Sort of a water is wet moment in that the Leftist bias of Wikipedia has been amply demonstrated for quite a few years. Wikipedia of course depends upon an army of unpaid contributors who are usually highly politically motivated and who often have endless time on their hands in the basements of their moms. I have noticed with Wikipedia that the more apolitical and technical a subject is the more it can be trusted. (Within limits. I have read some truly dreadful Wikipedia articles on highly technical legal matters. Some things it is just very hard to dumb down sufficiently for non-experts to grasp even where bias is absent.) However, if politics, and that increasingly covers a broad swathe of our existence, enters in, Wikipedia is as reliable as the vagrant on the street yelling about the invisible demons in his head. Actually somewhat less so, as the vagrant believes what he is saying is factually correct.
I haven’t trusted Wikipedia since the first time I visited Wikipedia. Little I’ve seen over the years has changed that assessment. With our sons in homeschool, We didn’t let them use Wikipedia as a source. It’s main value is art, maps and links to other sources.
Agree, Dave G.
Years ago, I went there to research Crusades related matters and quickly saw it was less than useful – post-modern and revisionist.
Who owns the past owns the future.
I think this happens because (1) producing content for Wikipedia is correlated with being in a word merchant occupation and (2) being in a word merchant occupation is correlated with leftoid politics and (3) leftoids have a compulsion to state their opinions in every kind of venue. We see this every day on our Fakebook wall. About 95% of the political posts from particular individuals we know are portside. Nearly all corrupted occupational associations are so courtesy their liberal members. Nearly all corrupted philanthropies are so courtesy their liberal board members.
Most teachers don’t accept it as a bibliography source because it’s unreliable and anyone can edit it at anytime. I don’t think University’s accept it as a source in dissertations either.
I once added a building and date of completion of a project I worked on for an architect studio. Anyone can come along and change the date or even the name. No restrictions.
Unfortunately Wikipedia is used as a source by other information sites on various topics so it’s a challenge looking for correct factual information on the internet.
Gone are the days we used to go to the home library and pull out the Britannica or World Book encyclopaedia which had publication dates in black and white print.