Wikipedia:Truth is irrelevant

On Wikipedia, the criterion for inclusion is verifiability not truth. In other words, truth is irrelevant. If a reliable source says something, then that counts as a "fact", regardless of whether that fact contradicts basic background knowledge. After all, an encyclopedia is just supposed to be a collection merely of "facts", caveat emptor, not of true facts.

Furthermore, in this postmodern era, truth is not even a desirable feature of an encyclopedia. After all, are not all views equally valid? An encyclopedia must not "take sides" on factual matters. Instead, we should present all sides, without getting hung up about whether things are actually true.

In fact, for Wikipedia's purposes, the more divorced a reliable source is from reality, the better! Does the BBC claim that an infant will win the Nobel prize for ground-breaking work in chemistry? Then that fact should be added to the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. After all, it is germane and very significant: an infant winning the Nobel Prize would be unprecedented in the history of science. Whether it's true or not is irrelevant.

This is especially true for biographies of living persons. The best source for biographies is well-known to be The Daily Mail. It has the courage and editorial fortitude to print things that other, lesser periodicals do not. Because Wikipedia is not censored, we must print the most salacious and up-to-date details about living persons, and the Mail is the best source for those.

See also

edit