If you needed any more reason to avoid Wikipedia as a legitimate source of information, look no farther.
Lawrence Solomon, in the National Post, describes how the Climategate emails reveal a concerted effort by climate cultist William Connolley to obfuscate the truth by hiding the Medieval Warm Period.
Connolley took control of all things climate in the most used information source the world has ever known – Wikipedia. Starting in February 2003, just when opposition to the claims of the band members were beginning to gel, Connolley set to work on the Wikipedia site. He rewrote Wikipedia’s articles on global warming, on the greenhouse effect, on the instrumental temperature record, on the urban heat island, on climate models, on global cooling. On Feb. 14, he began to erase the Little Ice Age; on Aug.11, the Medieval Warm Period. In October, he turned his attention to the hockey stick graph. He rewrote articles on the politics of global warming and on the scientists who were skeptical of the band. Richard Lindzen and Fred Singer, two of the world’s most distinguished climate scientists, were among his early targets, followed by others that the band especially hated, such as Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, authorities on the Medieval Warm Period.
All told, Connolley created or rewrote 5,428 unique Wikipedia articles. His control over Wikipedia was greater still, however, through the role he obtained at Wikipedia as a website administrator, which allowed him to act with virtual impunity. When Connolley didn’t like the subject of a certain article, he removed it — more than 500 articles of various descriptions disappeared at his hand. When he disapproved of the arguments that others were making, he often had them barred — over 2,000 Wikipedia contributors who ran afoul of him found themselves blocked from making further contributions. Acolytes whose writing conformed to Connolley’s global warming views, in contrast, were rewarded with Wikipedia’s blessings. In these ways, Connolley turned Wikipedia into the missionary wing of the global warming movement.
National Review’s Edward John Craig described it today as “Wikipedia Thuggery”. How appropriate. The climate cultist conspiracy has repeatedly and systematically acted to hide any evidence that disproves their bizarre and unproven theories. The Climategate emails are the gift that keeps on giving to the cause of revealing the truth about these nutjob zealots.
In the process, this episode has shown that Wikipedia has become little more than yet another leftist-infested propaganda machine.
(I pine for a WordPress plugin that eradicates any Wikipedia links in Redstate’s diaries and comments.)
(Update: Just noticed that RS member smagar had spotted the same story. Read the diary here).
Steve Maley
KnightsofMalta
Dan Spencer
Moe Lane
Dan McLaughlin
Are there any good alternatives to Wikipedia?
SoFiMil (Diary) Sunday, December 20th at 11:27AM EST (link)For me, Bing has already replaced Google.
I’ve noticed that most of the encyclopedia wiki sites are practically complete copies of Wikipedia.
www.suvstrategery.blogspot.com
Don't limit yourself to one site
Neil Stevens (Diary) Sunday, December 20th at 2:05PM EST (link)Use the whole Internet.
A self-declared encyclopedia is no more or less useful than just searching the Internet as a whole.
RS contributing editor, technical administrator, and “a hardy variety of crabgrass.”
Read the RedState Posting Rules
Unlikely Voter: Poll Analysis, Election Projection.
“I rejoice that America has resisted.” – William Pitt, the Elder
wikipedia is still useful
kyle8 (Diary) Sunday, December 20th at 2:09PM EST (link)remember that the vast majority of entries are in no way political and are created by average folk who happen to have a lot of knowledge or interest in the subject area.
You can still use it but just double check the so called “facts”.
“Nothing works like freedom, Nothing succeeds like liberty”
Kyle
I like Wikipedia and I know
minister_of_war Sunday, December 20th at 2:24PM EST (link)that almost everybody on here has gone on there to find something before. Yes, you double and triple check answers to questions. But I remember looking at definitions in my old hard-bound encyclopedias that I knew were wrong. Every book, paper, article, or entry on anything comes with the author’s biases. I do like Wikipedia. You just have to take things on there with grain of salt.
One thing for sure is that Wikipedia does know who the better team is out of my college football rivalry. How do I know that? Because I wrote that entry.
I just read this at the NP site. It is, to say the least, illuminating!
USNJIMRET (Diary) Sunday, December 20th at 11:27AM EST (link)And, as if this is a news flash, one more thing that the LSM will make nary a mention of.
Greatest concern I have at the moment is that some fool like Barney Frank will declare that Wikipedia must be financially ‘saved’, as the donations likely dry up because of this scandal.
Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales
TNJim (Diary) Sunday, December 20th at 12:00PM EST (link)has a page up requesting donations now. He has a bolded sentence in that appeal that reads “Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet has free access to the sum of all human knowledge.”
All human knowledge, Jimmy? Or just that which is approved by the board and guys like Connolley? When the left has an agenda to push, Wikipedia is on board right along with the MSM. Mark Levin just a couple months ago was blasting Wikipedia for not correcting discrepancies in the article on him, and when he (might have been a member of his staff, I don’t recall for certain which) tried to correct it, the entry was changed back and was locked. I haven’t heard if Levin was ever successful in correcting the entry or not.
David Sage below has a good idea about conservatives infiltrating the site, but considering Levin’s experience, it’s probably aleady too late for that. And with guys like Connolley already there, I daresay he’s not the only one, we can expect not to be able to make any headway.
Wikipedia is the bible of moral relativism
NickDeringer (Diary) Sunday, December 20th at 11:30AM EST (link)“We are all entitled to our own version of the truth.” The sun rises in the East. You are not considered enlightened if you say it rises in the South.
NickDeringer
Conservatives Need To Start Infiltrating Wikipedia
DavidSage (Diary) Sunday, December 20th at 11:31AM EST (link)Liberals get away with a lot of this stuff because conservatives don’t even try to fight. I’m sure a big reason why wikipedia tilts to the left is simply because so many liberals got involved and signed up. They saw this as a new battlefield, and swarmed it. If conservatives matched their efforts, it would help make wikipedia more objective.
We can scoff at Wikipedia all we want, but more people get their “facts” there than any other single source. We ignore it at our own peril.
Too late.
NightTwister (Diary) Sunday, December 20th at 11:47AM EST (link)They have it locked down now. Anything written from a conservative perspective is summarily deleted and the author banned.
The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter. – Winston Churchill
It's Never Too Late
DavidSage (Diary) Sunday, December 20th at 1:58PM EST (link)I’m sure the deck is stacked against us, but at the very least conservatives can fight to make sure their content is factually correct.
We could have said the same thing about the mainstream media, that’s it’s biased and we can’t do anything about it, but we can still fight to make sure our voices are heard. For Republican leaders and conservative activists to simply give up and unplug from the MSM would be suicidal for our movement.
I still think conservatives can “make a difference” with regards to Wikipedia.
I'd rather see effort put into Conservapedia.
NightTwister (Diary) Sunday, December 20th at 2:06PM EST (link)If conservatives stop visiting Wikipedia and write articles for Conservapedia, we can make it better than what they have and put them out of business, or at least give people a real option.
The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter. – Winston Churchill
Why create another vulnerable, centralized organ? (nt)
Neil Stevens (Diary) Sunday, December 20th at 2:16PM EST (link)RS contributing editor, technical administrator, and “a hardy variety of crabgrass.”
Read the RedState Posting Rules
Unlikely Voter: Poll Analysis, Election Projection.
“I rejoice that America has resisted.” – William Pitt, the Elder
To elaborate
Neil Stevens (Diary) Sunday, December 20th at 2:17PM EST (link)Single-issue wikis make more sense I think. See Ballotpedia as an example.
RS contributing editor, technical administrator, and “a hardy variety of crabgrass.”
Read the RedState Posting Rules
Unlikely Voter: Poll Analysis, Election Projection.
“I rejoice that America has resisted.” – William Pitt, the Elder
Not to take away from them.
NightTwister (Diary) Sunday, December 20th at 2:31PM EST (link)Single-issue wikis are good. Unfortunately there aren’t going to be a few hundred million of them to cover every issue, and keeping track of all the links to different one would be nearly impossible.
The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter. – Winston Churchill
I don't see an alternative
Neil Stevens (Diary) Sunday, December 20th at 2:37PM EST (link)I see neither the practicality nor the value in creating another public encyclopedia just to have it taken over by special interests again.
Nor do I see any value in having an encyclopedia with an express political bias our way.
RS contributing editor, technical administrator, and “a hardy variety of crabgrass.”
Read the RedState Posting Rules
Unlikely Voter: Poll Analysis, Election Projection.
“I rejoice that America has resisted.” – William Pitt, the Elder
Ah.
NightTwister (Diary) Sunday, December 20th at 3:52PM EST (link)I do.
