Comedian and broadcaster Sandi Toksvig has criticized Wikipedia for exhibiting a “patronising attitude” toward women and perpetuating bias in its content and editorial practices. Toksvig, who is currently touring internationally to raise funds for an alternative online knowledge platform, highlighted concerns over the predominance of male editors and the marginalization of women’s biographies on the site.

According to Toksvig, Wikipedia’s editorial community is largely composed of middle-aged white men from Western Europe. She accused these editors of engaging in “drive-by deletions,” where biographies of notable women are repeatedly removed or rejected. As an example, Toksvig pointed to Canadian physicist Donna Strickland, whose Wikipedia pages were allegedly dismissed multiple times before her recognition with the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2018 brought her status to wider acknowledgement.

Toksvig is involved with the Mappa Mundi project, based at the University of Cambridge, which aims to create an “interactive digital atlas” as a more inclusive and equitable repository of knowledge. The project seeks to address the gaps and dismissals that Toksvig says currently plague existing platforms by providing a space for information that might otherwise be sidelined or deleted.

She also voiced apprehension about the potential impact of artificial intelligence developments drawing from Wikipedia’s content. Toksvig warned that if AI systems rely on a database with deep-seated biases, they risk perpetuating incomplete and skewed knowledge that overlooks half of the global population. “If we leave it alone, it will set down the sum knowledge of information leaving out 50 per cent of the world’s population,” she stated.

Toksvig acknowledged past efforts to reform Wikipedia but expressed skepticism about their effectiveness. “Lots of people have tried to fix Wikipedia but it can’t be fixed,” she asserted during her appearance at the Cheltenham Literature Festival. Her comments underscore ongoing debates about representation, diversity, and accuracy in widely used digital knowledge platforms.