Wikipedia Lies

On Wikipedia's front page, displayed prominently, is the daily "featured article". Featured articles, Wikipedia tells us, "represent the best of what Wikipedia has to offer." They are articles "that showcase the polished result of the collaborative efforts that drive Wikipedia". They are selected after a demanding process which guarantees that each and every featured article "meets the highest standards and can serve as an example of [Wikipedia's] end goal".

Today's featured article is devoted to actress Uma Thurman. It stumbles immediately, describing Thurman as "a former fashion model" despite also reporting that Thurman is currently a "spokesmodel" for several fashion houses. It then discusses her "famously large feet" in a small section cobbled together from long phrases taken virtually verbatim from the Internet Movie Database, without footnoting. It claims that Thurman's recent bout with "body dysmorphic disorder" is "undoubtedly" rooted in incidents in her childhood, particularly a suggestion that she needed a "nose job". (This is a particularly interesting demonstration of Wikipedia's "verifiability" policies in action, since the only evidence of Thurman's "disorder" comes from an interview she gave to Talk magazine: "Ever since I had a baby I've had that body dysmorphic disorder. I see myself as fat.")

On and on the folly goes. Thurman is, we are earnestly told, best-known for her post-1980's films (the last 90% of her movie career); she is "six feet tall" (most sources list her as 5'11"); Woody Allen's Sweet And Lowdown, which snared two Oscar nominations, was a trivial, low-budget film. Also falling into the minor, "low-budget" category is Vatel, scripted by Tom Stoppard, nominated for one Oscar, featuring notable European actors like Gerard Depardieu and Arielle Dombasle. Vatel, probably the highest-budgeted French film of its year, and paying Thurman a measly $2 million, is not considered worthy of an article in Wikipedia, unlike the legendary American actress Kadee Strickland.

Kadee Strickland. Kadee Strickland. No discussion of Wikipedia's featured articles would be complete without mention of the notorious affaire Strickland. Kadee Strickland is an actress of no great note who somehow made Wikipedia's front page on her birthday last year. Her featured article is notorious, even among Wikipedians, as an outlandishly worshipful piece written by an earnest and devoted (not to say, outright, obsessive) admirer. Plumped out by unreservedly favorable quotations from pseudoprofessional reviews whose lifegoals seem to center on invitations to press junkets and free screenings (as well as a few distorted quotations from genuine working, recognizable critics), the article studiously avoids the fact that the actual high points of Strickland's career consist only of having one screen performance termed "adequate" by The New York Times and managing to work in low-rent films and trivial roles for seven years without taking her shirt off on camera. Not found in the Wikipedia article is the more interesting fact that she has been romantically linked to the acclaimed playwright/actor Stephen Adly Guirgis, a point that is likely to interfere with one of the central lifegoals of the article's main author.

Next Tuesday's featured article will be "Mosque". "Mosque" is a sincere, superficial, and occasionally turgid effort which strives to be inoffensive, but occasionally does so at considerable cost. The article insists that only a "small" number of mosques are associated with fanaticism, terrorism and violence; that may well be so (or not), but the claim completely fails Wikipedia's so-often-touted verifiability policy, since the article's authors provide no references or support for it. Also interesting is the peculiar discussion of "gender separation" in mosques, which is almost completely at odds with an article coincidentally appearing in today's New York Times. Presumably the discrepancies arise from differing practices at the Times, whose research methods and sources are not limited to arbitrarily phrased Google searches.

Last Thursday's featured article was devoted to the Ku Klux Klan. Wikipedia's clumsy implementation of its "neutral point of view" policy leaves it vulnerable to exploitation by white supremacist revisionists, but here most of their work seems to have been done in advance by Wikipedians with no large grasp of American history. Hugo Black was not a dominant figure in the Alabama Klan, for example, and there is little reason (at best) to link the Klan to contemporary "progressives." The article's presentation of Klan membership trends ignores its resurgence in the 1950s, and minimizes the KKK role in resistance to desegregation. The article's authors present anecdotal accounts of resistance to the Klan in that era, while mentioning the Klan's systematic campaigns of terrorism and murder rather bloodlessly, minimizing their significance.

Among the Klan atrocities ignored in the supposedly "comprehensive" featured article is the murder of Jonathan Myrick Daniels, an unarmed Episcopal seminarian gunned down at point-blank range by an Alabaman Klansman. Wikipedia has a short, already partially sanitized article on Daniels, but at least one Wikipedian, going by the username "Zoe" is unsatisfied with the article's tone. declaring it "hagiographic." It is not clear what "Zoe" wants, but he or she has recently harassed one Wikipedian who disagrees with his/her opinion into leaving the would-be encyclopedia. Perhaps "Zoe" would like the article to take a more balanced tone, presenting the positive aspects of cold-blooded murder; perhaps "Zoe" would like it to discuss the teenage misbehaviours (whatever they might have been) or other sins of the murder victim.

Are these featured articles "the best" that Wikipedians can produce? I doubt it, although it seems that given the behaviours the Wikilluminati encourage, they are likely to be among the best that Wikipedians will produce. Are they "well written", "comprehensive", "factually accurate", and "neutral", as Wikipedia claims failures to meet those requirements cannot survive its stringent review process. Of course not. That is just another of

Wikipedia's lies