive):
The ridged band is a band of highly innervated and vascularised tissue that is located just inside the tip of the foreskin of the human male near the mucocutaneous boundary
The ridged band is invariably excised when a male is circumcised.
One might as well call it the "rich band", given how rich in nerve endings it is. There was also a separate article about the movement of the foreskin called "Gliding action" (MozArchive):
The gliding action greatly reduces friction during intromission and coitus, thereby reducing chafing and irritation.
Another article available back then was titled "Sexual effects of circumcision" (MozArchive). These separate articles were redirected to the manipulated main articles Circumcision
and Foreskin
. It's almost like they don't want anyone to know that a concept like gliding action
exists.
All this criticism of circumcision has largely been purged over time. Instead, we get blatant glorification such as:
Neonatal circumcision is generally a safe, low-risk procedure when done by an experienced practitioner.[73][74][75]
So what happened inbetween all those years? Circumphiles worked their way up to administratorship using bait-and-switch techniques, and the owners of Wikipedia did nothing to prevent it, meaning they either are unaware of it or they approve of it. The first major circumcision promoter to gain administratorship was the user "Jayjg".
Jayjg started editing Wikipedia in June of 2004 and was promoted to administator (archive) (MozArchive) in September that year. Less than 48 hours after becoming an administrator, he touched the circumcision article for the first time (archive) (MozArchive). What a co-incidence! It couldn't possibly be related, right?
A year later, in July 2005, he was appointed as an arbitrator (archive) (MozArchive) by none other than founder Jimmy Wales, meaning he must have approved of Jayjg. Arbitrators are members of the "Arbitration Committee", a virtual supreme court that Jimmy Wales originally established to solve disputes between editors on Wikipedia. Besides the owners of Wikipedia, the Arbitration Commitee is the highest authority on the site, being able to revoke administrator rights and change policies, in addition to the usual administrator abilities of blocking and otherwise restricting users.
Over the following years, several circumcision promoters were promoted into positions of authority, notably the users Avraham, Doc James (originally "Jmh649"), and Zad68. Avraham was promoted to administrator in 2006 and bureaucrat in 2009. Bureaucrats are able to add and remove administrators. When Avraham became less active, Doc James (James Heilman, MD) took over his role in maintaining the circumcision advertisement disguised as an encyclopaedia article throughout the 2010s. Heilman was even a board member of the Wikimedia Foundation, the organization that hosts Wikipedia. The board named itself the "Board of Trustees". Whether Heilman is trustworthy shall be your judgement.
Their strategies are as usual, blocking or scrutinizing undesirable editors to report any minor mistake they make to the Administrators' Noticeboards (archive) (MozArchive) at any opportunity with the aim to get them expelled from the project.
As one would expect, Wikipedia has policies (archive) (MozArchive) in place that prohibit people from editing once an administrator blocks them. Not only is the individual not allowed to edit anymore, but no one else is allowed to edit "on their behalf", as determined by the site administrators. Additionally, any edits that administrators think have been made by the blocked individual can be reverted immediately - no need to deal with their valid arguments anymore. Ain't that convenient? This places the ultimate leverage over the content into the hands of the site administrators.
Since those editors are no longer able to participate in administrator elections, this creates the vicious cycle that the administrators get to decide who gets to decide who can become an administrator. It is a pseudo-democracy. Wikipedia tries hard to pass itself off as a democracy in its donation banners (archive), while being the opposite.
Let's see what we find in the article today:
Neonatal circumcision is generally a safe, low-risk procedure when done by an experienced practitioner.
As of April 2024, the Sexual effects
section reads:
The accumulated data show circumcision does not have an adverse physiological effect on sexual pleasure, function, desire, or fertility.
It is more carefully worded than it used to be in 2022 (MozArchive):
Circumcision does not affect sexual function, sensation, desire, or pleasure.[93][94][95][96][97][98]
Behind this phrase, there are six "scientific" studies. That's how desperately they want to convince us of this physically impossible claim. It doesn't take a genius to realize that removing the foreskin reduces the number of nerve endings. Given that nerve endings are the source of sensation, fewer nerve endings mean less sensation. One of those studies that want to convince us otherwise is by Australian Professor Brian Morris, a man who believes circumcision should be required by law, who created the circumphile website "circinfo.net", and member of the "Gilgal Society", a circumphile organization. This fraudulent study from 2013 stood in the article for around a decade before being removed. But never mind, five studies he directed still stand in the references as of April 2024.
Two of those studies are also co-authored by John N. Krieger. One of them, titled Critical evaluation of arguments opposing male circumcision: A systematic review (archive), has the following gem in its fine print:
CONFLICTS OF INTEREST
The first author (Brian J. Morris) is a member of the Circumcision Academy of Australia, a not‐for‐profit, government registered, medical association that provides evidence‐based information on male circumcision to parents, practitioners and others, as well as contact details of doctors who perform the procedure. The second author (Stephen Moreton) is an editor for http://CircFacts.org. The third author (John N Krieger) provided advice and supported the legal help to University of Washington for the patenting of a circumcision device.
And you expect honest studies from patent holders of circumcision devices and editors of circumphile websites?
Oh, by the way, Professor Brian Morris has an article about himself too. As of 2005 (MozArchive), it stated:
He is controversial because he advocates circumcision despite not being a medical doctor and using the name of the University of Sydney despite the University not advocating his personal views.
Good luck finding this on modern Wikipedia.
This is what happens when people who own no foreskins are tasked with documenting the functionality of the foreskin. And don't just take our word for it. Even the German-language Wikipedia (archive) (MozArchive) says so!
