The Daily Mail ban

Because no one else is doing it--not even the media.
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Re: The Daily Mail ban

Post by sashi » Wed Jul 25, 2018 2:09 pm

Paul Bedson wrote:I just don't get how about 50 editors out of a community of tens of thousands can decide for that community. It all sounds a bit Stalinist to me!


Hard to believe though it may be, a Daily Mail exclusive lasted on George Galloway all through an entire ArbCom case until an alert(ed) John rapidly removed it for fear of any WP:BLP shenanigans that might be going on. ^^

(disclosure: I'm following the latest KFC on the talk page with some amusement. Snooooog... give it up... repent... ^^)

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Re: The Daily Mail ban

Post by CrowsNest » Fri Jul 27, 2018 8:19 pm

John considers it his personal mission to wipe evidence of the Mail's existence in his world, from Wikipedia.

Hey, Mr Wikipedia Administrator, which part of WP:DAILYMAIL, indeed which fucking policy at all, tells you that the sentence.....
His interview with Saddam was published in The Mail on Sunday
....is to be deleted from Wikipedia immediately?

You gonna try and argue that is a WP:BLP violation? Good luck with that. You'll probably succeed, but only by bullshitting. Indeed, since the edit needed your advanced permissions to be made given the outgoing article protection, I'd say that makes it your only viable defence, lest you want to be seen to be abusing your rights to exert undue control over basic editorial decisions.

If you had any intention of building an encylopedia, you would recognise that fact has encyclopedic value for the reader, for the very reason you wankers absolutely hate the Mail (tons of people read it), and so you would leave it and merely tag it as needing a source, if the Mail itself isn't sufficient proof of what the Mail has published (people will think me crazy to even suggest Wikipedians are that retarded, but you would be surprised at what their rabid hatred of the Mail makes them say and do).

This only reason you get away with it, Mr. Wikipedia Administrator, ironically given the reasoning for your bullshit Mail ban, is there really isn't any penalty for anyone who manipulates Wikipedia to hide relevant facts from the reader, if letting them read it, hurts their political ideology.

All you powerless ordinary Wikipedia editors, even concerned fellow Admins, have a go at putting these questions to John. He will laugh in your faces. You are nothing to him. You might have tens of thousands of edits to your name, it won't buy you one ounce of respect with a guy like John, if he gets even a hint that your purpose is to stop his purge.

Sucks to be you.

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Re: The Daily Mail ban

Post by CrowsNest » Sun Jul 29, 2018 3:18 pm

AndyTheGrump wrote:The problem with the Mail is that some people take its claims to be a serious newspaper on face value.
Another brilliant piece of incisive analysis that the jokers of Wikipediocracy are known for.

I doubt this gimp could even tell me what he thinks makes a serious newspaper, much less do so in a way that convincingly excludes the Mail. It sounds suspiciously like he puts as much thought into statements like this, as the average fuckwit Wikipedian, motivated as they are by nothing but ideology and jealousy. Naturally, his qualifications in the study of journalism, will be nil. Like all the Wikipedians.

But it's a moot point, like those scumbags, this coward has shown himself to be allergic to having their statements examined for such things. And Wikipediocracy, an alleged Wikipedia criticism site, chooses to enable his wishes, allowing him to hide in their Safe Space. More fool them.

Because like it or not, and the Wikipedians really do not, here's what people can take at face value about the Mail, because they are simply truisms. No amount of bullshit or bluster, makes them untrue. So they choose to ignore them in their assessments of "seriousness".

1. It has wide circulation
2. It has won independent awards for its journalism
3. It attracts serious exclusives
4. It has political influence
5. It attracts guest columnists and writers of the highest reputation in their field

The biggest proof the Mail is a serious newspaper, is that in the debate which led the Wikipedians to ban it, they universally refused to even bother trying to convincingly prove their allegations, much less by showing us where they might appear in what they otherwise set their stall out to, namely significant coverage in independent reliable sources. Much less applying the even higher standards of proof they sometimes require for really serious decisions, with wide reaching impact.

