Conservapedia - User contributions [en]

Wikipedia

2012-09-01T18:56:06Z

Etait: /* Recent loss of influence */

[[File:Wikipedia-logo.png|right|200px]]

'''Wikipedia''' is [[Examples of Bias in Wikipedia|a politically left leaning]] [[communist]] online [[wiki]]-based [[encyclopedia]]<ref>http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4840340.stm</ref> project written and edited by an ''ad hoc'' assemblage of mostly [[anonymous]] persons who are mostly, according to the ''Register'' (UK),<ref>http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/mar/08/media.comment</ref><ref>http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/09/18/sanger_forks_wikipedia/</ref> teenagers and [[unemployment|unemployed persons]].<ref>[http://frontpagemag.com/2011/08/23/how-the-left-conquered-wikipedia-part-1/ How the left conquered Wikipedia - Part 1]</ref> Wikipedia editors, unlike Conservapedia, are overwhelmingly young males<ref>In 2009, a survey conducted by the Wikipedia Foundation came out concerning the typical Wikipedia editor that declared the average age of an editor is 26.8 years and 87% of the editors are men. [http://gawker.com/5410917/wikipedia-gridlocked-by-wikipedia-nerds]</ref> - a demographic associated with self-centered belief systems and behavior.

== Recent loss of influence ==

In August of 2012, it was reported that Wikipedia has a shrinking base of editors.<ref name="blog">
A certain blog reports that

"Pro-evolution Wikipedia has a shrinking base of editors plus [[Quora]] is Wikipedia's worst nightmare"</ref> In addition, in August of 2012, ''Business Insider'' indicated [[Quora]] was "Wikipedia's worst nightmare".<ref name="blog" /> In August of 2012, leading web traffic tracking companies indicated that Wikipedia's English version of their online encyclopedia has lost web visitors in the last 6 months. <ref name="blog" />

Other websites have refuted this thoroughly. Popular web traffic tool, Alexa, has revealed that Wikipedia was gaining more traffic, and stands to gain even more, as large portions of the world come online for the first time. The only problem in the foreseeable future is "lack of dedicated editors. We are currently running on drive by editors only".<ref> http://www.wikimedia.org/r.php?&m=1924&d=21324 </ref> <ref> http://www.alexa.com/wa?n=wikipedia </ref>

== Unreliability of Wikipedia ==

In 2008, the ''American Journalism Review'' declared concerning Wikipedia:
{{cquote|"An even more blunt assessment appears in the encyclopedia's "Ten things you may not know about Wikipedia" posting: "We do not expect you to trust us. It is in the nature of an ever-changing work like Wikipedia that, while some articles are of the highest quality of scholarship, others are admittedly complete rubbish." It also reminds users not to use Wikipedia as a primary source or for making "critical decisions."<ref>http://www.ajr.org/Article.asp?id=4461</ref>}}
The project was initiated by [[atheism|atheist]] and [[entrepreneur]] [[Jimmy Wales]] and the [[agnosticism|agnostic]] [[philosophy]] [[professor]] [[Larry Sanger]] on January 15, 2001.<ref>http://www.nndb.com/lists/288/000092012/</ref> An irony of internet history is that Jimmy Wales, despite being an atheist, refers to himself as Wikipedia's "spiritual leader".<ref>http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05/09/wikimedia_pron_purge/</ref> Despite its official "neutrality policy," [[Examples of Bias in Wikipedia|Wikipedia has a strong liberal bias.]] In his article entitled ''Wikipedia lies, slander continue'' [[journalism|journalist]] [[Joseph Farah]] stated Wikipedia "is not only a provider of inaccuracy and bias. It is wholesale purveyor of lies and slander unlike any other the world has ever known."<ref>http://wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=83640</ref> Mr. Farah has repeatedly been the victim of defamation at the Wikipedia website.<ref>http://wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=83640</ref> In December of 2010, [[Christian apologetics|Christian apologist]] [[JP Holding]] called Wikipedia "the abomination that causes misinformation".<ref>http://tektonticker.blogspot.com/search/label/Wikipedia</ref>

Wikipedia has millions of entries on topics ranging from an explanation for "duh"<ref>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duh (only after Conservapedia criticized the entry on the English word "duh" did Wikipedia eventually remove it)</ref> to singles by obscure rock bands<ref>such as ''[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honk_If_You_Love_Fred_Durst Honk If You Love Fred Durst]'' (accessed April 1, 2007)</ref> to arcane British nobility.<ref>Part of the article about [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Liddell Henry Liddell], a 19th-century Vice-chancellor of Oxford University and author, includes that his grandfather was the youngest son of the 8th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne, and that his daughter was the child ''Alice in Wonderland'' was written for (accessed April 1, 2007)</ref> There are editions of Wikipedia in 250 languages, and 130 have more than 1000 articles.<ref>[http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedias List of Wikipedias - Wikimedia], accessed April 1, 2007.</ref> After about four years Wikipedia had about 450,000 entries,<ref>Aaron Weiss, The Unassociated Press, N.Y. Times, Feb. 10, 2005, at G5.</ref> and after six years it had about 1.7 million entries.<ref>[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Statistics English Wikipedia statistics] accessed April 1, 2007</ref> Four years later this number had more than doubled again: in November 2011, there are more than 3.8 million content pages.<ref>[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Statistics English Wikipedia statistics] accessed May 6, 2011</ref> On However, the quality of these articles is up for dispute, given the [[Wikipedia#Leftist_bias|evidence of systematic bias]].
__TOC__

==Origins==
[[Image:Wpp.png|thumb|right|200px|Multilingual Wikipedia Home Page]]
Initially, Wikipedia was hosted on servers operated by Bomis, Inc., a company that also sold pornographic pictures.<ref>Martin Hickman and Genevieve Roberts, "WIKIPEDIA," The Independent (London) p. 12 (Feb 13, 2006)</ref> In 2003, Jimbo Wales founded the Wikimedia Foundation to oversee the day-to-day operations of Wikipedia. The Wikimedia Foundation is a non-profit organization that provides support for Wikipedia and other similar projects,<ref>[http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home Wikimedia Foundation] accessed April 7, 2007</ref> and also the free MediaWiki software that runs Wikipedia and Conservapedia.<ref>[http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki MediaWiki home] accessed April 7, 2007</ref>

== Leftist bias ==

See also: [[Leftist roots of Wikipedia]]

David Swindle writes at [[FrontPage Magazine]]:
{{cquote|There was not a single ideological vision driving Wikipedia’s founders and core contributors as they launched the project. Jimmy Wales, who would become the face of the project and its “benevolent dictator,” according to Andrew Lih’s ''The Wikipedia Revolution'', is a libertarian and [[Ayn Rand|Ayn Randian]] [[Objectivism|Objectivist]]. Also important in shaping Wikipedia was the so-called “hacker ethos,” the culture that has developed amongst computer programmers over the last 40 years and been shaped by the Left, the counterculture, popular culture, and [[anarchism|anarchist]] thought.

What binds together these ideologies is a [[Utopia|utopian]] ideal that human beings are more prone to [[altruism]] rather than self-interest. In Wikipedia Revolution Wales is quoted as saying, “Generally we find most people out there on the internet are good… It’s one of the wonderful humanitarian discoveries in Wikipeda, that most people only want to help us and build this free nonprofit, charitable resource.” Ward Cunningham was the programmer who created the wiki concept and software. According to Lih, he believed in the Wiki because “People are generally good.”

Lih explains how this philosophy is embedded within Wikipedia’s rules:

A core idea Wikipedia embraced.. was to assume good faith when interacting with others. The guideline promoted optimistic production rather than pessimistic nay-saying, and reads, “Unless there is strong evidence to the contrary, assume that people who work on the project are trying to help it, not hurt it; avoid accusing others of harmful motives without particularly strong evidence.

But as it worked out, Wikipedia in practice has strayed from these utopian ideas because of the ease with which political and social bias trumps altruism.

After almost a decade of rapid growth and free-wheeling experimentation the situation at the site by the Summer of 2009 was chaos. Political operatives would sabotage one another in electoral contests by vandalizing pages. More malicious misinformation filtered in freely, with living historical figures accused of involvement in conspiratorial plots.<ref>http://frontpagemag.com/2011/08/23/how-the-left-conquered-wikipedia-part-1/</ref>}}

[[File:Peter-Singer.jpg|right|thumbnail|250px|The [[atheist]] philosopher [[Peter Singer]] defends the practice of [[bestiality]] (as well as [[abortion]], infanticide and [[euthanasia]]). Despite holding these immoral views the [[liberal]] and pro-[[evolution]] academic establishment rewarded his views with a bioethics chair at [[Princeton University]].<ref>
*[http://creation.com/the-basis-of-a-christian-worldview The Basis of a Christian Worldview - Creation Ministries International]
*[http://creation.com/answer-to-philosophy-religion-professor-on-biblical-exegesis-and-the-problem-of-evil CMI answers philosophy/religion professor on biblical exegesis and the problem of evil]
*[http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2011/06/the-dangerous-mind-of-peter-singer ''The Dangerous Mind''] by Joe Carter, ''[[First Things]]''</ref> See: [[Atheism and bestiality]] and [[Wikipedia on bestiality]] ]]

=== Research ===

On August 23, 2011, David Swindle published an article at ''[[FrontPage Magazine]]'' detailing how Wikipedia has been taken over by the [[Leftist|political left]] and he cited statistics relating to Wikipedia's articles on [[Anne Coulter]], [[Michael Moore]], [[Glenn Beck]] and [[Keith Olbermann]] which helped demonstrate the Wikipedia has a leftist/[[liberal]] bias plus he discussed the liberal/leftist cultural foundations of Wikipedia.<ref>[http://frontpagemag.com/2011/08/23/how-the-left-conquered-wikipedia-part-1/ How the left conquered Wikipedia - Part 1]</ref>

For example, Swindle wrote:

<blockquote>"Consider Ann Coulter versus Michael Moore. Coulter’s entry (on August 9, 2011) was 9028 words long.* Of this longer-than-usual entry, 3220 words were devoted to “Controversies and criticism” in which a series of incidents involving Coulter and quotes from her are cited with accompanying condemnations, primarily from her opponents on the Left. That’s 35.6 percent of Coulter’s entry devoted to making her look bad. By contrast, Moore’s entry is 2876 words (the more standard length for entries on political commentators), with 130 devoted to “Controversy.” That’s 4.5% of the word count, a fraction of Coulter’s. Does this mean that an “unbiased” commentator would find Coulter eight times as “controversial” as Moore?"<ref>[http://frontpagemag.com/2011/08/23/how-the-left-conquered-wikipedia-part-1/ How the left conquered Wikipedia - Part 1]</ref></blockquote>

==Hearsay==
Wikipedia has a policy that information can only be added if a reference stating it can already be found elsewhere. In other words, it relies on [[hearsay]] and discourages independent thought, the application of [[logic]] and new development of new insights. The result is a colossal agglomeration of reheated "consensus" with little or no intellectual merit of its own; in particular, it is impossible to challenge orthodoxy, received wisdom or commonly held misconceptions through the Wikipedia system, no matter how factually incorrect those orthodoxies might be.

