Left-leaning Wikipedia blocked founder from editing site after he campaigned to make it more balanced

Left-leaning website Wikipedia took the drastic action of blocking one of its founders from editing pages on Monday — after he had campaigned to make it more balanced and fair.Last month, Larry Sanger launched WikiProject Intellectual Diversity (WID), a group designed to help reinforce the online encyclopedia’s “original, firm commitment to intellectual diversity,” by emphasizing neutrality and transparency.However, Sanger — who coined the name “Wikipedia,” drafted the site’s foundational set of rules and guidelines, and launched the site alongside Jimmy Wales in 2001 — was indefinitely blocked from editing, the most drastic action the site can take against an editor.“I am flabbergasted,” Sanger told the Post, saying the decision was made by a group of the site’s volunteer editors.He described the modern Wikipedia community as being like a “mob or a blob,” noting users do not feel obligated to a specific vision of the rules, but rather to each other.“They are constantly trying to gauge what other people think, and this is the way ultimately these people are able to influence each other,” Sanger said.

“Even a lot of the hard and fast policies are regarded as just guidelines if everybody is on board.”Sanger became unpopular among the site’s most prolific editors for making public calls for those whose viewpoints have typically been underrepresented — Hindus prominently, but also, most pointedly, American conservatives — to be more involved.The exact reason for his blocking was not given.Wikipedia makes a lot of noise about how its content is created by volunteer users, citing a figure of 267,000 people contributing or editing over the last 30 days on its website.However, Sanger has long argued the real power rests with a small, largely anonymous class of Wikipedia administrators — who he has identified as being just 62 accounts, which he calls the “Power 62,” of which 85% hide behind their screennames and have never r...