Another reason parents might want to ban Wikipedia from schools and libraries
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.
Let's say an eight-year-old wants pictures of docks for a school report. They enter "dock" into Google, and the first choice is this WP page:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dock
Now, scroll down to "Other", where there's a link to this page:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sex_positions#Genital-genital_sex
(Warning even for adults: the image at the last is both NSFW and very hairy).
For an even more common basic English word, try this:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peg
One of the pages in the "See also" section is definitely NSFW.
By now you know where I'm going with this, but here's one more:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rim
And - trust me on this - these are only scratching the surface.
There's a sanitized version of WP available (schools-wikipedia.org), but I'd imagine that most people - including those in grade school - access WP via the web.
If anyone has other examples, please leave a comment.
UPDATE: I spelled "desiccant" wrong, now corrected. I don't want Wikipedia to be disinfected, I want them to dry up and blow away. Of course, that's not likely to happen but if enough people stop linking to them they'll become less of a pernicious influence than they are now.
Comments
Smitty (not verified)
Tue, 07/14/2009 - 17:21
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HS 18680 yehrtoast@yahoo.com 2009-07-14T19:21:35-05:00
dessicant? Dissicants remove moisture. I think you meant disinfectant, which kills germs.
Fred Dawes (not verified)
Wed, 07/15/2009 - 01:15
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HS 18681 evildoers5@live.com 2009-07-15T03:15:13-05:00
what?
yourmother (not verified)
Mon, 11/09/2009 - 04:43
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HS 18682 2009-11-09T06:43:20-06:00
fuck you jackoff!