Wikitruth

http://www.wikitruth.info/index.php?title=Main_Page

The fine folks at the Wikipedia Review have gone all-out and founded an anti-Wikipedia wiki! Using MediaWiki (the same software that runs Wikipedia), they are now ready to compile a vast database of every mistake, every edit war, every piece of dirt they can find to tar Wikipedia and prove to the world that…well…Wikipedia sucks. Some of the dirt and gossip these folks have is actually quite interesting, such as their claim that you can't include a link to Wikitruth on any Wikimedia-sponsored wiki site, including Wikia (formerly Wikicities). (I'm glad I did it the hard way and hosted my own wiki!)

(Update: Apparently Wikitruth isn't automaticallly blacklisted at Wikia anymore. However, they state that anyone who uses the generic SpamBlacklist on their own Wikia site will still block out Wikitruth.)

However, it's still sad to see so much antipathy and sheer obsession with proving Wikipedia wrong here. If these guys end up befriending every "enemy" Wikipedia has earned over the years, who will they find in their company? The answer is: spammers, egoists, slanderers, racists, rip-off artists, and closed-minded idiots who refuse to admit that anyone else other than themselves are right.

I see the rivalry between Wikitruth and Wikipedia mirroring the Usenet wars between the net.kooks and the anti-spammers that took place in the 1990s, in which a small gang of troublemakers became more shrill, more idiotic with each passing day, and more and more obsessed with proving their opponents (the anti-spammers) were criminals, "pedophiles," and "against free speech." In the end, the net.kooks' war probably caused more harm to the Internet – and gave more tools and techniques to spammers and vandals – than anything the anti-spammers did against "free speech" in their battle to stop spammers. What will Wikitruth be like a year, three years from now…and how obsessed will its members be with ruining Wikipedia?