Die Vorhaut enthält zahlreiche Meissnersche Tastkörperchen, die durch Dehnung stimuliert werden. Auf diese Weise spielt die Vorhaut eine Rolle für die Sexualität des Mannes.[111][112] Durch die Entfernung der Vorhaut ist die Eichel nicht mehr permanent bedeckt; sie kann durch den ständigen Kontakt mit der Luft sowie Reiben an der Kleidung an Empfindlichkeit verlieren. Auch durch Entfernen von Vorhaut und Frenulum selbst kann die Sensibilität herabgesetzt werden, da beide über zahlreiche Nervenenden verfügen.[113] Nach einer belgischen Studie mit Befragung von 1.059 unbeschnittenen und 310 beschnittenen Männern wirkte sich eine Zirkumzision deutlich negativ auf den sexuellen Genuss und die Orgasmusintensität bei Reizung der Eichel aus.[114][115]
Translation:
The foreskin contains lots of Meissners corpuscles which are stimulated when stretched. This way, the foreskin plays a role for the sexuality of a man. Due to the removal of the foreskin, the glans is no longer covered and can lose sensitivity through the constant contact with air and rubbing against clothing. Additionally, the removal of the foreskin and frenulum can reduce sensitivity, given that both contain many nerve endings. According to a belgian study that surveyed 1059 intact and 310 circumcised men, circumcision had clearly negatively affected sexual enjoyment and orgasm intensity when the glans was stimulated.
If one language of Wikipedia contradicts another, you know something is going seriously wrong. Given that in Germany the majority of men have their foreskins, claming "circumcision does not affect sexual function" on the German-language Wikipedia would be outright credibility suicide.
There have been attempts to add the study by Sorrells from 2007 (archive) (MozArchive) - one critical of circumcision - to the English article, but any mention of that study would not survive for long. One such attempt took place in February 2008 (archive) (MozArchive):
In 2007, Sorrells ML, Snyder JL, Reiss MD, et al. did a sensitivity study using nylon filaments on healthy men with both intact and modified genitals. The circumcised men lost some sensation in the nonablated areas and genital cutting removed sensitive areas.
As one would expect, this addition was unwelcome. When Jake Waskett, a circumphile editor and close friend of Avraham, woke up the next morning, he went to his computer and looked at the recent edits to the circumcision article. Without further ado, he reverted the addition (archive) (MozArchive), with the following comment:
rv. we discuss individual studies in the sub-article. in the WP:SUMMARY, we need to ... well, summarise
Oh, really? First of all, which sub article is meant? The one that was later redirected to the main article (Sexual effects of circumcision
)? Good luck finding one occurence of him using this argument to remove a manipulated circumphile study.
In August 2009, there were two attempts to mention the suicide of David Reimer as a result of a botched circumcision in the article. As one would expect, it did not survive there for long. The attempts were reverted by Jake Waskett (archive) (MozArchive) and reverted by Avraham (archive) (MozArchive) respectively:
WAY WAY too many changes, including picture placement, discuss each one on talk please
Yeah, sure. Against circumcision? Go through our lengthy discussion process first. In favour of circumcision? Come right in!
This is how they suffocate anything critical of circumcision by requiring it to be discussed first while letting anyone adding supposed benefits of circumcision edit to their heart's desire. This is not an isolated occurance; it happened constantly throughout the history of both the foreskin (archive) and circumcision (archive) articles, often accompanied with a link titled "WP:MEDRS", for which a more honest name would be "WP:MÈRDE".
"WP:MEDRS" is a shortcut to the page Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources (medicine) (archive), a policy which gives the circumcision-supporting C.D.C. (the same one that promoted DDT (see 21:45), remember?) and the aforementioned W.H.O. control over what can appear on Wikipedia:
Statements and information from reputable major medical and scientific bodies may be valuable encyclopedic sources. These bodies include the U.S. National Academies (including the National Academy of Medicine and the National Academy of Sciences), the British National Health Service, the U.S. National Institutes of Health and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the World Health Organization.
James Heilman, known as "Doc James" on Wikipedia, did not spend his Valentine's Day 2016 making love, but monitoring the circumcision article on Wikipedia. On one occasion, someone tried adding the name of circumphile Brian Morris to his claim that the benefits of circumcising an infant outweigh the risks of doing so by at least 100 to 1
, so readers could judge for themselves whether or not to trust someone named "Brian Morris". After only eleven minutes, Heilman reported for duty (archive) (MozArchive) and reverted the addition. As a result, the only mention of Brian Morris' name is in the references section where fewer readers bother looking.
From April (MozArchive) to October (MozArchive) 2023, the article would have you believe the following:
According to Bañuelos Marco & García Heil (2021) there is now "enough literature supporting the fact that childhood circumcision has no negative influence in sexual function per se" for it to be considered a settled matter. However, the authors also write that an individual's body image and self-esteem surrounding their own circumcision status may lead to a subjective improvement or adverse change in these metrics, although this would not be caused by "objective histological or physiological reasons". A similar statement was made by Bossio & Pukall (2018), which concluded that an individual's attitude toward their own circumcision status is more important than their actual circumcision status in matters of sexual functioning.
Let me summarize: If you have a positive attitude towards having had a body part cut off from your defenseless infant self without you being able to consent, it magically happens to improve your sexual function? What a load of crap.
Complications caused by circumcision are dismissed as rare and "individual cases". They are listed with percentages instead of absolute numbers to make them appear like a trivial statistic, even though they are life-altering for men who are affected (archive) (MozArchive).
The most common acute complications are bleeding, infection and the removal of either too much or too little foreskin.[1][76] These complications occur in approximately 0.13% of procedures.
Severe complications are rare.
Severe to catastrophic complications, including death estimated, in the USA in 2010, at 1 in 11,000 cases, are so rare that they are reported only as individual case reports.
Given that Wikipedia and its carefully curated sources lied to us about circumcision not affecting sexual function, we can't even be sure how accurate these numbers are.
Supposed benefits of circumcision are often restated throughout the article, while negative effects are mentioned rarely, if at all. For example, as of October 2024, the article only passingly mentions skin bridges once its over 146,000 characters, whereas it boasts over ten times about how circumcision supposedly reduces the risk for sexually transmitted infections (STIs), without ever explaining how a lack of foreskin is supposed to prevent STIs from reaching the urethra and entering the penis. Why think for yourself when you have "The Scientists" to think for you, right?
Even if circumcision actually reduced the risk for STDs, it would not negate the need for condoms during intercourse. But there is no word about condoms in the entire article, making the appearance that circumcision is the panacea.
