Camp Gagnon - Wikipedia Co-Creator Reveals All: Secret Editors, Banning Content, & Ignoring Rules

Episode Date: January 27, 2026

Larry Sanger, Wikipedia co‑creator, joins us in the tent today to talk about who’s writing Wikipedia articles, secret Wikipedia editors, suppressing writers, and other interesting topics… WELCOME TO CAMP! 🏕️Shoutout to our sponsors: Mars Men, Bubs Naturals and Flakes Visit https://byeflakes.com and use code 'CAMP' to get 20% off, a free scalp brush, and a 30-day money-back guarantee.Get 20% Off Your Entire Order With Code 'CAMP" at https://bubsnatural.comVisit https://mengotomars.com and get 50% Off FOR LIFE, Free Shipping, and 3 Free Gifts With Code 'CAMP' at Checkout. 👕🧢 SHOP THE UFO COLLECTION HERE: https://camp-rd.com/collections/ufo🎟️ 🎫 Comedy Tour Tickets Here: https://markgagnonlive.com🎩👽 Daily Dose Of History Here: https://www.dailytodayinhistory.comTimestamps:0:00 Intro1:46 Meet The Co-Founder of Wikipedia4:03 Creation of Wikipedia11:47 Presenting Neutral Information21:36 Who’s Writing Wikipedia Articles?25:26 Example Wikipedia Article35:35 How Should Wiki Classify People?43:27 Individual Neutrality47:10 The 9 Theses + Yahweh57:06 Centrism vs Neutrality1:07:14 Wikipedia's Blacklisted Sources1:15:08 Ignore All Rules Theses1:17:40 Secret Wikipedia Editors1:26:20 LLM Inside Wikipedia + Blocking Writers1:28:03 Wikipedia’s Legislative Process#podcast #foryou #history #science #mystery #film #knowledge #interview #crime

My claim to fame is I am co-founder of Wikipedia. Could you say you're like the Wozniak of Wikipedia? I've been called that. Do you see it as a compliment? Because you should. Well, I mean, if I really were very proud of Wikipedia, I might. We've seen your former colleague, Jimmy Wales, who was recently on a podcast where he was asked a similar question. Just to be clear, right, Jimmy was one of three partners.

So these guys are sort of like the institutional founders. But the person who actually got it started. That's me. This is Larry Sanger, internet pioneer and the co-founder of everybody's first stop in internet research, Wikipedia. He was there at the very beginning, naming it, shaping it, and watch it explode into tens of thousands of articles in its first year. But years later, Sanger says something went wrong. The man who helped build the world's largest encyclopedia now believes that it's quietly shaping how millions think, and not always in the most honest way.

He argues that Wikipedia has drifted from neutrality in digital. to framing, bias, and in some cases, even propaganda, where subtle word choices can decide who's right, who's wrong, and what ideas are pushed outside the acceptable conversation. And today we break down how neutrality is different from objectivity, how Wikipedia articles can quietly manipulate public opinion, who really controls these controversial pages, and why Sanger believes neutrality and free speech rise together and fall together.

So if you are interested in how the media can be manipulated, how information and disinformation actually, work and who is using propaganda in order to manipulate your feelings about global events. This is the episode for you. So sit back, relax, and welcome to camp. Larry Sanger, thank you so much for joining me. Oh, it's good to be here. Thanks for coming into my tent and for taking an adventure all the way to New York City. So really quick, just explain to the audience, who are you? And what specifically is your concern that you're wanting to talk about today?

Well, my name is Larry Sanger. I guess my training is in philosophy, so I still think of myself as a philosopher. My claim to fame is I am co-founder of Wikipedia. I like to call myself ex-founder now. Now, you said that pretty easily. You said I am the co-founder of Wikipedia. We've seen your former colleague, Jimmy Wales, who was recently on a podcast where he was asked a similar question. And he said that he was the founder and then the host asked if he was actually the co-founder.

Then he said he didn't care. And then he walked off. Right. And this seemed like sort of a bombastic, you know. Maybe we say apoplectic response to a fairly simple question. So I'm curious, why did he respond in this way? He's responded that way often in the past saying that he doesn't really care. Why he got so upset this time?

I'm not sure. I think it's mostly because the interviewer just repeated the question so many times, and he thought he was being disrespected, I suppose. I see. But he is the co-founder, as are you, the two co-founders. Well, I suppose that's a matter of opinion, isn't it? Well, per Wikipedia, as we said, I read it, and you were the co-founder, so we'll go with that. He used to say I was.

He put it in the first three press releases anyway. Strange. So you have sort of come out since that founding day of, you know, a founder of Wikipedia and spoken about some of the potential issues as far as Wikipedia as a tool for, you know, the information coercion, can we say, the manipulation of how people think and understand, you know, news and information. And you haven't really let up. And this has led you to publishing a sort of thesis about how we can reform Wikipedia. to be more neutral. Right. So I guess maybe just for context for the audience, could you take us just to the beginning of Wikipedia in brief how that was sort of formed and what the original mission of this encyclopedia on the internet was supposed to be?

Sure. Nine Theses, actually, is what you're referring to. Yes. On larrysanger.org and actually posted from my user page on Wikipedia, that's where I first put it. So the origin story of Wikipedia, basically I knew Jimmy Wales from actually one of the very first discussion groups I ever got into on the Internet in 1994, I think, was something called the moderated discussion of objectivist philosophy, MDOP, which Jimmy Wales was the owner and moderator of. And so we got into some, like, debates and so forth. And, like, he called me up one time after we had, like, an argument or something and tried to smooth things over.

So I thought that that was nice. And later, I was taking a trip across the country and visited him and a mutual friend of ours who also lived in Chicago at the time on my way over to visit my uncle. And we actually got to know each other face to face. So, you know, we weren't really close friends, but we were friends sort of. And when I was looking around in 2000 for a way to pivot my work on the Internet because I had started a website before this, I was looking for advice from friends about, you know, what to do with a website that I had been working on. And there was Newpedia? Yeah, it's called Sanger's Review. I see.

Yeah, it's no longer online. And he said, well, don't work on that. Come and actually work for me, and you'll start a new encyclopedia called Newpedia. I see. So I thought that was a great idea. I actually had dreamt of working on an encyclopedia. Like I thought if I'm not going to be a philosophy professor, which for reasons I don't need to get into, I decided against as I was finishing my PhD, I thought maybe working on an encyclopedia would be a good alternative. And so here I had the opportunity of not just working on one, but starting one.

