Wired – Wikipedia Combats Conspiracy Theories

Wired’s article, The ‘Guerrilla’ Wikipedia Editors Who Combat Conspiracy Theories by Louise Matsakis (posted July 25th, 2018) is worth a read.

… companies like YouTube, Google and Facebook have turned to Wikipedia to help fight the spread of misinformation and conspiracy theories on their own platforms

… the Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia project has more than 120 volunteer editors … responsible for some of the site’s most heavily trafficked articles … seeks to improve skeptical content by writing new articles about topics like people who claim supernatural abilities and improving existing ones about groups like those who believe the Earth is flat

… are helping to populate search engine queries for which
few unbiased and relatively trustworthy results exist

… Wikipedia pages are also particularly crucial real estate in search results because Google often includes information from them in its “knowledge panels,” windows of information displayed before users even click on another website