Slashdot Mirror
When Wikipedia Fails
PetManimal writes "Frank Ahrens of The Washington Post looks at how Wikipedia stumbles when entries for controversial people are altered by partisan observers. Case in point: Enron's Kenneth Lay, who died of natural causes last week, shortly after being sentenced to prison. His Wikipedia entry was altered repeatedly to include unfounded rumors that he had killed himself, or the stress from his trial had caused the heart attack. From the article: '... Here's the dread fear with Wikipedia: It combines the global reach and authoritative bearing of an Internet encyclopedia with the worst elements of radicalized bloggers. You step into a blog, you know what you're getting. But if you search an encyclopedia, it's fair to expect something else. Actual facts, say. At its worst, Wikipedia is an active deception, a powerful piece of agitprop, not information.'"
I went to wiki to search for a household item substitute for thermal compound to replace a CPU on a spare motherboard, and it suggested nappy rash cream. Since we have a rug-rat, and therefore loads of nappy rash cream, I (st00pidly) decided to try it out.
Let's just say that at least in modern processors, I definately DO NOT recommend anything but actual thermal compound, and wikipedia owes me $50.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Aren't there an awful lot of parentheticals in your post to be complaining about other peoples' writing styles? (You know what I'm talking about.) Parentheticals are, after all, typically unimportant to the sentence and (to people reading them) they tend to be somewhat distracting from the point.