Further to: Slate has discovered why you shouldn’t use Wikipedia as a source (In other breaking news, pigs don’t really fly faster than light), we now read, once again, a story like:
The sad tales of the Wikipedia gang war regarding WUWT
This illustrates the most basic problem with the reliability of Wikipedia in any entry where human opinion is involved. There are roving gangs (and sometimes individuals who appear gang-like due to their output level, such as disgraced Wikipedia editor William Connolley, who will no doubt wail about this note, and then proceed to post the usual denigrating things on his “Stoat, taking science by the throat” blog) and individuals who act as gatekeepers of their own vision of “truth”, regardless of whether that truth is correct or not. Some of these people may simply be paid political operatives, others may be zealots who have a belief that they are part of a “righteous cause”, something we know from Climatetgate as “noble cause corruption“. Many of the people involved don’t even use their real names, so of course hide behind that anonymity. In my opinion, it’s truly an irresponsible and cowardly way to define “truth” with no responsibility for your actions attached.
The reason Wikipedia’s formula promotes ignorance is that absolute levelling sounds wonderful to a lot of people in principle but devolves into gang warfare in practice.
Because the lowest common denominator is gang warfare. And the gang member is simply better at it than the scholar.
Keep that kind of garbage going long enough and we will have ourselves a new dark age.
Note: As for Slate, see also:
Real Clear Science slams Slate science reporting
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