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Wikipedia Founder Edits Own Bio
Carnildo writes "Wired News reports that Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has edited his own entry in the online encyclopedia at least 18 times, in violation of Wikipedia's policy on autobiography. Edits included removing phrases describing Larry Sanger as a co-founder of Wikipedia, and changing phrasing describing Bomis.com, another of Wales' sites, as a pornography site."
"I don't see why editing your bio, espcially to correct errors, would be such a terrible crime worthy of news"
Perhaps because Whales was in the hardcore porno industry before his work with Wikipedia, and the article referended his past in the industry with the facts. Whales didn't seem to like the bio including his work in the porno industry and so he deleted those portion(s).
He owned several very big porno websites and was a porn cameraman for several years.
He doesn't want this information to be let out of the bag, so he's deleting and censoring it.
Wikipedia is not a reliable source of information.
I hate to break it to you, but any non-primary sources that don't cite their sources accurately aren't reliable sources of information. Not only that, but primary sources are shown to be fallible and subject to interpretation all the time. I'd bet that the majority of school teaching material you used to get to where you are today was on a similar level of reliability with Wikipedia. It just had more entrenched proponents.
Encyclopedias are "first step" sources -- places you go to find out about commonly held generalizations on a topic. From there, if you want accurate information, you follow the listed sources and decide their accuracy for yourself based on the evidence presented. The beauty of Wikipedia is that the more popular a topic, the more likely that the view presented will be a consensus view. More obscure topics will still likely hold the consensus view of those interested, but this view might differ wildly from that of the majority of individuals who are not interested in the topic. The one weak assumption with Wikipedia is that those who are most interested in a topic are also most likely to want the information distributed about that topic to be truthful and accurate.
So, in summary, Wikipedia is a reference, not a teaching source. Secondly, always check the sources and use your critical thinking skills -- even when dealing with teaching sources.
Did you believe Wikipedia was a "reliable source of information" in the first place?
Seriously, it's so fluctuating, that no one should treat it as that, but rather containing information one can use as a starting point for research, by verifying it with other sources. But name a source you wouldn't want to do that with. A single scientist's paper? Encyclopedia Britannica?
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Science, though, requires us to judge it, like any other publication, on the quality of what is produced, not our personal feelings about the process.
In ortherwords the ends justify the means?
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Next time try:
"Your search here" -site:wikipedia.org
in the Google search field.