Wikipedia isn't.

The people at Wikipedia want you to believe the online reference book is some sort of collaborative, democratic townhall, where users pass the wiki, (the conch, the talking stick, the candle, choose your own metaphor), and everyone gets to say their piece. The idea is that there will be a lot more voices, and the cream will rise to the top.

But this is the internet. What cream?

Not only is Wikipedia open to all sorts of ridiculous bias, lies, and propaganda. Not only is it one of the most consistently unreliable sources of information because so little is known of the contributors. But apparently the whole wiki idea is a sham.

Wikipedia employs monitors who watch over the entries and wield content-related editorial control. Every decent reference book has quality control editors. But Wikipedia is not a decent reference book. It has never pretended to be. It is some sort of on-line, "living document," where anything goes. Except things of which the thought police disapprove. (And remember--the website would like you to think there are no thought police. It's collaborative--allegedly.)

I have seen Wikipedia close its entries on Israel because those who wish to abolish Israel (and wipe the people off the face of the earth) had been filling the entry with propaganda. Sounds like a good decision, right? But what about every entry for every Jew who ever lived? How can Wikipedia keep out all the propaganda?

And what if you disagree with Wikipedia? Are the secret, trolling editors going to be fair on the facts surrounding gun control, or the Clarence Thomas hearings, or the Kennedy assassinations, or Greenpeace, or abortion proponent Margaret Sanger's ties to eugenics and her desire to rid the world of lesser races?

Here is an excellent article on Wikipedia's biased editing of all things related to global warming.

As I say so often, the article is better than what I have been rambling about. Trust me! You need to read the author's account of his struggle to correct facts about which he had first-hand knowledge.

Don't waste your time on Wikipedia. The handy categories, the nice layout, the tendency to have more information all in one place--it will lull you into credulity. I know it does me. My grandmother used to believe that people wouldn't put something in a book if it weren't true. "But it's in print!"

Don't think the same about Wikipedia. A source is either credible or it isn't. And Wikipedia isn't. Anyone can change a letter here and there and state as fact preposterous lies and distortions. Consider Wikipedia--at best--like the inadmissible evidence in a criminal investigation. It cannot be used to prove anything. But it "might" point you in the right direction.