From ... in Social issues — Aug 3, 2022

Ministry of Truth: Wikipedia Adds Editing Restrictions to 'Protect' Article on Recession

Wikipedia is introducing restrictions to prevent new and unregistered users from editing the article about economic recession.

The “online encyclopedia,” which has demonstrated its leftist bias on many occasions, became the subject of intense criticism last week after editors made dozens of changes to the recession article to de-emphasize the broad consensus definition of recession — two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth — instead parroting the Biden Administration’s talking points.

The Hill reports that Wikipedia is setting restrictions today that will prevent new and unregistered users who try to edit the page about economic recession. A spokesperson for the Wikimedia Foundation said that new account users and anonymous users will be able to make changes to the English recession page but that all edits will be subject to review from volunteer editors. President Joe Biden (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta) Janet Yellen, US Treasury secretary (Photographer: Sarah Silbiger/Bloomberg via Getty Images) The Commerce Department announced last week that the nation’s economy shrank for the second quarter in a row, which many experts believe constitutes a recession. Following the announcement, the recession page was repeatedly edited by users debating the definition of a recession. Breitbart News senior technology reporter Allum Bokhari reported last week: Editors of the leftist-dominated online encyclopedia are pushing a definition of “recession” that is unusually broad and favors the Biden administration’s claims that no recession has occurred. This definition, from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), claims that a recession is a ” significant decline in economic activity spread across the market, lasting more than a few months.” What was until recently the broad consensus on the definition of a recession — two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth — remains at the top of the page, but editors have been attempting to remove it. This definition is also described as the United Kingdom’s definition.

The article continues to note, further down the page in a section on the definition, that “in a 1975 New York Times article, economic statistician Julius Shiskin suggested several rules of thumb for defining a recession, one of which was ‘two down quarters of GDP.’” In response to the edit war, senior Wikipedia editors have locked the page on recession, preventing users from making further snap edits to it. Articles that become the subject of contentious “edit wars” are often locked in this manner by Wikipedia administrators — but the lock comes after leftists successfully muddied the waters.

The new prominence of the NBER’s definition comes after the Biden administration began citing it in its arguments, backed by a sycophantic media, that the U.S. is not in recession.

The Wikimedia Foundation spokesperson said: “Volunteer editors know this, and have created tools and mechanisms for responding to an influx of edits on articles that are in the public eye in order to maintain the standards of neutrality and verifiability that govern the site. Protecting an article is one common tool they use.” When Elon Musk criticized Wikipedia’s betrayal of the supposed neutrality that the Foundation mentioned, site co-founder Jimmy Wales flipped out, calling him “stupid.” Facebook recently placed a “fact-checking” label on a post written by top economist Phillip Magness, the research and education director at the American Institute for Economic Research, after he stated that America is now in a recession. Magness fired back at Mark Zuckerberg and the Masters of the Universe, saying, “We live in an Orwellian hell-scape. Facebook is now ‘fact checking’ anyone who questions the White House’s word-games about the definition of a recession.” Read more at the Hill here. Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan.

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