Wikipedia lambasted

WIKIPEDIA USER AND CRITIC Daniel Brandt has spotted tons of Wiki articles that he suspected of plagiarism, with pasted text from other sites on the Wibble.

One hundred and forty-two articles altogether have been suspected of plagiarism and brought to the attention of Wikipedia and its moderators. Brandt created a program to compare sentences found on Wikipedia to Google's search engine - the program removed material that had been copied from the Wiki.

Brandt reckons that Wikipedia should be held to a far higher standard than other pages on the web which unashamedly rip off content. Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales admitted that yes, sometimes plagiarised content does slip through the net, but thinks that Brandt's discoveries are a little bit much - though Jimmy agreed that the Wiki should be held to a higher standard than other user-generated websites.

A fair few of the 142 suspected articles have been reviewed by Wiking Moderators already and have been okayed, as the copied content has apparently come from public domain.

As this blogger says, Wikipedia is not without its fair share of dastardly users. An example pointed out in the blog mentions an article written by one "ABenis" about, suspiciously, Anthony M. Benis' "NPA personality theory." The article was in the top 0.2% of all Wiki articles, thanks to a clever campaign by Mr Benis himself and cohort Wiking "Dkatana."

Wikipedia's one of the biggest sources of user generated info on the Wibble, with over 1 million articles to date. µ