 | This is an essay. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. |
| “ | Wikipedia has, over time, instituted gradually more control ... the idea of a pure openness, a pure democracy, is a naïve one. | ” |
| — Joseph M. Reagle, adjunct professor, NYU, as quoted by the New York Times in support of its successful news suppression campaign. | ||
Censorship on Wikipedia is formally against policy, and in fact the English Wikipedia frequently resists external requests to remove information. This is frequently taken as an indication that the site is free, crowdsourced, and offers a neutral point of view to which any editor can contribute. However, Wikipedia has developed an extensive hierarchy, in which those with higher user access levels can take action to exclude contributors and delete contributions based on their own initiative, without needing to defend these actions according to any stated policy. As a result, certain governments and individuals have broad power to exclude unwanted information by means which are little-known to the reader and which are immune to contradiction or criticism by most editors.