Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger has known for years that the website he helped create — the single largest repository of human knowledge ever assembled — was going off the rails. But it wasn't until he read the entry for Yahweh, the Old Testament name for God, that he decided he had to take a more active role in restoring the site to his original vision.

It's not that the claims made in the Yahweh entry are false, Sanger explained in an interview with National Review, but that the entry provides an entirely secular account of the term's history, excluding entirely the biblical history that informs the perspective of millions of Christians and Jews.

“I’m not complaining about the research,” Sanger said. “I’m complaining about the pretense of neutrality that Wikipedia has. It’s absolutely ridiculous to call the article neutral. It takes a very definite position which contradicts the vast majority of people with strong and well-informed opinions on the topic."

For Sanger, the Yahweh entry is just one example of the secular, progressive bias that inspired him to compose a manifesto, the "Nine Theses," diagnosing the platform's problems and proposing solutions. Sanger released the manifesto last month to widespread acclaim on the political right, appearing on the Tucker Carlson Show as congressional Republicans and billionaire Elon Musk took up his cause.

Although it was an entry on a historical topic that spurred Sanger to action, Wikipedia's bias is most pronounced in entries dealing with current events, particularly events that are politically charged.

“I wouldn’t point to any particular article so much as the tendency of Wikipedia to simply dismiss and demonize a lot of conservative commentators as conspiracy theorists,” Sanger said.

Wikipedia relies on a list of "reliable" news sources that leans decidedly left. The list includes Al Jazeera, MSNBC, The Nation, the New Republic, Mother Jones, while right-wing sources such as Fox News and the New York Post are deemed unreliable.

Under Sanger's proposed system, Wikipedia would no longer blacklist certain sources while pre-approving others. Instead, there would be two entries on politically charged topics representing two adverse perspectives.

“One of the single most effective things that Wikipedia could do is to jettison the perennial sources page,” Sanger said.

Sanger's most controversial proposal involves unmasking Wikipedia’s most powerful editors, a group of 62 anonymous individuals who have been deemed reliable by other users and consequently enjoy the power to resolve disputes and generally police the site.

By allowing anonymous editors to shape articles with little recourse for subjects, Sanger believes Wikipedia is abusing its Section 230 liability protections. Section 230 shields Wikipedia’s umbrella organization, the Wikimedia Foundation, from liability for incorrect entries. Those protections also benefit the dominant editors.

“What they have said online is that I’m saying there should be no anonymous editing on Wikipedia, which is of course ludicrous. That is not at all the proposal,” Sanger said.

“The fact that there’s been such hostile pushback on this to me indicates that I’m over the target.”

Sanger's crusade has attracted the attention of some powerful allies, including Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Crus (R., Texas), who sent a letter to the Wikimedia Foundation earlier this month demanding that the nonprofit root out "ideological bias" on its platform. Even before Sanger released his manifesto, Republicans on the House Oversight Committee launched an investigation in August into allegations that "hostile nation-state actors" are using Wikipedia "to expose Western audiences to pro-Kremlin and anti-Western messaging."

Sanger believes Congress should investigate Wikipedia’s possible abuse of Section 230 liability and explore legislative solutions to the problem. The issue is even more urgent because artificial intelligence chatbots regularly cite Wikipedia as a source for answering queries. AI’s reliance on Wikipedia reflects its “great deal of unearned authority” over people’s reputations, a level of power Sanger does not think is appropriate for a single source.

The implications for AI training have caught the attention of President Trump's AI czar, Silicon Valley investor David Sacks.

"Wikipedia is hopelessly biased," Sacks posted on X in response to a clip of Sanger on the Tucker Carlson show. "An army of left-wing activists maintain the bios and fight reasonable corrections. Magnifying the problem, Wikipedia often appears first in Google search results, and now it's a trusted source for AI model training. This is a huge problem."

The Wikimedia Foundation previously told NR that Sanger’s blistering criticism overlooked Wikipedia’s existing oversight mechanisms.

“The values of the Wikimedia Foundation reflect our unwavering commitment to reliable knowledge, neutrality, and constant improvement. Wikipedia informs; it does not persuade," a foundation spokesperson said in a statement.

Anonymity allows "volunteer editors to exercise their right to free expression, while upholding knowledge integrity," spokesperson added.

Musk, for his part, shared Sanger's "Nine Theses" on X, writing, "Some good suggestions from the co-founder of Wikipedia."

Later that day, the Tesla founder floated the possibility of building an AI competitor to the internet encyclopedia. Sanger and Musk have interacted on X multiple times but Sanger said he has not spoken to Musk directly about building a rival to Wikipedia.

Musk’s “Grokipedia” would utilize Grok, the chatbot developed by Musk’s AI company. Sanger suggested that Musk ensure Grok’s language model is not “woke” or biased in a particular direction.

“What I’m worried about is that they’re going to make use of Grok without properly considering issues of bias,” Sanger said.

“I’ve never hidden my feelings about such things from Elon Musk. I don’t trust Musk when it comes to issues of bias and freedom of speech for that matter,” he added.