Calling Jimmy Wales

This is an unusual post, even for me. People familiar with Wikipedia know how kooks of all sorts can twist and turn articles to push their favorite pseudoscience, be it creationism, homeopathy, flat earthism, or the much verified fact that waving a pigeon over the stomach of a jaundiced patient is a tried and true remedy.

But Wikipedia is not the only website to attract these kinds of intellectual cretins. Recently, YouTube has faced the same problems, particularly with the rabid creationists. On the other hand, people who use YouTube as an educational medium to promote science sometimes have a hard time of it. Just ask Thunderf00t.

While reading Pharyngula's blog today, I learned that the James Randi Educational Foundation, which also had a YouTube channel, has been banned. I am not certain why, but the word on the street is that too many kooks complained about it, and if you click the link I just provided, you will see why so many kooks don't llke him.

Thunderf00t and others have responded boldly:



I would like to call on Jimmy Wales to respond too, and I will do it in a personal message here.

Jimmy, you have always been a supporter of Randi and his work, and one of the little perks I had when working at the office was skimming through your subscription to Skeptic's Magazine that was delivered there. You have also spoken time and again about the importance of free speech and the problems of internet censorship. You are also one of the few people who can pick up the phone and call Sergei and Larry (after all, Google owns YouTube), and tell them this is wrong.

We may not like each other very much. We may disagree virulently about just about everything. Still, I'd like to think that there are at least some basic values that we still share, and that this is one of them.

I'll probably never know if you actually did anything about this, but I hope you will.

D