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Wikipedia is a non-commercial, [free/open](free_culture.md) [pseudoleftist](pseudoleft.md) [online](www.md) encyclopedia written mostly by volunteers, running on [free software](free_software.md), allowing almost anyone to edit its content (i.e. being a [wiki](wiki.md)); it is the largest and perhaps most famous encyclopedia created to date. It is licensed under [CC-BY-SA](cc_by_sa.md) and is run by the [nonprofit](nonprofit.md) organization Wikimedia Foundation. It is accessible at https://wikipedia.org.
Wikipedia used to be a great project, however by 2022 it has become kind of a [politically correct](political_correctness.md) [joke](jokes.md). A tragic and dangerous joke at that. It just hardcore censors facts and even edits direct quotes to push a [pseudoleftist](pseudoleft.md) propaganda. **Do not trust Wikipedia on anything even remotely touching politics**, always check facts elsewhere, e.g. on [Metapedia](metapedia.md), in old paper encyclopedias etc. You may also browse older, less censored versions of Wikipedia articles, either on Wikipedia itself, or -- if you don't trust it -- on [Internet Archive](internet_archive.md).
Wikipedia exists in many (more than 200) versions differing mostly by the language used but also in other aspects; this includes e.g. Simple English Wikipedia or Wikipedia in [Esperanto](esperanto.md). In all versions combined there are over 50 million articles and over 100 million users. English Wikipedia is the largest with over 6 million articles.
There are also many sister projects of Wikipedia such as [Wikimedia Commons](wm_commons.md) that gathers [free as in freedom](free_culture.md) media for use on Wikipedia, [WikiData](wikidata.md), Wikinews or Wikisources.
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Let's note a few positive and negative points about Wikipedia, as of 2022. Some good things are:
- Despite its flaws Wikipedia is still a **highly free, high quality noncommercial source of knowledge for everyone**, without ads and [bullshit](bs.md). It is tremendously helpful, Wikipedia may e.g. be printed out or saved in an offline version and used in the third world as a completely free educational resource (see [Kiwix](kiwix.md)).
- Despite its flaws Wikipedia is still a **highly free, relatively high quality noncommercial source of knowledge for everyone**, without ads and [bullshit](bs.md). It is tremendously helpful, Wikipedia may e.g. be printed out or saved in an offline version and used in the third world as a completely free educational resource (see [Kiwix](kiwix.md)).
- Wikipedia **helped prove the point of [free culture](free_culture.md)** and showed that collaboration of volunteers can far surpass the best efforts of corporations.
- Wikipedia's **website is pretty nice**, kind of minimalist, lightweight and **works without [Javascript](javascript.md)**.
- Wikipedia's **website is pretty nice** (at least as of 2022), kind of minimalist, lightweight and **works without [Javascript](javascript.md)**.
- Wikipedia is very **friendly to computer analysis**, it provides all its data publicly, in simple and open formats, and doesn't implement any [DRM](drm.md). This allows to make a lot of research, in depth searching, collection of statistics etc.
- Wikipedia **drives the sister projects**, some of which are extremely useful, e.g. Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata or [MediaWiki](mediawiki.md).
- Even if politically biased, **Wikipedia may serve as a basis for [forks](fork.md) that fix the political bias** ([Metapedia](metapedia.md), [InfoGalacti](infogalactic.md), ...).
- Even if politically biased, **Wikipedia may serve as a basis for [forks](fork.md) that fix the political bias** ([Metapedia](metapedia.md), [InfoGalactic](infogalactic.md), ...).
And the bad things are:
And the bad things are (see also this site: http://digdeeper.club/articles/wikipedia.xhtml):
- Wikipedia is **censored and biased**, even though it [proclaims the opposite](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not#Wikipedia_is_not_censored) (which makes it much worse by misleading people). "Offensive" material and material not aligned with [pseudoleftist](pseudoleft.md) propaganda is removed as well as material connected to some controversial resources (e.g the link to 8chan, https://8kun.top, is censored, as well as [Nina Paley](nina_paley.md)'s Jenndra Identitty comics and much more). There is a heavy **[pseudoleft](pseudoleft.md) and [soyence](soyence.md) bias** in the articles.
- Wikipedia is **[censored](censorship.md), biased and pushes specific political propaganda**, even though it [proclaims the opposite](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not#Wikipedia_is_not_censored) (which makes it much worse by misleading people). "Offensive" material and material not aligned with [pseudoleftist](pseudoleft.md) propaganda is removed as well as material connected to some controversial resources (e.g the link to 8chan, https://8kun.top, is censored, as well as [Nina Paley](nina_paley.md)'s Jenndra Identitty comics and much more). There is a heavy **[pseudoleft](pseudoleft.md) and [soyence](soyence.md) bias** in the articles. It creates a list of **banned sources** ([archive](https://web.archive.org/web/20220830004126/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Perennial_sources)) which just removes all non-[pseudoleftist](pseudoleft.md) sources -- so much for their "neutral point of view".
- Wikipedia includes material under **[fair use](fair_use.md)**, such as screenshots from proprietary games, which makes it partially [proprietary](proprietary.md), i.e. Wikipedia is technically **NOT 100% free**. Material under fair use is still proprietary and can put remixers to legal trouble (e.g. if they put material from Wikipedia to a commercial context), even if the use on Wikipedia itself is legal (remember, proprietary software is legal too).
- Wikipedia often suffers from writing inconsistency, bad structure of text and **poor writing** in general. In a long article you sometimes find repeating paragraphs, sometimes a lot of stress is put on one thing while mentioning more important things only briefly, the level of explanation expertness fluctuates etc. This is because in many articles most people make small contributions without reading the whole article and without having any visions of the whole. And of course there are many contributors without any writing skills.
- Wikipedia is **too popular** which has the negative side effect of becoming a **political battlefield**. This is one of the reasons why there has to be a lot of **bureaucracy**, including things such as **locking of articles** and the inability to edit everything. Even if an article can technically be edited by anyone, there are many times people watching and reverting changes on specific articles. So Wikipedia can't fully proclaim it can be "edited by anyone".