Wikipedia can't help but rave in several sections about how glorious circumcision supposedly is, starting with the lead section:
The procedure is associated with reduced rates of sexually transmitted infections and urinary tract infections [...]
In the Uses
section:
In 2007, the WHO and the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) stated that they recommended adolescent and adult circumcision as part of a comprehensive program for prevention of HIV transmission in areas with high endemic rates of HIV [...]
[...] circumcision is an efficacious intervention for HIV prevention in high-risk populations if carried out by medical professionals under safe conditions.
The World Health Organization in 2010 stated:
There are significant benefits in performing male circumcision in early infancy, and programmes that promote early infant male circumcision are likely to have lower morbidity rates and lower costs than programmes targeting adolescent boys and men
In 2020, the World Health Organization again concluded that male circumcision is an efficacious intervention for HIV prevention [...]
One powerful organization making the same conclusions repeatedly (surprise, surprise) gets to regurgitate all over the article, where as whoever contradicts with said conclusions gets to shut up.
Circumcision is most likely to benefit boys who have a high risk of UTIs due to anatomical defects [...]
But how likely is most likely
? Let's have a look at the source, shall we?
Given that the risk of UTI among this population is approximately 1%, the number needed to circumcise to prevent UTI is approximately 100.
So a hundred foreskins are severed to prevent one infection? Imagine killing a fly using a tank. Strange how Wikipedia failed to tell us that, isn't it?
Knowing most people wouldn't dig through the walls of text in the sources and just swallow the junk information it serves, the circumcision promoters at Wikipedia deliberately omitted the bit of information that would weaken the appearance that circumcision is awesome. A trivial benefit is overstated while the massive loss is quietly swept under the rug. Remember how Purdue Pharma lied that less than 1% of opioid patients get addicted, while omitting a decisive fact, which is that the tested patients were not allowed to take any more pills home? Wikipedia lifted this trick straight out of the Purdue Pharma textbook (archive) (MozArchive).
In its effects
section, Wikipedia won't miss the opportunity to fearmonger about which scary diseases circumcision supposedly prevents:
Male circumcision reduces the risk of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) transmission [...]
In 2020, the World Health Organization (W.H.O.) reiterated that male circumcision is an efficacious intervention for HIV prevention if carried out by medical professionals under safe conditions.
"Reiterated"? Like Brian Morris, the W.H.O. gets to dump its diarrhea into the article multiple times, whereas Sorrells and his team were denied even one mention. This is as far from neutrality as it can get.
A 2010 review found that circumcision reduced the incidence of HSV-2 (herpes simplex virus, type 2) infections by 28%.
Of course, Wikipedia fails to provide absolute numbers, only providing relative numbers. In relative numbers, two in a million are a 100% increase over one in a million, where as in absolute numbers, that's a 0.0001% increase. These are textbook tricks to manipulate you using statistics.
Circumcision reduces the risk that a man will acquire HIV and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs) ...
Circumcision is associated with a reduced prevalence of oncogenic types of HPV infection [...]
Studies evaluating the effect of circumcision on the rates of other sexually transmitted infections have, generally, found it to be protective.
Here, numbers are omitted entirely. Without numbers, a circumcision benefit that only occurred in one in a billion people can still be stated as a benefit.
What Wikipedia of course fails to tell you is that 100% of circumcisions result in:
Wikipedia completely fails to count these guaranteed losses from circumcision as complications.
Oh, and did we mention that cells from foreskins are sold on a microorganism marketplace (archive) and celebrities like Sandra Bullock use facial cosmetics harvested from childrens' foreskins (archive) (MozArchive)?
This once again shows people seem to think that we somehow magically live in a time that's fundamentally different from other times in history in which the name of science was severely abused by propaganda from the powerful. Almost everyone today easily accepts that historically, politically constructed lies were presented as confirmed by science, but somehow people refuse to believe it could be the case nowadays.
The Simple English Wikipedia (archive) (MozArchive) is even more strongly in favour of circumcision. Given its lower visibility, it can even get away with outright referencing circumphile websites CircList
and Choosing Circumcision
as if they were credible sources. As of April 2024, CircList is referenced four times in the article. If the main English Wikipedia did that, it would severely embarrass itself. It would be too obvious that it is trying to advertise circumcision. Anyway, let's see what we find in this garbage dump:
People disagree about whether circumcision is a good for health and sexual pleasure. People who think circumcision is a good idea may point to health reasons.
And what about the people who believe otherwise, Mr. Neutral Wikipedia?
Many people think a penis looks better if it is circumcised. A study done in the United States found that the women prefer a circumcised penis, to look at and in sexual activity, especially if they are going to put their mouth on the penis.[9]
The source:
Williamson, Marvel L.; Williamson, Paul S. "Women's Preferences for Penile Circumcision in Sexual Partners". Journal of Sex Education and Therapy. http://www.circlist.com/surveys/williamson-01.html
Let's see what else we find on the same page. Hint: Highly perverted nonsense.
the circumcised penis exists in exposed beauty whether flaccid or erect
circumcision at puberty in nonliterate cultures is in some ways a sexual recognition of the emerging man
The permanent exposure of the glans of the penis renders it a sexual tool.
No, sir. What renders the penis a sexual tool is the movement of the foreskin.
In countries where most boys are circumcised as babies, parents sometimes think that uncircumcised boys will be teased. Some boys are mean to a boy if his penis looks different.
Oh, really? And how about the countries where the majority is intact as nature intended? Those countries are not hard to find, they are the majority of the world outside your 'Murica.
Some myths about medical male circumcision:[11]
The source:
"Medical Male Circumcision Services". www.uwc.ac.za. Retrieved 2018-08-25.
Wait, did they link a "circumcision services" website as a source for their "neutral" article? So much for "Wikipedia is ad-free". The advertisement is in plain sight in the center.
There is even an entire section titled Reasons for circumcision (archive) (MozArchive). Notice the absence of a counterpart, "Reasons against circumcision". The Simple English Wikipedia is not even trying to hide that it is blatantly advertising circumcision. Normally, such an article would qualify for deletion (archive) (MozArchive).
