Oh good: the dork side still don't like wiki

The denialists don't like wiki, because it reflects the current understanding of global warming. And so they need to construct elaborate fantasies about why it doesn't say what they want it to say. Of course, just like everyone else, whether they whinge about it or not, they use it, because its useful and accurate. So far, nothing new.

But its nice to know, every now and again, that the nutters are attacking it, because if they weren't, something would be wrong. In this case, the trigger appears to be some other nutters attacking it. And the trigger for the trigger appears to be some vandalism from 2009. 2009? WTF? Come on people, that's beyond lame. And its about football, so who gives a toss. I cared enough to track back what, according to Aunty, is the offending text: Blame Liverpool Fans, inserted by IP 195.92.40.49 which, FWIW, geolocates to gateway-202.energis.gsi.gov.uk. Which said account got a warning, followed by a 3 month block for vandalism fairly rapidly after the offending edit. Which edit was reverted about 4 minute later. A 5-year old piece of vandalism lasting less than 4 minutes seems pretty thin gruel, even for the wackos.

As an example, I looked up 2014 Russian military intervention in Ukraine. Which looks like a pretty decent summary of what's up. Where would you find anything better?

A comparison

Suppose you entirely accept WUWT on its own terms (hard to do, I know, but pretend). Then a useful comparison would be against the latest bout of Slayerism, as documented by Sou. And again, even if you accept AW's somewhat implausible story that it was all just a test, that "test" - or, in it state before it claimed to be a test, that misinformation - was up for hours misleading - well, lying to - anyone dumb enough to trust WUWT to provide factual information. So wiki's correction process works rather better, and at least the vandals get banned.

Refs

* Ferret
* Faking it - RC
* Good news, from QS: AGU Journals to Become Freely Available(*)

More like this

Hard on the heels of Wegman's farcical attempt to sue Mashey comes Watts's incompetent attempt to meat-puppet wiki. If you want to see my comments at WUWT that didn't survive moderation, you'll need to read stoat spam or just imagine them; I said nothing that wasn't obvious. My favourite, I think…
My previous post refers. There are lots more things to say; this post doesn't really say any of them but veers off at a tangent. Let me know if you get bored. The tangent to start with is "no-one from outside understand how wikipedia works". An obvious example of this is Lawrence Solomon (my…
Meh; not to spoil the tension but it is, as you've already guessed, just another dull clone of wiki a-la Conservapedia. I found it via Wired via fb; you certainly won't find it via people referring to it2. Other than me; sorry about that. This one is called "Infogalactic" which seems to hint that…
Its all about me refers. This wasn't terribly exciting the first time round, but now that dullard AW has finally noticed - its only taken him three+ weeks. And AW has only noticed because the Kalte cretins have recycled it. Apparently I openly sympathized with the views of the controversial IPCC…

What wiki? Do you mean the Wikipeida entry relating to climate change?

Blog entries like this are hard to follow, because casual readers, like myself, don't make the connections that you see clearly.

[Oh, sorry. Yes, just about any wiki entry relating to global warming or climate change winds them up. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming, canonically -W]

Now be accurate, there was also some offensive football edit in 2012, and the Indy's telling tales of edits removing crits of Cherie, and something shocking about Muslim veils which I've not bothered to investigate.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/wikipedia-articles-about-cherie-bl…

[Your article has the veil stuff. The bit you need is "...The comment was removed by a Wikipedia user six minutes later." And that's what the "ZOMG wiki!" stuff from the papers turns out to be in the end -W]

Anyways, any fule kno that the 'pedia has structural flaws, so that it's misleadingly nice about people like Watts and Fred Singer. Such is the BLP way.

Peter B,

When our host says "The denialists don’t like wiki,", he means the entirety of Wikipedia. They don't like it because the entries on climate change. They attack it with whatever hammer, rock, or piece of pasta they find lying around.

By blueshift (not verified) on 30 Apr 2014 #permalink

> I was showing my daughter ...
Warning, that second link is rather loud and the music starts as soon as you click into the link. Not for late night while the family's sleeping.

By Hank Roberts (not verified) on 30 Apr 2014 #permalink

The thing is Wiki had the potential to be the greatest resource that the human race has ever had.

Instead, it is now considered to be unreliable.

The individuals how caused this turn-around should not be proud of what they have done. It is exactly the opposite in the most extreme description possible.

[I'm overwhelmed by the number and severity of the examples of inaccuracy you present. Please, be more vague -W]

By Paul Williams (not verified) on 30 Apr 2014 #permalink

The first rule of Wikipedia is that Wikipedia is unreliable.... it's just that many other sources are even more unreliable.

I don't think the stuff from the papers is so much "ZOMG wiki!" as "ZOMG government employees are vandalising or whitewashing wiki!" so the focus is on the government to look embarrassed and make vague promises.

Vote Dark Side!

(Hmm... So who is the evil emperor?)

FWIW, I love Wikipedia and rely on it daily as a giant STEM manual in my engineering work!!

By Jim Cliborn (not verified) on 02 May 2014 #permalink

Triage suggests we should apply ourselves to Conservapedia instead.

I rely on Wikipedia as a starting point for further research.

By Mal Adapted (not verified) on 02 May 2014 #permalink

What sez the ministry of truth?

By Joe Mehma (not verified) on 06 May 2014 #permalink

Triage suggests we should apply ourselves to Conservapedia instead.

On the contrary, the first rule of triage is "don't waste time on hopeless cases".

The URL for your ferret link should be uncyclopedia.co not uncyclopedia.wikia :)