So that was the mission, essentially, to start Newpedia, to organize the people, to set the policy and the processes and actually be the editor-in-chief. So I worked on that for a year, but it was very slow going because we wanted the whole product to be very reliable and high-quality. And a friend of mine was telling me January 2nd, 2001, about wikis, which was a type of website that had been around for, at the time, like, six years. The original wiki was called wiki-wiki-web, which means fast after the Hawaiian word wiki-wiki-wiki. Like the wiki taxis in Hawaii? Exactly. at the Honolulu Airport, apparently. And so he told me how they worked,

how if somebody edits a page, another person can edit it and correct errors and so forth. And they negotiate with each other. The edits are all immediately visible as if you were working on your own computer. And that's what these wiki sort of websites were. They were more open, less like centralized sort of information sources that people can kind of adjust. Actually, they were just as centralized as they are now.

It's just that there wasn't all of this massive infrastructure behind them. You know, Wikipedia, if they wanted to simply change their policies, could become just like it they used to be. it would be probably a little more of a mess, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing all the time. Right. So the Newpedia editors didn't really want to have anything to do with a wiki. And so after about a week or so of just talking about it with them, we decided to launch the Newpedia Wiki

under its own name, so I named it, Wikipedia. And, you know, Jimmy Wales got the domain name. And just to be clear, right, Jimmy was the CEO of a company called Bomis and one of three partners, right? There was a silent partner, and then there was another friend of Jimmy's called Tim Shell. He became a friend of mine when I was working there. And he is another partner of Valmas. So these guys are sort of like the institutional founders of Wikipedia. But the person who actually got it started, that's me.

Right. Could you say you're like the Wozniak of Wikipedia? What's that? Are you like the Steve Wozniak of Wikipedia? I'm not actually that familiar with his story. Oh, really? I've been called that. Really? Do you see it as a compliment? Because you should.

Well, I mean, if I really were very proud of Wikipedia, I might. Fair. I guess Steve Jobs is sort of this, you know, enigmatic, you know, like frontman, so to say. And then, you know, Wozniak is sort of the genius, the brains behind it, sort of the guiding sort of spiritual, moral force of this thing. Perhaps. At the onset, at least. I see. I see. Okay. That's where that comparison comes from. Right, right. I see.

I mean, Jimmy was right there in the middle of things from the beginning. I don't want to deny that. Yeah, of course. And he had his own requirements for sure. It didn't all come from me. Okay. So, and then the site just grew up, just grew very quickly. it blew up in the first year we got 20,000 articles.

And yeah, I have to say, I was amazed, very sort of taken aback at this sort of success that sort of dropped in our lap. I had no idea that it was going to be so successful. And I can tell you also that one of the main reasons for the success is that we front-loaded the effort. for a year beforehand collecting people who are already interested in writing an encyclopedia, those people are to be sort of thanked and congratulated as much as any. Like, we didn't have to go out and find a bunch of early adopters. We already had them. I see.

Yeah. But from the onset, there was always a commitment to neutrality, which is a very difficult thing when it comes to writing an encyclopedia, right? How do you create a platform that can present information in a neutral way? Because things just little tweaks of language can shift how the public sees a person, an event, an institution. And it's a difficult task, but it was one that Wikipedia was committed to from the very beginning. And per, I guess, your, you know, kind of your words, it's maybe deviated in that commitment to neutrality. So can you explain how neutrality works and maybe some of, maybe an example of how that could be manipulated?

Sure. Yeah, how it can be manipulated, it can be manipulated in a lot of ways. At any rate, the basic idea of neutrality really needs to be distinguished from objectivity. So actually, let's start there because a lot of people don't understand the distinction. And I want to get this out clearly. So objectivity is a feature of persons, of minds, right? So a person is objective. And what that means is their approach to a problem or question is unemotional.

It's not driven by prejudging the situation. It is focused on evidence above all else. And especially it requires training careful use of logic. So all of these things are part of the virtue of objectivity. has nothing to do with neutrality as such. So neutrality is not a feature of persons. It's a feature of texts or of communication, generally speaking. So we can say that teaching and journalism and reference works can be, and I think, should be neutral.

And what that means is when there is a – an area of disagreement, then the communication doesn't take a side, right? The writing doesn't take aside. Again, this is not talking about the authors of the article. The author actually might think that one position is correct, but if the author writes something neutrally, then he is simply presenting the what we call the dialectical landscapes like the conversation, right? Teaching the debate is one, you know, fraught phrase that, you know, will piss people off, but nevertheless, it was a phrase used for good reason, actually.

It's actually important if you really want to understand any subject that is controversial to understand the debate. And you actually have to teach the debate and really study it before you can understand it and take a really well-informed position. Now, this was, this seems challenging, right? It's extremely challenging. Because you kind of have to steal man both positions. Exactly. And you also need to steal man. And when I say steel man, just obviously presenting the most sound sort of valid logical reasoning for both sides of an argument.

but also, I guess, creating some type of distinction that maybe they don't both hold similar weight, I guess. Like, this is something I wonder with, like, trying to find, like, a middle ground. Like, you might think of, like, you know, some type of tyrannical dictator or demagogue. And he might have a reasoning for why he wants to commit some type of atrocious act. And I think in good faith, you probably should explain why that is the case. Yeah. But you need to be able to explain it in a way to say, well, he's obviously. wrong, but showing his reasoning for why he's doing this.

Yes. Again, in your explanation of what such an article was up to, you actually talk about the intentions of the author, right? And what I'm saying is true of a neutral text. You don't even consider the authors at all. In other words, you literally don't take aside. Now, there is such a thing as the Overton window, I suppose, and you cannot talk about literally every potential or actual view on any question that comes up

because there's not enough space. So you actually have to be selective. Nevertheless, you know, journalists especially and good encyclopedia writers are trained and actually they're experts. They actually understand because they have to think about these things whenever they write how important it is to essentially not just way sides equally but explain each person. position sympathetically. The best journalism, right, about problems, actually makes a real attempt to sort of get inside the skin of everyone that's involved in a controversy. So now, if you want to say, for example, that an article about, you know, the shape of the earth should just rule out the

flat earth theory and so it's sort of out of the Overton window or something like that. Or if you are I don't know and editing an English encyclopedia and you don't think there is such a thing

as a right to bear arms right? Then that would be out of your overton window. But then what you have to say is the encyclopedia might be neutral within its bounds, but it has bounds, and therefore, to that extent, it is actually

biased. And I'm comfortable saying that. So there are degrees of neutrality. Yes. So for like the shape of the earth argument, because it seems fairly non-controversial, but maybe a good illustration of the point, that we agree that the earth is not flat, but is it worth mentioning that there are groups that do believe this? And should they be framed as fringe?

