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| | #:Wikipedia's entry omits references to leading pro-parent websites concerning vaccination,<ref>http://www.909shot.com/</ref> and instead Wikipedia's entry lists pro-government and pro-vaccine-manufacturer websites. | | #:Wikipedia's entry omits references to leading pro-parent websites concerning vaccination,<ref>http://www.909shot.com/</ref> and instead Wikipedia's entry lists pro-government and pro-vaccine-manufacturer websites. |
| | # Wikipedia displays an obsession with English social distinctions, such as obscure royality, and with unexplained academic distinctions earned in the English college system, such as references to "double first degree." The entry on [[Henry Liddell]] illustrates this extreme form of Anglophilia that characterizes many entries in Wikipedia.<ref>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Liddell</ref>. That entry fails to tell us when Liddell was dean of Christ Church, Oxford and has a grammatical error in its first sentence, yet describes in painstaking detail four obscure royal titles for Liddell's relatives and his "double first degree" in college. The casual reader of that entry wouldn't even notice a buried reference (well after a description of all the royal lineage) to Liddell's primary claim to fame: his daughter Alice inspired [[Alice's Adventures in Wonderland]]. The arcane English descriptions in many Wikipedia entries may be due to its copying, verbatim, passages from the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica. This copying was not disclosed in the debate in late 2005 about whether Wikipedia was as reliable a resource as the Encyclopedia Britannica.<ref>http://news.com.com/Study+Wikipedia+as+accurate+as+Britannica/2100-1038_3-5997332.html</ref> | | # Wikipedia displays an obsession with English social distinctions, such as obscure royality, and with unexplained academic distinctions earned in the English college system, such as references to "double first degree." The entry on [[Henry Liddell]] illustrates this extreme form of Anglophilia that characterizes many entries in Wikipedia.<ref>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Liddell</ref>. That entry fails to tell us when Liddell was dean of Christ Church, Oxford and has a grammatical error in its first sentence, yet describes in painstaking detail four obscure royal titles for Liddell's relatives and his "double first degree" in college. The casual reader of that entry wouldn't even notice a buried reference (well after a description of all the royal lineage) to Liddell's primary claim to fame: his daughter Alice inspired [[Alice's Adventures in Wonderland]]. The arcane English descriptions in many Wikipedia entries may be due to its copying, verbatim, passages from the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica. This copying was not disclosed in the debate in late 2005 about whether Wikipedia was as reliable a resource as the Encyclopedia Britannica.<ref>http://news.com.com/Study+Wikipedia+as+accurate+as+Britannica/2100-1038_3-5997332.html</ref> |
| − | # Until a complaint was lodged, Wikipedia's entry for the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, a conservative group, gave undue weight to a rant by a British journalist against the group, which it quoted at excessive length.<ref>[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Association_of_American_Physicians_and_Surgeons&oldid=107830399 The version] criticized above; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Association_of_American_Physicians_and_Surgeons the note] left by dpbsmith on the article's discussion page; the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_American_Physicians_and_Surgeons current version].</ref>. The only cited credential for the journalist is that he works for a television "programme-production company," and there is no citation for any of the factual claims in his intemperate and misleading remarks about the group. | + | # Until a complaint was lodged, Wikipedia's entry for the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, a conservative group, gave undue weight to a rant by a British journalist against the group, which it quoted at excessive length.<ref>[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Association_of_American_Physicians_and_Surgeons&oldid=107830399 The version] criticized above; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Association_of_American_Physicians_and_Surgeons the note] left by dpbsmith on the article's discussion page; the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_American_Physicians_and_Surgeons current version].</ref>. The only cited credential for the journalist is that he works for a television "programme-production company," and there is no citation for any of the factual claims in his intemperate and misleading remarks about the group. While the trimming of this rant is a step in the right direction, why is such an unsupported, unpublished criticism allowed to remain on Wikipedia at all? It is against Wikipedia policy, yet it is allowed as a liberal criticism of a conservative group. |
| | # Bob Schmidt observed on the ''Illinois Review'':<ref>http://illinoisreview.typepad.com/illinoisreview/2007/01/conservapedia_w.html</ref> | | # Bob Schmidt observed on the ''Illinois Review'':<ref>http://illinoisreview.typepad.com/illinoisreview/2007/01/conservapedia_w.html</ref> |
| | ::I just spent some time in Wikipedia checking if my recollections of its bias are correct. The bias is much worse than I had remembered. | | ::I just spent some time in Wikipedia checking if my recollections of its bias are correct. The bias is much worse than I had remembered. |