Perhaps the most important things about Wikipedia (and any published source for that matter) are being factual and neutral. Wikipedia obviously has a reputation as not always being factual, but I would argue that the neutrality aspect is often left ignored.
Being an open source, community driven project, Wikipedia has plenty of different viewpoints. Left-wing, right-wing, centrist, extremist, you name it. But opinions are like your buttocks - you can be proud of it, we all have one, but flashing it to others probably isn't the best idea.
This is especially important on those touchy topics. You know what I mean - gender identity, religion, politics (especially in the US!), regional/cultural wars ([[Wikipedia and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict
|i.e. the Israeli-Palestinian conflict!]]). Current events as well, such as elections, disasters, living people. More people take Wikipedia as a news source as one may think, despite their knowledge that anyone can edit it.
Perhaps a way to make the project less opinionated is by reconsidering the biased sources policy. While the concept of it is understandable, the guideline in practice allows for the creation of one-sided articles. Many people fail to understand the point of it is to understand different viewpoints, not present an opinion as fact. Like the guideline states, they can play an important role in presenting facts, but they can be weaponized.
It's easy to roll your eyes at a page and criticize it for being biased or incorrect, but you have to be the one to change it. Seriously. With the same level of effort to share the issue online or make a tweet, you can click edit and change it. If it's too much work for you, shoot me a message at my talk page and (within a reasonable amount of time) I'll get back to you.
This article appears to contain a large number of buzzwords. There might be a discussion about this on the talk page. Please help improve this user page if you can.
This article may overuse or misuse colour, making it hard to understand for colour-blind users. Please remove or fix instances of distracting or hard-to-read colours or remove coloured links that may impede users' ability to distinguish links from regular text, or links coloured for purely aesthetic reasons. See the guides to editing for accessibility of contrast and colour.
This "see also" section may contain an excessive number of entries. Please ensure that only the most relevant links are given, that they are not red links, and that any links are not already in this article. (Learn how and when to remove this message)
This page may be too long to read and navigate comfortably. Consider splitting content into sub-articles, condensing it, or adding subheadings. Please discuss this issue on the article's talk page.
This article's lead section contains information that is not included elsewhere in the article. If the information is appropriate for the lead of the article, this information should also be included in the body of the article. (Learn how and when to remove this message)
This article or section may have been copied and pasted from another location, possibly in violation of Wikipedia's copyright policy. Please review the source and remedy this by editing this article to remove any non-free copyrighted content and attributing free content correctly, or flagging the content for deletion. Please be sure that the supposed source of the copyright violation is not itself a Wikipedia mirror.
This article focuses only on one specialized aspect of the subject. Please help improve this article by adding general information and discuss at the talk page.
This article is about an event or subject that may not be current but does not specify the time period. Please help improve it to include this information. The talk page may contain suggestions.
This article lacks an overview of its topic. You can help by writing the lead section.
This section is missing mileposts for junctions. Please help by adding them.
This article needs attention from an expert on the subject. Please add a reason or a talk parameter to this template to explain the issue with the article. When placing this tag, consider associating this request with a WikiProject.
This article is about an event or subject that may not be current but does not specify the time period. Please help improve it to include this information. The talk page may contain suggestions.
This article appears to contradict another article. Please discuss at the talk page and do not remove this message until the contradictions are resolved.
This article may be very hard to understand. Please help clarify it.
The truthfulness of this article has been questioned. It is believed that some or all of its content may constitute a hoax. Please carefully verify any reliable sources used to support the claims in the article or section, and add reliable sources for any uncited claims. If the claims cannot be reliably sourced, consider placing the article at articles for deletion and/or removing the section in question. For blatant hoaxes, use {{db-hoax}} to identify it for speedy deletion instead. Further information and discussion may be on the article's talk page.
This article may be unbalanced toward certain viewpoints. Please improve the article by adding information on neglected viewpoints, or discuss the issue on the talk page.
This page exceeds Wikipedia's template size limit. Some references and templates may not render properly on this page.
This article uses HTML markup. Please help by changing HTML markup to wiki markup where appropriate. For help finding or replacing the problematic tags, see instructions.
This article currently links to a large number of disambiguation pages (or back to itself). Please help direct these ambiguous links to articles dealing with the specific meaning intended. Read the FAQ.
This list contains entries that may be out of scope and need to be evaluated for removal. Please help to clean it up by removing items that do not meet the inclusion criteria agreed upon on the talk page.