Yeah, well, I think in a really robustly neutral resource, they shouldn't be framed as fringe. They shouldn't be framed by the authors of the article at all because the authors are not engaged in the act of framing. That is not what they do. rather they say that the flat earth theory is framed as fringe by mainstream geologists. I see. Yeah. So you, and that's really all you need to say. I see.

That makes sense. So it's not fringe ontologically, right? It's not just like this is fringe. It is fringe in the perspective of the mainstream or by, you know, the, you know, whatever institution of, you know, Right. And cosmologists. If there is a question about which there is some dispute and a claim is made that somebody important, reasonably important anyway, disagrees with, then it's attributed. That's the rule, basically.

I see. Wikipedia used to follow that rule, right? It doesn't anymore. I see. And that's how it's fallen short, that there is sort of framing by the authors to make specific issues, you know, less palatable or out. outside the Overton window, and you feel like that is subjective by the, you know, individual editors themselves. Right. Right. I see. And then that shapes public opinion. Right. And in your view, this is now maybe acting as, I've refrained from saying propaganda. I don't know if you would use that term. I use that term all the time.

Okay. This has now become a tool to manipulate people and to believing specific, you know, sets of information. Yes. I think it clearly is. I think that there are. I mean, one of the biggest Wikipedia editing companies is called literally WikiPR, right? Public relations was started by a guy who invented the word propaganda, right? Or, well, I don't know if he invented, but he certainly taught the concept to the world. Edward Bernays. Eddie Bernays, the nephew of Segment Freud. Right.

So, yes. And so, of course, it's used. I think there are people that essentially have to pay PR flax to essentially massage their articles. And we don't know which of the Wikipedia accounts are actually paid in that way. I see. And so who has co-opted Wikipedia? Is this being done by all sides? Is this being done by one side specifically, one institution specifically?

How would you sort of classify that type of framing? The best explanation there is we don't know because of the very nature of Wikipedia. Wikipedia allows people to participate without even making an account. When they make an account, they usually don't share their real names or other personally identifying. information. And so, basically, there is no way of knowing who is ultimately in control or how it all works out. It would be fascinating if somebody took a God's eye view and, you know, had docks to everybody and or at least had a database of all the information and said, okay, who is working for who, in what countries, but nobody knows.

I think it's got to be some fairly wealthy and powerful people with regard to certain articles. Because there are some people who are working like full time as necessary to shore up their own influence over particular articles. Of course. And not just in America, but around the world. I think so. I mean, you can imagine, right, with any type of conflict, right? Like, who's the good guy, who's the bad guy? And you're going to have opposing forces on either side trying to frame the article to suggest that, you know, we are actually the good guys here.

Right. But I would say this. As a whole, Wikipedia has what I call a framework now. You could call it a bias, I suppose. Although I think a framework is slightly different from a bias. I won't get into that anyway, but the framework I call GASP. So globalist, academic, secular, and progressive, right? So globalist in the sense of like multinational institutions trying to impose their will on the globe.

Academic, meaning whatever is the leading view among academics, is presented. as fact. Minority views, if they're permitted at all, which sometimes they aren't, are labeled as such or disdained. Let's see. Secular means essentially that in articles about religious topics, especially anything that is a point of controversy, that essentially historical or critical Bible scholars, for example and other secular

scholars in philosophy or in religion. They tend to assume methodological naturalism which means basically you can't

assume or assert that any anything supernatural has happened at all, which is as prejudicial as it sounds. And then P and GASP stands for progressive, and well, I guess that doesn't really need a lot of explanation. We more or less know what that means. There are lots of examples that you can give on all of these points.

But a good recent example is, of something that I would call progressive is the Gaza genocide article. Is it worth pulling that up? What's that? Is it worth pulling it up just to take a look at it as well? In this article in the first paragraph, if you read it over, you'll see that Wikipedia claims in what's called WikiVice, in its own voice, that Israel committed genocide in Gaza does not represent, even to attribute to them,

the Israeli view on the subject. And so it's clearly biased against the Israeli point of view, which is also held by a lot of Americans. I see. So I'm not saying, that it's incorrect. I'm not saying that Gaza didn't have a genocide. I'm simply saying that it's an obviously biased article.

That just biased from the very title, because a lot of people dispute the idea that there was, in fact, what is properly called a genocide in Gaza. Now, are they using primary sources for this specific description? Like, how, where are they sour? this information and what would be a better framing? Well, they probably refer to some primary sources in the sense that they are attributing

opinions to the people who hold them. But they tend to, by policy, use secondary sources, right? So rather than, you know, directly pointing to a copy of a UN speech or whatever, wherever the opinion might have been, you know, published, they will talk about a news story in the New York Times or something like that. So they prefer secondary sources because they are more carefully vetted, I suppose, than the original. It's actually, it's very problematic. But we can read it here, if you like. Yeah, sure. So it says here, the Gaza Genocide's ongoing intentional and systematic destruction of the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strait.

carried out by Israel during the Gaza war. It encompasses mass killing, starvation, bodily and mental harm, prevention of birth. Other acts include many other terrible things. Right. So, I mean, just look at the very first sentence there. The Gaza genocide is the ongoing intentional and systematic destruction of the Palestinian people. So it doesn't say it is a hypothesis. or it is the widely held view or anything like that.

It's talking about the thing itself, which actually exists. It's a genocide and it involved in the ongoing intentional and systematic destruction of people in the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian people. If it really was a genocide, then I'm certainly against it. But I'm now talking about whether such a statement is neutral in the context of an encyclopedia. And no, it clearly is not neutral because there are people with skin in the game, a lot of them actually, who disagree with it. I see. Now, what would be a more neutral framing of this?

