Difference between revisions of "Wikipedia"
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Aside from the claims of [[Conservapedia|some embittered cranks]] that Wikipedia has a systematic bias, various well-heeled organizations, including the [[CIA]], Microsoft, [[Fox News]], and Diebold have been altering Wikipedia entries for their own agendas.<ref>[http://www.wired.com/politics/onlinerights/news/2007/08/wiki_tracker?currentPage=1 See Who's Editing Wikipedia - Diebold, the CIA, a Campaign]</ref><ref>[http://wikiscanner.virgil.gr/ Wikipedia Scanner]</ref> | Aside from the claims of [[Conservapedia|some embittered cranks]] that Wikipedia has a systematic bias, various well-heeled organizations, including the [[CIA]], Microsoft, [[Fox News]], and Diebold have been altering Wikipedia entries for their own agendas.<ref>[http://www.wired.com/politics/onlinerights/news/2007/08/wiki_tracker?currentPage=1 See Who's Editing Wikipedia - Diebold, the CIA, a Campaign]</ref><ref>[http://wikiscanner.virgil.gr/ Wikipedia Scanner]</ref> | ||
+ | === Teenagers === | ||
+ | It calls itself the "free encyclopedia that anyone can edit" and yet if you are a teenager, especially the taboo teenage girl type, you will not be warmly welcomed at Wikipedia. If you edit from a school your edits are automatically vandalism. If you say you are a teen they will use it againist you at every turn. | ||
==Copycats== | ==Copycats== |
Revision as of 13:05, 2 March 2010
Wikipedia, "The Ultimate Suppository of Knowledge", is a cheap knock-off of Conservapedia and Uncyclopedia. It is overly verbose and full of liberal bias, porn, gossip, slander, porn, smear, bias, liberal porn, and a liberal bias toward liberal porn.[1] What's even worse, they occasionally use "BCE" instead of "BC"! It is a known fact that Wikipedia is six times more liberal than the American Public.
Size
Wikipedia boasts approximately 7.3 million articles in 252 languages, of which 250 are not American and therefore incomprehensible and irrelevant.[2] The remaining one is full of spelling mistakes, most notably lots of "u"s where they don't belong and misspelling of words ending in -er. Wikipedia has been compared, once positively, to the well-established Encyclopædia Britannica. Despite this praise, it's often frowned upon to use it as a reference in any serious work, but it does make a nice starting point for those who can't be bothered to go past the first result on Google. It's also a great place to learn that George Washington took a shit on a stick and then told everyone to have unprotected sex.
It also occasionally edits itself, possibly indicating that it has become self-aware.[3]
Critics of Wikipedia
Realistic critics of Wikipedia often cite the fact that anyone can edit it as the reason that it is unreliable. It is certainly true that Wikipedia's open editing policy sometimes causes some problems, known as "vandalism" or "wandalism". This is usually the number one criticism brought up in popular media, where any working knowledge of how the wiki operates is not needed. While the fact that anyone can add misinformation is true, it also means that anyone can also remove it. The Media Wiki software even has a handy button to do this, and numerous bots and editors patrol recent edits to make sure none are obviously malicious — the average unwanted edit usually lasts about one minute on Wikipedia. Coupled with the fact that any article likely to receive attention from vandals is protected or semi-protected from anonymous editing[4] the wiki isn't in much danger of being overridden by nonsense.
In reality, one of the major drawbacks of Wikipedia is its excessive bureaucracy that is evident when you get deeply involved in writing for it or patrolling its edits. Its pages on policy and style are numerous, and probably larger than the whole of RationalWiki (that's including talk and non-mainspace entries). The implementation of its rules in letter rather than spirit by its senior members is also an issue. This is hardly surprising and to be expected; Wikipedia has over 3 million articles in the English language alone and only a small handful of administrators. Therefore, during a disagreement, any arbitrator that is called upon is likely to have little to no working knowledge of the subject at hand. While this is fine for reasons of neutrality, it hardly puts the arbitrator in a position to appraise the links and evidence at hand.
For example, the fairly sensible "3RR" rule, which in human-speak means "don't repeatedly revert something - i.e., start an edit war - more than three times" (either that or "truth by consensus") and can easily be beaten by the use of sockpuppets. Sheer bloody-mindedness on the behalf of people operating sockpuppets is probably the number one cause of misinformation and POV-pushing on Wikipedia, especially on controversial articles.
Bias or radial?
Wikipedia attempts to maintain a neutral point of view, and although there is admitted difficulty in attaining this goal,[5] efforts are supposedly made to try to filter out and resist pervasive bias.
Bias on Wikipedia
Aside from the claims of some embittered cranks that Wikipedia has a systematic bias, various well-heeled organizations, including the CIA, Microsoft, Fox News, and Diebold have been altering Wikipedia entries for their own agendas.[6][7]
Teenagers
It calls itself the "free encyclopedia that anyone can edit" and yet if you are a teenager, especially the taboo teenage girl type, you will not be warmly welcomed at Wikipedia. If you edit from a school your edits are automatically vandalism. If you say you are a teen they will use it againist you at every turn.
Copycats
- For a fuller list, see Category:Wikis
The Wikipedia project has inspired a great many other, smaller projects, called "wikis" such as Homestar Runner Wiki[8] and Citizendium,[9] using the same Mediawiki software designed by the Wikimedia Foundation. Although many are encyclopedic in nature (often set up to counteract some perceived bias or error on Wikipedia), some, such as Flu Wiki[10] and the WIGO pages of RationalWiki, are used for information sharing for a specific purpose.
Some "wikis" such as Uncyclopedia and Encyclopedia Dramatica are parodies of the wiki phenomenon. Others, such as WikiSynergy or Wiki4CAM, are general projects that aren't necessarily encyclopedic in nature but gather information and resources for people who are interested in certain things and find that Wikipedia is a bit too strict regarding notability and neutrality.
External links
- Wikipedia official site
- The Wikipedia FAQK, by Lore Sjöberg
Footnotes
- ↑ Seriously! They have pictures of both men's and ladies' naughty bits, if you look hard!
- ↑ The Simple English variant is spoken in Alabama
- ↑ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/127.0.0.1
- ↑ Every time xkcd mentions something obscure, the relevant wikipedia article which would explain the joke gets locked down pretty tight.
- ↑ Perhaps they should just delete and protect the article?
- ↑ See Who's Editing Wikipedia - Diebold, the CIA, a Campaign
- ↑ Wikipedia Scanner
- ↑ Homestar Runner Wiki
- ↑ Citizendium
- ↑ Flu Wiki