[Yeti]

I use Wikipedia for research on technical issues, not for research on political issues.

Good point. I've never seen bias, but I've never looked up anything that brushed against an ideological bone of contention.

For science and engineering, medicine, technology, factual(non spinworthy) history -- things like that -- it's the best site on the web, hands down. The articles are thorough and up-to-the-minute, and the links they provide go very often to original sources, you'll usually do much better to check Wikipedia before you try to extract something content rich from Google's search results.

It does my heart good to see so many people working together for free to produce something really, really good and useful for everyone to use. I use the search tool in Firefox to get results from Wikipedia, it's very handy!

Incidentally, I just checked the FR entry in Wikipedia, and it looked factual and accurate to me. Do some of us want it to be a flattering fiction before we call it "unbiased?"

[Arkinsaw]

Do some of us want it to be a flattering fiction before we call it "unbiased?"

I wrote hundreds of articles over there so I have some experience with the community.

My primary example is that the term "Santorum" was put in. It was coined by a homosexual activist DJ in San Francisco and had no national exposure. That definition remains in a truncated, somewhat less vile and obscene way. But it still exists.

Islamosfacism on the other hand has been used by conservative columnists, has been broadcast on national news programs, and gets tons of Google hits. Yet that article was turned into a redirect to the article [Neofascism and religion] which has no reference to the term or really much of anything about Islam in it. The Islamofascism article was derided as being unworthy of an encyclopedia article, racist, and offensive and it now no longer exists. Yeah, but an article that some unknown guy made up that equated Senator Rick Santorum with an aspect of homosexual sex WAS worthy.

Why the difference? Because the people who have the influence on Wikipedia do not like Senator Santorum and do want to be politically correct about Islam. Thats why, and its the only possible reason why the double standard. How the article is debated and what due process it gets depends on its content.