Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a politically left leaning online wiki-based encyclopedia[1] project written and edited by an ad hoc assemblage of mostly anonymous persons who are mostly, according to the Register (UK),[2][3] teenagers and unemployed persons.[4] Wikipedia editors, unlike their counterparts at Conservapedia, are overwhelmingly young males[5] — a demographic associated with self-centered belief systems and behavior.
Wikipedia was founded by atheist libertarian objectivist Jimmy Wales and atheist philosophy professor Larry Sanger. The website was born out of expert-written project Nupedia as a way to collaborate on articles. Nonetheless, Wikipedia overtook Nupedia and became an independent project hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation, which also hosts related websites including Wikiquote, Wikibooks, and Wikinews. An irony of internet history is that Jimmy Wales, despite being an atheist, refers to himself as Wikipedia's "spiritual leader".[6]
Recent loss of influence
In August of 2012, it was reported that Wikipedia has a shrinking base of editors.[7] At the same time, Business Insider indicated Quora was "Wikipedia's worst nightmare".[8] 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.[9]
Unreliability of Wikipedia
In 2008, the American Journalism Review declared concerning Wikipedia:
| “ | "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."[10] | ” |
Despite its official "neutrality policy," Wikipedia has a strong liberal bias. In an article entitled "Wikipedia Lies, Slander Continue," 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."[11] Mr. Farah has repeatedly been the victim of defamation on Wikipedia.[12] In December of 2010, Christian apologist JP Holding called Wikipedia "the abomination that causes misinformation".[13]
Wikipedia has millions of entries on topics ranging from an explanation for "duh"[14] to singles by obscure rock bands[15] to arcane British nobility.[16] There are editions of Wikipedia in 250 languages, and 130 have more than 1000 articles.[17] After about four years Wikipedia had about 450,000 entries,[18] and after six years it had about 1.7 million entries.[19] Four years later this number had more than doubled again: in November 2011, there are more than 3.8 million content pages.[20] However, the quality of these articles is up for dispute, given the evidence of systematic bias.
Origins
Initially, Wikipedia was hosted on servers operated by Bomis, Inc., a company that also sold pornographic pictures.[21] 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,[22] and also the free MediaWiki software that runs Wikipedia and Conservapedia.[23]
References
<references>
- ↑ http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4840340.stm
- ↑ http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/mar/08/media.comment
- ↑ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/09/18/sanger_forks_wikipedia/
- ↑ How the left conquered Wikipedia - Part 1
- ↑ 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. [1]
- ↑ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05/09/wikimedia_pron_purge/
- ↑ Pro-evolution Wikipedia has a shrinking base of editors plus Quora is Wikipedia's worst nightmare
- ↑ Pro-evolution Wikipedia has a shrinking base of editors plus Quora is Wikipedia's worst nightmare
- ↑ Pro-evolution Wikipedia has a shrinking base of editors plus Quora is Wikipedia's worst nightmare
- ↑ http://www.ajr.org/Article.asp?id=4461
- ↑ http://wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=83640
- ↑ http://wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=83640
- ↑ http://tektonticker.blogspot.com/search/label/Wikipedia
- ↑ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duh (only after Conservapedia criticized the entry on the English word "duh" did Wikipedia eventually remove it)
- ↑ such as Honk If You Love Fred Durst (accessed April 1, 2007)
- ↑ Part of the article about 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)
- ↑ List of Wikipedias - Wikimedia, accessed April 1, 2007.
- ↑ Aaron Weiss, The Unassociated Press, N.Y. Times, Feb. 10, 2005, at G5.
- ↑ English Wikipedia statistics accessed April 1, 2007
- ↑ English Wikipedia statistics accessed May 6, 2011
- ↑ Martin Hickman and Genevieve Roberts, "WIKIPEDIA," The Independent (London) p. 12 (Feb 13, 2006)
- ↑ Wikimedia Foundation accessed April 7, 2007
- ↑ MediaWiki home accessed April 7, 2007