Oh, something like the bombarding. of Gaza is represented by Palestinians and their many allies as a genocide and as part of a war campaign by Israelis. I see. Something like that. I see. And then if it's the point and then maybe the rebuttal point, would that be the idea that you have you know, the genocide point and then following up the, you know, Israeli state or the Israeli government has claimed that this is an ongoing war effort to show both sides. Is that effectively the idea? Sure. Well, and if you wanted to say that the topic properly should be the very notion that there was a genocide in Gaza, then what you would say is the Gaza genocide accusation.

or something like that. In other words, there would be some sort of distancing device used in the very title. And, of course, in the first sentence. I see. Okay. So the idea then is that an article that's actually unbiased that is neutral doesn't take a stand. It allows the reader to make up his or her own mind. That's the general idea.

The great advantage, the great virtue of neutrality is that it respects, you know, the individual person's autonomy. You can think what you like, decide what you like. There's a lot of people in the world that don't like that, though. What's up, guys? We're going to take a break really quick because I got to tell you something. The holidays wrecked me. Yeah. Travel.

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has retained his innocence the entire time. Does the article then say, you know, the alleged killer despite, you know, this killer being in prison? But once legal action has been taken and he's been convicted in a court of law, does that no longer apply? I don't know what Wikipedia's policy is now, but it used to be something that I approved of, which is that as soon as there's a conviction, then the person can be referred to as a murderer. But of course, you would also want to say if the person maintains his innocence that, yeah, something to that effect. I see. So take like, you know, World War II, right? Or like, you know, the Third Reich. Because of the Nuremberg trials, would these people be seen as war criminals within the Third Reich that

were committing, you know, atrocities because of the Nuremberg trials, then the framing would be more to the, to the effect of like, yes, this was, this is less neutral. I suppose. And, and, um, let's just put it this way. When you actually start taking neutrality seriously, then such questions like the one that you ask, well, was it a properly constituted tribunal. I mean, I think so. But maybe not everybody does. Does that have a bearing on the application of neutrality policy? Well, all of those things need to be debated, and I'm not saying that they're obvious and straightforward. People can have good faith disagreements about how to solve such problems. But something like that, that Gaza genocide article simply cannot be justified for the

very simple and straightforward reason that, you know, the people who are involved and a lot of other people outside are disagree with the description. Right. So I do want to to acknowledge that it's not easy, of course, right? But it's, there are clearer examples and less clear examples. And this is one of the clearer examples. So clear, in fact, that Jimmy Wales himself weighed in on the talk page of that particular article and said that it's biased. And I followed up and said, well, here's something we actually agree on. And a lot of people were up in arms about that because Wikipedia does tend to take, as I say, sort of progressive stance.

And apart from some Jewish progressives, they tend to be very much pro-Palestinian on. any issues connected to the war. And that shows itself in the Wikipedia articles. So with that article specifically, what would be the standard of information or the standard of knowledge, perhaps, that would make that article justified? Would it be some type of like military tribunal against, you know, the actors in the conflict? Would it be a consensus from the UN and all other sort of global governing bodies? What would that look like? See, this is difficult because here we're not, we're talking about the law of nations, not, you know, criminal law, which is very different. They're, you know, international tribunals have never been regarded by legal philosophers as quite the same thing as other sorts of, you know,

ordinary tribunals. And that actually does affect how people write history books, at least it can. You know, if somebody in good faith who is in good standing in other respects, and on the global stage takes another view, that tends to affect how it's reported. But now we're talking about just traditions of how things are reported and we're not really talking about the issue itself. So, I mean, if you ask my opinion, the fact that some international organizations are opposed to the bombardment of Gaza, not all of them even, but. And so much so that they call it a genocide, then that in itself, that doesn't mean that they are fact stating. When you're talking about geopolitics in general, it's kind of important to remain to remain neutral in any.

sort of reference work, I think. Well, I guess that would be my concern is that I would be, again, I don't know the totality of every geopolitical conflict, but I would assume that most nations and most governments are acting in such a way that they don't really think that they're committing any type of genocide in any capacity. Right, right. Of course, they always deny it. I don't think the Serbs thought that they were committing a genocide or, you know, the Turks.

I don't think, you know what I mean? Like, I don't know if any nation that we all would kind of be like, oh, that technically was a genocide. Historically, I don't think any nation would ever say like, well, that's what we were doing. I think they would say, like, no, we were protecting our border or we were trying to, you know, care for our citizens and our ethnic group. And they would denounce that framing. So at what point, because then if that is the case, then no, there's never been a genocide ever. It would be my concern. Well, you wouldn't learn that from a neutral encyclopedia, though, right? Because that would be a very, very opinionated sort of thing, wouldn't it? I see. Yes. You would go to the article about the various alleged genocides, and maybe none of the articles would be called genocides if they were still controversial, right? nevertheless, one of the very first things that you would learn, as is the case in an article about the so-called Gaza genocide, is that, yeah, like a lot of people on the world stage think that it is actually a genocide.

It's really important to know these days, actually. Mm-hmm. The notion of neutrality is that the resource doesn't make up your mind for you. That's the whole point. So what are ways that people in an individual sense can try to, you know, protect themselves from framing of articles that would lead them to believe one thing or another? And then maybe this can parlay into your thesis as to how. the platform itself can remain more neutral. But I guess I want to start with the individual sort of quotient,

because that to me feels them like the most empowering thing. Yeah. Then what we're talking about is something called methodology, even just study method or epistemology to a certain extent. But epistemology concerns the actual definitions of knowledge and justified belief and things like that, Whereas methodology concerns the actual procedures that you go through and rules that you apply. So it's a hard question, you know, you have to read a lot of different sources, for example.

Just reading the assigned text is generally not enough when you're talking about difficult controversial geopolitical topics or topics in religion or whatever sort of of thing you're trying to avoid bias about. So, yeah. So it's, obviously, it's important to find the best representatives of multiple sides, try to get a lot of different opinions, just random opinions is what I have tried to do. And then you get your own notion of the lay of the land. And then it's simply a matter of going and systematically exploring.

Yeah. And to get back to the point then about an encyclopedia article, a neutral encyclopedia article, does that work for you in advance? That's sort of the beauty of neutrality. That's why we actually appreciate and even feel gratitude for, toward a journalist that, like, takes something, takes a topic that is normally just a matter of, of, you know, acrimony. and they usually take one side, whether explicitly or, you know, implicitly. But somebody who actually makes an attempt to, as you say, steelman both sides, is doing hard work, important work that people like to have in front of them.

