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18 April 2008

To the pigheaded, go the spoils

Wikipedia's "War on Truth"...
As I'm writing this column for the Financial Post, I am simultaneously editing a page on Wikipedia. I am confident that just about everything I write for my column will be available for you to read.

I am equally confident that you will be able to read just about nothing that I write for the page on Wikipedia.
Meet "Tabletop"... eco-warrior par excellence...
Tabletop, it turns out, has another name: Kim Dabelstein Petersen. She (or he?) is an editor at Wikipedia. What does she edit? Reams and reams of global warming pages. I started checking them. In every instance I checked, she defended those warning of catastrophe and deprecated those who believe the science is not settled.
Now... nobody is gonna try make an argument that Wikipedia is anything more than a loosey-goosey online approximation of Readers Digest... but still, it pops up when you do any sort of online search on any topic.

And if we've learned anything from commercials on TV... it's that bombarding people with information, of any kind, or calibre, works...
While I've been writing this column, the Naomi Oreskes page has changed 10 times. Since I first tried to correct the distortions on the page, it has changed 28 times. If you have read a climate change article on Wikipedia -- or on any controversial subject that may have its own Kim Dabelstein Petersen -- beware.

Wikipedia is in the hands of the zealots.
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FROM THE COMMENTS:
One specific NDP supporting gay activist basically ensures that CBC and Canada culture pages are sanitized of criticism.
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