Wikipedia's bad reputation
A comment thread on a Volokh Conspiracy article about Wikipedia is loaded with negative opinions about Wikipedia. Here is the first comment that I added to the thread:
Dangermouse said,Don't use Wikipedia at all, ever, to research politics, social topics, environmental issues, religion, culture and some history. Politically incorrect information is often purged from those articles, at the behest of the no-life lefty zombies that run the site.
I wholeheartedly agree. Wikipedia is OK on non-controversial topics but really sucks royally on controversial topics. On controversial topics, Wickedpedia is not even a good source of references because politically incorrect references are routinely purged.
I made a suggestion for handling controversial entries: When an item is disputed, simply enter a brief description of the item, a statement that the item is disputed, and links to external websites or separate Wikipedia discussion pages where the disputed item is discussed or debated. There would be no Wikipedia endorsement of the disputed item and Wikipedia article pages would not be cluttered up with long discussions of controversial items. THIS SIMPLE, SENSIBLE SUGGESTION WAS IGNORED. Wickedpedia's preferred methods for handling disputes are censorship and endless edit wars. Wickedpedia also has a crazy set of rules that the control-freak Wickedpedia administrators exploit to "lawyer you to death" if you try to make a politically incorrect entry. One of Wickedpedia's problems is that it tries to look like a printed encyclopedia and fails to take advantage of the Internet's capability of instantly linking to external sources where disputed items can be discussed and debated.
Wickedpedia has reached the point of no return -- all the decent people have left the organization in disgust and all that is left is a bunch of crazies.
I am glad to see that there are so many other commenters here who share my negative opinion of Wikipedia.
My blog has three post-label groups of articles that attack Wikipedia [1] [2] [3]
Labels: Wikipedia (new #2)
posted by Larry Fafarman | 5/13/2009 10:13:00 AM
1 Comments:
Anonymous, one of the rules here is that I don't allow comments that contain nothing but scoffing. If you want your comment to remain posted here, you are going to have to explain why you think that my proposed solution is "dumb." I have explained the reasons why I think my solution is simple and sensible:
(1) -- outside views are presented, not just the views of the Wikipedia administrators
(2) -- no appearance of Wikipedia endorsement
(3) -- discussions and debates of controversial entries are in external websites and/or separate Wikipedia discussion pages -- Wikipedia articles are not cluttered up with long discussions and debates of controversial entries.
(4) -- helps prevent edit wars
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