I see. So trying to aggregate as many different perspectives as you can on a specific topic. And maybe starting with the encyclopedic sort of description that gives you more or less the facts of both sides and then going into more biased sort of perspectives for one side of the other to form an opinion. Yeah, assuming that the encyclopedia source is reasonably neutral, or at least represents the field, because sometimes the entire field is biased, you know, and you need to consider things that are concerned. that are fringe or whatever alternative, if you want to have a truly broad idea of what's going on in a field. Right. Now, what can the platform do in order to uphold and maintain these values of neutrality?

What can a platform do? Well, I mean, write in neutral articles, essentially. I mean, if your question is how can it like organize? people to do it. That's another question. I guess how can Wikipedia now, per your theses, try to maintain that? Well, then we're getting into

basically the first four theses. I can sort of go over those quickly. Yeah, please. It might be helpful to pull them up. Yeah, that would be a good idea to pull them up. Okay. Right, so the first, these are just the headlines, of course, but that's

quite enough for me. The first is end decision-making by consensus. Here, the idea is that Wikipedia's have this unfortunate practice of pretending that after a topic has been discussed enough when they have arrived at a decision that that is, should be dubbed the consensus view. when often it's not. One side is the loser.

The other side is the winner. And if they're just taking the winning side, that doesn't make the winning side the consensus view. So all I'm saying there is that in the interest of neutrality, stop calling this decision-making procedure consensus, because that's not what it is. Do you have an example of how that could be done or how that has been done? Well, well, let's see.

I know there's probably many examples, but I find examples are helpful to make it concrete. Essentially, whenever Wikipedia has a debate on any topic at all, it goes through a process of sort of discussion. Sometimes there's dispute resolution and so forth. and often what happens at some point is there's a kind of vote taking. It's not supposed to be democratic. They say it's not democratic, but to that extent, it is. They don't necessarily tally the vote, but usually the vote is strongly on one side or the other. and when it is, then they say that's the consensus.

Sometimes, though, when there is such vote-taking, some administrator will, or just very distinguished, you know, long-lasting Wikipedia editor, steps in and overreward. rules the whole procedure and says, yes, this is not in keeping with our policy, obviously. And so I'm just going to shut this down. They do that sort of thing quite a bit, just ending discussions, including ending these sorts of, this sort of vote taking. Do we know who these people are? You'd mentioned before that they're sort of anonymous.

Now we're skipping ahead to the thesis six. Okay, I don't want to jump too far. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So the second one is enable competing articles. So I've already explained this idea about GASP. The GASP framework, again, globalist, academic, secular, progressive. Now, if Wikipedia continues to, and again, this flows out of the very policies that they have now. especially if you look at certain commonly cited what they call essays on Wikipedia. It's very clear that they have this framework and that it is in operation. So what about everybody else who disagrees with some aspect of it? There's an article, for example, about Yahweh, which is the name of my God.

It's the name of the Christian God and the name of the Jewish God. It is the name that is translated, the Lord, in the Bible. And the article in Wikipedia about Yahweh, that's the title of the article, Yahweh, nothing else, says Yahweh was, past tense, the head of a pantheon of ancient, I don't know, is, Israelite gods, or maybe they say Canaanite, I think maybe Canaanite. And it's, well, first of all, that's very speculative, right? So we don't know that for sure. That is widely believed by especially secular Bible scholars. I see.

So, yeah, the way it's written here, Yahweh was an ancient Semitic deity of weather and war in the southeastern ancient Levant and the nation god of the iron age kingdoms of israel and judah that's interesting because myself growing up catholic right i would read the old testament i would read the the tetragrammaton of yahweh and you'd be like all right this is the god of the Israelites and the secular view i understand is that oh this is a desert god of war and that seems like it is at odds with what the religious belief of who yahweh is and i can see that the framing of this makes it pretty clear. If you're in a debate with someone about, you know, the nature of Yahweh, someone could pull this up and be like, yeah, this is a deity of war. This is no different than,

you know, Ra or, you know, some type of a Norse god or something like that. Right, right. Which I can see being at conflict with someone that believes, like, no, this is the one true God. And the line is that this deity then was sort of pressed into service and made the only God, the creator God, but it took a long time for this process to happen. Whereas if you actually ask believing Christians and Jews and even Muslims, they will tell you that, no, in fact, God gave his name to Moses, right? and his name was at least used in the book of Genesis and it's used all throughout the Torah,

the first five books of the Bible. And these, again, on a traditional confessional view, were written by Moses and who actually talked to God. And so that's where we got the name, the tetragrammaton, tetragrammaton, as you say. And not this way. So this just tells one view and simply ignores the religious view.

Now, I'm not saying that the religious view is correct and that it should be stated in wiki voice, but this should not be stated in wiki voice. This view that's stated here should be in the second or third paragraph and attributed to, its owners. I see. Right. Secular scholars will say that Yahweh was a desert deity, yada yada, but amongst, you know, Jews and Christians, Yahweh is the god of the ancient Israelis. Yeah. And I'll tell you, this article is not totally devoid of value because it does tell you what people like that think. Right. Right. But it, the fact that it only tells you that means that it's biased in favor of what they think. I see.

Yes, this makes sense. This makes sense. I can see that the subtlety of the way of the framing can really lead people into believing one thing or another. Right, right. When it's not as clear as your argument. So the second thesis, then, enable competing articles, would say, okay, look, if Wikipedia is set on having that particular article, right? then you should declare that this is according to the GASP framework, right? And other frameworks should be permitted. And therefore, you know, a Christian framework, perhaps it would be a Catholic framework and a Protestant framework. He knows exactly where the lines will be drawn there and whether people will be able to just, you know, create their own frameworks, will an alien or whatever.

And, of course, if an article is not well rated by anybody, then it shouldn't even get into the main namespace, as it's called, in Wikipedia. Shouldn't be shown to the public easily anyway. Yeah. So the idea then is, then, there can be multiple competing articles on the same topic. So a number of different articles on Yahweh, for example, or on the violence in Gaza. I see. Could I ask you a question on this specifically? So I've heard a criticism of like centrism generally is that it offers equal weight to two ideas when one of them deserves a little weight.

This is completely wrong. People are centrists. Articles are not centrist. All right. So people are objective or people are biased one side or to the other side. In other words, they're opinionated, right? articles, right, can be biased or neutral. If they're neutral, they're not centrist.