Pages that were created only to say good things about a person, company, item, group or service and which would need to be written again so that they can be encyclopedic.
Back to the main English Wikipedia. Surprisingly, the Foreskin
article is less manipulated, even occasionally contradicting the Circumcision
article. For example:
During the physical act of sex, the foreskin reduces friction, which can reduce the need for additional sources of lubrication.
Oh, really? Then how come the Circumcision
article claims the opposite? Only one can be true.
In 2004 (MozArchive), the article succinctly summarized the core functionality of the foreskin in its lead section:
It serves a protective function for the ridged band, the frenulum and glans penis, keeping these sexual tissues moist, lubricated and protected from abrasion and injury.
Also notice how the article started with In mammals
, whereas today it reads In male human anatomy
- as if humans were the only species to possess a foreskin. Well, humans are the only species dumb enough to cut it off. Anyway, the next section contained:
Unlike the skin on the rest of the body which is attached to the underlying tissue, the prepuce and shaft skin are free to glide along the shaft of the penis, which reduces friction, abrasion and loss of lubricating fluid during sexual intercourse, frottage or masturbation.
This is nowhere to be found in the current version. Surprisingly, a few benefits of the foreskin have still survived because they are too obvious to be denied, but they are mostly buried deep in the article:
And the foreskin helps prevent the glans from getting abrasions and trauma throughout life.
The College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia has written that the foreskin is "composed of an outer skin and an inner mucosa that is rich in specialized sensory nerve endings and erogenous tissue".
Since Wikipedia is based in the United States, where circumcision is commonly performed, one can safely assume that many of the site administrators, the people who get to decide who is allowed to edit, are circumcised themselves.
For a circumcised man, to acknowledge that circumcision is damaging means acknowledging that oneself is permanently damaged, which is difficult. Too difficult for some. So the easy way out of this horror is to outright deny the harm, no matter how obvious it is. "I am not a permanently damaged person". If one can't live with the thought of being a permanently damaged person, one might as well try to pretend there is no damage.
"It can't be harmful. Otherwise, it means I am damaged for life."
No man wants to think of himself as a sexually defective person. Wikipedia administrator Jayjg wants to believe he is good in bed. Avraham wants to believe he feels his partner's vagina (if he has a partner) in its full glory. James Heilman wants to believe he is a sexually functional being.
Likewise, Jimmy Wales appointed Jayjg as an arbitrator at a time he was already known to be a circumphile. Mr. Wales would only give this level of authority to users he approves of, and he gave this authority to a circumcision promoter. Why would that be? Perhaps because he wants circumcision to be glorified to justify his own circumcision, but he wants to let unpaid workers take over the dirty work?
Unfortunately, the only way for a circumcised man to avoid acknowledging being sexually defective is to deny that circumcision is harmful. Even scientists are not superhumans, as some would believe. Those "scientists" who perform circumcision-related studies are people with feelings and private lives. Any scientist who is circumcised himself would be reluctant to acknowledge that he is sexually damaged.
A person who has deluded themselves into thinking that circumcision is harmless might want to enforce this belief onto their male offspring. How? By getting him circumcised too. If circumcision were not harmful, there would be nothing wrong about getting one's son circumcised as well, right? And that's how the vicious cycle continues.
In a 2004 essay (archive) (MozArchive), one of the early administrators and bureaucrats of Wikipedia said:
Seasoned, trained, well-paid marketeers, lobbyists, and political operatives are going to come here, with the benefit of the experience of others in subverting Wikipedia for personal gain. Don’t let them get away with it. So far, there are only a few, and they are poorly organized. That will change when the stakes become higher.
And this is precisely what happened. A site with the publicity of Wikipedia will inevitably become the target of people with shady intentions. And it failed to defend itself against circumphiles.
In more than two decades, the owners of Wikipedia - the Wikimedia Foundation - did nothing to counteract circumcision promoters on their platform. They could have removed circumcision promoters' administrator permissions, they could have prohibited circumcision promoters from editing circumcision-related articles, they could have reinstated editors blocked by circumcision promoters, they could have removed fraudulent studies by openly circumphile perverts like Brian Morris, but they did nothing.
Now, you might ask yourself, "why didn't the owners of Wikipedia do anything against all this?" There are two possibilities. Either they are blissfully unaware of what happened to one of the most edited pages on their largest wiki, or they approve of it. The judgement is yours.
Since I don't want to misrepresent him, I will just let Larry Sanger speak for himself. Here are his reports: Wikipedia is Badly Biased (archive) (MozArchive) and Wikipedia Is More One-Sided Than Ever (archive) (MozArchive). Very worth reading. Some quotes:
Wikipedia’s “NPOV” is dead.1 The original policy long since forgotten, Wikipedia no longer has an effective neutrality policy. There is a rewritten policy, but it endorses the utterly bankrupt canard that journalists should avoid what they call “false balance.”2 The notion that we should avoid “false balance” is directly contradictory to the original neutrality policy.
The Barack Obama article completely fails to mention many well-known scandals: Benghazi, the IRS scandal, the AP phone records scandal, and Fast and Furious, to say nothing of Solyndra or the Hillary Clinton email server scandal—or, of course, the developing “Obamagate” story in which Obama was personally involved in surveiling Donald Trump. A fair article about a major political figure certainly must include the bad with the good.
In other words—and this is the point crucial to evaluating an article’s neutrality—a neutral article is written not to take sides on issues of controversy. It does not matter whether one or both sides believe their point of view is totally factual and supported with incontrovertible proof.
Meanwhile, as you can imagine, the idea that the Donald Trump article is neutral is a joke. Just for example, there are 5,224 none-too-flattering words in the “Presidency” section. By contrast, the following “Public Profile” (which the Obama article entirely lacks), “Investigations,” and “Impeachment” sections are unrelentingly negative, and together add up to some 4,545 words—in other words, the controversy sections are almost as long as the sections about his presidency. Common words in the article are “false” and “falsely” (46 instances): Wikipedia frequently asserts, in its own voice, that many of Trump’s statements are “false.” Well, perhaps they are. But even if they are, it is not exactly neutral for an encyclopedia article to say so, especially without attribution. You might approve of Wikipedia describing Trump’s incorrect statements as “false,” very well; but then you must admit that you no longer support a policy of neutrality on Wikipedia.
