International Aroid Society

Dear Ted and all Aroid Friends,

Thanks, Ted!
By now it SHOULD be obvious that Wikipedia is a VERY unreliable sourceof information on aroids or ANY material.
I would NOT be surprised if it has become a ''tool'' of persons who areusing it to push THEIR agenda. "They" can post ''their'' agendas(which may be VERY inaccurate, as we have seen in this examples quotedhere by Ted, plus others quoted previously), and ''they'' can keepediting any correction to THEIR false entry back to ''their'' originalinaccurate posting, so that ''their'' misinformation is spread as beingfactual. This by Wikipedia, a source, which to most of the generalpublic, is an aparently ''reliable'' source''. Not so!!!
Enough said. ''There are none so blind as those who WILL not see''.

Julius

Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2009 11:42:01 -0500
From: oppenhauser2001@gmail.com
To: aroid-l@gizmoworks.com
Subject: [Aroid-l] Wikipedia

Julius and Steve, and others interested in Truth and Honesty,

Let me tell you a story about Wikipedia.

A couple of weeks ago I came across a book in my"weirdness" section called "You and Your Palm", by a guy named "Cheiro"(pronounced like the two Greek letters Chi and Rho). It turns out hewas a late 1920s and early 30s sort of palm reader to the stars. Thebook contains palm prints and diagnoses of a number of famous moviestars of the day. I don't know how you feel about palm reading andthese related skills, but I am not a fan except in the sense of mockeryand derision.

Well, I looked up the good doctor on Wikipedia and founda very flattering account of his life. Among the testimonials to hisgreatness as a seer was what was purported to be an excerpt from aguest book he kept. The entry was from Mark Twain and indicated howpleased Twain was with the results of his sessions with the master.

As it happens I know some things about Mark Twain. Amongthem is that Mark Twain was a huge skeptic. In fact, there is a wholesection in his autobiography (Chapter 13) in which he discusses somecontrolled experiments he had done with both palm readers andphrenologists of his day. Interestingly, they all concluded that onething his personality lacked was a sense of humor (!). These were doneby Mark Twain (and his agent) without revealing his identity.Curiously, when he presented himself to a couple of the same jokers ashis real self, they managed to conjure up that he had a strong sense ofhumor. So much for the veracity of the occult sciences.

Anyway, I thought I'd add an item to Wikipedia relatingto this and suggested that the views quoted there might be comparedwith Mark Twain's own testimony with its not-so-veiled skepticism aboutsame. I was diplomatic. I merely pointed readers to something thatmight shed more light on the subject.

This morning I checked the Wikipedia site and, sureenough, my comment had been deleted and the entry about Mark Twain'sendorsement of Cheiro's abilities remained unaltered. In the past twoweeks I suppose some partisan of palmistry had reversed my efforts.

I was immediately doubtful when I first learned ofWikipedia. I have stronger doubts about it now, after my experience.Better, I think, is to rely on peer-reviewed matter, such as Aroideana,for one's information about scientific topics. For non-scientifictopics we are at the mercy of our own judgment, I suppose.

Ted.