Formal fallacy

No notable fallacies detected.

• Systemic/Selection Bias (scope limitation)

  “In everyday conversation, the term logical fallacy usually refers to a formal fallacy.”

  The article opens by narrowing the colloquial meaning of 'logical fallacy' to formal fallacies, which may inadvertently underweight the vast literature on informal fallacies (e.g., ad hominem, straw man, appeal to authority) that are far more commonly encountered in everyday argumentation. This is a mild editorial framing choice, not a deliberate bias, and is flagged in the article's header redirect note.

• Illustrative Example Bias (limited domain)

  “Most animals in this zoo are birds. Most birds can fly. Therefore, most animals in this zoo can fly.”

  All worked examples in the article are drawn from abstract or zoological domains. While this keeps the content politically neutral, it may give readers an incomplete picture of how formal fallacies manifest in real-world discourse (e.g., political, scientific, or legal reasoning). This is a conservative pedagogical choice, not ideological bias.

• The article does not address informal fallacies (ad hominem, straw man, false dichotomy, etc.), which are arguably more relevant to everyday media literacy than formal fallacies — even though the header redirect from 'Logical fallacy' implies readers may be looking for that content.
• No mention of the psychological literature on why humans commit fallacies (e.g., cognitive biases, heuristics) — a significant body of work by Kahneman, Tversky, and others that would complement the purely logical treatment.
• The article does not distinguish between fallacies in deductive versus inductive reasoning beyond a brief mention, leaving readers without guidance on how fallacies function in probabilistic or scientific argument.
• Wikipedia's own known limitations — including volunteer editor bias, systemic gaps in coverage of non-Western philosophical traditions on fallacies (e.g., Nyaya school of logic in India), and the English-language-centric perspective — are not acknowledged.
• No mention of the ongoing academic debate about whether the informal/formal fallacy distinction itself is the best taxonomy (pragma-dialectical approaches, for instance, challenge it).

Author

Contributors to Wikimedia Projects

Publication

Wikipedia / Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

Known affiliations

Wikimedia Foundation (nonprofit, 501(c)(3), San Francisco, CA), Tides Foundation (historically housed the Wikimedia Endowment from 2016–2023), Major institutional donors include Google.org, Rockefeller Foundation, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Amazon, Craig Newmark Philanthropies, George Soros, and Facebook

Funding notes

The Wikimedia Foundation finances itself primarily through millions of small reader donations (average ~$11 USD), supplemented by philanthropic grants and Wikimedia Enterprise services income. It does not carry advertising and explicitly avoids commercial influence. Net assets reached approximately $255–310 million as of 2023–2025. The Wikimedia Endowment, initially housed at the Tides Foundation (a left-of-center pass-through funder), became an independent 501(c)(3) in 2023.

Track record

Wikipedia operates under a long-standing Neutral Point of View (NPOV) editorial policy requiring articles to represent significant views fairly and without editorial bias. The Foundation does not exercise day-to-day editorial control; content is curated by volunteer editors. Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger has publicly alleged systematic left-leaning bias in politically sensitive articles, though the article under review (on formal logic) is entirely non-political and shows no evidence of such concerns.