Content that their screwed up culture and broken governance insulated them from real scrutiny, much less accountability for knowingly making false statements, they were content to list mere examples of the Mail's supposed unreliability, not caring from who or where they came from. An example of a prepared story published in error, was included. A blog from a disgruntled employee, was included. Presentation of headlines as if they were stories, was included.

A total lie about complaint statistics in press regulation was included, advanced by the architect of the half baked slap dash proposal, and right at the top of the debate. Third party correction of that lie came late, was made in an obscure way, and did not prompt the liar to apologise or retract. He certainly faced no sanction for it. It is still there, all these months later. I found it ironic that this resembles exactly what they accuse the Mail of, and so it was no surprise to see that person later admit, after he had achieved his aim, that he was deliberately using Daily Mail stye tactics to achieve it. That's what Wikipedians do. Scum.

It was also no surprise to see him later conduct himself so poorly, breaking rules Wikipedians actually care about, they finally kicked him out. Their Mail hating hero. If you assumed that means there would be a systematic review of all his past acts to see if they were tainted by rule breaches, you must be dreaming.

This is Wikipedia, there is no such thing as regulation or accountability for them. Happy to denigrate the Mail for the views of people long since dead, published eighty years ago, but unwilling to examine the despicable acts of their own thoroughly discredit scum, from just a few months ago. We have to assume they are still alive, but chances are he has since done something that typically gets you killed.

I can quite easily do the same as they did to the Mail, to 'prove' the case for any supposedly serious newspaper you dare to mention, even the BBC, because nobody is perfect, and lying in a venue where lying costs nothing, is fucking easy. Any keyboard coward can claim the Mail routinely fabricated stories, even quotes, as Guy Macon did. Publishing a newspaper in the UK which contains that sort of blatant lie, with our legal system and penalties for defamation, is decidedly not easy.

That was the extent of their desperation. This gimp is as desperate as they are. And he is every bit the coward that they are.

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Re: The Daily Mail ban

Post by CrowsNest » Fri Aug 03, 2018 8:52 pm

I think we can expect a damming article in the Mail slamming Wikipedia soon, and by none other than Peter Hitchins, who is currently indefinitely blocked on Wikipedia (as User:Clockback) by that notorious shitheel Guy Chapman, but also reinforced by several other Administrators, each one as clueless as the last. You know it's officially become a farce when 331dot turns up to concur with his colleagues, as per his thread here.

The beauty of it all, is that the likely article won't reveal any special or unique failing of Wikipedia or the Wikipedians. They simply got themselves in this situation by doing their normal everyday thing. Namely being lazy, contradictory, hostile, disproportionate, abusive, hyoocritical, idiotic and pompous.

And even though Hitchins is strongly associated with the Mail, it is in doubt whether their hostility to the publication is making them act worse than they normally would in this situation. Either way, they have been stupid enough to register examples of their hatred, so you can expect him to highlight that.

In response to the likely article, you can expect the Wikipedians to bleat on, proferring the usual excuses for their dysfunction. Hutchins did this, he didn't do that, blah, blah, blah. Nobody not already addicted to Wikipedia will be convinced. They will think them lunatics, or rather agree with what will be Hitchin's main thrust of the article, that they are assholes acting with malice aforethought.

It could get quite nasty, since Guy wants his block to stand up on the basis Hutchins is not and has never has been a Wikipedian, so good fucking riddance. Which will be good, since it will be hard to explain, if that is really true, how they let Hitchins rack up 862 edits over 12 years, never blocking him once until now.

Hilariously, Hitchins has his own ready made example of how Wikipedia is unreliable garbage, from his family history. It joins the thousands of others. Suck on that, Wikipedians. As common as they are, it never hurts to have those things widely circulated in popular newspapers.

Kingsindian is trying to help Hitchins from the inside. Sad how he keeps making the mistake of thinking the Wikipedians give the slightest fuck. He's in limbo right now, not quite critic, but not quite Wikipedian.

