wikipedia

wikipedia: Page 1

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When did Stanley Dunham move to Seattle with Obama: 1961 or 1962? (University of Washington, Wikipedia) - 01/19/11

[UPDATE BELOW] The political establishment has spent countless man-hours trying to claim that we know for a fact that Barack Obama was born in Hawaii. Yet, even seemingly simple aspects of his past history are shrouded in mystery. For example: when exactly did Obama's mother Stanley Ann Dunham moved from Hawaii back to Seattle to attend the University of Washington? WorldNetDaily uncovered a college transcript from UW (emailed from UW and attached): The transcript clearly documents that Dunham was enrolled at the University of Washington for two classes that began on Aug. 19, 1961:...

State Dep't doesn't have passport records for Stanley Dunham before 1968; conflicting marriage information - 08/02/10

From this: Responding to a Freedom of Information Act request, the State Department has released passport records of Stanley Ann Dunham, President Obama's mother – but records for the years surrounding Obama's 1961 birth are missing. The State Department claims a 1980s General Services Administration directive resulted in the destruction of many passport applications and other "non-vital" passport records, including Dunham's 1965 passport application and any other passports she may have applied for or held prior to 1965. Destroyed, then, would also be any records shedding light on whether...

WorldNetDaily shows why nothing in Wikipedia can be trusted - 12/31/09

WorldNetDaily offers some of the vandalism of their Wikipedia entry and of their editor Joseph Farah here. It includes lots of smears and lies, and it shows yet again how nothing you read in Wikipedia can be trusted.

Wikipedia used to spread AGW propaganda? (global warming) - 12/19/09

Wikipedia is little more than a propaganda source that allows interested, mostly left-leaning but certainly establishment-supporting parties to spread disinformation. And, it seems like one of those involved in Climategate may have been using Wikipedia to present biased coverage of global warming.

Another reason parents might want to ban Wikipedia from schools and libraries - 07/14/09

I'm of two minds about this. On the one hand, Wikipedia is little more than a disinformation source that presents a biased, mostly leftwing Beltway establishment view of U.S. politics. And, due to its innumerable inaccuracies it's already been banned from some schools and libraries or at least forbidden as a reference. On the other hand, exposing it to sunlight is the best desiccant. However, parents of young children might think different due to the following issue.

Barack Obama gave differing accounts of which hospital he was born in (Wikipedia and Snopes too) (+Bill Press) - 07/08/09

Those who make the definitive claim that Barack Obama was born in Honolulu should know which hospital he was born in, right? How can you know for a fact that he was born there without knowing which hospital it was? Yet, not only have Snopes and Wikipedia given differing accounts of which hospital he was born in, but so has Obama himself.

Wikipedia helps NYT hide truth about David Rohde kidnapping; "Reliable Sources" - 06/29/09

Late last year, David Rohde of the New York Times was kidnapped in Afghanistan and, in order not to increase his worth to his captors, the NYT worked with other news organizations to keep the news secret.

WikiQuote's bogus, circular smear of Rush Limbaugh (Jack Huberman; James Earl Ray quote) - 06/17/09

Wikiquote - affiliated with Wikipedia - is using as a source for an almost assuredly bogus and highly inflammatory Rush Limbaugh quote a book that was published 10 months after the unattributed quote was added to the same Wikiquote page. The 06:01, 20 July 2005 revision of en.wikiquote.org/w/index.php?title=Rush_Limbaugh (by someone using the IP address 69.64.213.146, more at [1]) was the first appearance in the entry of this supposed Rush quote: You know who deserves a posthumous Medal of Honor? James Earl Ray [the confessed assassin of Martin Luther King]. We miss you, James. Godspeed. No...

Wikipedia misleads, smears about Obama citizenship "conspiracy theory" - 03/09/09

Wikipedia has a page called "Barack Obama citizenship conspiracy theories" (en.wikipedia .org/wiki/Barack_Obama_citizenship_conspiracy_theories) that smears those who have questions about where Obama was born and whether he's eligible to be president as fringe conspiracy theorists. And, as will be shown below, that page has been grossly misleading visitors about this issue for almost two and a half months: since around Christmas, anyone who's relied on the article has been misled.

WorldNetDaily, Newsbusters criticize Wikipedia while helping it - 03/08/09

WorldNetDaily informs us that "Wikipedia scrubs Obama eligibility/Mention of citizenship issues deleted in minutes, 'offending' users banned" (wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=91114). They're right about that, but at the same time as criticizing Wikipedia they also help that site by linking to it. The best way to deal with WP is to stop linking to it and encourage others to do the same. If WP loses enough links their entries might fall in the search results. By linking to them directly, WND is giving them a little "search engine juice", helping WP (to a small extent) maintain their...

