Neither fish nor fowl nor good read meat...
Two excellent posts here which actually hit the nail on the head wonderfully.
1) Freudian slip
By Dan Davis Posted Friday 29th May 2009 01:33 GMT
"The site sees itself as an encyclopaedia with a 'neutral point of view' - whatever that is."
Right, "neutral" is hardly in the vocabulary of this wiki-obsessed web rag.
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2) Firstly, a few facts:
By Moss Icely Spaceport Posted Friday 29th May 2009 02:53 GMT
1. wikipedia (aka: Wikiwhacky) is NOT a trustworthy 'encyclopaedia'.
2. The Co$ is NOT a religion, it is a cult (aka: C.U.L.T, aka: Utter Bullshite).
I couldn't give a Xenu's uncle what tripe is posted on wikipedia. It's so far from a reliable source is useless to me.
If I had my way, I'd round up all the Thetanistas and shoot them agin' a wall. However that's probably a bit harsh. Some of them might be salvageable as regular people, with professional treatment*.
* Not Co$ pseudo science
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In early January 2006, even Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia's founder, told Business Week that he didn't think anyone should cite Wikipedia as a source - so why would anyone consider it reliable if the man responsible for it gives it such a, ahem, 'ringing endorsement'?
Now, add to that the fact that Wiki can be edited, on-the-fly, whilst you're reading it, meaning things ("facts") can be changed (by un-named and unvetted persons), and it becomes no better than Twitter or other random blog. The information in Encyclopaedias is submitted, edited and rendered by already published specialists in their respective fields - not by stopping the man in the street and asking his opinion on any given topic - which is, effectively, the method Wiki uses for garnering its articles.
Indeed, whilst perusing Wiki about 18 months ago, I was amazed to read (and it must be 'fact', right, coz it's in Wiki, innit!) that the gentleman then running Australia's domestic security service (their equivalent of MI5) had, prior to joining the intelligence world, been a ballet dancer and specialist in Macramé. Utter nonsense, of course, as the man had no such background, but hey, it was in Wiki, so joking aside, you cannot take it seriously as an encyclopaedia.
As a an exercise, or as an example of a collaborative project, it's a runaway success; but as anything resembling a reliable source of information, it's a joke; which is kind of an apposite place to finish, as so is the cult of $cientology.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