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Re: The Daily Mail ban

Post by CrowsNest » Sat Aug 04, 2018 12:18 am

I have to say that I know Guy is no fan of the Daily Mail, and consequently indefinitely blocking an established Mail journalist is probably a conflict of interest and a misguided move. The Mail would be only to keen to ham up the “Wikipedia banned prestigious journalist!” angle, which could be a PR disaster for the WMF. Does anyone else endorse an indefinite block? For the record, I think Clockback’s edits are wholly unsuitable for a neutral article and should not be allowed to stand. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 07:10, 1 August 2018 (UTC)
This, from the same guy who also openly hates the Mail, but wrote the following Wikipedia article.......

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enemies_of_the_People_(headline)

.....and promptly got it featured on their front page......

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template: ... the_People

Is he really dumb enough, or arrogant enough, to believe that he is not conflicted in such a scenario, but Guy would be? If you check out the thread we have on him here, the answer is yes, yes he is.

I'm putting aside the fact when he said this, he had already missed Guy's claim, and it really can only be called a claim, that he didn't know who Clockback was before he blocked him. The relevant issue is that at the time, and probably even after the denial, Ritchie believed he knew, thus believes he was conflicted. Or to be accurate, "probably" conflicted. Which is a useless term to use in this context. He either was or he wasn't, in your view, as the person alleging the conflict exists. Probably comes into it if or when others examine the issue. And it looks like they aren't buying it.

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Re: The Daily Mail ban

Post by sashi » Sat Aug 04, 2018 3:13 pm

This sequence is quite telling. Hitchens is a better writer than most people who get blocked, but I don't think that's the main reason (or even among the reasons) why he has not yet had talk page access removed . Surely that would have happened days ago if he didn't write for the Mail on Sunday.

I think it would be good to have a link to further reading (from the moment of the block), so I'll add one (§)

Earlier in the thread, you mentioned the number of articles referenced in Wikipedia. Doing rather dull search queries I've learned that the Daily Mail is actually quite a Wikisource as sources go, linked 27,336 times from en-wp. (more than NASA, Bloomsberg , the Rolling Stone , The Hindu, or even Rotten Tomatoes, but not quite half as often as facebook is linked.)

20180804_Sources_enwiki.pdf

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Re: The Daily Mail ban

Post by CrowsNest » Mon Aug 06, 2018 8:56 am

It's used extensively as a source, and they hate that, because it reveals their true nature. They are not an encyclopedia, but a news aggregator, a large proportion of that being the daily developments in famous people's lives. That last part is how the Wikipedians try to explain why it is so heavily used, but like a lot of the things Wikipedians claim, it is easily debunked.

The top 20 results returned when I just checked, featured the following types of story.....

Science/Technology
3
Music
1
History
2
Fashion
1
Reality TV
2
Sport
2
Showbiz
2
Health
1
Food
2
Obituaries
2
Lifestyle
1

It isn't a coincidence that this basically covers the entire contents of the printed paper. The only thing that didn't come up was finance or motoring.

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Re: The Daily Mail ban

Post by CrowsNest » Mon Aug 06, 2018 12:36 pm

This is what I love about Wikipedia. People (including Hitchens) complain about anonymity, but the two biggest fuck ups in this entire epispde, the original block and now his ultimate punishment, being muted, were done by people whose identities are known - Guy Champan and JP Gordon.

The issue is not knowing who these people are, the issue is not being able to hold them to account on Wikipedia, for what they do on Wikipedia. All that knowing their identifies allows you to do, is hold them to account in real life. And there's only two ways to do that, by publicly shaming them, or via legal action. The former is useless, these people are shameless. The latter is largely pointless.

In terms of on wiki actions to that end, both are Administrators, so that means it has to be a pretty brave person to undo one of their actions, and by definition, it can only be done by another Administrator (since it is well established the WMF itself never dirties it's hands to rectify injustice, and there would be a riot if they did so in anything but the most obvious cases).

Both of these shitlords know Hitchins has already lost the game, largely because he didn't know what the rules were in the first place. Like so many before him, he persisted for too long under the impression that on Wikipedia, facts and logical argument matter, and that there is something akin to justice or at least proportionality.