Worse still, Wikipedia's ubiquity has caused this attitude to be widely adopted in some circles outside the site, creating a [[hearsay society]] where all the above problems are reproduced and magnified, to the intellectual and material detriment of all.

== Wikipedia on bestiality ==

''See also:'' [[Wikipedia on bestiality]] and [[Atheism and bestiality]]

As noted earlier, the Wikipedia project was initiated by [[atheism|atheists]] and [[entrepreneur]] [[Jimmy Wales]] and the [[agnosticism|agnostic]] [[philosophy]] [[professor]] [[Larry Sanger]] on January 15, 2001.<ref>http://www.nndb.com/lists/288/000092012/</ref>

[[Bestiality]] is the act of engaging in sexual relations with an animal. As of July 18, 2012, Wikipedia's article on [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoophilia zoophilia/bestiality] has an entire section on "arguments for zoophilia" plus pictures depicting zoophilia as well as a section on "arguments against zoophilia". No worthwhile encyclopedia in existence has an article on zoophilia/bestiality with an entire section on "arguments for zoophilia" plus pictures depicting zoophilia. As of September 24, 2011, Wikipedia has a "[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoophilia_and_the_law Zoophilia and the law"] article which has a section on the impact of zoophilia laws where eight alleged negative impacts of zoophilia laws are given, but no positive impacts of the laws are given.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoophilia_and_the_law#Impact_of_laws|title=Impact of laws section of "Zoopilia and the law"|date=July 17, 2012|accessdate=July 18, 2012}}</ref>

See also: [[Atheism and bestiality]] and [[Evolutionary belief and bestiality]]

==Economics==

Though Wikipedia is non-profit, the [[Wikia]] project of its co-founder is very much for-profit and has raised millions of dollars in investments. Already Wikipedia has been criticized for favoring Wikia. When Wikipedia community voted 61-39% percent to treat all links to other sites equally by removing nofollow (Google-ignored) tags for all of them, the Wikipedia co-founder overruled this decision and Wikipedia now favors Wikia in its treatment of nofollow tags.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/04/28/wikipedia-special-treatment-for-wikia-and-other-wikis/|title=Wikipedia: Special Treatment for Wikia and some other Wikis|author=Nik Cubrilovic|date=April 28, 2007|accessdate=July 22, 2012}}</ref><ref>http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2007-January/061137.html</ref>

''The Register'' said:<ref>http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/09/18/sanger_forks_wikipedia/</ref>
:Wikipedia has tried to balance the Utopian goal of "an encyclopedia anyone can edit" with the more utilitarian goal of "a website anyone would want to read". With over a million articles, and a rulebook almost as dense, Wikipedia has demonstrated an insatiable desire to participate, create lists and generate procedures. The result is a huge silo of recorded trivia, and perhaps the world's largest, most distributed bureaucracy - mostly manned by a casual staff of teenagers and the unemployed.

==Quality==
''In other words—and this is the rock-solid principle on which the whole of the Corporation’s Galaxywide success is founded—their fundamental design flaws are completely hidden by their superficial design flaws.''
—Douglas Adams

Wikipedia, which is written by anyone, still struggles to solve the need for traditional quality controls characteristic of conventional [[encyclopedia]]s. The self-policing practices has produced results and accuracy far better than originally expected. But still the lack of consistency and uniform supervision leaves an ever present shadow over any given piece of information. It has come to receive high grades for accuracy, but still many in the [[academy]] insist that it is unreliable source for [[research]] and an unacceptable reference in many classrooms. Perhaps these reactions are inevitable. Nevertheless, Wikipedia steers people to original [[source material]], and with the use of [[hyperlink]]s and [[search engine]]s, it has become the most widely used intermediary [[reference]] tool on the [[Internet]].

==[[Liberal bias]]==

''See also:'' [[Examples of Bias in Wikipedia]]

Wikipedia shows a systematic bias in that tiny proportion of articles which treat controversial issues. It ignores its own [[NPOV]] policy when it allows contributors to "delete well-referenced information" merely because it comes from a [[scientist]] who holds a [[minority view]]. It would only be a violation, if the article used the information to give a false impression of the proportion of scientists adhering to that view, but liberals use "[[undue weight]]" like a sledge hammer. They are either unaware or unconcerned about their bias.

This is not surprising, given this [[Zogby]] poll:

While 97% of [[Republican]]s surveyed said the media are [[liberal]], two-thirds of [[political independent]]s feel the same, but fewer than one in four independents (23%) said they saw a "conservative bias". [[Democrat]]s, while much more likely to perceive a conservative bias than other groups, were not nearly as sure the [[media]] was against them as were the Republicans. While Republicans were unified in their perception of a [[left-wing]] media, just two-thirds of Democrats were certain the media skewed [[right-wing|right]] – and 17% said the bias favored the left.

http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=1262

==Scandals and decline==

[[Image:Wikipedia scandals.jpg|thumb|450px|right|Decline in Wikimedia Foundation donations.<ref>[http://centiare.com/Wikipedia_scandals Wikipedia scandals]. Retrieved from centiare.com October 10, 2007.</ref> Graph courtesy [http://www.centiare.com/Directory:Gregory_J._Kohs Gregory Kohs]. Used with Permission.]]The cumulative effect of multiple scandals and revelations has led to declining activity on the English Wikipedia. The rate of new account creation peaked in early 2007 and has declined ~30% since. Overall editing activity showed a steady decline beginning in February 2007. An independent analysis reported, "The rate at which edits were being made to Wikipedia articles appears to have peaked in February to April 2007 and declined since. This decline is unprecedented in Wikipedia's history.... Though it may be purely coincidental, this time frame also corresponds to the Essjay controversy appearing in the press."<ref>[http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2007-October/033661.html Statistical Decline of the English Wikipedia], [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Dragons_flight/Log_analysis Dragons flight/Log analysis], October 9, 2007.</ref>

Even after the hoax was revealed of high level intimates promoted by the Wikimedia Foundation as experts in fields that they were not, to persuade college professors to allow students to cite Wikipedia as a reliable source, and entrusted with the ability to invade users privacy which could affect, in their words, "life and death," Wikipedia still appealed to students with a Jim and Tammy Faye Baker-style fundraising slogan across one million project space pages that read, "OMG! Wikipedia is gone! I’ll flunk my exams!" [http://whygive.wikimedia.org/2007/11/24/omg-wikipedia-is-gone-ill-flunk-my-exams/]

==False claim about Brent Bozell==

In March 2007, Brent Bozell described this falsehood in Wikipedia:<ref>http://www.creators.com/opinion/brent-bozell/not-your-father-s-encyclopedia.html</ref>

:The other day, Bernie Goldberg emailed me, upset. He pointed me to his Wikipedia entry. To read what was written was to conclude that apparently I must hate his guts. But we are friends. He is a man for whom I have profound respect, professional and personal. He knew there was foul play.

:Right there on the screen, under the heading "Criticism," it stated that I had attacked him, "claiming that Goldberg merely lifted material he had been producing for years, and only published the book because he had an ax to grind with his former employers and was attempting to make a 'quick buck,' noting that Goldberg never mentioned the alleged liberal bias of the media until it was 'convenient' and 'profitable' for him to do so." ...

:In fact, those words have never been uttered by me. The accusation would be false. Back in 1996, Goldberg used the op-ed pages of The Wall Street Journal publicly to castigate his own network for its one-sided oafish bashing of Steve Forbes. It was anything but "convenient" or "profitable" for him. It ruined his friendship with Dan Rather and put him on a path to the outer fringes of CBS "News. Ultimately, it ruined his newscaster career.

:My attorney contacted Wikipedia by email demanding the removal of this false entry. No response. So we edited out the offensive material ourselves, after which in writing counsel alerted Wikipedia to the legal action that might befall them should this be repeated. Here's full disclosure, Wikipedia-style: You can see how each article is altered, sometimes hour by hour, in its "History" section. But there is no mention of the attorney's complaints. In the Goldberg article's history, an editor simply now scolds: "Bozell's article is a mock-jealous swipe at Goldberg's opportunism. PLEASE REREAD IT." (Capitals theirs.)

:Goldberg and I are not alone. The website Conservapedia.com has a [[Bias in Wikipedia|long list]] of 41 allegations of bias and factual errors at Wikipedia. You can add to that the problem with the credentials of its staff. One of its editors, named only "Essjay" online and described on his user profile "as a tenured professor of religion at a private university with expertise in canon law," was recently exposed as a 24-year-old college kid in Kentucky. He resigned in disgrace — even though Wikipedia tried to retain him, claiming he'd edited thousands of articles with flair.

Instead of apologizing to Brent Bozell, '''Wikipedia instead says "Bozell points to Conservapedia as a resource that documents Wikipedia's faults in this regard, presumably holding it as a more authoritative reference less vulnerable to vandalism."'''<ref>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brent_Bozell accessed April 1, 2007</ref>

==Rewriting its own history==

The Associated Press and others credit Larry Sanger as the co-founder of Wikipedia.<ref>http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/tech/2007/mar/25/032502465.html
</ref> But the Associated Press quotes Jimmy Wales as denying it:<ref>''id.''</ref>

:"When you write this up please do not uncritically repeat Sanger's absurd claim to be the co-founder of Wikipedia."

:"I know of no one who was there at the company at the beginning who would think it anything other than laughable," he added. This is an interesting comment, considering that Larry Sanger takes credit for coining the name, "Wikipedia."<ref>[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jimbo_Wales/Archive_20#Sorry.2C_Jimbo.2C_but_not_buying_it. User talk:Jimbo Wales/Archive 20, Larry Sanger 03:26, 5 March 2007 (UTC)]</ref>

:"I am not bent out of shape about it," he wrote. "The facts are on my side, which is why I bother so little about it."

According to the Associated Press, Jimmy Wales "has repeatedly tried to address this - even going so far as editing his own Wikipedia biography to tone down credit for Sanger. Such autobiographical contributions are frowned upon in Wikipedia's community, and Wales apologized after his changes were noticed and publicized by blogger Rogers Cadenhead in 2005."<ref>''id.''</ref>

Jimmy Wales has admitted that certain administrators, contrary to their own rules, have at times completely removed editing evidence.

== Seigenthaler scandal ==

In early October 2005 a prominent and respected journalist [[John Seigenthaler Sr.]], contacted Wikipedia founder [[Jimmy Wales]] about false and libelous content in his biographical entry. Essjay, a 24 year old Wikipedia Administrator who was advancing rapidly in the organization, was dispatched to handle the situation.<ref>[http://www.wikitruth.info/index.php?title=User:Essjay/Letter User:Essjay/Letter]. Retrieved from WikiTruth, November 3, 2007.</ref> An anonymous contributor added to Seigenthaler's biography the previous May,
:"John Seigenthaler Sr. was the assistant to Attorney General [[Robert Kennedy]] in the early 1960s. For a short time, he was thought to have been directly involved in the Kennedy assassinations of both [[John F. Kennedy|John]], and his brother, Bobby. Nothing was ever proven," and "John Seigenthaler moved to the [[Soviet Union]] in 1971, and returned to the [[United States]] in 1984. He started one of the country's largest public relations firms shortly thereafter."

