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Founder of propaganda rag Wikipedia begs for our money - Printable Version

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Founder of propaganda rag Wikipedia begs for our money - Myra Bronstein - 23-12-2008

I just may barf. Jimmy Wales has the gall to beg for money from the very people he spreads propaganda to: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate/Letter/en?utm_source=2008_jimmy_letter_r&utm_medium=sitenotice&utm_campaign=fundraiser2008#appeal[B]

This is the jerk who said the following:
[/B]Peter Andrews writes:
The Wikipedia entries for politically-sensitive events such as the causes of the WTC collapse and the assassination of JFK parrot the official government positions, despite the fact that in both cases a majority of people around the world seriously doubt these explanations.
For example, the page about JFK's assassination discusses the controversy but all evidence linking the killing to the CIA is missing. It is difficult to believe that nobody in the world is interested in adding this information, so most probably it has been removed by CIA staff. Do you see any need to actively protect these areas of Wikipedia, so that their contents are not so obviously government propaganda? Or do you yourself censor the entries so that they comply with official government policy?

Jimmy Wales replies:
I could tell you but then I would have to kill you, as the old saying goes.
When the cumulative wisdom of thousands of individuals working in complete freedom from points all over the globe in a transparent public system leads to a certain result you don't like, it is probably better to check your premises than to assume that it is the result of a CIA plot. Please.
The truth is that people who are eager to push bizarre theories based on random speculation by lunatics do not generally find a fact-based, open culture of dialogue and debate to be to their liking. I think this is one of the huge benefits of Wikipedia, it allows ordinary people a quick way to rely on a resource where good people have thoughtfully sorted through the noise to arrive at a broad presentation of the truth. Including the truth about what the CIA has done or not done, when reliable evidence supports it.
But to answer your question a bit more directly: no, Wikipedia is not controlled by the CIA, Martians, or Elvis.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn10970-readers-q--a-with-wikipedia-founder.html?full=true

Yet Virgil Griffith showed that the CIA is, in fact, updating Wikipedia:

http://www.wired.com/politics/onlinerights/news/2007/08/wiki_tracker
See Who's Editing Wikipedia - Diebold, the CIA, a Campaign
By John Borland Email 08.14.07
CalTech graduate student Virgil Griffith built a search tool that traces IP addresses of those who make Wikipedia changes.
Photo: Jake Appelbaum

...
Wikipedia Scanner -- the brainchild of Cal Tech computation and neural-systems graduate student Virgil Griffith -- offers users a searchable database that ties millions of anonymous Wikipedia edits to organizations where those edits apparently originated, by cross-referencing the edits with data on who owns the associated block of internet IP addresses.
...
Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales told Wired News he was aware of the new service, but needed time to experiment with it before commenting.

The vast majority of changes are fairly innocuous, however. Employees at the CIA's net address, for example, have been busy -- but with little that would indicate their place of apparent employment, or a particular bias.


Given that Wikipedia is demonstrably controlled, at least to some extent, by the CIA--Wales should go to them to beg for money. Or maybe should say "beg them for more money."