He clearly had his talk page access removed once it became obvious to JP Gordon that Hitchins was wise to the game, and no longer wanted to play. Once a blocked user starts referring to their experience of Wikipedia as Kafkaesque, you know they're toast. As if to prove the point, JPGordon weight to explain himself as follows (a very late explanation it was too).....
Any admin who wants to is welcome to restore the user page access. I know nothing whatsoever of this conflict other than what I was drawn to as a result of the request for unblock. Just like his unblock requests, the verbiage on his talk page did not seem to be addressing the reasons for his block, and did not seem to me to be going in a useful direction. As far as "who is jpgordon", well, I'm probably one of the least anonymous editors on Wikipedia; I've been entirely public in my networked life since the early days of usenet and BBSing. But that's meaningless here. The question is asked, "in what area of public life J P Gordon (whoever he or she is) has any power or authority over Mr Hitchens?" That's easy. I'm one of 1,211 administrators on Wikipedia, and, like each of us could, I exerted blocking authority regarding the Wikipedia user account identified as User:Clockback, with the intent of reducing disruption to Wikipedia. Obviously it has failed in this instance; the disruption instead increased. Oh well. --jpgordon 22:29, 4 August 2018 (UTC)
Imagine my surprise, in reading those words, to find the following message on Hitchin's talk page......
No, that's not going to get you unblocked. It wouldn't surprise me at all if someone removes your talk page access if you try this approach again. --jpgordon 16:56, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
That wasn't a random comment, but was what JP Gordon thinks is an appropriate way to decline an appeal from someone who so clearly either doesn't understand or doesn't accept that in order to be unblocked, he simply has to admit guilt for a crime he didn't do, and say he won't do it again, even though the reasons for his alleged crime would still exist if the Wikipedians persisted in treating this matter in isolation.

Rather than wait for one of those other 1,211 Administrators to come to the conclusion he had, and perhaps because he could see none of them were going to, he decided to just do it himself, a day later. Even though he could see that what was happening on the talk page, while not textbook appeal negotiation, was at least aimed at resolving the issue. He wasn't simply ranting and raving into thin air, he was being talked to by three users, Kingsindian, onetwothreeip and another Admin, Swarm.

Indeed, what perhaps rattled JP Gordon into muting Hitchins, was seeing Swarm's rather generous act, which he explained here.....
Administrator note: I tried to close this as "no consensus to unblock" before sufficient time had elapsed for this to be considered a "community block" (which is a block that ends up endorsed after "due consideration" by the community, thus becoming a de facto CBAN). I did this in an attempt to avert unnecessary drama, prevent the escalation of an unintended CBAN, and to let this user retain the normal options for unblocking. Both the OP here and the blocked user have objected to the closure as too quick, and while I thoroughly explained to them the much more serious consequences of a formal community-endorsed block that has been given "due consideration", the OP has strenuously insisted that they want a fair trial. So, if the consensus to endorse the block continues to hold for a reasonable amount of time, that is a risk that the blocked user was made aware of and decided to take. Swarm 10:32, 4 August 2018 (UTC)
A fly in the ointment there being that it had already been open for 24 hours, which is considered the minimum for debating a community ban. That it had not been so closed, perhaps shows the other 1,200 not involved in the case can see the weakness of such an affirmation based on the specifics and general shitness of the efforts in community review thus far, even if not minded to undo the original block.

But it seems clear that all that further comment from Hitchins was going to do, was further build his case in his own mind, if not in general community, that he has been totally fucked over, by the unaccountable and completely illogical Wikipedia machine. Which, as Hitchins has already identified, is geared to one goal - protecting and encouraging those fools stupid enough to dedicate enough time to understanding how the game is played, and willingly playing.

He has already figured out the best winning move after seeing his detractors deploy it numerous times - if you find yourself in a hole, caught in a lie or a brazen act of hypocrisy, the best move for any Wikipedian, is to say nothing, or simply answer the bits of the post that don't land them in the shit. After all, what can anyone do to you? It's a volunteer website, so nobody can be forced to admit they are wrong. The only means Wikipedia has to even try to do that, is blocking, and as Hitchins has pointed out many times, the person arguably responsible for triggering his "bad" edit, is not blocked, and nobody else seems interested in the wider context at all.

