Wikepedia’s rules innately and inherently create bias. One is required to source stuff, not in reality, not in what is observable, but in what respectable authority says, which necessarily excludes Climategate from Wikipedia. Evidence based data is “original research”, thus the scientific approach is forbidden. To present the actual science, rather than the “consensus”, is a violation of Wikipedia rules
Thus, for example, respectable authority does not like anything that Darwin said, for all of it is apt to support raaaciiiiissssm. But respectable authority cannot simple throw Darwin overboard as an evil Nazi. So instead, respectable authority attributes to Darwin the advances of his predecessors, loudly praises him for those ideas, and denounces Darwin’s actual ideas as “ultra darwinism”. It is then necessary for respectable to deny that Lamarck proposed common descent, so that they can attribute common descent to Darwin, in place of Darwinism. And so, if one quotes Lamarck’s own words discussing common descent, this will be deleted from Wikipedia in fifteen seconds, and replaced with some eminent academic telling us what Lamarck supposedly said. Quoting Lamarck as evidence of what Lamarck said is “original research”, and obviously that is unacceptable in Wikipedia. Indeed, any evidence based assertion is “original research”. and thus all of Climategate, and all of the results of Steve McIntyre, are “original research”. The rule against original research, necessarily prohibits evidence or facts based on evidence from appearing in Wikipedia.
In place of the “no original research” rule, we need to have a rule that privileges evidence and deprecates authority. And that rule is: Nullius in Verba
I think you are being too harsh on Wikipedia.
For every controversial topic such as Climategate, there are 10 or 20 or 50 innocuous entries on particle physics or the world’s highest mountains or Hello Kitty or whatever. The major problem for Wikipedia is not the willfully mendacious, it is kooks. “No original research” is an effective, low-cost way to brush off loons and morons.
No sane person would refer to Wikipedia on controversial topics. But nevertheless, it is a useful site that contains an enormous amount of data. You just have to approach it with your bullshit detector on … which is kind of how you have to deal with the Internet in general.
It used to be the case, fairly recently, that the non political stuff in Wikipedia was pretty good, but if you have a political line that takes a political position on everything in the world, everything in the world becomes controversial. Who would have guessed that it is “controversial” that Lamarck said what he said? So when you look up “Hello Kitty”, or Liverpool, or the worlds highest mountain, chances are that there is some controversy involving gay politics and Hello Kitty, welfarism and Liverpool, colonialism and the worlds highest mountain, and that to support the politically correct version on these issues, everything remotely connected to controversy has to be elaborately falsified, like the infamous Soviet Encyclopedia, wherein everything was political, so nothing was true.
The class of “controversial” topics is astonishingly large and growing, and as it grows, Wikipedia becomes perforated with holes in its coverage.
Here is a random sample, topics I know enough about to check if the Wikipedia entry is relevant, truthful and informative:
1. Methyl Bromide. Having selected Methyl Bromide, I will now see what Wikipedia says about it. (Looks it up) Oops, an environmentalist issue, which I knew, but simply forgot. Because it is an environmentalist issue, any information that is not relevant to environmentalism is just not there. Like the Soviet Encyclopedia, all politics, all the time, therefore all lies all the time. There is precisely zero non political information about Methyl Bromide, and non political information about Methyl Bromide is the only reason I would look it up.
2. Cairns, the tropical city: (looks it up) The tourist information seems to have been inserted by the tourist industry, and is accurate and fair. The history (oh those evil colonialists) is pure political bogosity, as is all the stuff about Australian natives.
3. Battle of the Coral Sea: (looks it up) All lies except for the first paragraph. The second paragraph is a complete white wash of Tojo’s imperialism and fascism. Who would have thought that Japanese imperialism is “controversial”?
So on the basis of that random sample, the majority of stuff in Wikipedia is either falsified for political reasons, or, like non political facts of Methly Bromide, deleted because non political.