Deep Minds

[CrowsNest]

Of course, since Wikipedia is not a newspaper, it should have no place in the battle against fake news.

Which is the important point really.

What did humanity do, to deserve dim bulbs like this being passed off as Wikipedia critics, people capable of deep insight and possessing expert knowledge?

One obvious role for Wikipedia, is verifying a news website is actually a news website. Another obvious role is in describing what fake news is, how it is produced and how it is spread. Thirdly, the pretty bizarre implication of these two that there should be a literal interpretation of the policy "Wikipedia is not a newspaper" notwithstanding, there will always be times when fake news tries to distort historical fact as part of their stories, which Wikipedia can be used to debunk. I'm certain there will be others, but those three alone are sufficient to make the point.

Or course, this is all predicated on the world having a Wikipedia that works as advertised, which may be entirely impossible. If that assumption wasn't meant to be inherent in these comments, then why are they even bothering with this as a topic of discussion? It would have no practical use even if they could agree it has a role.

These people just suck at being critics. It is hard to even define what they are actually setting out to achieve with comments like this. I mean, they're succeeding in making themselves look like idiots, but that is surely not their goal.

[AndrewForson]

Indeed. The point about Wikipedia here is that while it is not, and never could be, an actual encyclopaedia, enough people think it is for it to be worth capturing for your preferred view of the world. As you say, it can then be used to directly promote fake news, to support its back story and to validate other fake sources. Lying for money by Dan Davies is a good read on the subject of major frauds of the past. He notes how some have worked by capturing the control mechanisms. Like it or not, Wikipedia is part of the disruption -- not in a good way -- of the control mechanisms that previously kept misinformation and disinformation in check. Personally I'm more concerned about how it is disrupting scientific and scholarly knowledge, but the effects are the same.