Wales told Seignethaler that Wikipedia is "accountable" and corrects mistakes immediately, but that the internet service provider of the anonymous user probably would not be helpful in identifying who placed the content.<ref>[http://www.journalism.org/node/1673 Seigenthaler's Op-Eds], October 1, 2005. Retrieved from http://www.journalism.org November 12, 2007.</ref> Accountability activist [[Daniel Brandt]], a victim of a spurious biographical entry by Wikipedia Administrators, identified the place of employment of the anonymous user, and from there the person accountable was identified.<ref>http://www.journalism.cf.ac.uk/2006/online/index.php?id=parse-195-0-0-251&article=336&author=India+Camm</ref>

Seigenthaler returned to the editorial pages of ''USA Today'' from which he retired as its first editorial manager to write an Op-Ed piece critical of Wikipedia and the threat it poses to free speech due of its overt provocation of government regulation, its irresponsible self regulation and lack of accountability.<ref>[http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2005-11-29-wikipedia-edit_x.htm A false Wikipedia 'biography'], By John Seigenthaler, ''USA Today'', 11/29/2005.</ref>

=== CNN interview ===

On December 5, 2005 Wales and Seigenthaler appeared on [[CNN]]. An exchange between CNN moderator [[Kyra Phillips]] and Wales went like this:
{{Cquote|PHILLIPS:...I ran my name. I was shocked to see what was under my name. ...I'm telling you right now, Jimmy, that's not how I want people to see me and understand me. And what I'm about and what I write about in my interviews, et cetera. So, you know, it's not just individuals like John, but me and many other people, that just have concerns that this is creating gossip that can be very harmful. And people go to these sites thinking that this is the truth.}}
{{Cquote|WALES: Well, I mean, I think the real key is that the site matures over time, the -- all of the articles are edited over and over and over, and improved. Anyone's free to contribute. You're free to go and contribute.}}

This in fact is not the case. Phillips was not free to remove objectionable content within her biographical entry, as Daniel Brandt at that exact moment was discovering. Not four days prior, Wales told ''Editor & Publisher'' magazine regarding Brandt's objections to a false Wikipedia biography created by Wikipedia Administrators about him, "I find it hard to take him very seriously at all," and libelous slanders remained in Brandt's biography for a year and half. Wales told CNN, "we are very, very responsive to complaints and concerns."

Seigenthaler told the audience "with accountability comes credibility" and expressed fear that, "I'm afraid we're going to get regulated media as a result."<ref>http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0512/05/lol.02.html</ref>

On December 9, Seigenthaler appeared on C-SPAN's ''Washington Journal'' with Brian Lamb and articulated his concern that members of Congress or other powerful figures in government may likewise be targeted. On November 2, 2006, days before the mid-term Congressional elections, an anonymous IP address traced to the ''[[New York Times]]'' changed [[U.S. House of Representatives]] [[Majority Leader]] [[Tom DeLay]]'s Wikipedia biographical entry from "a prominent member of the [[Republican Party]]" to "Grand Dragon of the Republican Party."<ref>[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tom_DeLay&diff=prev&oldid=85320018 Wikipedia/Tom DeLay, Revision as of 20:19, 2 November 2006, IP 199.181.174.146]</ref><ref>[http://wikiscanner.virgil.gr/name2ip.php?orgname=New+York+Times&location= WikiScanner]</ref>

Seigenthaler wrote a more expansive column in the ''The Tennessean'' after the November 30 ''USA Today'' piece appeared,
{{Cquote|a sudden stream of invective — homophobic, anti-Semitic and racist — spilled, as if from a sewer, onto the Wikipedia page under my name. ..It identified me as ...a "Nazi," "fascist-oriented" ....murderer ...there also was the profile picture of Adolf Hitler over the caption, "Press photo of Seigenthaler." The accompanying line: "He is secretly responsible for killing all the Jews." }}

=== Accountability and Section 230 ===
[[Image:Wikifascists.JPG|thumb|275px|right|From Wikipedia Watch. [http://www.wikipedia-watch.org/] The inscription reads, ''"Two wikifascists find someone without a biography."'']]
Upon his retirement from ''USA Today'', Seigenthaler founded of the First Amendment Center, an organization dedicated to a national dialogue about [[First Amendment]] rights and values. Seigenthaler criticized passage of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996. Section 230 states that "no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker." Unlike print and broadcast companies, internet service providers (ISP's) cannot be sued for disseminating defamatory attacks on citizens posted by others. Seigenthaler noted [[Jimbo Wales]] told [[Brian Lamb]] in a [[C-Span]] interview that Wikipedia is accountable and that mistakes are corrected within minutes, but the false information remained in Seigenthaler's biography for five months. Seigenthaler concluded,
{{Cquote|And so we live in a universe of new media with phenomenal opportunities for worldwide communications and research — but populated by volunteer vandals with poison-pen intellects.<ref>A false Wikipedia 'biography', By John Seigenthaler, ''USA Today'', 11/29/2005.</ref>}}

In the case of ''Zeran v. AOL'', Zeran sued AOL for refusing to screen and remove defamatory messages, even after Zeran notified the ISP of their existence. The lower court ruled for the service provider and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit upheld the decision, noting that the intent of Section 230 was to (1) remove incentives on service providers to restrict speech on the Internet and (2) encourage self regulation by service providers.<ref>http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=916529</ref><ref>http://www.adl.org/Civil_Rights/newcyber.pdf</ref>

An American citizen who posts material on the Internet that is illegal in a foreign country could be prosecuted if he subjected himself to the jurisdiction of that country. Internet users who export material that is illegal, that is to say, post material that is accessible and illegal in some foreign countries may be subject to prosecution in that country. However, under American law, the United States will not extradite a person for engaging in a constitutionally protected activity even if that activity violates a criminal law elsewhere.<ref>http://www.rjayco.com/obrien/nazism.pdf</ref>

=== Essjay given oversight ===
:''See Main article: [[Wikipedia:The Essjay scandal]]

Essjay wrote a professor to persuade her to allow her students to use Wikipedia as a viable source of information and posted a verbatim copy of the email for others to use. Essjay stated, "I was the administrator who deleted the inappropriate revisions when Mr. Seigenthaler contacted our founder, [[Jimmy Wales]]; it is quite unfortunate that a relatively minor issue on a relatively minor figure has provided so much negative publicity.<ref>[http://www.wikitruth.info/index.php?title=User:Essjay/Letter User:Essjay/Letter]. Retrieved from WikiTruth, November 3, 2007.</ref> Seigenthaler noted in his Op-Ed piece, "The motive for the salacious stuff directed at me is reasonably obvious," and quoted some comments, "We all at Wikipedia think he (Seigenthaler) is a horrible, stupid p...k for complaining about small inaccuracies in his biography."<ref>[http://www.journalism.org/node/1673 Seigenthaler's Op-Eds], October 1, 2005. Retrieved from http://www.journalism.org November 12, 2007.</ref>

Others said, "Mr. Seigenthaler's attitude and actions are reprehensible and ill-formed," and “if there is an error whether large or small, he can correct it.” This again, was not true. Even prior to the Wikipedia policy, '''Biographies of Living Persons''', [[conflict of interest]] restrictions existed on the subject of an article editing their own entry. Another wrote: "Rather than fixing the article himself, he made a legal threat."<ref>http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2006/02/12/bias_sabotage_haunt_wikipedias_free_world/?page=3</ref>
[[Image:Seigraph.gif|400px|thumb|right|The Seigenthaler scandal was viewed as "the best thing that ever happened to Wikipedia" as curiosity seekers to view the [[misinformation]] skyrocketed Alexa rankings.]]
Despite the damage to an innocent person and divulgence of Wikipedia's precarious claim as a viable source, the Seigenthaler scandal was viewed as a triumph and considered "the best thing that ever happened to Wikipedia,"<ref>[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:John_Seigenthaler,_Sr.#The_best_thing_that_ever_happened_to_Wikipedia Talk:John Seigenthaler Sr.#The best thing that ever happened to Wikipedia], retrieved 23 March 2007.</ref> catapulting it into a top ten most visited website as curiosity seekers responded to the negative publicity.<ref>[http://wikipediareview.com/lofiversion/index.php?t1100.html Wikipedia: A Nightmare Of Libel and Slander], Joel Leyden, Israel News Agency, 8 May 2006.</ref>

The scandal was originally billed as a "hoax", then "controversy," then downgraded to "incident," and now re-upgraded to "controversy," evidently in response to criticism. The Wikipedia entry on "Seigenthaler controversy" contains [[disinformation]], making the claim, "After the incident, Wikipedia took steps to prevent a recurrence, including barring unregistered users from creating new pages." No actions were ever taken to require disclosure of the real life identities of contributors. Barring unregistered users from creating new pages had nothing to do with the Seigenthaler scandal--the page already existed when an anonymous IP added the false information. Registration of accounts requires no accountability of the real life identity of the contributor. Indeed many experienced Wikipedia editors and Administrators have dozens of registered accounts, called "sockpuppet accounts." Protecting the identities of anonymous high-level Administrators has always been more of a priority to the WikiMedia Foundation than the propagation of false information about real life persons whose identities are known. Wales was asked by ''BusinessWeek'' magazine, “Why do you feel it is important to allow contributors and site administrators to remain anonymous?” Wales responded, “there are definitely people working in Wikipedia who may have privacy reasons for not wanting their name on the site….there are lots of reasons for privacy online that aren’t nefarious.”<ref> http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/dec2005/tc20051214_441708.htm</ref> In the Seigenthaler case, it was the odd circumstance that a victim of false information had a large enough platform to respond, coupled with the welcome fact that the victim fundamentally opposes government regulation of internet speech.

Wikipedia's "Seigenthaler controversy" also states, "The Foundation added a new level of "oversight" features to the MediaWiki software,[12] accessible as of 2006 to around 20 experienced editors nominated by Wales,"<ref>[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Seigenthaler_Sr._Wikipedia_biography_controversy#Wikimedia_Foundation_reaction Seigenthaler controversy#Wikimedia Foundation reaction].</ref> one of whom was Essjay.

This ban on anonymous page creation “reform” was abandoned less than two years later as Wikipedia's usage and ratings slumped in the wake of yet more scandals and questions about Wikipedia's culture, core content policies, and endemic lack of accountability.<ref>http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2007-October/084292.html</ref>

==Brandt / Berlet feud==
:''See Main article: [[Wikipedia:The Daniel Brandt controversy]]
An ugly far-left sectarian dispute<ref>[http://spencer.lib.ku.edu/exhibits/wilcox/5.html Laird Wilcox], ''The Watchdogs: A Close Look at Anti-Racist "Watchdog" Groups'', Second Edition, Part 2, Editorial Research Service, 1999, p. 21. ISBN 0-993592-96-5.</ref> reared its head in 2005 with disastrous consequences for the site's credibility. The feud had been dormant for many years until the need to elevate a “controversial and notable expert” above the level of “partisan and extreme” defined by its own policies became apparent which would have precluded the so-called “expert” as "a source for anything other than himself,” as Wikipedia's ever fluid policies dictate.

