Wikipedia – Inaccurate???

Recently, I’ve been reading many articles stating that Wikipedia is a “dubious source” when researching. The problem is that anyone can add to it and articles can be checked and edited by others with the same academic interest. This means anyone in the world can check articles for accuracy and to me, this is the best form of review. Granted, some people my intentionally add false information, but with peer review I believe it would be corrected eventually.

With a worldwide peer review, I believe this will enhance the accurracy of Wikipedia and will be a more complete encyclopedia than any ever written in the history of the world. Until now, we in the West had to rely on textbooks written from the Westerners point of view. Also, the cliché is that “History books are written by the victors.”

In America we learn how great “Manifest Destiny” was and until recently never even mentioned the mass slaughter and rape of the Native Americans. In Mexico, the Spaniards refer to the natives there as “savages.” If you read history books written by both Europeans and those from Muslim countries, they both are slanted towards their point of view and to paint themselves in a favorable light.

Further, I wonder what those who call Wikipedia a “dubious source,” believe is a credible source? American media for Gods sakes???? (or media from any country for that matter.)

Every country, area, provence inherently has a bias in their articles simply based on the fact that they do not understand or cannot comprehend a completely different way of thinking. Sure they provide two different points of view but it’s always American points of view.

Take the war on “terror” for example. Why is there never a rebuttal from a pro-“freedom fighter” point of view. (aka terrorist in the USA.) The reason is it would really shake people up and get them thinking. But unfortunately, most populations are unable to understand all the complexities involved, and hardly anyone understands the mentality of other cultures. If they did start thinking, then perhaps we couldn’t get anything done since the debate would drag on forever. Here, it’s just much quicker and easy to paint issues in black and white and to go attack somewhere. So what they get instead, is an analysis but some expert Johnnie Arab-American who tries to explain their way of thinking but we never get to hear the “real” other side.

America has never seen real grief and suffering caused by invasion. Pearl Harbor and 9-11 were not felt by most of the population and most did not go to Vietnam. War is the most horrifying, awful experience someone can ever have but it just never seems to stop.
But then again, every country has invaded others, slaughtered and for much more inane reasons than America ever has. Why break the trend now? Somebody somewhere must need some freedom.

Wikipedia at least has the capability to be corrected by users from all over the world, so as long as we’re going to continue killing each other perhaps we will be able to get a better view exactly why we are going over into their country to kill their citizens? From my old textbooks, it was because they were godless, inhuman, savage terrorist baby-killers.

Or perhaps they disparage it because Wikipedia is free for all and they cannot package it, put it in department stores with displays of young people dancing around it while selling it for ONLY $59.99.

Dubious they say. Every daily newscast regarding the most important issues in the world are friggin dubious…everywhere.