Free Republic

Wikipedia has deleted its ‘List of Scientists Who Disagree with the Scientific Consensus on Global Warming’. Stalin — who set the template for airbrushing inconvenient people out of history — would no doubt have heartily approved of this wanton act of censorship. But what would probably have pleased him more is the magnificently twisted justification offered by the editor responsible. “The result was delete. This is because I see a consensus here that there is no value in having a list that combines the qualities of a) being a scientist, in the general sense of that word, and b) disagreeing...

A £30,000 scheme to teach schoolchildren how to use Wikipedia has been condemned as a waste of taxpayers’ money. An IT expert is being paid the sum by a council to visit schools and show pupils aged 13 and 14 how to “critically engage” with the online encyclopedia. The children will be taught how to search for entries and look for mistakes and bias in articles. The scheme is set to begin at secondary schools in Leicester later this year. Council leaders say searching for information online and evaluating its reliability is “an essential skill for all citizens”. But Chris...

Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog Wikipedia’s “Barack Obama” article violates Wikipedia’s “Neutral point of view” policy Wikipedia’s “Neutral point of view” policy states:“All encyclopedic content on Wikipedia must be written from a neutral point of view (NPOV), which means representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without bias, all of the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic.” Wikipedia’s “Barack Obama” article includes a section called “Cultural and political image.” According to Wikipedia’s “Neutral point of view” policy, this section should contain both positive and negative things. However, almost everything in the section is positive....

Wikipedia is much maligned as a serious reference source. However, with regard to trivial subjects, Wikipedia can be a rich source of obscure and oddball facts about subjects that most people don't care about. For example, no respectable encyclopedia would have an article about snipe hunting but Wikipedia fails to disappoint in that regard. Or how about A Flock of Seagulls? If you played in a garage rock band that sold 47 copies of an album (and mostly to friends), you can get an entry for that band (so long as somebody outside the band writes it). Or what about...

[UPDATE: Early this morning, in a discussion thread about whether references to Neil deGrasse Tyson's history of quote fabrication should be added to Tyson's Wikipedia page, an editor stated that "no version of this event will be allowed into the article."] Religious fanatics have an odd habit of overreacting when people have the audacity to question their fanaticism. In Iraq, radical Islamic jihadists are systemically murdering and beheading Christians, Jews, and even Muslims who do not pledge fealty to ISISÂ’s religious tenets. Hundreds of years ago, church authorities and Aristotelian acolytes imprisoned Galileo for having the audacity to reject geocentrism...

Monkey business — or legitimate copyright claim? In Indonesia in 2011 a female crested black macaque hijacked the camera of British nature photographer David Slater and proceeded to snap hundreds of photos — among them several selfies, photos of himself, one of which made worldwide headlines and the animal’s Wikipedia page. Slater, citing royalty losses, has tried to have the photograph removed from the site. The Telegraph reports: The Gloucestershire-based photographer now claims that the decision is jeopardising his income as anyone can take the image and publish it for free, without having to pay him a royalty. He complained...

Women make up only 9% of Wikipedia editors. Educators say raising that number is key to improving the online encyclopaedia, and have started campaigns to do just that. At the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Depression-era artist Natalie Smith Henry's vivid depiction of a farm family hangs high on the wall. But until recently, Henry didn't exist, at least not according to Wikipedia. Then Chelsea Tufarolo, a student at American University, decided to write her an article about her. It was Tufarolo's first post on the world's largest knowledge-sharing resource. Editors and activists are trying to address the root of what...

A 24-year-old geography major is the first Wikipedian-in-residence at the University of California, Berkeley. His announcement can be found - where else? - but on his own Wiki page. Cal hired Gorman, according to a February announcement, to advise students and professors on the complex task of editing articles for Wikipedia, the user-generated online encyclopedia that gets 500 million monthly visitors. Until now, Wikipedians-in-residence have been assigned to cultural institutions, such as the British Museum, the Gerald Ford Presidential Library and the U.S. National Archives. In a statement, Cal calls Gorman a "hardcore Wikipedian" since his undergraduate days at Berkeley,...