Daniel Brandt, founder of Namebase,<ref>http://www.namebase.org/</ref> Google Watch, and Wikipedia Watch, removed [[Chip Berlet]] from his Board of Advisors in 1991 when Berlet refused to sit on the same Board which included Fletcher Prouty." Prouty, a retired Air Force colonel whose intelligence career stretched back to accompanying President [[Franklin Roosevelt]] to the [[Teheran conference]], was allegorically portrayed as the mysterious “Man X”<ref>[http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/lfprouty.htm Leroy Fletcher Prouty, Jr., Colonel, United States Air Force], [[Arlington National Cemetery]] Website, Retrieved November 4, 2007.</ref> by [[Donald Southerland]] in [[Oliver Stone]]'s film, [[JFK]]. A Brandt biographical page was created using Berlet as the source for unsavory attacks on Brandt. Brandt describes himself as an "accountability activist"<ref>[http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2006/04/your_take_roundupbelievers_neg.html Believers, Negativists Debate Wikipedia’s Trustworthiness], by Mark Glaser, 20 April 2006. Retrieved from pbs.org October 29, 2007.</ref><ref>[http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Daniel_Brandt Wikiquote/Daniel Brandt#Sourced]</ref> and claims he originally began working with Wikipedia editors in good faith during October 2005 but any biographical information he revealed was spun against him to depict him in a negative light. Brandt states,
{{Cquote|I soon realized that it was also about Berlet, who was still bent on undermining me. Berlet was using Wikipedia as part of his political agenda, and he was successful in this.<ref>http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=5641&st=40&p=21441&mode=linear#entry21441</ref>}}
Berlet's biography underwent an extensive revision with most of the substantive NPOV criticism cut out. The revising editor commented, "I kept Daniel Brandt, not because I feel he's a credible source, but because there's so little published criticism of Berlet, that I felt I had to retain something."<ref>[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Chip_Berlet&diff=prev&oldid=9161554 Chip Berlet/Talk, SlimVirgin 00:19, 7 January 2005].</ref> This is an extraordinary statement and raises the question why the same high-level Administrator and author of several of Wikipedia's core content and citation policies, including '''Wikipedia:Reliable Sources''' and '''Wikipedia:Biographies of Living Persons''' ('''BLP'''),<ref>http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons&diff=31947681&oldid=31753956</ref> would use a source she did not consider credible.

===Biographies of living persons===

Wikipedia:Biographies of Living Persons (WP:BLP) policy did not come into being because of the [[Seigenthaler scandal]], but rather over the Brandt controversy, as the originating editor noted in an edit summary.<ref>http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons&diff=31947681&oldid=31753956</ref> Brandt requested Wikipedia delete his biographical entry, and ceased working with editors he suspected of working to further the propagation of false information about him.

''Editor & Publisher'' magazine bills itself as the nation’s oldest trade journal serving the newspaper industry with roots dating back to 1884. Wikipedia founder [[Jimmy Wales]] responded to questions from ''Editor & Publisher'' in a prepared statement on December 1, 2005 about Daniel Brandt saying,
{{Cquote|I don't regard him as a valid source about anything at all<ref>[http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/article_brief/eandp/1/1001612839 Wikipedia Founder, Readers Respond to Seigenthaler Article], Jay DeFoore, ''Editor & Publisher'', December 01, 2005.</ref>}}

Wales comments added '''undue weight'''<ref>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:UNDUE#Undue_weight</ref> ('''WP:UNDUE''') to criticism of Brandt when placed within his biographical entry. Brandt demanded accountability from the army of unidentified Wikipedia Administrators furthering [[Chip Berlet]]'s agenda to destroy Brandt's credibility, and elevate Berlet's own as a Wikipedia "expert."
[[Image:294577483 90fd22f5cd m.jpg|thumb|300px|right|From '''WikiTruth''', the inscription reads, 
"''The Big Bad Brandt is Gonna Getcha!'']]
Brandt became known as the scourge of the Wikipedia Admin community. WikiTruth says in its ''Brandt the Boogeyman'' entry,
{{Cquote|he dates back to a time when people would look up facts in books and would verify information without just doing a copy and paste from an AP news article and thinking they were done. He compares writing styles, he calls government agencies, and he writes letters. And when he's done, he tends to know. Or at least, he knows where he stands in terms of information. He's rather tenacious about getting stuff right.

Wikipedia, of course, doesn't do this much at all: depending on the day, they'll laud a link to a website as being absolutely useless (it's on the WEB, of course) and then the next minute link to a different website to back a "fact" up. Citing books and printed materials is often a no-go, because nobody can read the original citation, so it gets swept away as well. Really, you have no idea what's good and what's bad, and it's all one big happy soup-hug.

Therefore, guys like Daniel Brandt are horrible for Wikipedia: he researches. He finds laws that pertain to situations. He asks the tough questions that could upset the whole Wiki-cart.}}

==The Wordbomb Saga==
[[Image:Patrick byrne overstock small.jpg|thumb|right|Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne [http://www.overstock.com/Patrick-Byrne-and-naked-short-selling/7371/static.html]]]
One of Wikipedia’s most bitter and drawn-out disputes, chronicled in ''The Register,''<ref>http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/12/06/wikipedia_and_overstock/</ref> centers around the assertion by representatives of Overstock.com<ref>http://www.overstock.com/community</ref> that a [[Mainstream media|mainstream financial journalist]] Gary Weiss had been editing Wikipedia to impose his point of view on a series of articles relevant to the company. Weiss was once a reporter with BusinessWeek, in 2007 became a columnist with Forbes, and had for over 10 years been posting under fake names to confuse, distort, hijack Usenet groups, stock message boards, and Wikipedia, to prevent the public from understanding criminal activity.<ref>http://www.deepcapture.com/gary-weiss-scaramouch-psychopath/</ref> Weiss was notorious around the Internet for his public feud with Overstock<ref>http://garyweiss.blogspot.com/2007/05/overstockcoms-ethical-dilemma.html</ref> and its CEO Patrick Byrne,<ref>http://allantyoung.com/2008/09/22/patrick-byrne-vindicated/</ref> ridiculing their campaign against the controversial practice of [[Naked Short Selling]].

In 2006, Judd Bagley, an ally of Overstock’s Patrick Byrne having interviewed the CEO for a personal project, began editing Wikipedia to counter what was perceived to be a skewed representation of Naked Short Selling and Overstock.com. He was swiftly dispatched by influential Wikipedia administrators.

Shortly after, Bagley became Overstock’s Director of Communications, and embarked on an aggressive campaign to publicize the dispute on various websites, aiming to expose the administrators he held responsible for protecting Weiss. Using the moniker “Wordbomb”, Bagley presented evidence<ref>http://antisocialmedia.net/final-word-on-weiss/</ref> suggesting that not only was Gary Weiss editing Wikipedia using the name “User:Mantanmoreland“,<ref>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mantanmoreland</ref> but that he was operating other accounts to manipulate consensus and protect his interests in the dispute. Mantanmoreland violated Wikipedia policies against Conflict of Interest and No Self Promotion by creating an article about himself.<ref>http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gary_Weiss&diff=prev&oldid=48341962</ref> Bagley proved Weiss had edited Wikipedia from one of two main IPs used by the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC),<ref>http://www.dtcc.com/about/business/index.php</ref> the organization charged with settling about a quadrillion stock trades each year. The DTCC is also the organization Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne said acts an enabler of perpetrators of illegal naked short selling of many public companies.<ref>http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=10360&st=0&p=36485&mode=linear#entry36485</ref>

Wikipedia responded to Bagley’s campaign in typical schoolyard fashion. The dispute was escalated by a small clique of powerful Wikipedians who seemed less interested in the truth of Bagley’s assertions, and more concerned with attacking perceived threats to the status quo at Wikipedia. With the approval of [[Jimbo Wales]], administrators sided with “Mantanmoreland” / Gary Weiss, and anointed Bagley / Wordbomb an “Enemy Of The Wiki” who needed to be silenced — a “stalker” and a “harasser” for publicizing the details of the person who had been editing relevant articles on Wikipedia, and the people who had been stopping him from doing the same.

For nearly two years, Bagley’s name was invoked to inspire paranoia in the Wikipedia Admin Community to keep questioning editors in line. It became a textbook case for analysis of the intense group-think Wikipedia has become notorious for.
[[Image:Judd bagley overstock.jpg|thumb|left|175px|Judd Bagley was made a target at the highest levels of Wikipedia and became a victim of a global [[witchhunt]] by the Wikipedia Admin Community for daring to expose an unholy alliance of abuse and [[corruption]] on [[Wall Street]] and in the Wikipedia cabal. [http://antisocialmedia.net/] ]]
Bagley was repeatedly disparaged<ref>http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=15897</ref> by a cabal of out-of-control administrators such as Guy Chapman, who denounced Bagley as “lunatic” and “evil” when it suited. UK Wikimedia representative David Gerard banned an entire area of Utah to prevent Bagley raising his issues and made personally disparaging remarks.<ref>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:David_Gerard/archive_5#User:204.15.84.2</ref> Wikipedia Arbitrator Fred Bauder claimed that Bagley’s blog AntiSocialMedia.net showed “moral depravity”<ref>http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Attack_sites/Proposed_decision&diff=158954587&oldid=158809362</ref> for challenging the Wiki-elite. Administrator Phil Sandifer dismissed Bagley in highly personal and offensive language while boasting<ref>http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2007-October/083509.html</ref> that he himself had become a “powerful and trusted administrator on the 9th biggest website in the world.”

Other editors who raised Overstock’s quite legitimate complaints were banned as proxies of Judd Bagley. Paranoia had taken such a hold that editors with productive records from all over the US, and as far afield as Europe and Asia found themselves accused of being Bagley. When the editor Cla68<ref>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Mantanmoreland/Evidence#Evidence_presented_by_Cla68</ref> questioned the issue of Gary Weiss editing Wikipedia, he was swiftly blocked by administrator Durova on the orders of Jimbo Wales who wrote,<ref>http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Gary_Weiss&diff=165916446&oldid=165916313</ref> “Durova and Guy have my full support here. No nonsense, zero tolerance, shoot on sight. No kidding, this has gone on long enough”.

A study<ref>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:SirFozzie/Investigation</ref> undertaken by concerned administrators into the editing patterns of “Mantanmoreland” came to fruition. Despite the “Mantanmoreland” account ceasing edits on Overstock / Naked Short Selling articles in September 2007, the study revealed evidence beyond reasonable doubt that the same person had been operating several accounts to “control” articles. Thus affirming Bagley’s claims.

More worryingly for good faith Wikipedians was the revelation<ref>http://www.wikback.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=2762#Post2757</ref><ref>http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/01/wikipedia_and_naked_shorting/print.html</ref> that [[Jimbo Wales]], alongside leading administrators, had considered that this person was almost certainly Gary Weiss in a private discussion as long ago as September 2007 (the same month the “Mantanmoreland” account quit editing the relevant articles). Meaning that behind the scenes, they were admitting that Bagley was probably right all along, yet in public were vilifying or blocking anyone who publicly stated so.

