Thread: I always learn something new from Wikipedia...

I traced that back to an anonymous contributor last year. It's probably spread throughout the web on the various Wikipedia copy sites too.

What you can/should do when you find something like that is either add a {{fact}} template to the statement, which causes a "citation needed" tag and flags it for attention, or you can just delete it if it is patent nonsense, putting something like "deleted unsupported claim" in the edit summary.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikiped...urced_material

Wikipedia sounds like a foreign word for"wouldn't have a clue what they are talking about".
Silky for fence posts --- next thing they will tell you is balsa makes a great bridge timber.

I think there is a general misunderstanding about what Wikipedia is. There is no "they". Anyone can contribute to it, that's why it pays to check other sources if it really matters to you. I wouldn't build a fence from silky oak on the strength of something I read in Wikipedia and neither should you.

When I was a regular contributor, there was a constant stream of garbage being added by well-meaning or not so well-meaning people. That's one of the reasons I got sick of it and tuned out.

I use it as a quick reference for things but if it matters, always check other sources. The web is full of idiots who think they're funny.

The kiwi's use treeferns for fence posts, maybe they can't get silky oak there