Specifically - Essjay claimed to be a homosexual theologian and frequently espoused far left versions of Christianity in his article edits. He basically used his phony Ph.D. to browbeat his leftist point of view into articles on Christianity by citing himself as an expert.
He is also one of dozens of radical gays who CURRENTLY populate the upper tiers of wikipedia's administration. This guy is just the tip of the iceburg at Wikipedia.
How long before the Times hires him? (snicker)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essjay
Strange to see the site discussing itself in a 3rd person way.
The Russian version of Wikipedia is worse - the expert arbitrators are clearly from the Russian government. Articles on the Moscow theater hostage crisis and Beslan - written by survivors and relatives of those who died - get deleted faster than they can be posted.
I've pretty much given up on wikipedia. It's a fun idea to go in and collaborate on the historical record, but the editors with authority will simply overwrite anything that doesn't jive with their left-wing gay agenda. Waste of time.
I find Wikipedia creepy. I once went on there and corrected some political bias and which ever power-that-be was on duty tracked me down by my IP and sent me on-screen messages lecturing me.
I was then banned or locked out from making changes -- forever.
This is Stephen Glass all over again.
Wikipedia is simply once source of information, and a very good one. Like anything, it is best to get information from multiple sources and then come to your own conclusion. Yes, some entries on Wikipedia are biased, but so is most everything else. It is your job to make up your own mind based on the best available evidence.
BTTT
I loved the pimping he did on The New Yorker. They "corrected" their "mistake" in the latest issue. That's one down, eleven million to go.
He joined Wikipedia as some self proclaimed anti-vandalism patrolman and later got special status. Now someone has nominated him to be an admin.
This guy is about as far to the left as Karl Marx. Anything negative about any liberal, be it a politician, celebrity, reporter, etc. is instantly deleted and if the author protests, he is threatened with banning.
I went a few rounds with him but when I was able to provide a credible citation, he was forced to back down but he's still holding a grudge.
I attempted to edit the unreferenced fictions dealing with Pierre Trudeau and Paul Martin's "deeply Catholic faith" with a more neutral account of their legislative histories and words as compared with Catholic teaching. For that bit of free speech, I got stomped on like a narc at a biker rally. The admins have I.P. blocked me from Wikipedia ever since.
For those who are anti-wiki, can you please post on here some of those excerpts that you find objectionable?
Once you have more than one shade of opinion (eg does the color of the sky appear to be blue or another color?), it succumbs to a series of edit wars, including deletions, reversions, bannings, etc.
Eventually, disputes can lead to 'voting', which are completely subjective and prone to corruption as a result of favoritism garnered/given to various editors/groups. Even worse, there's no way to determine authority and/or expertise, so you might have a professor of climatology overridden by a pimply-faced geek.
I know quite a few wikipedians (many with thousands of edits) who have bailed on the site. What originally started out as a noble exercise in information sharing has devolved in a standard collectivist nightmare. That is, everyone is equal, except some are more equal than others.
Speaking of which, Animal Farm is the most frequently used analogy, featuring Larry Sanger as Snowball (driven off) and the worker bees as horses (like Boxer). Of course, we all know who the pigs are as they plot ever increasing & arbitrary power.
Many in the know expect Wikipedia to crash as fast as it rose.
Wikipedia, welcome to the real world where people use fake or tenuous credentials all the time, like Ward Churchill, quite a few other teachers and public servants, and most of the old creation/ID proponents.
Wikipedia is a nice source of info, but anyone who relies on it as THE source is naive. There are plenty of sources against which the info in Wikipedia can be verified if one is so inclined.