After the [[financial meltdown of 2008]], the [[Securities and Exchange Commission]] issued directives aimed at curbing abusive naked short selling.<ref>[http://www.philly.com/inquirer/business/20090728_SEC_short-selling_rule_is_permanent.html]</ref> Patrick Byrne has been widely recognized as in the forefront of the movement aimed at curbing such abuses.<ref>http://www.investigatethesec.com/drupal-5.5/?q=node/425</ref>

==Michael Moore==
[[Image:Moorecagan.JPG|right|thumb|200px|Moore with [[Leslie Cagan]] [[United For Peace and Justice]] [http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=629] ]]
The website MichaelMoore.com, dissatisfied with a Wikipedia editor's edits to ''[[Sicko]]'', published an image of a Wikipedia user on its main page. This was combined with links to edit both ''Sicko'' and the editor's user page.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Attack_sites/Proposed_decision#Michael_Moore] Several Wikipedia editors and Administrators regarded this action on the part of [[Michael Moore]]'s official website as an egregious violation of a well publicized ruling to protect Wikipedia editors from outside harassment. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Attack_sites/Evidence#Michael_Moore][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Attack_sites/Evidence#Michael_Moore_2] The consensus, per Wikipedia's policy was to remove links from Wikipedia to Michael Moore's attack site which was urging vengeance and reprisals against an editor who posted criticism of Moore's film.

In Arbitration, Wikipedia's internal policy making and dispute resolution arm, the Arbitration chairman publicly admitted,
{{Cquote|No question it contained an attack, including a link to edit our user's page. The problem is that many of us like Michael Moore very much and don't care much for the viewpoint of the user involved. Applying our policy in a rote manner (Without consideration of '''the unwritten rule that we support prominent subjects that we like''') yields removal of the link (At least while it contained the personal attack).<ref>Wikien-1 [http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2007-October/082980.html Harassment sites], Fred Bauder, Sun Oct 14 19:03:28 UTC 2007.</ref>}}

Wikipedia's Neutral Point of View (NPOV), laid down by founder [[Jimbo Wales]] allegedly is "absolute and non-negotiable."[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view#_note-0] The ArbCom chairman further stated, "Obviously we need to make an exception for prominent people whose viewpoint we support." [http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2007-October/082987.html] When asked, "How, then, is this remotely compatible with NPOV?", the ArbCom chairman responded, "Not at all." [http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2007-October/082993.html] The editor whom Michaelmoore.com was urging its viewers to attack and harass is described as "a Fellow at the [[American Enterprise Institute]], a [[conservative]] [[think tank]]."[http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2007-October/083230.html]

==Sinbad hoax==
On March 16 2007, Wikipedia entry on the 50-year old entertainer Sinbad, born David Adkins, states: "He succumbed to a fatal heart attack on the morning of March, 14, 2007." This hoax was widely reported in the media<ref>http://www.ioltechnology.co.za/article_page.php?iSectionId=2891&iArticleId=3734818</ref>.

==Rutgers-Ivy League hoax==
A Wikipedia entry falsely stated that Rutgers was once invited to join the Ivy League. Although that false statement was eventually removed from Wikipedia, it was not removed before the ''Daily News'' relied on it in this story:

:You don't have to define your college with your football team, but Rutgers long ago decided to give it a try. Back in 1954, when it was considered a 'public Ivy,' Rutgers might have joined the fledgling Ivy League and altered its destiny. But the school declined the offer - arguably the dumbest mistake in its history. Ever since then, Rutgers has scrambled to prove itself worthy of playing football with the big boys."<ref>Bondy, Filip. "They Can Finally Say They Belong Here", New York Daily News, 2006-11-10, p. 92. Retrieved on 2006-12-13.</ref>

==Barbara Bauer vs. Wikimedia Foundation==
Wikimedia Foundation is one of 17 defendants in a lawsuit suit filed in New Jersey, by Barbara Bauer and her literary agency. Her Wikipedia article was deleted on March 25, 2007 by Wikipedia administrator Doc Glasgow as a "bloody disgrace".<ref>http://www.wikipedia-watch.org/bauertc.html</ref><ref>http://www.wikipedia-watch.org/bauertc.html</ref><ref>http://www.wikipedia-watch.org/bauert1.html</ref><ref>http://www.wikipedia-watch.org/bauert2.html</ref>

==GFDL License Issue==
Wikipedia's practice of complete deletion of articles<ref>http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&page=Brian+Peppers</ref> without reference to the original article, the author(s)/publisher(s) of the article, and the history and title(s) of the article, including modification history, description and appropriate dates, is a direct violation of at least GFDL version 1.2. Additionally, the GFDL License states that if the article/document contains Copyright notices, that said notices must be preserved at all times. If those notices are removed, then they are in violation of Copyright Law, as well as the terms of the GFDL license. Furthermore, the question of them removing anything outright at all comes into quite a grey area. If one reads the GFDL License literally, then it implies that once the article document is posted, it is in distribution, and technical measures are not allowed to be taken to prevent the use of the document in question, and that no other conditions whatsoever can be added by the user to those of the GFDL license.<ref>http://www.wikitruth.info/index.php?title=Wikipocalypse:GF'DL</ref><ref>http://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl.html#TOC1</ref>

However, beginning June 15, 2009, the Wikimedia Foundation began transitioning content on Wikipedia to be dual licensed under both the GFDL and Creative Commons CC-BY-SA 3.0.<ref>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-06-15/News_and_notes</ref>

==Cyberbullying==
The press have reported on incidents of [[cyberbullying]] on Wikipedia.<ref name="LATimes">{{cite news| url=http://articles.latimes.com/2008/apr/29/local/me-wikipedia29 | work=Los Angeles Times | first=Molly | last=Hennessy-Fiske | title=Wikipedia threats went unchecked – Los Angeles Times | date=29 April 2008}}</ref><ref name="ABCLocal">[http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?section=news/local&id=6087243 Hacienda Heights school receives possible threat | abc7.com]</ref><ref name="LATimes2">{{cite news |title=Student arrested for violent threats on Wikipedia |first= |last= |url=http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2008/04/wiki.html?cid=6a00d8341c630a53ef011571abd811970b |work=[[Los Angeles Times]] |date=29 April 2008}}</ref> An editor threatened an Asian student at the [[Glen A. Wilson High School]] in 2008,<ref name="LATimes" /><ref name="ABCLocal" /><ref name="LATimes2" /> and a 14-year-old boy was arrested for making a threat against [[Niles West High School]] on Wikipedia in 2006.<ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.pantagraph.com/news/article_baef01f3-e56f-52e1-b9af-e90eb83e811b.html|title=Teen charged after threat to school on Wikipedia|date=31 October 2006|agency=Associated Press |publisher=Pantagraph.com|accessdate=26 January 2011|location=Bloomington, IL}}</ref>

== Humorous quotes concerning Wikipedia ==

''See also:'' [[Essay: 10 telltale signs you are on your way to becoming an atheist nerd|10 telltale signs you are on your way to becoming an atheist nerd]] - [[satire]]

An article entitled ''Wikipedia Gridlocked by Wikipedia Nerds'' declared:
{{Cquote|So who are these Gatekeepers to all the internet's knowledge?

A survey the foundation conducted last year determined that the average age of an editor is 26.8 years, and that 87% of them are men.

As you suspected: [[nerd]]s.<ref>http://gawker.com/5410917/wikipedia-gridlocked-by-wikipedia-nerds</ref>}}

[[Jimmy Wales]] said the typical profile of a Wikipedia contributor is "a 26-year-old geeky male" who moves on to other ventures, gets married and leaves the website.<ref>[http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/digital-living/5397593/Wikipedia-losing-contributors-founder-says Wikipedia losing contributors, founder says]</ref>

=== Song excerpt ===

{{Cquote|All of my action figures are Cherry,
[[Stephen Hawking]]'s in my library....

I edit Wikipedia...I'm nerdy in the extreme,
whiter than sour cream...

They see me strollin', they're laughin'
And rollin' their eyes cause I'm so
White and nerdy". - ''White and Nerdy'', Weird Al Yankovic<ref>http://www.musiclyricsfyi.com/white-nerdy-lyrics.htm</ref>}}

==Unbaised editor recruitment==
Wikipedia claims that anyone can edit it. It is to an extent, its editor pool is self-selecting. However, on January 25–29, 2012, the Wikimedia Foundation paid for Gregory Varnum and others to attend and staff a booth at the "24th National Conference on LGBT Equality: Creating Change" conference in Baltimore, Maryland. The purpose of the Wikimedia booth was to create more LGBT activists to edit Wikipedia. Although Wikimedia has outreach efforts at other conferences, there has been no outreach at conservative events.

Wikipedia editor [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:SarahStierch Sarah Stierch] was the volunteer moderator of the Gender Gap email list where she departed from discussing Wikipedia to freely share her negative experiences with men in her life. In fall 2011, she was hired by the WMF as a Community Fellow to work on creating a "Teahouse" for newer Wikipedia editors. The report on the Teahouse Pilot Project<ref>{{cite web|url=http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Research:Teahouse/Pilot_Report&oldid=3832292|title=Teahouse: Pilot Report|date=June 14, 2012}}</ref> explained, "If you click through to the Teahouse, it’s clearly aiming to broaden female participation - just look at the pastel background and references to tea." Stierch tried to use Twitter to recruit more female editors into Teahouse and the English Wikipedia. The report concluded, "Because so much time and energy needed to be spend during the pilot on setting up and maintaining the space, we weren't able to focus as much as we'd have liked on gender-targeted strategies for recruiting female guests and hosts. There are clearly more experiments that need to be run in order to better integrate the space with other gender gap efforts and WikiWomen's calls to actions."

