Dystopiapedia

Wikipedia is a tragedy.

I believe, through Wikipedia's increased popularity (as evidenced by Google providing Wikipedia entries on many front-page searches) and misinformed promotion by modern thinkers, the half-truths, interpretations of the past, and liberal use of "Citation Needed" are doing more damage than good to an increasing internet population focused more on fast information and word-of-mouth than they are on fact checking. People are lazy and take what's written for granted. For the sake of future generations, Wikipedia's promotion as an alternative to encyclopedias needs to stop.

And it's not as easy as doing your civic duty by telling your children that anything they read could be a lie, because chances are you're one out of a thousand that will teach your children to think for themselves, while the others go on reading then teaching (mostly through ambivalence) whatever they see as fact. I believe in freedom of speech, but it's a slippery slope into the freedom to lie. Is a half-truth a lie? Is an interpretation of the past taught as an interpretation, or is it taught as fact? And if we teach our modern interpretations as facts, how long until it's completely distorted into a lie?

Horrible links (Work in progress)

Endemic Warfare - This is what got me started. Jesus Christ, why even bother reading this rubbish of a pedia when you get statements like, "Endemic warfare is often highly ritualized and plays an important function in assisting the formation of a social structure..." in the opening paragraph of the article? It sets the tone for the rest of what you learn without ever providing a factual basis for how the author arrived at that knowledge. I didn't know anything about Endemic Warfare before visiting Wikipedia, but now I know worse than nothing, and that's what I can interpret as lies. Lies, lies, and more lies. Citation Needed after an unknown source = LIES! Remove those goddamn Citation Needed statements because it's not enough -- It's not a goddamn-nuff in our exponentially growing world.