As a further example, bearing in mind Hitchins has frequently cited how complex and confusing Wikipedia is, as he attempted to get unblocked, it was not surprising to see Guy make a post like this, in the place where he is supposed to be justifying his block.......
How many times do I have to explain this? The original block was for WP:TE/WP:DE/WP:EW (and WP:POINT, frankly, and possibly WP:CIR, certainly WP:NPOV, WP:V, WP:RS), the block review that you instigated has shown that in addition to being tendentious and disruptive, all this user's edits for the past decade are also WP:COI, despite numerous past warnings, and many are WP:PROMO. This is a user who simply does not accept our COI policy and who views his opinion as ineffable truth (m:MPOV). Add WP:NPA and (of course!) WP:NCR, leading to TPA removal, and I am left thinking that the only reason for unblocking at this point would be for comedy value, to see if he can collect the full set of policy violations before the next inevitable block. Guy (Help!) 12:55, 5 August 2018 (UTC)
Kingsindian has wasted a lot of time trying to defend Hitchins, and I don't know why, since he surely cannot be surprised to learn Guy is the sort of person who does this.....
We're done here. Guy (Help!) 15:02, 5 August 2018 (UTC)
I really do hope Hitchins sees the contemptuous manner off that post, the sheer brazennes of a veteran Wikipedia shitlord who clearly knows they are untouchable inside the Wikipedia bubble, and does the only right and just thing and slams all these fuckers in his paper. It won't get him unblocked, but he has surely figured out by now, that to get unblocked, he would have to accept their proposition that he is an idiot and a scumbag. And in all likelihood, have to accept a topic ban from the pages he clearly wants to edit.

Hitchins made the point himself, although it is easily missed in the walls of text (first rule of then gsme, don't write too much, and don't repeat yourself)......
But the implication, that I am so stupid that I cannot tell an encyclopaedia entry from a newspaper column, or vice versa, and that I think I could or should get away with interfering in entries which concern me in a way that suits my case, *while using my own name* is rather insulting. I am just not that thick.
To be unblocked, he really would have to accept them believing he is thick. Not only is that implicit by virtue of their many and repeated public slurs against anyone who works for the Mail, which can be found all over Wikipedia, not just in this debacle, the Wikipedians are showing it by deliberately ignoring his explanation for that "bad" edit for this long.

If there was justice and accountability to be found anywhere on Wikipedia, if there was a prospect of any of them being remotely prepared to accept they have got it wrong, or could at least accept he is not thick, then he would have been swiftly unblocked, rather than being subjected to this torture of a thousand cuts.

Still, it is far better he be tortured like this, since it will leave a deep, long lasting impression. I have high hopes it will bear fruit not just in a single article in the Mail, but an whole series of them, exposing how Wikipedia really works, that they will then mindlessly dismiss in the usual way.

Since he will surely soon realise, in time, that his case was not special but simply routine. That they treat people like this all the time. There is no bigger crime for the Wikipedians, than a user realising the whole thing is rigged, a hypocritical farce, but then not being so overcome with the need to edit, that they would wllingly be a party of it, subjugating themselves to shitlords like Guy, or in this case to a group of people who see in him the qualities espoused in WP:ADMIN. Reading that document and comparing his experience to it at the hands of people like 331dot, should be the last straw for Hitchins.

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Re: The Daily Mail ban

Post by CrowsNest » Tue Aug 07, 2018 9:53 am

If anyone is still in any doubt that this ban was political, consider this......

1. Sarah Jeong joins the NYT editorial board
2. People find allegedly racist statements in her social media history
3. The ensuing shitstorm makes the BBC.....(2 Aug)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-45052534
4. After deploying every trick in the book, the left leaning Wikipediote grudgingly accept maybe now they have to mention it (5 Aug)
5. Even more questionable tweets are found, notably attacking the police
6. This makes it into the Daily Mail (4 Aug)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... -cops.html

That's the basic timeline, but of course the Wikipedians have expended kilobytes of discussion getting that far. There's now a ton of sources on the page showing there is more to this than the BBC story and her rather pathetic excuse.