==See also ==
*[[Examples of Bias in Wikipedia]]
*[[Previous Breaking News/Wikipedia|Articles about '''Wikipedia''' from previous "Breaking News"]]
*[[Essay:The Protocols of Ritual Defamation]]
*[[Wikipedia prejudice and KAL 007]] (Wikipedia deletion material related to [[New World Order]] and [[Larry McDonald]], touching [[Korean Airlines Flight 007]])

==Further reading==
*[http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/aug/21/conservatives-miss-wikipedias-threat/ SHEFFIELD: Conservatives miss Wikipedia's threat] by [[Washington Times]], August 21, 2008
*[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/12/06/wikipedia_and_overstock/print.html Wikipedia black helicopters circle Utah's Traverse Mountain], By Cade Metz, ''The Register'', 6th December 2007.
*[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/06/15/wikipedia_can_damage_your_grades/ Avoid Wikipedia, warns Wikipedia chief - It can seriously damage your grades] by Andrew Orlowski, ''The Register'', June 15, 2006
*[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/10/18/wikipedia_quality_problem/ Wikipedia founder admits to serious quality problems] by Andrew Orlowski, ''The Register'', October 18, 2005
*[http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/whowriteswikipedia Who Writes Wikipedia?] by Aaron Swartz, 2006

==References==
{{reflist|3}}

==External links==
*[http://www.wikipedia.org Wikipedia]
*[http://www.wikitruth.info/ Wikitruth]
*[http://www.citizendium.com Citizendium(Beta)]
*[http://www.wikipedia-watch.org Wikipedia Watch]
*[http://wikipediareview.com/ Wikipedia Review]
*[http://www.mises.org/story/2704 Wikipedia: What Is It Good For?], By Dick Clark, 9/19/2007. Retrieved from The Ludwig von Mises Institute, http://www.mises.org/ November 5, 2007.
{{Liberalism}}
[[Category:Wikis]]
[[Category:Featured articles]]
[[Category:Encyclopedias]]

Starlight problem

2012-09-01T18:50:04Z

Etait: /* Humphreys' model */ criticisms. The theory is now pretty useless, even within the YEC consensus

The '''starlight problem''', or '''starlight travel-time problem''' concerns the placement of stars at distances so far from Earth that starlight could not traverse that distance, at its current velocity, in less than the age of the universe. Yet the light has reached Earth anyway. This raises a question under any creation-based theory, including the [[Big Bang theory]]: how did this starlight reach Earth so quickly? This is a major point of interest in the question of an [[Old Earth Creationism | old universe]] vs. [[young earth creationism | young universe]].

There is no conflict with the description in Genesis, which says, "let there be light, and there was light." It does not say, "let there be stars to generate light that can illuminate darkness," or "let there be light, and there was darkness that light later reached."

There is no way to "date" the age of light observed in the sky, or anywhere else. It is also possible that light traveled faster at higher energies in the past, and/or space has expanded at a rate faster than the speed of light.

[[image:Crab composite cx.jpg|right|thumb|250px|The Crab nebula, a supernova remnant]]

== The size of the universe ==
The maximum distance that can be determined using parallax calculations is about 3300 light years.<ref>[http://bccp.lbl.gov/Academy/pdfs/Parallax.pdf Parallax], site http://bccp.lbl.gov</ref> Indirect measures, correlating the brightness of stars called ''cepheids'' with the period of their variability, estimate the [[Milky Way]] diameter of approximately 80-100,000 light years, although others estimate the size of the entire universe to be as narrow as only 12,000 light years across.<ref>Fangrad, Richard, 2007.</ref>

Calculations based on the observed brightness of [[supernova]]e of known energy output can determine the distance to more distant objects. The most distant object known is a galaxy cluster is estimated to be approximately thirteen billion light-years away from Earth, observed by the [[Hubble Telescope]] using gravitational lensing.<ref>Amos, 2004</ref>

==Starlight Problem for the Big Bang Theory==

Although [[atheist]]s simplistically use the starlight problem to argue against a young Earth, the [[Big Bang theory]] has had difficulty in explaining its own light travel problem, known as the [[horizon problem]].

The Big Bang model proposes that the temperature of the [[Cosmic Microwave Background]] (CMB) would have varied considerably from place to place early in the universe, yet because the speed at which this radiation can disperse from hotter to colder parts of the universe is limited by the speed of light, there has not been enough time for the radiation to even out, yet observations today show it to be extremely uniform<ref name="Lisle">Lisle, 2003</ref> (with fluctuations at the part-per-million level<ref>[http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/m_uni/uni_101Flucts.html Fluctuations in the Cosmic Microwave Background]</ref>).
{{QuoteBox|The problem is this: even assuming the big bang timescale, there has not been enough time for light to travel between widely separated regions of space. So, how can the different regions of the current CMB have such precisely uniform temperatures if they have never communicated with each other? This is a light-travel–time problem.<ref name="Lisle" />}}

A number of solutions to this problem have been proposed, including several versions of an "inflationary model", in which space itself expanded faster than the speed of light early in the Big Bang, but ''after'' different areas exchanged radiation to even out the temperature. This model fits the data, as the CMB is only uniform at certain scales; over large enough areas anisotropies are visible in the field that match what one would expect from a rapidly expanding gas. However, there is no consensus on which explanation is correct, and each of the proposed solutions has its own problems.<ref name="Lisle" />
{{Creation vs. evolution}}

== Flaws in arguing for an old universe based on starlight ==

The observation that many stars are millions of light years away is one of ''distance'', not ''time''. Since it takes light one year to travel a distance of one light year, it is possible to view an object as it was in the past, with the number of years in the past equal to the number of light years in distance. Some scientists argue that the oldest objects visible today are gamma ray bursts over 13 billion light-years away,<ref>http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/news/4350/gamma-ray-burst-closest-yet-big-bang</ref> but if the universe is expanding then it should be possible to observe stars that are now actually much further away.

=== Light created in transit ===
As suggested by the "let there be light" verse in Genesis, God likely created light, not merely light sources. Accordingly, some observed light did not necessary travel from a distant star. A Christian objection to this idea<ref>[http://creation.com/arguments-we-think-creationists-should-not-use Arguments we think creationists should NOT use], from [[Creation Ministries International]]</ref> is that the light created in transit would show events that had never happened, or in other words that God would have [[lie]]d to us.

=== Moon-Spencer theory ===
Some creationists promoted an idea by Parry Moon and Domina Spencer that light somehow takes a shortcut through "Riemannian Space," taking no more than 15 years to reach Earth from the outer limits of the universe.
However, this idea never really caught on and appears to no longer have adherents.<ref>Humphreys, 1994, p. 46.</ref>

=== Decrease in the speed of light ===

[[Image:Barry_setterfield.jpg‎|right|thumb|150px|[[Barry Setterfield]]]]
Creationist [[Barry Setterfield]] has proposed that the speed of light was faster in the past. <ref>Norman and Setterfield, 1986</ref>
This idea initially found wide acceptance by creationists, but is now widely rejected, although some still hold to the idea.

One criticism of it by anticreationists was that if the speed of light had changed, we should see the difference in the [[Fine Structure Constant]] as measured by nearby stars versus distant stars, but this was not observed.
Yet in 1999, John Webb, a professor at the University of New South Wales in [[Sydney]], Australia, and his colleagues reported astronomical observations suggesting that the value of the fine-structure constant may indeed have changed. They subsequently published this in ''[[Physical Review Letters]]''.<ref>Physical Review Letters 091301, 2001</ref><ref>Sarfati, 2001</ref>
However, although this showed that mainstream scientists are open to new and controversial ideas, the methods Webb used were shown to contain simple flaws, which discredited the results. <ref>M. T. Murphy, J. K. Webb, V. V. Flambaum, Phys. Rev. Lett., 99, 239001 (2007)</ref>. A later study of 23 absorption systems using the 'Very Large Telescope' found no measurable changes.<ref>H. Chand et al., Astron. Astrophys. 417, 853 (2004)</ref>.

These problems with the theory have led most creationists to drop the idea, although some credit it with stimulating further research.<ref>Humphreys, 1994, p.128</ref>. Systematic uncertainties are difficult to quantify and so Webb's results still need to be checked by independent analyses, using quasar spectra from different telescopes. Their efforts are ongoing, apparently by several different teams of scientists.

=== Humphreys' model ===
In 1994 Dr. [[Russell Humphreys]] proposed a new cosmology<ref>Batten et. al., 2007, p.90, Humphreys, 1994</ref> that includes a bounded universe with a center and an edge, that God had created 6,000 years ago as a much smaller body than today, then stretched it out, making it much larger.
In Humphreys' model, because the universe has a center and an edge (unlike the unbounded model of the Big Bang universe), the center of the universe is also the center of a [[gravity well]], meaning that gravity is stronger at the center of the universe than at the edge.

As gravity can affect the rate at which time passes, he calculated that while the six days of [[creation week]] were passing on Earth, billions of years' of time was passing at the edge of the universe.
According to this idea, the Biblical references to time are according to an observer (real or imaginary) on Earth, so ages are given in "Earth time".

However, this theory is not without problems. The evidence contradicts Humphrey's assumption that the earth is in a large gravity well. If the earth were in such a gravity well, light from distant galaxies should be blue-shifted. Instead, it is red-shifted. Also, gravitational time dilation, if it existed on such a large scale, should be easily observable. On the contrary, we observe (from the periods of Cepheid variable stars, from orbital rates of binary stars, from supernova extinction rates, from light frequencies, etc.) that such time dilation is minor. It is thought that here is ''some'' time dilation corresponding with Hubble's law (i.e., further objects have greater red shifts), but this is due to the well-understood expansion of the universe, and it is not nearly extreme enough to fit more than ten billion years into less than 10,000.<ref>Conner, S. R. and D. N. Page, 1998. Starlight and time is the Big Bang. CENTJ 12(2): 174-194. (See also letters in CENTJ 13(1), 1999, 49-52).</ref> Furthermore, in the event the Earth was in the center of a immense gravity well, the core of the planet should be composed of a soup of subatomic particles, like a Neutron fluid.<ref name="neutronsoup">http://www.astro.umd.edu/~miller/nstar.html</ref>

This model receives cautious but wide support among creationists.

On Humphreys' thousands-of-years-old universe, in 1998 physicist Dave Thomas wrote that Humphreys "has his astronomy backwards - the Kuiper Belt contains the remains of the "volatile" (icy) planetesimals that were left over from the formation of the solar system - numbering in the hundreds of millions. If anything, it is the Kuiper Belt that supplies the more remote hypothesized Oort Cloud, as some icy chunks are occasionally flung far away by interactions with large planets.

Scientists Glenn Morton and George L Murphy have dismissed Humphreys' cooling model as "wrong" because "it is ineffective, it is falsified by observational data, and it is theologically flawed." First, in a classical model for a harmonic oscillator (like a particle oscillating in a crystal), "the particle does not lose energy to the cosmic expansion." Second, Humphreys' model "is too slow to be useful to the creationist agenda." Thirdly, "there would be visible effects in the spectra of light emitted during the Flood, including those from stars a few thousand light years away in our own galaxy. A change in the energy levels of atoms (which this idea would entail) would change the frequencies at which light is emitted in a fashion that would be observable. The lack of such observations rules out Humphreys' cooling mechanism as a reasonable possibility." Lastly, they criticized it for contradicting the theological foundation Humphreys uses in another publication.

Geologist Kevin Henke has criticised Humphreys for stating that "zircons from the Fenton Hill rock cores... contain too much radiogenic helium to be billions of years old.

=== Time dilation field ===

Dr. [[John Hartnett]], a creationist physicist, spurred by Humphreys' model, has proposed an alternative [[time dilation]] model, by theorizing the Earth was in a time-dilation field during the first few days of creation, from Earth's point of view, while billions of years passed for the rest of the universe.
According to the Bible, God "stretched out"<ref>For example, {{Bible ref|Isaiah|40:22}}</ref> the heavens (space), and this movement during [[creation week]] caused time to travel faster for those objects, in accordance with [[Albert Einstein|Einstein's]] [[Special Theory of Relativity]], adding to the time dilation caused by [[gravity]], per Humphreys, in accordance with Einstein's [[General Theory of Relativity]].<ref>Hartnett, 2003, Hartnett 2007</ref>

This theory has the drawback that if the entire universe was comoving with respect to the earth, it would in fact be the Universe that experienced "less time" relative to the Earth, not the other way around. There is in fact no such thing as a "time dilation field," and the gravity well required to cause such drastic time dilation would have crushed the Earth under enormous force.

