The Signpost

In the news

Criticism from climate change sceptic, decade in review

Climate change sceptic attacks Wikipedian

In the wake of Climategate, journalist Lawrence Solomon has an opinion column on "Wikipedia's climate doctor", alleging that User:William M. Connolley "turned Wikipedia into the missionary wing of the global warming movement." The article accuses Connolley of a long-term campaign of biased editing in global-warming related articles, including abuse of his administrator status. Solomon, a global warming sceptic who has chronicled climate change denial and related viewpoints on the part of scientists in the 2008 book The Deniers, previously published a series of opinion columns criticising Wikipedia's climate change coverage and some of the editors involved in maintaining it.

Wikipedians have been discussing the column on the talk page of the Wikipedia article on Connolley, noting how misleading it is with respect to Connolley's history as an editor and administrator. Although Connolley lost his administrator status after a recent arbitration case, his editing and administrator activities related to climate change have on the whole been supported by other Wikipedians, despite unusually close scrutiny because of Connolley's focus on controversial topics.

Summing up the decade

Wikipedia has been appearing in many end-of-the-decade columns:

...and many more.


















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