7/09/2008

What is wrong with Wikipedia

Here is a discussion about Wikipedia on Global Warming:

Ever wonder how Al Gore, the United Nations, and company continue to get away with their claim of a “scientific consensus” confirming their doomsday view of global warming? Look no farther than Wikipedia for a stunning example of how the global-warming propaganda machine works.

As you (or your kids) probably know, Wikipedia is now the most widely used and influential reference source on the Internet and therefore in the world, with more than 50 million unique visitors a month.

In theory Wikipedia is a “people’s encyclopedia” written and edited by the people who read it - anyone with an Internet connection. So on controversial topics, one might expect to see a broad range of opinion.

Not on global warming. On global warming we get consensus, Gore-style: a consensus forged by censorship, intimidation, and deceit.

I first noticed this when I entered a correction to a Wikipedia page on the work of Naomi Oreskes, author of the now-infamous paper, published in the prestigious journal Science, claiming to have exhaustively reviewed the scientific literature and found not one single article dissenting from the alarmist version of global warming.

Of course Oreskes’s conclusions were absurd, and have been widely ridiculed. I myself have profiled dozens of truly world-eminent scientists whose work casts doubt on the Gore-U.N. version of global warming. Following the references in my book The Deniers, one can find hundreds of refereed papers that cast doubt on some aspect of the Gore/U.N. case, and that only scratches the surface.

Naturally I was surprised to read on Wikipedia that Oreskes’s work had been vindicated and that, for instance, one of her most thorough critics, British scientist and publisher Bennie Peiser, not only had been discredited but had grudgingly conceded Oreskes was right.

I checked with Peiser, who said he had done no such thing. I then corrected the Wikipedia entry, and advised Peiser that I had done so.

Peiser wrote back saying he couldn’t see my corrections on the Wikipedia page. I made the changes again, and this time confirmed that the changes had been saved. But then, in a twinkle, they were gone again. I made other changes. And others. They all disappeared shortly after they were made.

Turns out that on Wikipedia some folks are more equal than others. Kim Dabelstein Petersen is a Wikipedia “editor” who seems to devote a large part of his life to editing reams and reams of Wikipedia pages to pump the assertions of global-warming alarmists and deprecate or make disappear the arguments of skeptics. . . .


Thanks to Jim Purtilo for this link. For his collection of comments on Wikipedia see here.

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3 Comments:

Blogger James said...

Wikipedia is rife with this sort of behavior. If a regular editor doesn't like your edit, they'll often revert your work and then use their knowledge of the labyrithine Wikipedia system to get their way.

This is most common on political subjects, but even extends to articles on things such as TV shows and books. I once was embroiled in a long argument with someone over a book entry, and they repeatedly insisted that Wikipedia had rules to be followed. I then read the rules, adjusted my edits to fit them yet still preserve the integrity of the article, and then found them once again tossed out. They're not rules, I was then told, but "guidelines". Haven't done much editing since.

7/10/2008 1:16 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

How wikipedia stand legally if one of the mis quoted people sued for some kind of re-dress?

would they be able to hide behind claiming "anyone can change entries"?

7/10/2008 2:15 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Wikipaedos do this kind of thing a lot. My guess is they don't spend much time away from the PC.

11/11/2008 2:51 PM  

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