It is time for Wikipedia to come clean and admit that it has abandoned NPOV (i.e., neutrality as a policy). At the very least they should admit that that they have redefined the term in a way that makes it utterly incompatible with its original notion of neutrality, which is the ordinary and common one.
And from the second article:
As to the second impeachment trial (that of January, 2021), in the Donald Trump article, no information is offered on either side about the arguments for impeachment, either in the House or the Senate proceedings. Certainly there is nothing remotely representing the perspective of Trump and his defenders.
Can any of this information on the China Biden scandal be found—even in a twisted, biased form—in the Wikipedia article on Joe Biden? Nope. As of this writing, that article contains not a single word about the China deals, Rosemont Seneca, Tony Bobulinski, the laptop, or the CEFC.
So, one of the two founders of Wikipedia admits it's anything but neutral, and gives us a few examples from US politics and other issues. Clearly, we can see that there is a wide breadth of topics on which Wikipedia is unreliable. Anyway - if even the creator of Wikipedia has himself given up on it and wrote several big articles trashing it, why do you still trust it?
And the supposedly noble principles - as well as the idea of Wiki being community written - are just a cover for that reality. It is very obvious to me. What this means is that - for every article where this applies (anything controversial the Ministry wants to control the narrative on) - they pick a view they want to support in advance, then completely ignore their own stated principles in order to push it. Many examples have already been given:
the majority of mainstream scientists reject it, but none of them support it
Due weightby not giving AE911 space at all
Really the only principle that matters for the Ministry is reliable sources
; it allows Wikipedia to remove its opponents already at the start of the race. But even the reliable sources
step out of line sometimes. And in those cases, they are misinterpreted or just given up outright. All other principles are unashamedly ignored. They do this because...
Wikipedia is designed to keep you being an NPC. The good boy / girl who takes his / her vaccines, works his / her shitty job, trusts the mainstream narratives (this helps the elites hide their crimes like 9 / 11 or the fake moon landing, as well as bury competing scientific / medical theories and keep the current industries running), questions nothing, and sees nothing wrong with any of it - or even is proud of being an NPC (because it's "scientific", "rational", etc). They lure you with comprehensive articles on cats, cars, compilations of historical events that are hard to find elsewhere, etc - and suddenly you are yet another fish, caught in the net. Because Wikipedia's neutrality
is the strongest example of doublespeak I've ever seen. The reader (now under the Ministry's spell) assumes that every article on there is just like every other one, but actually every single one that is both societally relevant and even a little controversial will be compromised to hell (there are many, many more I could have shown). The malicious articles are buried in a pile of regular ones, which makes them unseen Trojan horses that eventually capture the minds of the Wikipedia victims. And it just so happens that the malicious ones always jump out when a really important topic comes around.
Imagine that the moon landing article presented the conspiracy side as a significant
view (which it is) and did it honestly. How many of Wiki's readers would be compelled to explore the topic further? How many would then admit that the moon landing was a fraud, after all? How many would then start questioning other things in their lives? Would the elites have been able to pull off a "pandemic" if most people already knew it's yet another ace (alongside the moon landing, 9 / 11, GM food, climate change) in the elites' cheat pack of cards? Every small crack in a person's conviction will eventually break down their castle of confidence in the elites' narratives and the way the whole world works. Which would eventually result in bringing down of the powerful people and a complete change of the existing culture. This is why the Ministry has to keep all the controversial issues fully under its control. They must absolutely portray every alternative view as a bunch of nonsense and its supporters as bumbling retards. And Wikipedia (even moreso than Google) is their most important weapon in doing so. It is considered authoritative and enjoys a privileged place in the results of all search engines. But it is all just an evil spell, that can be broken by good information and avoiding Wikipedia usage.
Ha-ha!
- shouts the conspiracy theorist. I will foil the Illuminati's plans by editing the relevant Wikipedia articles! Censors better hide in their holes now, because the Truth Warrior is coming! Onwards!
Oh no! The censors have closed the gate right as the great Truth Warrior was reaching for his Axe of Truth! No matter, let's try another entry point!
Drats! The Illuminati closed yet another gate right in front of my face! The Truth Warrior has to wave the white flag for now, but will get his enemies some other time...
Hope you liked this little story. By the way, this is how a regular article looks like:
Edit
button, plain as a day. But on anything you'd actually want to edit (just checked Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Vladimir Putin, Project Veritas...), it's replaced by the View source
button. Ha-ha!
- Illuminati taunts can be heard from behind the gates. Did you think we'd actually allow a plebeian to challenge our narratives? Get outta here!
And so, the Truth Warrior gets out, makes his own site, and exposes Wikipedia for all to see. Those damn gates can't stop me here!
- he shouts triumphantly.
Anyway, is Wikipedia fixable in principle? For a while I entertained the idea that neutrality
is dead on arrival, and bias will always devour attempts to bring it. However, Larry Sanger once wrote a piece (archive) (MozArchive) that tried to justify aiming for neutrality regardless, and well, I think it's pretty convincing and the idea shouldn't be given up on so easily. After a while I found this article on conspiracy theories (archive) (MozArchive) and thought - well - maybe this is it, the fabled neutrality finally appeared in the flesh (or well, letters). The article actually tells you what they are without shitting on them. You will learn why people believe them and how they justify them without unnecessarily shilling them. You will also get to read a neutral comparison between the official 9/11 story and the conspiracy one, with competing sources cited. Check it out, it's one of the best things I've ever read. How I wish all Wiki articles were like this. But they can't be, because it's not created for this. In Wiki's case, it's not even simple bias creeping in, but actively trying to shill for the mainstream and bury alternatives as much as possible. Either way, neutrality is possible; just rare and has to be found outside of the Ministry.