Citizen journalists: how to increase the effectiveness of your criticism - 01/25/09

This post will look at three rightwing blog postings and describe how they could have been more effective. I keep seeing people make these same mistakes and - to be frank - to a certain extent I don't want them to do things the better way since that's more competition for me. On the other hand, another mistake they and similar people make is to not read this site, so it all evens out.

ZXY4931 is my new Wikipedia username - 01/16/09

I've used the Wikipedia username "LonewackoDotCom" since 2005 or before, and no one's raised any issues with that name.

Obama "Energy Czar" Carol Browner's membership in Socialist panel scrubbed from website, Wikipedia - 01/10/09

Up until the past few days, the website of Socialist International - the main, worldwide socialist organization - listed Carol Browner - Barack Obama's choice to be Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change aka "Energy Czar" - as a member of their Commission for a Sustainable World Society (CSWS) group. Now, however, her membership in that group has been scrubbed from their website. Don't worry, though: I saved off a copy and screengrab here. The scrubbing continued at Wikipedia, where the news that she was a member of that panel was deleted by someone using an IP address...

Obama strategist David Axelrod owns "astroturfing" company (ASK Public Strategies) - 09/11/08

Via [1] comes this article from Business Week about Barack Obama chief strategist David Axelrod: From the same River North address, Axelrod operates a second business, ASK Public Strategies, that discreetly plots strategy and advertising campaigns for corporate clients to tilt public opinion their way... On behalf of ComEd and Comcast, the firm helped set up front organizations that were listed as sponsors of public-issue ads. Industry insiders call such practices "Astroturfing," a reference to manufacturing grassroots support... Oddly enough, some months ago I noted a very strange blog...

Eve Fairbanks misleads about Wikipedia (+Kevin Drum) - 04/15/08

If two "liberals" tell you that Wikipedia isn't biased towards the "liberal" side of things, doesn't that prove that it is biased, especially when the two "liberals" aren't exactly known for thinking things through? OK, it's not proof, but it is a strong indicator, as Kevin Drum [1] approvingly directs our attention to the post from Eve Fairbanks [2] of the New Republic (also home to Jim Kirchik and Jason Zengerle). She discusses a subscriber-only National Review article (link) called "Liberal Web" which discusses liberal bias at WP, and says: while I hadn't perceived anti-conservative bias...

AVWatch: will facts stick in Villaraigosa's Wikipedia entry? - 02/08/07

As a test designed to show how unreliable Wikipedia is, I added some long-missing facts to the WP entry for Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. Then, someone else came along and junked the paragraph I added up a bit.

How not to criticize Wikipedia - 02/05/07

Dave Pierre offers "'Lib-pedia'? Anti-Conservative Bias Rampant At Wikipedia" (newsbusters . org/node/10615). He's definitely right about that, but I don't think he fully groks that the only way to correct that bias is for conservatives to be more tenacious than those on the other side who currently spend a lot of time making sure WP's articles match their ideology. Lacking that, the only thing to do is to point out to anyone who relies on WP or who advocates relying on WP that it's completely unreliable.

Bloggers: stop linking to Wikipedia - 01/22/07

Based on a "directive" from Jimmy Wales [1], the English version of Wikipedia has started using the "nofollow" tag on all external links (the foreign language versions had been doing that for a while). That tag tells search engines to not pass any "search engine juice" (e.g., PageRank) from the WP page to the linked page. While sites that have links in WP will continue to receive visitors from those links, they will (supposedly) not receive search engine-related benefits (they might, however, be spidered by some engines). Certainly, some search engines may special-case WP (including having...

"Wikipedia Celebrates 750 Years Of American Independence" - 07/31/06

From this fine news source: Wikipedia, the online, reader-edited encyclopedia, honored the 750th anniversary of American independence on July 25 with a special featured section on its main page Tuesday...

Wikipedia's continual low credibility - 04/04/05

I provide yet another reason to distrust Wikipedia in this post at BoreAmerica. Previous coverage of Wikipedia starts here.

Wikipedia Watch: You'd think she was Mother Teresa - 01/11/05

Can Wikipedia be trusted? Here's their article (en . wikipedia . org / wiki / Haunani-Kay_Trask) on Hawaiian separatist and University of Hawaii professor Haunani Kay Trask.