One of the great things about Wikipedia is that anybody can edit articles.
One of the bad things about Wikipedia is that anybody can edit articles.
Controversial subjects tend to attract malicious edits, such as the sort of thing we’ve seen with Climate on Wikipedia, resulting in edit wars and suspensions of people like William M. Connolley.
Unlike the hard-bound reference Encyclopedia Britannica, Wikipedia is often representative of the “fact of the moment” edited by a single person.
At left is a screen cap of the Romney edit, a high profile example of a malicious edit. You’d think they’d have had the good sense to lock the page to prevent such random edits, but no.
Here’s the edit trail from Wikipedia’s history page, click to enlarge:
While only up for 26 minutes, it underscores just how vunerable Wikipedia’s pages are to the opinions and actions of an anonymous single person, especially when controversial subjects are involved.
h/t to Garret Bastardi
If the wiki vandal had a sense of history he or she would have picked Palin instead of Rubio as VP.
John A says:
… No its called vandalism. Its no more prescient than the toss of a coin.
Well, okay, coins don’t make intelligent decisions. How about ‘Hope and Change?’
Back in March of this year, the Wikipedia was claiming that Flowerdale in Northern Tasmania “…contributes 90% of Australia’s Cotton yield.” Rather odd given that the climate is far too cool to grow any cotton whatsoever.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Flowerdale,_Tasmania&diff=500647050&oldid=479641811
The Git long ago discovered that editing Wikipedia to correct errors was bootless. Instead he informed Cotton Australia who appear to have had the entry edited to reflect reality.
The Wikipedia it must be remembered is on the Internet where anyone can say anything. Here’s one that amuses me:
http://physics.info/temperature/
Unfortunately, for etymological purposes “hotness” occurs in all of the relevant dictionaries on my bookshelves: The Oxford English Dictionary, The Concise Oxford, The Universal Dictionary of the English Language and Chambers Twentieth Century Dictionary. This is hardly surprising since the word has been in use since the 16th C. I assumed the rest of Glenn Elert’s “facts” were also complete and utter tosh and went elsewhere.
“Betting On America?”
Why not go with a sure thing?
Low cost, high density, +200 year supply, grid compatible, on demand, coal based energy production located on small footprint sites immediately adjacent to high demand cities.
Keep it Simple, Simons. Go With What Works!
With pie-in-the-sky alternate energy companies like Solyndra and the Bright Source Energy project at Ivanpah CA going belly up each week ( http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/07/03/is-ivanpah-solyndra-times-three ), the real vandalism is the crony socialism that stole Billions of Taxpayer dollars to provide guaranteed ‘loans’ to these veiled political pay backs and campaign money laundering schemes.
May Wikipedia’s FAIL be our FUTURE (or would you all rather be required to pay seven TIMES more for biofuels than conventional fuel like the Navy?)
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/07/02/gop-in-congress-critical-navy-great-green-fleet/
“Unlike the hard-bound reference Encyclopedia Britannica,”
Sadly, this is no more: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/9142412/Encyclopaedia-Britannica-stops-printing-after-more-than-200-years.html
Well, Obama’s ”change” has taken place (the health insurance is now a fact) so he did his job and is out of work in a few months 😉
belvedere,
Yes, he did his job.
Oh yeah Smokey…. and a decade+ of ‘wealthcare’ ha$ done so much to lift us into prosperity?
Rocky, somehow it just doesn’t *feel* right to have Navy destroyers and aircraft carriers powered by chicken fat.
Maybe that’s just me though.
– MJM
I pay almost 140 euro a month for healt insurance.. So i can pay for my own cancer later in life.. Welcome to europa! 🙂
Obviously, the topology of Wikipedia has become so complex that it is warping space and time.
michaeljmcfadden says:
July 7, 2012 at 3:24 pm
“Rocky, somehow it just doesn’t *feel* right to have Navy destroyers and aircraft carriers powered by chicken fat.”
Michael and Rocky,
Somehow, naval destroyers and aircraft carriers powered by chicken fat seems entirely appropriate for this adminisissytration! Putin feel safe flying Russian nuclear weapons capable ‘Bear’ bombers to within 15 miles of the US pacific coast on the 4th of July!
MtK
When I first saw Wackapedia, I called it Wackapedia because I noticed anyone could edit it. A lot of global warming (climate change) misinformation has been put in there. You can’t trust the data. It’s wacky.
Let’s hope they get this prediction right!
Wagathon says:
That would be Michael Palin right?
My money is on editors’ internal squabbles and someone sacrificing one of his/her clones to burn the Reichstag. An outside vandal would most likely had broken the page template.
Neither do editors of Wikipedia.
The real tragedy of Western democracies is that no-one has thought of a way to make a better source of information than Wikipedia and make it a profitable enterprise. Wikipedia wins by default even though its fact checking is diabolical and a lot of articles are grossly biased and misleading.
Commenter scarletmacaw — “Wikipedia is a useful source only if the subject is not politicized or religious” — hits the nail on the head.
I would only add that many Wikipedia articles that appear to be on innocuous topics are regularly rewritten by ferociously determined people with an axe to grind. The more outlandish the ideologies they adhere to, the more likely they are to be unemployed and therefore better at the byzantine internal politics of Wikipedia which favor those with unlimited time on their hands.
Avoid Wikipedia like the plague.