The perils of Wikipedia

The New York Times posts a humorous but cautionary article on Wikipedia, the free colloborative encyclopedia. While its unique nature makes Wikipedia very responsive and much broader than a regular encyclopedia (all it takes for a subject to gain an entry is a single netizen interested enough to write it up and post it), the ability of anyone and everyone to edit whatever entry they like instantaneously also casts a shadow over Wikipedia's reliability on hot-button issues. Bush and Kerry found their Wikipedia entries repeatedly vandalized over the course of the last two weeks.

Best example - two days after the election, Kerry's entire entry had been replaced with a single sentence: "John Kerry is a girl."

Wikipedia is a phenomenal resource, and an intriguing idea... but it's important to take the more controversial entries with a grain of salt.