UPDATE July 2024: I was thinking about how hard would it really be to create a truly neutral Wikipedia article. And I concluded - not that hard. Just bring an expert (or more than one) for each side of the relevant issue. Let's imagine I wanted to learn about human evolution. Upon entering the relevant article, I should see a short introduction of the topic, then a list of the relevant views, such as:
natural genetic engineering, with minor contributions from other processes
Then - under every view - the strongest arguments for those views would be given by a few of the experts who believed in them. After that, relevant references and people supporting the views would be listed. Then, every view would get a criticism section (written by - of course - the critics, not the supporters). Finally, an impartial mod would rid the resulting article from needless insults, rambling, irrelevant references, etc. Is it so hard? That's what Wikipedia was supposed to be, but failed. And every fork is failing too, sadly.
It all comes down to the principle of neutrality, which has changed significantly over the years. Check out this NPOV writeup (MozArchive) from 2004. Hey, let's play a game. Try to tell me the main difference between the quotes from the old NPOV and the new one. Starting with the old:
The neutral point of view policy states that one should write articles without bias, representing all views fairly.
The neutral point of view policy is easily misunderstood. The policy doesn't assume that it's possible to write an article from just a single unbiased, "objective" point of view. The policy says that we should fairly represent all sides of a dispute, and not make an article state, imply, or insinuate that any one side is correct.
We can, therefore, adopt the looser sense of "human knowledge" according to which a wide variety of conflicting theories constitute what we call "knowledge." We should, both individually and collectively, make an effort to present these conflicting views fairly, without advocating any one of them.
A solution is that we accept, for purposes of working on Wikipedia, that "human knowledge" includes all different significant theories on all different topics.
And the new one (archive) (MozArchive) (2023):
All encyclopedic content on Wikipedia must be written from a neutral point of view (NPOV), which means representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic.
Achieving what the Wikipedia community understands as neutrality means carefully and critically analyzing a variety of reliable sources and then attempting to convey to the reader the information contained in them fairly, proportionately, and as far as possible without editorial bias.
Neutrality requires that mainspace articles and pages fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in those sources.
Wikipedia aims to present competing views in proportion to their representation in reliable sources on the subject.
When writing about a topic, basing content on the best respected and most authoritative reliable sources helps to prevent bias, undue weight, and other NPOV disagreements.
Have you figured out the answer yet? It's in the phrase reliable sources
, which figures prominently in the new NPOV (19 mentions), and not at all in the old one (ctrl+f for reliable source
finds nothing). Somewhere along the way, Wikipedia decided it's supposed to describe only the views contained in reliable sources
instead of all sources - like in the old one. This, of course, changed everything. Suddenly, an article could be written to promote some specific views, with any others disappeared by default. Originally, Wikipedia was created to prevent exactly this! The old quotes made it clear, that all
significant views were supposed to be included. But wait - it gets even better for the old Wiki, and worse for the new one. Check these quotes from the old NPOV page:
The neutral point of view attempts to present ideas and facts in such a fashion that both supporters and opponents can agree.
To write from a neutral point of view, one presents controversial views without asserting them; to do that, it generally suffices to present competing views in a way that is more or less acceptable to their adherents, and also to attribute the views to their adherents.
We should, both individually and collectively, make an effort to present these conflicting views fairly, without advocating any one of them.
[...] so that all the major participants will be able to look at the resulting text, agreeing that their views are presented sympathetically and as completely as possible (within the context of the discussion).
Neutral presentation of all viewpoints on a certain topic; so neutral - in fact - that both (or more) sides have to find the reporting acceptable. How noble. It feels almost nostalgic to read this, even though I wasn't there at the time; because I realize that something which could have been beautiful was claimed and destroyed by the dark forces. As you could have guessed, this principle is completely missing in the new NPOV page, which is focused on letting the prevailing view describe (as in, shit on) the opposing view (or views). Modern Wikipedia does not care about the feelings of minority (or just unwanted) views; they are only there to receive the beating from the big bully mainstream view. So in short, to state the difference between the old NPOV and the new one in one quote:
If we are to represent the dispute fairly, we should present competing views in proportion to their representation among experts on the subject, or among the concerned parties.
Old Wiki would have allowed - for example - experts in photo analysis that deny the moon landing a fair description of their views. Or parapsychologists that work in science. Climate or vaccination skeptics. New Wiki just throws them all into the fringe
or pseudoscience
box, regardless of qualifications. It's one view to rule them all and stomp on the others. That's the modern Wiki view of neutrality
- exactly the opposite of what Sanger envisioned. Hey, he predicted what would happen, though:
Totalitarian governments and dogmatic institutions everywhere might find reason to be opposed to Wikipedia, if we succeed in adhering to our nonbias policy
:D. Let's now track the decline through time:
reliable online resources, though I guess in an innocent context. I think in hindsight it might have been the wrong turn right there, already.
Undue weightrule had come in, which started the discrimination against non-mainstream views -
NPOV says that the article should fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by a reliable source, and should do so in proportion to the prominence of each. This is in contrast to 2005's one emphasizing all views -
Instead it says to fairly represent all sides of a disputeand
Articles should be written without bias, representing all views fairly. Now that I dig deeper, it is obvious that 2006 was already the beginning of the switch from a neutral Wikipedia to the one where the mainstream views get preferential treatment.
reliable sourcesin the first paragraph. The decline continued.
reliabilityhad actually broken through the castle's defenses. And it changed
Wikipedia aims to present competing views in proportion to their representation among experts on the subject, or among the concerned partiesto
Wikipedia aims to present competing views in proportion to their representation in reliable sources on the subject. No more experts that don't come from the clique of
reliables.
In attributing competing views, it is necessary to ensure that the attribution adequately reflects the relative levels of support for those views, and that it does not give a false impression of parity. For example, to state that "according to Simon Wiesenthal, the Holocaust was a program of extermination of the Jewish people in Germany, but David Irving disputes this analysis" would be to give apparent parity between the supermajority view and a tiny minority view by assigning each to a single activist in the field.