They're neutral. Centrist actually is a different, that's an opinion, right? I see. If you're going to actually take a centrist, express a centrist view in an article, then you're expressing a view. I see. Okay. Maybe, I think that makes sense.

I'm curious, like, what would be the line for this? So, like, September of the 11th, right? There's, in my opinion, as an American, this was a terrorist attack taken course by, you know, Al-Qaeda radicals. Okay. Should there be a competing Wikipedia entry for the Al-Qaeda side, that is the freedom fighter that was basically doing an act of war against American meddling in the Middle East? Why not? Is it possible that these two articles in? in tandem could lead people to believe that, oh, there's actually two really good sides to this.

Or do you hope that... If they're idiots, I suppose. I mean, I'm being a little flippant, of course. Right. But one would hope that in a media atmosphere in which neutrality is more robustly understood and practiced, that one wouldn't draw such a conclusion. Right. Right.

So as a matter of fact, you can go and learn online from online resources, takes quite a bit of digging, actually, and find different competing, you know, views on things. Of course, with AI, it's becoming easier and easier. They'll actually be able to do that research for us. They're not very good at it yet, but they will be better, I'm sure. Nevertheless, if you were to make an encyclopedia resource that respected all different views by policy, right, not because they are all morally equally, then, you know, someone could learn quite a bit, you know, I think it would be frankly fascinating to have a set of articles on different religious topics written from different religious points of view.

So articles about God or about salvation or the afterlife or whatever from different frameworks. I think it's important to, again, to distinguish between a bias and a framework. I think it's possible for an article to be written about God from a Hindu, in a Hindu framework, for example, that is nevertheless quite neutral by their lights, if you see what I'm saying. Whereas if you just read a piece of Hindu propaganda about God, then you would simply be, I mean, you still learn what Hindus think, right? But the style of writing would be different, the approach to topics, the setting views in contrast with each other would not be there, etc. And that's all important if you're actually trying to learn about different points of view.

Right. Yeah, I can see that from like a theological or almost, you know, sort of a hypothetical kind of framework. But I guess once it gets into concrete events where people feel very emotionally about them, this type of, you know, this multitude of different opinions, I can see that being offensive. But I guess in the desire for neutrality, you have to allow some people to be offended by the framing of certain articles. There's unfortunately a lot of people in the world who are simply so closed-minded about topics that they disagree with that they just don't want to give any support, any to countenance the use of any public resource to share views that they disagree with. So, yes, you know, that the Israeli view about the Gaza genocide, if we want to call it that, is simply offensive, extremely offensive to Palestinians and a lot of their progressive supporters. That's okay. I mean, I'm not saying that they're wrong to be offended, but they are.

I think, to not allow the other side to speak. Right. So I actually say neutrality and free speech are very close. They are mutually supporting. And a society that has lost neutrality is in danger of losing free speech as well. It's commitment to free speech. I think that's a good point. Yeah, I mean, I've always sort of taken the perspective that, I think it was Aquinas that said that the truth fears no interrogation.

That, you know, if, like, whatever the truth is can be sort of, you know, scrutinized and attacked, but because it is the truth sort of in a capital T sense, if there is such a thing, that it will sort of withstand these attacks. And that I would hope that human beings with the ability to reason and, you know, apply the sort of the, you know, the, you know, sort of the, the. principles of logic can see something and see all of the information without any type of censorship and draw similar conclusions. I love that. That's my hope. Yeah. But also I recognize that people are busy and they have jobs and they do things and they don't always have time to parse through every different article.

And perhaps different people have different, you know, logical reasoning abilities. And especially when it's shrouded with emotion that my fear is that people see the totality of information and then draw improper conclusions. And I guess this is putting a lot of faith, which I personally have in the ability for people to reason when given all the information. But I recognize that there are many people specifically in like the global stage that look at human beings with a fairly cynical view with their ability to reason for themselves that they must be thought for. Yes, for sure. What's up, guys? We're going to take a break real quick because we've got to have some real talk.

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So Wikipedia has a page called the Perennial Sources page, which is a list of many, many different news media sources. and the New York Times, the Washington Post, BBC, Le Monde, you know, Der Spiegel, they're all in there. And it's color-coded. So the ones that can be used on Wikipedia as sources without attribution, except in footnotes, of course, are greenlit. And the ones that I just named, they're all green lit, of course. Then there's some that are, they've got a yellow background. The ones that are yellow are, you can cite them, but it's better to cite another one instead. Yes.

So academic repositories. So they can be cited. Articles in preprint services can be cited, but, you know, Generally speaking, you should try to find something that isn't. And then the red ones are generally off limits. At least you're supposed to attribute only opinions to them. And usually the way it works is they're not able to be used on Wikipedia at all. In fact, that's true, most of the yellow ones as well.

In practice. in practice. Which I can see why this was instituted. I can understand the reason why this was done. I suppose. Like if you don't want to, you know, necessarily publish state-sponsored propaganda, right? You could have a media apparatus that functions to just lie on behalf of a government that then gets put in. What if you, what the article is about is the state-sponsored propaganda.

What if it's, you're writing an article about a war? in which that state is a participant, then it's actually pretty important that you be able to report about what their propaganda is because that's like part of a story. For sure, most of the stuff that they blacklist, if you go down the list, is either conservative or it's fringe in some other way.

I'm considered fringe, but on Wikipedia, basically, everything conservatives is fringe unless it's unless it is explicitly establishment. But even the you know

national review is yellow if I'm not mistaken. And it's you know as establishment as they come. I see. So there really does seem to be some

Other ones, like, you know, whatever, the Federalist, the Epic Times, the Bright Bart, those are all like either red listed here or there's another category, gray, which means they can't even be linked to. The software will stop you from linking to them. So even in an article that is like, I guess, about Breitbart, I'm not sure. Interesting. Maybe they have an override. I'm not sure how that works. Interesting. I guess I'm curious, how would you prevent from someone just lying, right?

