Re: Jupiter

On Thu, 31 Jan 2008 02:57:44 -0800 (PST), Whippet
<naylor.nathan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

How reliable is Wiki as a source?

....Depends on the nature of the article content and whether or not the
vandals, trolls and/or trolls with admin powers have discovered it.
Here's some rules of thumb that I use to determine whether to use a
Wikipedia article as a source:

* If it's a science-based article, and the science isn't undergoing
mass-media scrutiny and/or involved in some major controversy - i.e.,
cloning, abortion, cervical cancer immunizations in teens, etc - then
odds are *VERY* high that the article is reliable as a source.

* If it's a politically-based article, it's *always* suspect if any of
the contributors are -not- native to the country relating to the
content/topic in question. Ergo, if it's an article about Dubya, and
the major contributors are not from the US, then it's suspect.

* If it's a genre-based article - i.e., one about a TV show, movie or
other entertainment form - then it's totally suspect if you find a lot
of bull*** arguments going on over on the article's talk page.
Bull*** arguments are easy to spot, and usually involve two or more
gender-challenged, basement dwelling British schoolboys pretending to
be adults, who either have managed to acquire admin rights by faking
support through sock puppet accounts and/or by sycophanting existing
admins thru support of said admins abuse of other Wikians. This has
been a major problem on the "Lost", "Battlestar Galactica (New
series)" and "Jericho" pages for quite some time, and it's usually the
same two limey twits - Matthew Fenton and Will "Sceptre" Noble - who
are behind it all, and fully supported by their admin buddies for
reasons stated above.

* If it's a sports-based article, trust it only if it's locked during
and after the playoffs :-)

* If an article has a lot of [citation requested] tags, take a look to
see if they're all from the same person. If they are, ignore them,
because 99.9% of the time they were added by some dip*** who hasn't a
clue, and is just vandalizing.

....I'll give you an example: over on Memory Alpha - a Star Trek-based
Wiki project - there was an article on Alpha Centauri that *REALLY*
needed a major enema. I spent the better part of two days getting the
article revised, and loaded with accurate facts about our nearest
neighbor, as well as info about Proxima and Beta. Two days later, I
checked the article and found that some twit had gone through and put
{citation requested] tags on every single sentence - especially facts
that were hyperlinked to JPL and JHU articles! When I removed the
tags, the dip*** restored them, and then threatened to have me
blocked from MA for vandalism. After chatting with an admin, it was
found that this was some 12-year-old retard out on a trolling binge,
and while the punk was punted, it still put me off of contributing to
*any* Wiki.

* You can always look at an article's history to come up with an idea
of whether or not it's suitable as a source. If it's had a *LOT* of
major edits in a short period of time, and those edits caused edit
wars and flame fests on the talk page, and an admin has stepped in to
support one side that has a history of trimming articles and being
anal about Wikinazi rules and guidelines, then you ignore those
dipshits and go with the stuff that's been purged. There's a growing,
retarded trend amongst the Wikinazis to "newspeak" articles and keep
them ridiculously short, with only the barest minimum information as
possible. This is *NOT* what a peer-editable reference work is all
about, because you're *NOT* limited by page count. The more info, the
better.

* If an article has an "Original Research" tag blatantly displayed,
this does *not* mean the article is suspect. The problem is that,
regardless of what Jimbo Wales has to say about the matter, *ALL*
research is original, even if the data used is not. There's no such
thing as research that is "not original", because any research comes
to a conclusion that is the sole view of the researcher. With that in
mind, every single article on Wikipedia is "Original Research", and
should be wiped accordingly.

Bottom Line: Wikipedia is a great concept that's currently being
destroyed from within simply because the asylum is being run by the
inmates *and* those inmates have not only discovered how to undo their
straightjackets, they've discovered that sexual favors are not limited
to getting extra rations and privs from the wardens. There's quite a
bit of sexual harassment going on these days, and at least once every
3-4 months some admin gets outed as a pedophile. But still, Wikipedia
*can* be used as a reliable source. As with any source on the
internet, one has to simply use both caution and logic. It's a shame
that one has to use more grains of salt when considering a Wiki
article as a source, but until Jimbo Wales gets his head out of his
ass and bars anyone under the age of 21 from doing anything but *read*
a Wikipedia entry, it's only going to get worse as time goes on.

....Hope this helps :-)

OM
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