== Bibliography ==
* [http://www.nature.com/physics/highlights/6849-3.html#ref1 Inconstant constant?] ''Physical Review Letters 091301'' (9th August 2001)</ref>
* Amos, Jonathan, [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3490657.stm Hubble sees 'most distant object'], BBC News, 15th February, 2004.
* Batten, Don, Catchpoole, David, Sarfati, Jonathan, Wieland, Carl, [http://www.creationontheweb.com/images/pdfs/cabook/chapter5.pdf How can we see distant stars in a young universe?], chapter 5 of The Creation Answers Book, 2007.
* Fangrad, Richard, [http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/5425 The media spin on the creationists] (Creation Ministries International), 14th November, 2007.
* Hartnett, John C., A new cosmology: solution to the starlight travel time problem, ''Journal of Creation'' 17(2):98–102, August 2003. [http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/1616/ HTML] [http://www.creationontheweb.com/images/pdfs/tj/j17_2/j17_2_98-102.pdf PDF]
* Hartnett, John, Starlight, Time and the New Physics, Creation Book Publishers, 2007 ISBN 978-0-949906-68-7
* Humphreys, D. Russell, Starlight and Time, Master Books, 1994, ISBN 0-89051-202-7.
* Laird, Jeff, [http://swordofthemind.blogspot.com/2008/05/starlight-time-and-new-physics-review.html "Starlight, Time, and the New Physics" (Review)], Gladio Mentis, 26th May, 2008.
* Lisle, Jason, [http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/167/ Light-travel time: a problem for the big bang], ''Creation'' 25(4):48–49, September 2003.
* Norman, T.G. and Setterfield, B., ''The Atomic Constants, Light and Time'', SRI International Invited Research Report, Menlo Park, 1986.
* Sarfati, Jonathan, [http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/2430 Have fundamental constants changed, and what would it prove?] 22nd August, 2001 (Creation Ministries International).
* Wieland, Carl, [http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/2551/ Speed of light slowing down after all?], 9th August 2002 (Creation Ministries International).

==Notes==
{{reflist|2}}

[[Category:Science]]
[[Category:Astronomy]]
[[Category:Featured articles]]

{{Creation vs. evolution}}

Flood Geology

2012-09-01T18:47:00Z

Etait: well why not?

'''Flood geology''' is the study of the Earth's geology from the point of view that the Earth's geology was radically redefined by a [[Great Flood|global flood]] in the relatively recent past, as recorded in [[Genesis]], as well as the scores of flood stories in other cultures throughout the world.<ref>http://www.icr.org/article/570/</ref>

== Genesis Flood account ==
Genesis provides the most detailed account of the global deluge, including specific dates, measurements, and even some key geological events during the flood. Consequently, flood geologists use it as a starting point for understanding the events of the deluge. Based on the Genesis account, flood geologists argue that the flood resulted from subterranean water erupting to the surface ("the springs of the great deep burst forth" <ref>Genesis 7:11, NIV</ref>), combined with 40 days and nights of rain. Although the rain stopped after 40 days, the flood waters continued to rise for 150 days, and lasted just over a year before Noah and the others on the boat were able to leave. During the flood, there was massive tectonic activity, including some land rising up and other land dropping, such that the waters ended up in newly-deepened oceans. All the animals and birds (except those on the ark), and large numbers of sea creatures perished, and many of them were buried so quickly that they became fossils, accounting for the vast majority of fossils existing today.

== Evidence ==
Flood geologists base their belief in a relatively recent global deluge on several strands of evidence. While none of these strands alone is sufficient to ''prove'' that a global flood occurred, flood geologists argue that a global deluge is the most reasonable and [[parsimonious]] explanation for the evidence.

=== Sedimentary rock ===
Sedimentary rocks are formed by sand and other sediments which settle out of suspension in water, minerals which dissolve in water (which sand cannot do)<ref>http://pearsonkt.com/summaryStreetOT/texts/Sci-National-Grade-4/iText/products/0-328-34278-5/unitc/ch11/331.html</ref> and the hard parts of small aquatic organisms such as [[plankton]], which accumulate on the bottom of a body of water and undergo [[lithification]]. Although only about 8% of the earth's rocks are sedimentary, 75%-80% of the Earth's land area is covered in sedimentary rock.[http://honolulu.hawaii.edu/distance/gg101/Programs/program21%20SedimentaryRocks/program21.html] Therefore, geologists point out, there is irrefutable evidence that at least 75% of the Earth's land was once covered in water.

=== Sufficient water ===
There is enough water on Earth today to cover the entire surface to a depth of 2.7 kilometres (1.7 miles), if the surface was levelled out.<ref>[http://www.creationontheweb.com/images/pdfs/cabook/chapter12.pdf Noah’s Flood—what about all that water?], Chapter 4 of the ''Creation Answers Book'', Dr. Don Batten (Ed.)</ref> Continents emerge because the average ocean depth is 3.7 km.<ref>http://www.mos.org/oceans/planet/features.html</ref>. Flood geologists argue that geological activity during and after the flood lowered the ocean basins, causing water to flow from the continents into the basins, and leaving dry land.<ref>{{Bible ref|Psalms|104|6-9|version=NASB}} "You covered it with the deep as with a garment; The waters were standing above the mountains. At Your rebuke they fled, At the sound of Your thunder they hurried away. '''The mountains rose; the valleys sank down''' To the place which You established for them. You set a boundary that they may not pass over, So that they will not return to cover the earth."</ref>

=== Fossils ===
Fossilization requires rapid burial in a sedimentary solution, and subsequent rapid lithification of the solution. Slow burial does not result in fossilization, because the remains decay prior to being fossilized. Therefore, every fossil was buried in rapidly deposited sedimentary material which subsequently turned to stone.

=== Fossil fuels ===
Fossil fuel formation requires the burial of enormous amounts of organic matter under a sedimentary solution, and the application of heat and pressure. Slow burial processes do not produce fossil fuels, because the organic matter decays prior to conversion into a fossil fuel. Therefore, all fossil fuels on earth were quickly buried under sedimentary material which subsequently turned to stone;

Similar processes have been observed in [[Spirit Lake]] following the eruption of [[Mount St. Helens]] in 1980.

=== Rock strata ===
Most sedimentary rocks are layered, forming sharply defined lines at varying depths. Were these formed over long periods, erosion would have softened these lines. The sharpness of the lines implies rapid deposition and lithification.

=== Pure sedimentary layers ===
If sedimentary layers were laid down over millenia, they would have experienced mixing. However, many rock strata are pure -- for example, the [[St. Peter Sandstone]], covering 500,000 sq miles of the United States, is 99.94% pure silica. While uniformitarian scientists state that it was deposited by the shore of a sea, they cannot explain how it remained so pure if it was laid out over a long period of time. However, the sorting processes of [[liquefaction]], consistent with a global flood, can make such an explanation.

=== Submarine canyons ===
Canyons can be found under the sea at the end of many major world rivers, including the Congo, Amazon, Ganges, and Hudson. They extend for thousands of miles underwater, thousands of feet under the sea; they are as deep as the Grand Canyon in places, and although not well understood by the mainstream scientific community, they are generally understood to have developed when sea-levels were significantly lower than today. Flood geologists argue that as the continents divided and the flood subsided, these major rivers drained the new continents, and the water flowed into the new low-lying areas, which would fill to become seas, leaving the sediments to dry out of their [[liquefaction|liquefied]] state.

=== Land canyons ===
As explanation for great land canyons such as the [[Grand Canyon]], flood geologists point to canyon formation events such as the catastrophic hot mud slides observed during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens. One particular hot mud slide at Mt. St. Helens carved a canyon 140 ft. deep and 17 miles long in a single day. Only a thin creek remains at the bottom of the canyon today, which would likely be interpreted as having carved the canyon "over millions of years," if it were not known first-hand that the canyon was carved in a single day.

=== Ancient accounts of a navigable Atlantic ===
Plato's ''Timaeus'' states:
: "In those days the Atlantic was navigable; and there was an island situated in front of the straits which are by you called the Pillars of Heracles [Straight of Gibraltar] ... and was the way to other islands, and from these you might pass to the whole of the opposite continent which surrounded the true ocean; for this sea which is within the Straits of Heracles is only a harbour, having a narrow entrance, but that other is a real sea, and the surrounding land may be most truly called a boundless continent."<ref>http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/timaeus.html</ref>

=== Plate tectonics ===

A clear problem with a global flood is that of repopulation: after the flood, very few non-marine species would survive. In particular, most of those observed today could not possibly have survived - this includes all insects, the vast majority of birds (Some species of albatross may have survived), the vast majority of mammals, and possibly freshwater fish depending on the salinity of the floodwaters.

Flood geology models include a means for these species to survive, most typically via artificial assistance - an Ark, as described in [[Genesis]].

An often-proposed explanation is that of continental drift - that the continents may once have been united in a single supercontinent, which broke into fragments and drifted into the formations seen today during the time between the start of repopulation and today. Continental drift in principle is nearly universally accepted by all geologists, with flood geology differing only in time: While conventional geology estimates the breakup of the supercontinent to have occurred over approximately sixty million years, flood geologists mostly claim that the process occurred during the flood year, whilst a few claim that it occurred at the time of [[Peleg]].

Flood geologists propose several models which would explain how continental drift could proceed at the rapid pace required to allow the rearrangement of continents during or shortly after the flood, then slow to the currently observed rate. One of the best known of these is the runaway subduction model of Dr. [[John Baumgardner]].<ref>http://www.globalflood.org/platetec/about.html</ref>

=== Total destruction ===

Flood geologists argue that the scale of destruction of the Flood, especially if rapid plate tectonics was involved, would mean almost certain total destruction of the pre-Flood world, including any evidence of civilisations predating the Flood, along with the destruction of the [[Garden of Eden]].
After the Flood, and particularly after the [[Tower of Babel]], new civilisations developed, that either survive to this day or that we find archaeological evidence of today.

