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Old 08-02-2007, 14:16   #6
Airbornelawyer
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Join Date: Jan 2004
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Quote:
Wikipedia is a dubious source for information, as always.
Wikipedia is as reliable as its users make it. I have authored over 40 articles and extensively overhauled several others. I am reasonably certain that, at a minimum, despite the universality of "as always", you would not find these to be "dubious".

I really only revise articles in areas where I am arguably a subject-matter expert, and I would avoid the really unreliable articles, which are any on a controversial topic like politics. But given the number of intelligent articulate Special Forces personnel on the Internet who are SMEs, there really shouldn't be any dubious special operations articles on Wikipedia.

One can say "we don't care about that old Wikipedia" and just sit around the team room having a few beers, but the simple fact is that Wikipedia is the main source for information on topics like this, and will be a source for misinformation unless those who know better improve it. On Google, Wikipedia is the #3 hit for "Special Forces" (after commercial websites specialforces.net and specialforces.com), the #1 hit for "Green Berets", the #1 hit for "Army Rangers", the #2 hit for "special operations forces" (after socom.mil), the #3 hit for "United States Special Operations Command" (again after socom.mil), the #4 hit for "United States Army" (after 3 US Army sites), and so forth.

Lay people will go there, and they will be presented either good information or bad. You have the power to decide which it is.

I'm sorry if this sounds snippy or preachy, but I got tired of myself and my own complaining about poor articles. We often complain about misinformation in the media. We can't change what the MSM tells people about various topics; we can change what Wikipedia tells them.
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