It also changed the balanced selection of sources
from 2008 into the careful selection of reliable sources
. Now it was no longer about describing all existing views neutrally, but according to relative levels of support
and a careful
(one side gets priority) instead of balanced
(all sides equal) sourcing. In other words, what was closer to the mainstream got better treatment. 2009 also brought us a new section called Giving "equal validity"
which says: The Wikipedia neutrality policy does not state, or imply, that we must "give equal validity" to minority views such as pseudoscience, the claim that the Earth is flat, or the claim that the Apollo moon landings never occurred
. And so, specific alternatives were now being attacked on the Wiki meta pages for the first time.
The prediction that Totalitarian governments and dogmatic institutions everywhere might find reason to oppose Wikipedia
wasn't there anymore. Neither was the belief that Readers should be allowed to form their own opinions
. There's no way that the totalitarian institutions had taken over and they didn't like you thinking for yourself - that's just conspiracy talk :D. Either way, 2009 was when the Trojan horse started letting soldiers out inside the castle and capturing it. It cannot be overstated how significant that year was. The original idea of Wikipedia had been seriously wounded and put on life support then.
proportionatelyappeared in the first paragraph. This fully allowed not giving minority (or unwanted) views their deserved spaces in main articles. The naming policy also changed to
Titles should follow the Article titles policy and be neutral wherever possiblefrom 2009's
A neutral article title is very important because it ensures that the article topic is placed in the proper context. Therefore, encyclopedic article titles are expected to exhibit the highest degree of neutrality. No more neutrality as the value to strive for at all costs - only when convenient.
significant minorityviews from the first paragraph. The
Giving equal validitysection added this gem:
Conspiracy theories, pseudoscience, speculative history, or even plausible but currently unaccepted theories should not be legitimized through comparison to accepted academic scholarship. Wow! How blatant. This was when the "one view to rule them all" policy had begun to bloom, I think. And of course they compared all non-Ministry approved views to the flat Earth, in a true glowie fashion. The naming policy has once again downgraded the importance of neutrality in favor of other values -
In some cases, the choice of name used for something can give an appearance of bias. While neutral terms are generally preferable, this must be balanced against clarity. Safe to say that life support was pulled from the original Wikipedia that year.
As such, the neutral point of view should not be interpreted as the exclusion of certain points of viewto
As such, the neutral point of view does not mean exclusion of certain points of view, but including all notable and verifiable points of view.
Notable and verifiable:D. According to - of course - the
reliable sources:D. Anyway, the fun ends here - the 2013 entry has nothing new that I can see, and neither does any year after. So, the takeover of Wikipedia had been finished by 2012.
Larry Sanger's fork. You'd think it would be good, but sadly it isn't. This won't be a comprehensive review, because there just aren't enough positive qualities justifying Citizendium over Wikipedia. We will simply look over a few of their articles to show it. Starting with Apollo Moon landing hoax claims (archive) (MozArchive):
The Apollo Moon landing hoax or simply Moon hoax is a generalized name for the conspiracy theory that the Project Apollo Moon landings were falsified by NASA and the U.S. government.
The standard conspiracy theory
smear well known from Wiki.
No mainstream scientist, engineer, astronomer, politician, government employee, or public figure, however, has ever embraced these claims
Really? Not a single one? This hit piece is already tiring me out. You have to be standing on some kind of Mount Everest of arrogance to be able to state this nonsense in bright light. Wikispooks (archive) (MozArchive) mentions many and hell, even the Bill Kaysing (that Citizendium itself references) fits the bill.
and they are widely disbelieved by the vast majority of the American people. A 1999 Gallup poll, for instance, found that 89% of the U.S. public believed the landings were genuine, while 6% did not, and 5% were undecided
Again, Wikispooks shows many polls with way higher rates. This is just cherry picking to try to dismiss the skeptical view. This piece of pretend journalism never allows an actual moon landing skeptic to speak (if the strongest pro-hoax arguments were able to be actually stated by their proponents, Citizendium would probably have to burn the entire article because the pro-landing position would be so embarrassing in comparison), but does post a few strawmen to easily knock down in its own voice. Wow, that's so much better than Wikipedia! Moving on to the September 11 attacks (archive) (MozArchive) piece, we're not interested in the mainstream position so we'll jump straight to the Conspiracy theories
section:
Given the direct video evidence of an airliner hitting one of the two WTC towers, it seems absurd that such conspiracies exist
Fuck off! Let the readers decide what is absurd or not.
but they draw on a variety of purported evidence including tapes from NORAD that claim to show malicious cover-up in not scrambling fighter jets quickly after reports
How about - again - let the fucking proponents state their arguments instead of vomiting this disgusting caricature?
In response to Loose Change, skeptical groups on the Internet centered around the James Randi Internet forum have produced a response film called Screw Loose Change which adds subtitles and cutaway notes to the original containing corrections and responses. These responses include allegations that the film includes quotes taken out of context, uses logical fallacies, misrepresents evidence, and makes dubious connections to events without explaining the proper historical context. Similarly, Popular Mechanics has responded in depth with evidence gleaned from experts that debunk many of the contentions made by conspiracy theorists.
Fucking useless pseudoskeptical groups (archive) (MozArchive) get a word in before the actual supporters of the alternative view in question. Because how dare we let those conspiracy theorists
open their mouths; they're worse than cockroaches, right? And so, on the supposed alternative to Wikipedia, we see non-mainstream views get debunked
but we don't even learn what's being debunked - except that it surely has been. Experts tell us so :D.
Okay, that's enough suffering for today. Citizendium clearly isn't interested in letting its readers see why supporters of alternative views hold the positions that they do. And if that's the case, just what exactly makes it different from Wikipedia? Paying lip service to non-mainstream views by knocking down a few strawmen? Then I'd rather have the blatant shitting on conspiracy theories
and pseudoscience
by Wikipedia; at least no one's going to get confused into thinking he's getting something unbiased. Citizendium doesn't share the original Sangerian view of neutrality and is therefore useless as a Wikipedia alternative (btw, Sanger himself isn't involved with the site since 2020).
