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[Ottava]

Just some things to show how stupid Wikipedians can be when it comes to sourcing.

"Martin left his father's girlfriend's home in the gated community of Twin Lakes to walk to a nearby 7-Eleven convenience store to buy some candy"

All reports I've seen have stated that the girlfriend did not live in the community but near it. So I looked at the source.

A clearly marked op-ed.

Then look at the article: "Trayvon had left the house he and his father were visiting to walk to the local 7-Eleven. "

The op-ed, not a reliable source, does not even contain the supposed "facts" that the article states. This is a really key point, because most news stories when covering both sides point out that the girlfriend of his dad did not live there, and that the boy was entering into the community without permission (it was gated and no clear way for him to get to the girlfriend's house).

So someone wanted to skew the truth, put forth a link to an op-ed that was inflammatory but did not lack the detail, and hoped no one noticed.


That is Wikipedia - not about verifiability or truth, but about how you can get your agenda across.

[Zoloft]

Wikipedia would do well to suppress the creation of articles that are essentially news.

Oh, sure, once they have time to get their act together, they provide a lot of information that is glossed over or screwed up by CNN or FOX or your local news-ripper newspaper, but the mistakes and POV-pushing and clueless scrambling for position during the first few days/weeks is embarrassing and misleads many people who search for information on Wikipedia.

Perhaps they should just have a team of volunteers build an article on an event as prominent as the Trayon Martin shooting—in non article space, then place it in Wikinews with a summary of that article in Wikipedia itself, and a prominent "Read More" link back to the main article at Wikinews.

One stone, multiple birds.

[Tarc]

Wikipedia would do well to suppress the creation of articles that are essentially news.

The existence of such articles is the raison d'être of the Article Rescue Squad. Plane crashes, train derailments, hiccuping girls, women walking into mall pools, judges who slap their daughters, reporters who have aneurisms on-air, and so on.