Reliability of Wikipedia.

[Kyuuketsuki]

As I said to Mark before he left:

I don't "dismiss" Wiki, I simply accept it for what it is ... a user subscribed database of documents with insufficient control over its content to be trusted. Yes they have improved this recently but there remain questions about the way it is edited, indeed one of the primary administrators was found to have edited out negative comments concerning something he was intimately associated with. Nevertheless it remains a useful starting point in anything one wishes to research ... it simply cannot be regarded as in any fashion authoritative.

Another little story about Wiki for you, hearsay I admit ... there was a debate between Gordon Brown & David Cameron and they disagreed about something or other and the debate ended as debates do. Immediately after some bright Tory runs along to Wiki and edits the article in favour of Cameron (despite the fact that Brown was actually right) in the full knowledge that the press, gullible as they are, will run to Wiki and lap it up ... and it worked. Oh it was edited back the following day but by then the damage was done!

You see the problem with Wiki is simple, it ISN'T an encyclopaedia, it a sort of debating forum. When issues arte no contentious it's fine, it can maybe be relied upon but when they are (such as the historicity of Jesus) it can't, it isn't that sort of resource.

So yeah, that means I disagree with you Leo (at least under certain circumstances)

There are a number of websites dedicated to criticism of Wikipedia and TBBH I can see why.

Kyu