Intelligent people know that "Intelligent Design" is sham science, and it is reflected in encyclopedias, including the Wikipedia. However, unlike many other tomes of knowledge, the Wikipedia can be edited by just about anyone. It is the collective group of contributors, editors, and policies that makes the wiki so successful.
The Discovery Institute has admitted to violating these policies. More under the fold.
Over the years, Wikipedia has suffered many assaults on the information contained within: vandalism, spam, and misinformation campaigns. One of the ways to retain integrity of the articles is the policy on autobiographies. This
policy states the following:
You should wait for others to write an article about subjects in which you are personally involved. This applies to articles about you, your achievements, your business, your publications, your website, your relatives, and any other possible conflict of interest.
Wikipedia has gone through many prolonged disputes about the significance, factual accuracy, and neutrality of such articles, including one about Jimmy Wales himself. Refraining from such editing is therefore important in maintaining Wikipedia's neutral stance and in avoiding the appearance of POV-pushing.
Pretty simple, eh? The point is to maintain neutrality in the articles; to go with the wikicommunity's consensus on what that neutrality is.
Unfortunately, the Discovery Institute does not understand this concept. In their perceptions that their pseudoscience is unfairly treated as such, they have attempted to make changes to it (emphasis added):
I know of numerous people who have tried to suggest changes to Wikipedia to lessen the current bias of the ID entries -- including staff of Discovery Institute. They were rebuffed. The moderators of Wikipedia's ID-pages have repeatedly rejected and censored changes that would provide some semblance of balance or objectivity to the discussion. Basic accuracy on dates and names have suffered, never mind the downright falsehoods about the science.
It's pretty obvious where the bias is really coming from: the Discovery Institute. The scientific consensus is not on their side, and the Wikipedia community is not on their side; their side is a minority of religious extremists and those they have duped. Let's make an analogy: this is like the Astrology Institute complaining that the astrology article makes mention that its critics consider it pseudoscience. The wiki on Intelligent Design is actually quite neutral. I would have classified it as pseudoscience outright instead of stating that "an overwhelming majority of the scientific community views intelligent design as unscientific, as pseudoscience or as junk science."
I wonder if DI will apologize for their willful violation of Wikipedia policy, or if instead they will attack the policy with ad hominem slurs much like they did to Judge Jones.
It is quite interesting that despite the article attacking the Wikipedia for not cowtowing to their side, there was no link to the Wikipedia articles in question. It's as though they don't want their readers to view the truth about Intelligent Design.