According to a wikipedia.com article…
Can anyone verify this? If true, where can I find more information regarding this issue.
Though it’s just a stub, a link would be nice. The first page of Google reports, though, all look rather psychoceramic. I can’t say one way or the other.
Wikipedia, is just a series of article that can be postedor edited by anyone. Rather useless. I could even go to that page and delete the article, at least I think I could.
IYHO
Rather more than my not-so-humble opinion. Read below.
If I can go to Wikipedia, and post anything I wish, then how can that information be used to substantiate anything?
If I can delete or alter what others post at that site, how reliable is the info?
As a matter-of-fact, I see from that site the following: alterego is a paid spy , that you are part of the problem. Right after Philips(sic) Graham. 
samclem: Sorry, bucko, but vandals get banned from Wikipedia. Someone notices the pages you altered, reverts all your edits, and bans your IP address and/or block.
You lose.
samclem, in addition to the aforementioned, any edits are listed here with ip address or username. Interestingly, there actually is one right around the time of your post on that very same article.
You make your point, but I find Wikipedia very useful at times, as i’m sure lots of others do.
And, above all else, my whole point was to nudge the OP towards the habit of posting links as well as quotes.
Now, that settled, can we get back on topic?
I apologize to Wikipedia and those on here. I would NEVER try to do something unethical. I didn’t read all their info before doing that. Had no idea what an interesting and dedicated community they are.
The change was performed by me, of course.
But, to the OP, what bothers me it that the readers of this forum might give extra weight to an article that is posted in an Encyclopedia. While I am now MORE impressed with the community over at Wikipedia, I can’t say that I’d readily accept an article there. But I would the Encyclopedia Britannica.
Does that make sense?
My copy of the Codeword Dictionary doesn’t list anything called “Mockingbird.”
Of course, the CIA might have bribed the publishers to leave it out. :rolleyes:
I trust Wikipedia because the process is open and each article has a talk page.
For example, look at the page on JFK’s assassination. If Wikipedia was as bad as samclem seems to think it is, it would be a nest of conspiracy theories and edit wars. As it is, the official theory gets most of the time and the other theories are all in one single section. Very clean.
And if you look at the talk page, you’ll see that people are discussing changing the page. They want to create a single, undisputed timeline as the main focus of the page, and then put all theories in a single section. The culture of the neutral point-of-view is strong.
The English-language Wikipedia is one of the most active online communities in my knowledge. It’s highly respected in many quarters, not only because it’s more up-to-date and comprehensive than any dead tree collection, but because if you notice junk, you can clean it up. It’s as good (or as bad) as you want it to be.
It’s interesting how the old philosophical saw about reality being essentially constructed by consensus of observers is coming true as regards describing reality.
Britannica doesn’t operate from a preferred reference point, either, Mathochist. No such location exists, in physics or politics.
I’m of the opinion that work operates from a reference point. Anything any one person says is informed by their own reference point. Anything created by multiple authors is informed by a collective reference point, which is somehow constructed from those of the authors.
The difference is that the Encyclopedia Britannica’s method of constructing this reference is through the action of an editorial staff, while Wikipedia’s is (ideally) through the consensus of anyone who wants to contribute. It’s analogous to how the scientific community (as opposed to any one journal) constructs the notion of what “science” consists of. A more illustrative example can be built on the JFK example cited earlier: The Warren report was the product of one selected editorial board, while Wikipedia’s coverage presents that report most significantly (as the predominant view) while adding sections to report on competing views which (I believe) will end up having prominence roughly proportional to their acceptance by the community as a whole.
But, again, this veers far more into the philosophy of information gathering and reporting than it answers the OP’s question.
As the author of Codeword Dictionary I am (I guess) the only person who collects codenames.
I have never heard of MOCKING BIRD. That does not mean it did not exist.
Oh, **Ranchoth **, thank you for your support.
Mockingbird had very little to with the media. It was primarily an attempt to engineer a new type of agave plant. The CIA had predicted that the Hispanic population of the USA would grow dramatically. They wanted to place control mechanisms in that population before while it was still a tiny minority. the goal of Operation Mockingbird was an agave plant, that when processed into tequila, made humans more succeptible to subliminal messages. The name was actually a pun -To Kill A Mockingbird= Tequila Mockingbird= Mockingbird. There were other related operation. Operation Smoke And Mirrors was an investigation into the feasability of controlling the Hispanic population through manipulation of Santaria, Mucumbe, and other practices based on precolumbian religions. The name was derived from smoky mirror, a title of Tezcatlipoca a trickster god.
Mockingbird was pronounced a failure and canceled. It was discovered that the worm absorbed nearly all of the psychoactive substance the project’s scientists had worked so hard to create.
So far as I know, Smoke And Mirrors remains active. I have seen some evidence that George W and Jeb have used this Operation to gain control of Texas and Florida repsectively.
I have taken steps to remove Mockingbird from the Wiki.
Thanks for the heads up.