Pam Boss wrote to me the other day: "It is just awful what has happened to the cold fusion wiki article. All my pretty pictures are gone. Given the effort the skeptics are putting into the whole thing, they must feel threatened."
I told her I think Wikipedia has become a sort of cult. It is isolated. They don't allow other points of view. Anonymity and isolation gives rise to a "Lord of the Flies" effect -- people without adult supervision going to extremes. You see this sort of isolation and turning away from reality at large, powerful corporations that are in trouble, and at high levels of government. Here is an example from an article about the Bush administration: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/14/AR2009011402791.html This reminds me of the atmosphere at Wikipedia, in which anything goes and no authority steps in to enforce rules: "In the fall of 2002, Bush witnessed a startling face-off between National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld in the White House Situation Room after Rumsfeld had briefed the National Security Council on the Iraq war plan. Rice wanted to hold on to a copy of the Pentagon briefing slides, code-named Polo Step. "You won't be needing that," Rumsfeld said, reaching across the table and snatching the Top Secret packet away from Rice -- in front of the president. "I'll let you two work it out," Bush said, then turned and walked out. Rice had to send an aide to the Pentagon to get a bootlegged copy from the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Bush should never have put up with Rumsfeld's power play. Instead of a team of rivals, Bush wound up with a team of back-stabbers with long-running, poisonous disagreements about foreign policy fundamentals. . . ." - Jed
