Wikipedia: The Dark Side

I've visited Wikipedia before, and even blogged about it, in my previous blog. The basic idea is that Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia about everything and anything, with the articles being written by the general public. The articles themselves are constantly editable, as new information is learned, or people with expertise in a topic show up to burnish the edges. But, the concept always suffered from one flaw, in my opinion -- how am I to ultimately know whether what I'm reading has been fact-checked, and is as unbiased as possible? Well, that flaw is exposed in a big way in the following USA Today article, about an assistant to Robert Kennedy, Attorney General in the '60s . Form your own opinions, but this points to why I think there needs to be better research and fact-checking involved, somehow.

A false Wikipedia 'biography'
[Courtesy of USATODAY.com]

Wikipedia.com