Wikipedia Suspends Editing ‘Recession’ Page After Users Furiously Debate Definition

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Wikipedia suspended editing on their page for the word “recession” after users were furiously editing back and forth, as politically-driven debate rages over the word.

Economic officials from Joe Biden’s administration have recently taken to pushing the “technical” definition of a recession as the U.S. faced a second quarter of negative GDP growth. Two quarters like that is what many economists refer to as a recession, something multiple media pundits pointed out to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and others recently, only to be told that this is not how the White House is defining a recession.

The Wikipedia page for recession was edited numerous times this week, only for the website to lock it so only “established, registered users” can make changes. Everyone else needs to suggest an edit for approval.

Among the critics of Wikipedia’s decision was Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk. The billionaire accused the company of “losing its objectivity” in a tweet.

Wikipedia is losing its objectivity @jimmy_wales

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 29, 2022

One Wikipedia user edited the recession page to read “there is no global consensus on the definition of a recession,” the New York Post reported.

The page remains locked as of this writing, and Wikipedia has added a note addressing the numerous edits it has gone through in recent days.

This article may be affected by the following current event: Increased political debate in the United States. Information in this article may change rapidly as the event progresses. Initial news reports may be unreliable. The last updates to this article may not reflect the most current information.

A look at the page’s history shows that there were dozens upon dozens of edits just on Friday alone.

Despite the GDP and record inflation, Yellen claimed on Sunday that the economy is not in a recession, but rather a state of transition.