Here's David Gerard yet again (and with complete impugnity), making utterly absurd claims about the Mail that speak to his prejudice. He's arguing that someone getting an opinion piece published in the Mail, is equivalent to publishing a blog nobody reads (or nobody that matters).
It's not hard to see what it is about this specific piece that offends Wikipedia editors...
For those who don't know, Liverpool is a byword for loony leftist politics.The daftest lecture in wokery yet: Iconic Prime Minister William Gladstone loathed slavery. But because his father once owned them, Liverpool University has replaced his name on a building with a communist activist, writes PROFESSOR ROBERT TOMBS
It's pretty hilarious, given Gerard fancies himself as quite the blogger, but he is so clearly biased as fuck, with more axes to grind than a fucking lumberjack, he has got FUCK ALL chance of ever getting his shite published as an opinion piece in the "high quality news" sources that best fits his leftist wankery (The Guardian).
In other words, he's even fringier than the people who regularly pop up there to argue for the sort of batshit ideas that appeal to the fringes of the Labour Party conference, but which, to nobody's great surprise, has proven to be a vote loser for fifty years now, whenever it gets close to being officially platformed, or even just hinted at.
That's a heck of a lot of getting your butt kicked at the polls (and invariably blaming the media rather than themselves, even in these allegedly enlightened times when we've had Wikipedia to reflect what the neutral point view is )
Why does he do that? Well, when seen alongside his mate Auqilion speaking elsewhere, all be it on the same subject of what makes a reliable source, all becomes clear....
It's not rocket science. If the Mail is seen by Wikipedia as naught but an axe-grinding political blog, rather than what it is according to reliable sources (a widely read, award winning mass market newspaper, with the renowned ability to predict and indeed drive the UK government to reflect and enact the will of the people), then they can't be accused of tipping the scale by ignoring it......weighing academic papers and the New York Times equal to an axe-grindy political webblog is not balance, it's giving WP:UNDUE weight to one side in order to put our thumb on the scale in the service of one editor's view of what the article "should" look like....... In contexts where all the sides you're thinking of are treated equally seriously, that will be reflected in academia, high-quality news coverage, and so on; balance will be achieved by looking at those high-quality sources - we shouldn't have to put our thumb on the scale at all. --Aquillion (talk) 03:21, 4 December 2021 (UTC)
The Mail reflected and brought about Brexit. A resounding victory for the people, 52% of them to be precise. But you won't find a single Wikipedia Administrator who supported Brexit. It's the most mainstream right wing viewpoint in Britain since, well, for a fucking long time really. Two party politics, in functional democracy at least, being marked by such seemingly narrow differences.
Wikipedia editors don't like this. And they think they have the power to do for the left, what years of clown car politics hasn't.
By banning the Mail, they can have Wikipedia articles reflect what they think Wikipedia articles should look like, which will be to reflect their widely known left leaning bias, and they can claim this is merely reflective of "high-quality sources".
That it is, neutrality.
They think you're stupid.
So do the politicians who choose to either ignore or even fight the Daily Mail.
These are the people who never get their hands on actual power. People who, for all their claims to be mainstream or even centrist, end up as powerless as Nigel Farage, the British Trump.
Welcome to a country where the (print) media is allowed to have a viewpoint, but not actually lie to us, and the public broadcast/online media has a legal obligation to be neutral. Try it some time! I say this amid posts on Wikipedia that seem to imply the sight of CNN anchors literally crying because the voters (or jurors!) won't do what they want them to, isn't a sign of bias.
The right is going to win the next election here, which is some years away barring any sign the right is in for a landslide, OR, the left will win after a lacklustre covid recovery and Brexit teething troubles, but only with a government with broadly the same policies and indeed ministers of the famously centrist Tony Blair, people that will talk a good game but with an eye to winning another term, won't make a single move to roll back Brexit.
Either way, it's unlikely the Mail will be on the losing side.
The Mail's ban is and always was about politics. Wikipedia is biased. And in British terms, due to the already wide gulf between what passes for a mainstream right wing viewpoint here (gun control, gay marriage, abortion, free healthcare) and what an American President has has swear loyalty to for even a sniff at power (God, Guns, Naked Capitalism In All Things), it's blindingly obvious to the majority of the world that isn't American, but who by the Grace of Her Most Brittanic Majesty, speaks English.