Feminist groups at more than a dozen universities are planning to participate in another mass “edit Wikipedia day,” because the free, volunteer encyclopedia website is obviously horribly sexist. Sarah Stierch, a Wikipedia contributor and researcher for the Wikimedia Foundation, said the problem isn’t just that most Wikipedia user are male. The layout of the website is itself “very masculine,” she said. “It’s aesthetically very masculine in its design,” said Stierch in a statement to The Daily Dot, also noting that, “The average Wikipedia editor is a well-educated white male. Well-educated white males have been writing history and the story of...

I'm usually a lurker here, but I may have something to contribute today. :) I was listening to a hard core Liberal in another non political forum I frequent go on and on about how Obama just implemented the Republican healthcare plan that the Heritage Foundation suggested. I have read about the Heritage Foundation spin before, but this seems to really be popping up a lot on my journeys around the interwebs lately so I did a little digging and noticed that pretty much all of the Wiki pages about the ACA have very recently been edited to insert the...

Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog Wikipedia’s article “Presidency of Barack Obama” is a puff piece which ignores many critical issues. Wikipedia’s article “Presidency of Barack Obama” is a puff piece which ignores many critical issues. These issues have been added to the article multiple times, but they always get erased. Editors who continue to add these things to the article get accused of “edit warring,” and if they continue to put the information into the article, they get blocked from editing for 24 hours. If they continue adding the information after their 24 hour block expires, they get blocked for a...

Wikipedia’s article “Presidency of Barack Obama” is a puff piece which ignores many critical issues. These issues have been added to the article multiple times, but they always get erased. Editors who continue to add these things to the article get accused of “edit warring,” and if they continue to put the information into the article, they get blocked from editing for 24 hours. If they continue adding the information after their 24 hour block expires, they get blocked for a week, then they get topic banned from editing any Obama related articles for three months, and then they get...

A Wikipedia article devoted to Critical Race Theory, a controversial legal theory crafted to respond to the alleged role of “white supremacy” in American law, was placed on a temporary editing lockdown over the weekend after bloggers determined that CNN anchor Soledad O’Brien had relied on Wikipedia’s introductory definition of the theory — verbatim — during on an-air debate. A second lock was placed on the article Monday to protect it from politically biased editors who adjusted it following O’Brien’s gaffe. The flurry began after Breitbart.com editor Joel Pollak made a guest appearance on O’Brien’s show to explain a video...

Apartheid in Palestine – Censored by Wikipedia by Spartacus on April 13, 2011in Edit War,Editing on Wikipedia This article was deleted by Wikipedia administrators.Note: Wikibias received a hard copy of the article by an anonymous editor before it was deleted and made inaccessible from Wikipedia. This is the most recent draft of the article available prior to its deletion. The Palestinian Authority’s treatment of the Christians, Jews, women, gays and the refugees of 1948 has been compared by United Nations investigators, human rights groups and critics of Israeli policy to South Africa’s treatment of non-whites during its apartheid era.Public...

I visited wikipedia (my bad) for two items (I learned to sip and to be SELECTIVE in the "info" that libs. and PaidIslamoActivists insert there) I got this popup. http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/WMFJA010/en/US?utm_medium=sitenotice&utm_campaign=20101117BT01&utm_source=2010_JA1_Banner5_US&country_code=US - A message from wikipedia's founder asking for donations. --- On wiki bias see: http://conservapedia.com/Examples_of_Bias_in_Wikipedia Also: http://WikiBias.com, http://backspin.typepad.com/backspin/2009/05/is-wikipedia-biased-against-israel.html and http://wikipediaisbiased.wordpress.com among others)

During the 70 years that the communists controlled the Soviet Union, they had a peculiar way of teaching history to the people. They would teach things as historical fact that never happened. If you were one of those who took umbrage with their revisionist history lessons, you would soon find yourself living in a tiny apartment in a part of the country where they laugh at anyone who claims the world is getting warmer. In a communist country this is the only way to convince the masses that they are actually better off than anyone in the history of...

"[Wikipedia Authors] are 80 percent male, more than 65 percent single, more than 85 percent without children, and around 70 percent of them are under the age of 30."

July 08, 2008, 6:00 a.m. WikipropagandaSpinning green. By Lawrence Solomon 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...