In recent months Wikipedia has turned into Wackypedia. What started out as a great successor to has been taken over by a cabal of eggheads. It started when its rulers got their feelings hurt because universities told students that Wikipedia articles weren't "academic enough" — i.e. they didn't verify their findings or present long lists of references and footnotes. The Wikids decided to tighten the reins because they still yearned for admittance into the cap and gown priesthood they had all dropped out of. Apparently they were having trouble sleeping at night.

They could have written to their authors to ask them politely to justify their questionable claims, but instead they decided to throw their weight around and insert insulting and humiliating "fright banners" in bold type at the top of articles they were afraid would get them in hot water with people they should have known not to care about in the first place.

I laughed out loud today when I came across the following example. At the top of a brief article that explains various English-language terms for bed sizes — twin, double, queen, king — appears the following two warnings:

This article needs references that appear in reliable third-party publications. Primary sources or sources affiliated with the subject are generally not sufficient for a Wikipedia article. Please add more appropriate citations from reliable sources.

The examples and perspective in this article may not represent a worldwide view of the subject. Please improve this article and discuss the issue on the talk page.

Do you need more convincing proof that eggheads are insane? First of all, anyone who knows high school English can see that they meant "might" when they wrote "may". But more importantly, why would anyone lie about bed sizes? How could anybody with a brain larger than a walnut even be wrong about bed sizes? And, since I was looking at the English version of Wikipedia and the article distinguished clearly between American, British and Austrailian terminology, what "worldwide view" could possibly be missing here? Finally, unlike terms like gluon, Parliament, and The War of the Roses — which refer to things and events about which verifiable data from numerous sources can readily be gathered — the terminology of bed sizes is an utterly arbitrary convention whose only purpose is to satisfy the commercial needs of bed manufacturers to sell beds, and whose relation to "truth" has nothing to do with scientific methods or journalistic credibility. The Wikids are scratching their heads here, wondering if the true name of a rose is indeed "rose".

Wikipedia has become a poster child for the moral of "Jurassic Park" — that "life finds a way" — because people communicate through it despite the attempts of the Wikipundits to stop them. That's the only reason it's still useful to us little people on the ground.

If you ask a high school geek just learning about science, she'll tell you that absolutely everything should be proven before you believe it, otherwise how do you know it isn't just a rumor or a myth? And this is an important stand to take when you begin to see that most people around you believe in ancient superstitions. But it's not true. Just how, for starters, could she prove her claim? We tried to found a science of science, but it just didn't work out very well.

Karl Popper finally said that, in science, there's no real way to "prove" anything since you might eventually find a counterexample. ( is a good book on this topic.) Therefore we can only disprove our theories, or "falsify" them. If a theory seems reasonable it's okay to entertain it, but always watch for those damned black swans to crash the party. The same principle should hold for Wikipedia. If you can disprove a claim in a particular article, go ahead and do it. Don't just say, "You haven't proven these rash and spurious claims about bed sizes." That will make you look like a silly librarian and people might laugh behind your back. (Might, not may!)

Despite our adorable high school friends — and the "scientistic" geeks that some of them become — the fact is that much of our world is simply "given" to us, or (yes) "revealed". When you wake up in the morning you think, "Wow, I'm still alive!" You don't need any proof to know this, or indeed any scientific background whatsoever. You don't need to have seen the inside of a school room, and you don't even need to have acquired language yet. And despite rumor's bad reputation, much of what informs our daily life is indeed unverified hearsay from friends and neighbors. So let's lift our granny glasses, take a deep breath, and decide to trust one another just a little bit more than the Wikiwacks do.

And I'm happy to report that most of Wikipedia's "nag boxes" have been utterly ignored by the authors they're trying to intimidate — as they should be. Apparently their volunteers have more respect for free speech than the Wikiwankers do.