Editorial Behaviors for Biasing Wikipedia Articles

As the vital source of information on the Web that it has long become, Wikipedia (WP) has developed detailed policies and guidelines for contributing to it as well as for resolving conflicts with a goal to ensure that all important viewpoints are represented fairly and supported by trustworthy published resources. However, WP has long been criticized for systemic biases in its content, which are often implemented and maintained through the use of these same WP policies and guidelines. The present study explores editorial behaviors of a selected editor who succeeded in biasing a set of WP articles. By selecting an editor to examine through a big‐data approach, this study can serve as an objective crosscheck for previously reported tactics for introducing and maintaining bias observed from personal experiences of disputes on WP, and could provide evidence to generate empirically grounded hypotheses concerning editorial practices indicative of bias. It was found that editorial behavior around deletion and erasure is an important strategy for implementing and maintaining bias on WP, and WP policies and guidelines are used to support and validate the silencing of other voices.