<img alt="" height="1" width="1">http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=T&ct=us/0-0&fd=R&url=http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html%3Fin_article_id%3D558786%26in_page_id%3D1770&cid=1150132896&ei=S73-R-WHF430yAT8wIiLBA&usg=AFrqEzf2x73VhtWf3ImkL2XXud2pjh0LOA
Mail on Sunday, UK -47 minutes ago
Who put me there or why, I have no idea. But if you look me up on Wikipedia, the world's most frequently consulted reference work on the internet, ...
http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=T&ct=us/0-0&fd=R&url=http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html%3Fin_article_id%3D558786%26in_page_id%3D1770&cid=1150132896&ei=S73-R-WHF430yAT8wIiLBA&usg=AFrqEzf2x73VhtWf3ImkL2XXud2pjh0LOA
This is a well-written column that is both funny and serious. One of the serious parts touches on the impossibility of NPOV.
It's wonderful. I'm flagging it for posterity.
And the most wonderful thing is that this article was referenced in his Wikipedia entry and - guess what - the link was removed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tom_Utley&diff=next&oldid=204880229
I don't know whether to laugh or to hold my head in my hands in utter despair.
The http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tom_Utley&diff=next&oldid=143953179 lasted for 12 days.
I thought Wikipedia vandalisms were "almost always" reverted "very quickly"?
In January, the Henrik-o-Meter says that the Tom Utley article was getting 5 or 6 page views per day. Maybe it was only 3 or 4 per day, back when Wikipedia was less popular in July 2007.
Still, that's easily 30 or more visitors who saw the nonsense, versus the one reader who actually did something to correct it.
This seems to be a trend that I'm establishing with these stories about vandalism. We frequently see 20 to 50 people walk idly past a vandalism without "sofixit"ing it. Why?
IT'S NOT THEIR PROBLEM. IT'S NOT THEIR ARTICLE. IT'S NOT THEIR ENCYCLOPEDIA.
Wikipedia: The World's Most Irresponsible Encyclopedia.
Seriously, do Wikipediots think this is a "good" ratio of damaged views-to-corrective actions? To me, 40 to 1, or even 20 to 1, are not statistics to be proud of, considering it's purported to be a self-correcting reference.
Greg
As a science educator, I was astonished to discover how much antagonism I encountered among Wikipedians to the principles of scientific methods of inquiry and verification.
Then again, my sample of Wikipedians is largely limited to those who were signatories to the Wikipedia Project on Intelligent Design.