As they discussed whether or not the Mail story on this anti-police aspect was evidence it was significant enough to mention (WP:DUE), some sensible Wikipedians arguing that if makes it all the way across the Atlantic into a major national newspaper, it is significant, the Wikipediot fighting hardest to defend Jeong and present the whole controversy as a right wing harassment campaign, didn't need to use any fancy words, or explain himself at all. Thanks to this ban, he was able to shut that entire sub-debate down with a simple post.......
See WP:DAILYMAIL. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 22:07, 6 August 2018 (UTC)
And at time of writing, that is where it ended.

And that, dear reader, is how you turn a fabricated argument that the Mail is unreliable, into a powerful weapon, whereby you can suppress any story you do not want Wikipedia to feature, merely because it has the wrong politics, as if it was as irrelevant as mentioning the flat earth theory in the Earth article.

If you think I'm making this shit up, please note this is the first paragraph of WP:DUE.......
Neutrality requires that each article or other page in the mainspace fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in the published, reliable sources.[3] Giving due weight and avoiding giving undue weight means that articles should not give minority views or aspects as much of or as detailed a description as more widely held views or widely supported aspects. Generally, the views of tiny minorities should not be included at all, except perhaps in a "see also" to an article about those specific views. For example, the article on the Earth does not directly mention modern support for the flat Earth concept, the view of a distinct (and miniscule) minority; to do so would give undue weight to it.
By declaring the Mail unreliable, this is what they were setting out to do, namely in terms of assigning it significance, to put it in the same bracket as the writings of people who wear tin foil hats and bark at the moon.

They can't rid the world of the Mail, much less rid the world of all the people who read it, so they set out to do the next best thing, and pretend it doesn't exist.

There would have been some warped kind of integrity in them simply being honest and stating this was their goal all along. But they're Wikipedians, and a defining feature of the species is to never state what your true intention is. Although it you go back and look, some didn't even bother to hide it. They think they're untouchable. They think they won't suffer any consequences.

They are wrong.

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Re: The Daily Mail ban

Post by CrowsNest » Tue Aug 07, 2018 10:35 am

Some sad reading for the Wikipediots......(June 2018)
Daily Mail’s market share is 24.9%, up 0.6% year-on-year

* Saturday’s Daily Mail remains the biggest-selling newspaper on any single day, outselling its nearest competitor by 211k copies and with a UK retail sale of 1.79m copies

* The Mail on Sunday’s market share is up 0.3% year-on-year to 22%

* The Mail on Sunday’s annual UK retail sales value is £91.3m, higher than any other Sunday paper
Not bad for a paper the Wikipediots would have you believe is national socialist, celebrity obsessed and routinely fabricates quotes, even entire stories (those were all things Wikipedianss actually said during the course of the ban discussion, and faced no sanction for).

It's also worth noting the Mail group publishes the Metro, the free newspaper given out on public transport across the country. If it isn't the only such title, it is certainly the most popular.

So their ban of the Mail for not being a real newspaper, has clearly had no effect on the newspaper buying habits of the general public. At least not the one they were hoping for. Perhaps most worryingly for the Wikipediots, is that this shows that even though newspaper sales are declining across the board, the Mail is holding its market share and then some, and their financials reveal the decline is within expectations, and much of the loss is being offset by gains in digital.

So if the Wikipedians want to kill the Mail, they're going to have to work doubly hard to remove its links. Which is a big ask, since they've not put much effort into it at all so far. But even if they did, this all rather suggests it won't reduce the public's desire to seek it out regardless.

If they had an honest bone in their body, they would admit why that might be. Namely, it is a real newspaper. A tremendously successful newspaper. Nobody is perfect, but if the Mail was even 1% guilty of the crimes the Wikipedians accused it of, very publicly, and let's be clear, under UK law they are all crimes, civil or criminal, since we don't have the First Amendment here, it would have gone bust years ago.

Luckily for Wikipedia, they suffer no penalties for lying, not legal or financial. And unlike any newspaper in the free world, Wikipedia takes a bizarre pride in being able to say they're not meant to be believed, that you are to assume every last word in their website, is fabricated.

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