Larry Sanger, one of Wikipedia’s cofounders, was banned from editing the site indefinitely after other editors determined he was canvassing, or in other words, calling on his followers off platform in order to influence Wikipedia’s content.
Sanger has spent more than a decade criticizing Wikipedia for what he claims is an ideological, left-wing bias on a variety of topics, and on X has framed this recent ban as further proof of everything that’s wrong with Wikipedia. The New York Post took that bait and last night published an article with the headline “Left-leaning Wikipedia blocked founder from editing site—after he campaigned to make it more balanced.”
Wikipedia editors obviously reject that framing and say that Sanger was banned for wielding his followers to sway discussion and decision making on Wikipedia. The discussion that led to the decision to ban Sanger concluded with what an editor called a “clear consensus” to ban Sanger.
It’s not an insult. It’s the widely accepted term for the ideology of the bourgeoisie. They self-describe as liberals. That’s been the usage of the term since its coining; USAmericans just decided to only use it to describe more left-leaning liberals rather than all liberals. If it’s used as an insult, it’s between communists accusing another communist of not being a communist, not because liberalism is inherently a pejorative. Like if a right-winger calls someone a communist as an insult, it’s not because communism is a pejorative, it’s because it’s a non-communist accusing another non-communist of not being not-communist enough.