The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter. – Winston Churchill
Ballotpedia
lesliegraves (Diary) Monday, December 21st at 9:50AM EST (link)Thank you for mentioning Ballotpedia, which is a specialized wiki that focuses on state-level politics. Ballotpedia covers state and local ballot measures and is also expanding to cover state legislators and statewide constitutional officers.
Several people are working on Ballotpedia to increase its information about the 2010 gubernatorial elections. If you’re following one or more of those races, please feel free to get involved with covering the races on Ballotpedia:
http://ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php/Gubernatorial_elections,_2010
Leslie Graves
www.ballotpedia.org
Plug In
badanov Sunday, December 20th at 11:35AM EST (link)Red State is written in php. A quick routine would fix it. Take less than two minutes, but lasts a lifetime.
This isn't too surprising
aelie (Diary) Sunday, December 20th at 11:42AM EST (link)Relentless editing of historical articles on Wikipedia by revisionist “historians” has been going on there for a very long time. It was only a matter of time before those cultists start expanding from history and politics. My only surprise is that it took them this long to start a concerted effort to distort Wikipedia.
William Connolley was booted
JoeG Sunday, December 20th at 3:09PM EST (link)He was one of two admins booted recently, and he was booted by a large margin.
Wiki is valuable for it's primary sources listed in the footnotes.
Veronica (Diary) Sunday, December 20th at 3:14PM EST (link)But even then, one should read the entire source entirely before considering its value.
I knew something was up w/ Wiki when I couldn’t find Al Gore III’s listing on there.
It disappeared after his drunk-driving/wreck/what-have you.
Gore Jr. Jr. was a co-founder of Good Magazine, a liberal, subtly socialist, greenie, propagandist rag steeped in Clinton/Obama verbiage.
One of their CEOs was from Clinton’s Dept. of Commerce.
http://www.foliomag.com/2008/good-names-first-ceo
Gore Jr. Jr’s “official” record broadcast on Wiki would hamper Good’s Obamao-Agenda in Magazine Form.
At Barnes & Noble, the mag sat front and center in the Policy/Current Events Magazine section. At least 30 deep.
So, yeah .. Wiki censors.
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Pray as if everything depends on God, and work as if everything depends on us. – St. Augustine
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He's all over Wikipedia
Erick Brockway (Diary) Sunday, December 20th at 6:11PM EST (link)On the discussion page for Medieval Warm Period,
there’s old William M. Connolley deleting, removing, distorting.
Note to lefties;
“Don’t be afraid to see what you see.” -Ronald Reagan
Activists taking Action
Join the RedState Strike Force
William Connolley ties to Al Gore & ACORN
sharonmcp (Diary) Monday, December 21st at 12:14AM EST (link)From a post at Newsbusters:
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/matthew-sheffield/2009/12/19/leftist-green-party-member-exposed-using-wikipedia-preach-enviro-#comment-1117504
“William Connolley is a founding member of RealClimate.org which gets money from the Tides Foundation and is connected to Environmental Media Services. EMS’s founder and President was Arlie Schardt, who also served as the National Press Secretary for Al Gore’s 1988 presidential campaign, and as Gore’s Communications Director during his 2000 bid for the White House.
It’s amazing how all these people/groups are connected to each other.”
http://www.populartechnology.net/2009/07/truth-about-realclimateorg.html
And of course we know that Drummond Pike, the founder and CEO of the Tides Foundation, agreed to buy a nearly $1 million promissory note from the family of Wade Rathke, founder and recent leader of ACORN and that Teresa Heinz Kerry, wife of U.S. Sen. John Kerry, funded Tides with more than $8 million between 1994 and 2005.
Also according to a post by Jack Bauer at Newsbusters:
Good news everyone…
The Wiki results were announced yesterday… and Connelley the Warm Monger fascist was defeated.
For/234
Neutral/284
Against/478
-244 a net for of 32.9%.
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/matthew-sheffield/2009/12/19/leftist-green-party-member-exposed-using-wikipedia-preach-enviro-#comment-1117571
“Above all, we must realize that no arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women.” ~ Ronald Reagan
If you think Wikipedia is bad, check out the Foundation itself!
thekohser Tuesday, December 22nd at 3:20PM EST (link)While the nefarious manipulations within the Wikipedia “encyclopedia” have been known to quite a few for quite some time, it appears that the media and virtually all of the general public have not sussed out the nefarious goings-on at the Wikimedia Foundation itself. That’s why the Internet provides us with the opportunity to expose organizations like the WMF for what they are:
http://www.tinyurl.com/WMF-myths