== Dating ==

Flood geologists date the flood to around 2350 B.C., based on [[biblical chronology]].
They argue that archaeological dates which purport to show civilisations and artifacts being older than the Flood (see Criticisms) are incorrect because they are based on the presumption that none of these methods would be altered by the effects of a global flood in such a way as to render conclusions drawn from them invalid.<ref>One example is Carbon Dating which is calibrated according to known background levels of C14 in the atmosphere, but this calibration does not account for likely altered levels due to extensive volcanism during the Flood. See [http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/5026/ Carbon dating into the future] (Creation Ministries International).</ref> [[Christian apologetics|Christian apologetists]] state that the biblical flood would have occurred before the Egyptian pyramids were built and that the commonly cited Egyptian chronology is errant and built upon poor foundations. <ref>http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/2503</ref> Also, Christian apologists argue that ancient Sumerian history supports the flood account given in the Bible. <ref>http://www.christiananswers.net/q-abr/abr-a009.html</ref> In addition, ancient Sumerian literature speaks of a world wide flood. <ref>http://home.comcast.net/~chris.s/sumer-faq.html#A1.6</ref>

[[Creationism|Creationist]] scientists also state that the chronology used to dispute a worldwide flood based on tree rings is invalid.<ref>http://www.icr.org/index.php?module=articles&action=view&ID=381</ref> <ref>http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/faq/docs/tree_ring.asp</ref><ref>http://www.biblicalchronologist.org/answers/c14_treerings.php</ref><ref>http://www.grisda.org/origins/21066.htm</ref><ref>http://www.creationresearch.org/crsq/articles/26/26_1a.html</ref><ref>http://www.creationresearch.org/crsq/abstracts/sum29_4.html</ref>

==Counterevidence==

===Explanation of Geological Strata===

Advocates of flood geology generally use the flood as an explanation for the existence of the geologic column, and indeed any geological phenomena or feature. It proposes that the age of the Earth as shown by rock strata is only apparently old, an illusion caused by looking at it through a secular worldview. Thus, while a scientist may spend years developing and testing theories through evidence, a flood geologists simply needs to manufacture evidence to fit his theory.

===Fossils===
Fossils follow a logical pattern. The old ones are near the bottom, the young ones near the top. This is cited as evidence that a catastrophic flood could not have occurred, due to the fact that a flood powerful enough to create canyons in 40 days would also disturb the fossils to a point that they are no longer possible to date. Instead, the fossils follow a pattern predicted by evolution, where the fossils follow the pattern of old to young. Similarly, mass extinction events such as the KT boundary provide very fine lines that cut off the fossil record - this is incompatible with the idea that all rock sediment was laid down only a few thousand years ago in a massive flood.

===Erosion===

Erosion is a slow process in conventional geology - unless the rock is soft and the weather particularly severe, but these cases are outlying exceptions. This is all due to the hardness of rock and the fact that we can observe the rate that it erodes under rain now. The flooddidit idea proposes that despite this, all erosion features can be explained by the flood. This applies equally to rock that is eroded to rock that isn't eroded - a proposition that flies in the face of both science and good sense. The high levels of erosion seen in hard rock formations is chalked up to the speed of the flood waters. Indeed, fast water can be quite powerful and water cutting jets can slice through objects with high efficiency. However, the Grand Canyon, for example, isn't a small board of MDF being hit by a precise sub-millimeter wide jet of water traveling at hundreds of miles per hour. Even in a flood of global proportions, the water could not travel fast enough (it can only work under gravity) and the rock is simply not soft enough for it to form in anything less than millions of years.

Secondly, erosion due to the flood is incompatible with rock sedimentation being explained by the flood. A global flood that would explain both sedimentation and massive erosion would cause both processes to occur simultaneously. There should be more sediment put down at a near equal rate to the erosion removing it - therefore features where erosion has revealed the sedimentation layers should not exist. Conventional geology is able to explain that sedimentation occurs first and erosion cuts in afterwards to expose the layers, and also explains more distorted features such as uncomformities - which flood geology is unable explain.

==Creationist Scientists Defense of Flood Geology ==
Creationist scientists assert that there are multiple lines of evidence from the field of geology showing that flood geology is correct. <ref>http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/faq/geology.asp</ref><ref>http://www.creationism.org/topbar/geology.htm</ref><ref>http://www.grisda.org/georpts/gr11.htm</ref><ref>http://www.nwcreation.net/geologylinks.html</ref><ref>http://globalflood.org/</ref> Creationist scientists also state that there was enough water to cause a worldwide flood and various other objections to a worldwide flood are invalid. <ref>http://www.answersingenesis.org/Home/Area/AnswersBook/flood12.asp</ref><ref>http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/faq/flood.asp</ref>

== Common Criticisms ==

Critics claim that there is not enough water on the Earth to actually cause a worldwide flood, or ever has been; in addition, many archaeological records (notably tree-ring records and the records of various early civilizations, including Egypt and Sumeria) stretch through the period of time most often given as that of the Great Flood, without any actual reference to such an event.<ref>For a summary of other criticisms, see http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-noahs-ark.html</ref>

== History ==

Until the rise of uniformitarian [[geology]] in the early 19th century, most geologists accepted the Noahic deluge as part of geology. But [[James Hutton]] proposed in 1795 that geology ought to be based on the processes that we see happening now, thereby automatically ruling the Flood out of consideration. During the 19th century a number of "[[scriptural geologist]]s" held out against the rising acceptance of Hutton's principles, but they fought a losing battle and interest in flood geology virtually died out by the end of the 19th century.

However, in the second half of the 20th century, interest was revived amongst people keen to show that the biblical account was correct, and a small but growing number of geologists are now studying this field again, although the vast majority of geologists still reject the idea of a global flood on Earth. At the same time, there has been a recent resurgence of [[catastrophism]] in geological interpretation. <ref>http://www.icr.org/index.php?module=articles&action=print&ID=84</ref><ref>http://www.grisda.org/georpts/gr11.htm</ref>

Interest in Flood Geology was stimulated by the 1961 publication of ''[[The Genesis Flood]]'', by [[Henry Morris]] and [[John Whitcomb]]. Dr. Henry Morris had a number of arguments for geology supporting a worldwide flood. <ref>http://www.icr.org/index.php?module=articles&action=view&ID=54</ref><ref>http://www.icr.org/index.php?module=articles&action=print&ID=84</ref><ref>http://www.icr.org/article/842/</ref>
{{Creation vs. evolution}}
== External Links ==
*[http://www.icr.org/index.php?module=articles&action=view&ID=54 Geology and the Flood] by [[Henry Morris]], Ph.D.
*[http://www.creationism.org/symposium/symp3no2.htm Stratigraphic Evidence of the Flood] by Stuart E. Nevins.
* [http://www.answersingenesis.org/tj/v14/i1/flood_models.asp Flood models: the need for an integrated approach] by A.C. McIntosh, T. Edmondson & S. Taylor.
*[http://www.nwcreation.net/geologylinks.html#anchorgeologycreationist Global Flood Geology from Creation Science Perspectives]
*[http://www.biblicalgeology.net/content/view/46 Biblical Geology: Properly Understanding the Rocks]

==References==

<references/>

[[Category: Young Earth Creationism]]
[[Category: Geology]]

Carl Wieland

2012-09-01T18:40:50Z

Etait:

[[Image:Carl wieland.jpg|thumbnail|150px|right|Dr. Carl Wieland]]
Dr. '''Carl Wieland''' is the Managing Director of [[Creation Ministries International]] in [[Brisbane]], [[Australia]] and a speaker on the topic of [[young earth creationism]]. <ref name="bio">[http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/3497 Carl Wieland's biography by Creation Ministries International]</ref>

Dr. Wieland has authored many articles in both [[Creation magazine]] and the associated in-depth [[Journal of Creation]] (formerly TJ).<ref name="bio"/> In addition, he authored the compact booklet Stones and Bones, and was co-author of The Creation Answers Book, One Blood, and Walking Through Shadows.<ref name="bio"/>

Although Dr. Wieland's formal qualifications are in medicine and surgery (MD) (from [[Adelaide University]] in [[South Australia]]), he has not practised in the medical profession since 1986. He is a past president of the Christian Medical Fellowship of South Australia.<ref name="bio"/>

==Criticisms==
Most of his opponents point out that his medical degrees, do not qualify him to mount a challenge to the very philosophical basis of science, as he is neither a researcher, nor a scientist.

== External link ==

* [http://creation.com/dr-carl-wieland Dr. Carl Wieland] at [[Creation Ministries International]]
* [http://www.creationwiki.net/Carl_Wieland Carl Wieland] on CreationWiki.

==References==
<references/>

{{DEFAULTSORT: Wieland, Carl}}

[[Category: Young Earth Creationists]]

Hanzi in Genesis

2012-09-01T18:37:41Z

Etait: Created page with "'''Hanzi in Genesis''' is a publication by Creation Ministries International, wherein they cite several examples of Hanzi characters, which they claim they were aware of Chri..."

'''Hanzi in Genesis''' is a publication by [[Creation Ministries International]], wherein they cite several examples of Hanzi characters, which they claim they were aware of Christianity and God's promise well before the european powers came.The key argument within is that the development of Chinese characters pre-dates the writing of the Book of Genesis. Thus, the Chinese characters seem to provide an 'independent' record of the events in Genesis, conveniently forgetting that as with any language, it can evolve over time and can incorporate new characters and "words' as and when they become necessary.

==Problems in the Hypothesis==
The most obvious error that CMI has made is the mistake of confusing the phonetic component of the Hanzi, for the semantic portion. Furthermore, the analysis was gleaned from the simplified Chinese characters, which are a relatively recent invention, and are different from the classical characters. <ref>http://creation.com/chinese-characters-and-genesis The website itself</ref>

==Examples==

The website lists several examples, with more in the actual text.

===船 - "Large Boat"===
This is actually the word for a basic boat, or anything that floats and is controllable, "Chuan" (wade-giles "ch'un") The argument that this is evidence for Genesis is as follows.<ref name ="know"> I am a native speaker of chinese and japanese</ref>

*舟 on it's own does mean a boat - "Zhou".
*八 is the logical number 8, ""ba"
*口 is the word for mouth, "kou", which CMI mistakanly translate to "people", "ren - 人".

The idea behind this setup is to suggest that the character refers to the eight people that were on the Ark: Noah, his wife, their three sons and their wives. However, CMI is making a crucial mistake in disassembling the character completely. What they ignore is the fact that Chinese characters are not made up exclusively of components that provide a meaning, but also of phonetic radicals that are supposed to offer a clue as to how they're pronounced. In both of the cases above, they simply skip this part in order to extract the meaning they want from it. The first character does not feature 八 and 口 as separate components, but rather as the combination 㕣 yǎn, with the (irrelevant) meaning of "marsh". Likewise, the second one features 公 gōng, "public" as the additional component.

==婪 - "Covet"==
This is actually the adjective, greedy, not the verb, covet "垂涎". The two trees, actually is the symbol for forest, "lin", and the female character, "女" is "nu". This presumably has some kind of mysogynistic association with women, possibly the creation story with Eve. Here the problem lies in that "lin" is not meant for semantic meaning, but, for phonetic (lin-lan). The "nu" section is the semantic portion (rather unfortunately, sexism is rampant in the characters, with "nu" used in many uncomplimentary ways, including ugly "妛" and "委" committee.<ref name="know" />

==Referencs==
<references />

Quora

2012-09-01T18:17:33Z

Etait:

'''Quora''' is a question-and-answer website. The website's community of users create, edit and organize it's content. Quora was founded in June of 2009. It is known for it's inability to accurately measure web traffic, despite claims that the rival [[Alexa]]. Quora is also a favorite website qouted by internet [[quack|conspiracy theorists]], to support their claims, which cite themselves ([[circular reasoning|See Circular Reasoning]]).

== External links ==

[http://www.quora.com/ Quora website]