Like, if we take an example, let's say, I don't even have a Wikipedia entry, but let's say I did. And, you know, there's a long section about how I'm a sadist. And some person, a bad actor, just, you know, I'm using this as sort of a silly example, but made a news article. and they've made a whole website and they published it and they said, Mark is a Satanist because he went to these satanic meetings,

all of which is untrue. But now that is an entry on my Wikipedia. Yeah. For no reason other than a bad actor wanted to frame me as a Satanist, just as a hypothetical. Right, right. What is, like, should that view also be considered,

despite it being completely erroneous? Um, I think you have to have some sensible policies about things like that. I'm not saying you should just throw open the doors to any source whatsoever. So I'm certainly in favor of considering issues of credibility. I see. Okay. I think that's true. I do think on the other hand that, you know, if the person has a big following and has made this accusation,

that there can be grounds for including it. It really depends on, you know, that's kind of an edge case. You see what I'm saying? I'm imagining a situation in which the, you know, the massive preponderance of evidence is that you're not a Satanist. Right. Okay. And it's just this one guy who's saying that you are.

And maybe it's Alex Jones, for example. Right. And he's the only one who says it, right? Should that be included? Maybe. I actually would have to think hard about that one. So there are edge cases. That's fair. And I use the edge case, obviously, to illustrate sort of the point just to beg the question to push it to its, you know, for this conclusion. Anyway, so the, the, my reasonable proposal, all of my proposals in the nine Theses are extremely reasonable. There's nothing, nothing. Nothing. particularly outlandish about any of them, except to Wikipedians because they're really stuck in their ways. But to everybody else, they make a lot of sense. And so here, I'm simply saying abolish the blacklists. Okay, so get rid of the perennial sources page.

It began as an essay, if I'm not mistaken. And so it should be, you know, made a subpage of the person who ever started it. And then you simply say that, you know, if there is a source which is not supported that is regarded by many Wikipedians as not reliable, et cetera, then you, when there is a claim made in such a source, depending on the circumstances, it can be made, but it has to be attributed to the source. And the other side, obviously, should be given an opportunity to respond with its own sources as needed. I see. Yeah. The fourth here, this is the original neutrality policy, which I think we've spoken about.

Which is what we have been speaking about. So I don't really think that's necessary to go into any more detail about. But that particular article, each of these has an article that it's linked to, that particular article is good as a sort of introduction to the issues. Right. So number five, repeal, ignore all rules. So, yeah, there's, in the early weeks of Wikipedia, there were a lot of people who were like, shy and not bold enough about making edits, which you really have to be if you're going to work on on wiki. And so I was like encouraging them by saying be bold in updating pages and so forth.

And one of the other things that I said is ignore all rules. If rules make you nervous and not desirous of participating in the wiki, then ignore them and go about your business. That's essentially the original wording. And the whole idea is tongue-in-cheek expression of our good faith trust in people to get things right, more or less. And if they actually do, you know, step over the line somehow, we're not going to get too upset about it, at least not right away, you know. So it was a way of welcoming the newbies. I see. Now it's actually used by people who are very much part of the system.

And it's sometimes used simply to, in lieu of a better argument, or when an argument isn't even available, it's like, oh, you guys know what I mean. This sort of thing cannot stand. Ignore all rules. I see. Yeah. So it really doesn't have a legitimate use any longer. I kind of wish it did. I kind of wish that Wikipedians were much more welcoming to new people and actually did, you know, not kick them out so quickly.

Creating an open environment that people are sort of voracious and eager to contribute in it for. information. Well put, and that actually is thesis eight, and indefinite blocking. It's related to that anyway. But I don't actually mean to skip ahead. So I'm simply saying, I invented that rule. I made that rule. Let's get rid of it. Okay. Number six. I don't know if you want to keep going through all of the rules. Yeah, I mean, I'm enjoying this. I mean, Six seems fairly, I actually am, I think most people would be pretty much in lockstep with this. Like, yeah, we should know who the people are that are editing this, like any type of newspaper or any type of media source, right? Like, if I'm reading an article and I see who it's written by and I've read other articles by them, it'll imply me, or it'll sort of clue me into what their implicit bias is. So that at the very least, I can understand why they are writing this or where this information is coming from. Right.

But I'm not saying this is true of all Wikipedians. I'm simply saying that there are some Wikipedians who are trusted enough that they have been given certain rights in the system. So the arbitration committee, the bureaucrats, and the Czech users are three, I don't know if they're necessarily the most powerful groups. But they sort of represent some of the most powerful people on Wikipedia. There are 62 people who are in one or more of those groups right now. And of them, 85% are anonymous. That's strange. Yeah.

How can that be? We don't even know who they are and they're essentially leading Wikipedia. So. Is there pushback on this point? Do people disagree with you here? Oh, yes. on Wikipedia, you mean? Well, I can imagine these 62 would disagree, but does the vast majority of other people, do

you get pushback on this point? There's a lot of pushback, yes. What is the strong, the steel man to support their... What they say is simply that this places the editors in great danger. Don't you know that there has been someone who is threatened. once. And of course, there have been people who have actually been assaulted, you know. I'm sorry, that's happened to a lot of journalists, too, right? I think what's important, though, here is not to make all of the editors anonymous, but make the ones anonymous who actually have a reason to be anonymous.

Or give a justification for why this person specifically is anonymous. Perhaps, yes, yes. There's no need for all of the leadership, especially of the English Wikipedia, to be anonymous. And it's actually very important that somebody be able to take responsibility for what's going on, because Wikipedia has become an engine of defamation. I could see the case of someone living in some type of totalitarian regime where any type of criticism against the leader can lead and, you know, lead to death, that that person, if they are sourcing and sort of writing about, you know, a leader in potentially a negative light in the interest of, you know, including the totality of what they've done or who they are, that they would be at risk of dying. So in that case, I could see that person, I could see a benefit for that person being anonymous. Sure. I think it depends on a lot of things. Let's put it this way. Let's suppose there were some

Wikipedia who just happened to be really influential. So the person was named, like my proposal is adopted. And so because the person was a bureaucrat that, therefore he had to reveal his name. He agreed. And then after that, you know, he became like this massively influential figure, like a media figure who is followed and so forth. And when he would weigh in on Wikipedia, people would listen and so forth. I can easily imagine this happening.

And then, of course, there are death threats, right? Well, should Wikipedia then give such a person a security detail? Yeah, they should. It's that important. I suppose they should. They've got the money for it, actually. They're collecting $200 million. And if there was a need for it, I'm sure the money could be found for that use in particular.

Right? But I mean, obviously, that's not the case for most journalists, right? But we have to acknowledge that these people are powerful. It's ridiculous to suppose that just because they use these sort of Tweed 1990s gamer handles, right? that therefore it's they are just, you know, powerless college students or something, you know, basement dwellers. Right. Probably they're being paid by, you know, Microsoft or, you know, Germany or the CIA or whatever. Right.

