It sounds like such a nice idea and it really does appear useful at first, but Wikipedia turns out to have a fatal flaw: While you can edit material on its listings, malicious persons can change it at their leisure. Worse, some editor you can't find is able to sabotage even the best efforts to make corrections.
That has happened to Discovery Institute thanks to an editor who calls himself "FeloniousMonk" (get it? it's a pun on the great jazzman Theloniuus Monk). The pen name is shared by a number of people on the Internet, so this one clearly is in hiding. But he doesn't shirk from making sure that a factually untruthful picture of Discovery Institute is posted on Wikipedia, no matter how we try to correct it.
But we are not the only ones complaining. I notice most recently that the scientist Douglas Hofstadter, author of "Godel, Escher, Bach," among other things, has this exchange with an interviewer (Deborah Solomon) in the Sunday New York Times Magazine:
(Q) "Your entry in Wikipedia says that your work has inspired many students to begin careers in computing and artificial intelligence."
(A) "I have no interest in artificial intelligence. The entry is filled with inaccuracies, and it kind of depresses me."
(Q) "So, fix it."
(A) "The next day someone will fix it back."
It would appear that Douglas Hofstadter has a Felonious Monk assigned to him, as we do.
Moral: you can't trust anything on Wikipedia. Felonies against the truth don't get prosecuted there.
This Just In: A Rasmussen poll shows that 25% of visitors found errors on Wikipedia. Imagine how high the number would be if they polled people mentioned in Wikipedia items. Sinbad (the entertainer) was amused recently to read on Wikipedia that he was dead!