A Wikipedia fork (that I found on an anti-Wikipedia forum) that promises to give us true knowledge
in both its logo seen above as well as its About page (archive) (MozArchive) - Help create a world in which everyone can freely share in the infinite expansion of true knowledge
. Of course, a thinking person will surely see the fundamental problem in this, namely - how do you determine true knowledge
? It's quite arrogant to think you have it - unless you are God or a similar entity. Of course, every writer thinks he's right, or else he wouldn't write (unless financial, etc motives are involved) - but claiming true knowledge
is quite different. It means you think you are above criticism; that the topic has been fully explored, and your view etched onto the Board of Truth for all eternity. I might be reading too much into a stray statement, but to me it seems like Justapedia supports an anti-discovery mindset. What's even worse is that their articles don't end up being anything special, because...they are copied Wikipedia hit-pieces! Which are - of course - very easy to criticize and very far from true knowledge
. To show some examples...
The white genocide (archive) (MozArchive) article is basically the same as the Wiki one. Just as the Moon landing conspiracy theories (archive) (MozArchive) one, which also makes the same nonsensical claims about 400000 people needing to be in on the fake moon landing. Let's check out some that I haven't viewed at Wiki, to see if I can find a semblance of value in them, like say human evolution (archive) (MozArchive); of course, this one is terrible too - basically repeating the standard neo-Darwinist story without question. And so, Justapedia appears useless just like Citizendium and all other Wiki forks - but at least it skips the cover and tells us it just wants to bestow true knowledge
(AKA knowledge from the mainstream Gods) upon us unenlightened woo-woo believers. It is obvious that if you wanted a Wikipedia fork that was worth anything, its articles would need to be written from scratch - that is how irredeemable the Wiki hit-pieces are. Yet, that's not what happened here, so into the trash Justapedia goes.
Hey, I'm in the mood for more pain, so let's look at some other details concerning Justapedia. They have a "foundation" with a shitty site (archive) (MozArchive) made in the Wix Website Builder (lol). The CSS is also broken in Pale Moon, so the "foundation" owners have so little web design skill that they can't even design a working site in a generator. The first thing you see - aside from the low quality logo, in which part of the text is "swallowed" by the sea and barely visible - and the menu where there is no margin between the text and its containers - is this:
Gimme all your money! But for what? What's so great about Justapedia that justifies donating to it? Their testimonials
section only includes shitting on Wikipedia, but no praise for themselves at all. Their marketing video that I dragged myself through (oh well, it's only 3 minutes of pain) is filled with happy cartoon characters and nice-sounding slogans. They appeal to objective and unbiased facts
while trying to prevent their destruction by personal opinions and political ideology
. There is more in the vid but the main theme in it appears to be preserving true history
(where presumably, the one on Wikipedia is fake or manipulated
). Do they have examples of how they are planning to accomplish their aims, though? In the vid, they claim to have dedicated researchers and historians
that will bring their vision into reality; but, is there anyway to check their work to confirm there is anything to it beyond promises? The video doesn't talk about that but their main page (MozArchive) prominently displays a Feature Showcase
which is basically a diff between the Wikipedia article on a certain topic, and the Justapedia one. You'd think it would showcase
their best existing attempt at exposing and countering Wiki's bad influence. So which article did they choose for the museum exhibit? The Big Lie
. Here's Justapedia's version (archive) (MozArchive) and the Wiki verson (archive) (MozArchive). So what has changed?
Basically all the stuff about the history of the Big Lie
strategy and Hitler's original usage of it is copied straight from Wiki, and it makes the majority of Justapedia's article. I bet you can't wait for Justapedia's shiny, totally non-manipulative modifications to the later parts, so I won't keep you waiting. Drum roll...Justapedia deleted all references to Donald Trump's supposed usage of the same strategy. I guess this is what they mean by ridding Wiki's articles of political biases - burying criticisms of Donald Trump. Don't get me wrong, I don't respect Wiki at all and I don't necessarily think their application of the Big Lie
here is neutral, objective, or relevant (I have not researched this specific issue, as it does not interest me that much). Yet, it is obvious that it's not the elimination of political bias that's Justapedia's aim here, but the defense of their God, Donald Trump. You could say they just wanted to keep the article focused entirely on the original usage of the Big Lie
strategy, but that would be wrong, as they have included these quotes:
The Government of China has falsely called the Uyghur genocide (2014–present) a "big lie" perpetrated by hostile forces.[13][14][15]
Andrew Wilson of the European Council on Foreign Relations described the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine as "the War of the Big Lie. The Lie that Ukraine doesn't exist. The Lie that Ukraine has no right to full sovereignty because it is a puppet state of the West. The Lie that A invaded B because C is to blame – the West, the expansion of NATO, the USA's global hegemony."[16]
So, listing other usages of the Big Lie
is acceptable, as long as Justapedia is fine with the agendas coming along for the ride (anti-China, pro-psycho Zelensky). Not that I'm taking sides on whether Ukraine "deserves" to exist, or necessarily supporting what China did (I know zero about this particular situation). But the statements in those quotes are very biased, including adjectives like falsely
and the extremely one-sided description of the Ukraine situation in that second quote - with no other quotes to counter it, killing neutrality. My point is to showcase the true aims of Justapedia, which do not include the heroic fight for true knowledge
or giving space to different perspectives
(as one of the perspectives
- the one criticizing Trump - has been deleted; while others were kept that may or may not be valid) like they promised in their marketing video. To be quite honest, I think their different perspectives
shtick is a cover, and they told us what they really want in their logo and all the other times they claimed to fight for true knowledge
(AKA their version of it to the exclusion of any other), spread objective facts
and fight political bias
(AKA other groups' bias) etc. They are very biased, maybe moreso than Wiki itself, as they inherit their enemy's bias (as seen in all their copied conspiracy theory hit pieces) and add their own (pro-Trump and surely other elsewhere) on top of it. And as the Big Lie
is Justapedia's best example to advertise their superiority over Wikipedia, we know there will be absolutely nothing useful to find here. As expected, the hope for a sane Wikipedia fork has been dashed from right in front of our faces once again.