That's interesting. Yeah, you'd even mentioned, I think, in your conversation with Tucker that there was entries from Langley. Yes. At one point. And probably still to this day. It was discovered in 2007 by the wiki scanner. Right.

That's not even, you know, it's no conspiracy theory. Langley, obviously, being the head of the CIA headquarters. Right. That the CIA itself as an intelligence operation is sort of changing the narrative and changing facts about specific articles. Yes. Mm-hmm. Which to me is like, all right, yeah, that makes sense.

I imagine that every intelligence. They're not doing their job if they don't do that, I suppose, right? That's sort of the nature of warfare and spycraft in the 21st century, actually. Right? So the reason that I say that, you know, intelligence agencies are editing Wikipedia has nothing to do with, you know, some. crazed conspiracy theory, it's simply a strong inductive reasoning. You know, it's what, you know, we know, we know that they do whatever they can to sort

of manage certain points of public opinion. That's like what they do now. You can look at their books. They say so, right? And, okay, why wouldn't they be using Wikipedia to do that? because Wikipedia is one of the most influential media sources today. And they should have their own entry, perhaps, or they should have the ability to continue to edit?

Oh, who's going to stop them? I mean, maybe they shouldn't in some sense. I mean, if we could identify them, then, yeah, I would say, yes, let's get rid of all the spooks from everywhere. Yeah, it seems like a difficult task, Because the point of being a spy is that no one knows your spy. Yes. Yes.

So I can understand the nobility and the desire to want to eradicate any type of foreign intelligence to change it. But to me, I'm like, I don't, perhaps I'm resigned and perhaps I'm nihilistic, but I think that's an inevitability of the platform. Is that so long as you allow people to edit, you're going to have, you know, foreign agents or even internal agents with, you know, sort of spy agendas to do it. I think the way to fight back is to require an identified leadership, right? So don't allow them to operate in the shadows. Right. That the people who have the most responsibility should be required to take real world responsibility. I see.

Now, just to go through the rest of these quickly. Sure, sure. Letting the public rate articles, you sort of let crowd wisdom decide whether or not things are good or not? Well, not necessarily letting them decide. People can still decide for themselves, but the idea is that you would, I actually think a good place to begin would be with an LLM,

which has been trained to be perfectly neutral, right? And of course people can make and adopt a free version of an LLM and then negotiate about exactly what the prompts should be and that sort of thing. And then, yeah, and then the rating then would be reasonably useful, I think. I won't go into the details why I think so, but I've tested it. That makes sense. Yeah. Indefinite blocking, this is, I think, similar to one of the other points. Sure.

You know, not, you know, users or editors that are basically just like banned off the platform for wrong thing. Yes, often, that's the reason. Sometimes it's just because they're cussed and they don't like somebody and they just say, get rid of them and they're gone forever. And, yeah, it's a big problem because it is a way for the inner circle to exclude people that they don't like who are not falling in line. And then the ninth and final thesis is a legislative process. Exactly. So throughout its history, Wikipedia has had a very slow method of making any sort of changes.

There have been changes, but they tend to be very incremental. And so there hasn't been any really radical change to Wikipedia apart from this sort of redefinition of words like neutrality or re-efinition. conceptualization of the policies about reliable sources. That sort of thing. But if you wanted to allow multiple competing articles, for example, there really isn't any good way to have that discussion and to adopt it. There is such a zeal of. about sticking to the current system, whatever it is,

that anybody who disagrees with it is sort of shoved out or leaves in disgust. Hmm. And having a legislative process would then allow a lot more creativity, you know. we could start considering important new, you know, reform proposals. So I put it last, but in some ways it actually comes first. If a legislative process were installed, if there were a Wikipedia editorial assembly or whatever it would be called, then it would be really interesting. to watch and I can imagine, you know, these sort of legislators from around the world coming together,

meeting face to face and, you know, debating in the way that politicians do various policies, and presumably they would represent the editors very well. One thing that would make such a a thing much more legitimate than at present is that, again, we don't know how many people are standing behind the active accounts, right? It might be just one entity that is controlling multiple accounts. And there's really no way of knowing. I see. These are all very interesting.

I can admit that the challenge of understanding and sort of implementing policy to capture the totality of, you know, human knowledge is extremely difficult. It is. And, I mean, even just the philosophy of epistemology of, you know, the philosophy of what is knowable of knowledge and where it comes from is challenging and has been debated ad nauseum. But I do think that your commitment to neutrality is really admirable and I think it is probably a more difficult position in many ways. And I think ultimately hinges on, to me, I see it very much analogous to the free speech sort

of argument, right? There are people that, you know, are strong free speech absolutists that say, you know, in the marketplace of ideas, everything is able to go and that good ideas will trounce on bad ideas and that ultimately, with the fullness of information, the good things will sort of, you know, matriculate through. And I retain that in a theoretical sense where I'm like, that is the way that things should be. But I do also see the other side and I understand the concern that perhaps not all people are rational agents and that we don't always operate with pure logic and reason

and that people can sort of be seduced by very evil agendas and bad ideas because of their emotional predilections and the way that they feel about the world and that can also be scary. So I recognize the counter sort of argument to this that, you know, things have to be framed in a certain way to sort of quell

any type of ideological I guess wandering into bad territory. So I don't know. I'm conflicted. The beauty of neutrality is precisely that such reservations and even strong pushback can be expressed sympathetically right alongside the views that are so offensive. Yeah, I can see that being the case. But I do think your commitment to neutrality is I think an important voice and I think in the way that, you know, I wouldn't consider myself like, perhaps like a, I think free speech is foundational to America. Do I consider myself a free speech absolutist? Maybe not. But I do value the free speech absolute voices as, you know, as a part of the dialectic, right? And I think the commitment to neutrality is, you know, as a part of the dialectic, right? And I think the commitment to neutrality is, yeah, I think it's important.

And I think it's important to have people like you advocating for the fullness of information on both sides. Well, I'm excited to read your book. And if you ever have an early copy that you want to send over, I would gladly go through it. I'll probably read it very slowly or maybe I'll have to use an LLM to even get to the bottom of it. But I'm always open. Larry, thank you so much for joining me. I really appreciate it. This is a fantastic conversation.

I appreciate you sharing. Thank you for having me. Of course. Let's do it again soon when your book comes out. Thank you.