Bias

Bias is a term that is used to describe any individual circumstances, beliefs or any other factors that determine what an individual will believe as accepted truth. All people are biased, although all people each have their own unique bias that is slightly different to others. People can be grouped in terms of bias by common factors, such as their nation of origin, their race, religion, wealth, what language they speak, and any personal circumstances. People are considered to be "neutral" when they have no bias. Whilst this is a theoretical impossibility, nonetheless it is what all historians aim for. In being "neutral", you try to account for your own biases, in addition to the biases of whoever you are reading from, and combined form what you consider to be as neutral as possible. Responsible writers will usually list their credentials both to indicate why they should be believed but also to give a hint for anyone reading it what their biases are, so that they can be accounted for in future texts.

The advent of Wikipedia, especially their NPOV rule, means that, at least in that form, bias becomes confused. Due to the use of internet aliases, many people on Wikipedia are able to lie about their own biases, to the extent where the CEO of a company can pretend to be a neutral bystander whilst writing glowing reports of their own company, and at the same time someone can lie about their credentials to pretend that they have authority when in actual fact they do not. People can also have multiple accounts to push their ideas to a greater extent. This, as a whole, makes Wikipedia virtually impossible to use as a reference tool.