Group Behind 'To Catch A Predator' Claims Wikipedia Is A Corporate Sex Offender

from the might-be-a-bit-personal dept

We've seen all sorts of criticisms of Wikipedia over the years, but this might be a first. Apparently the group "Perverted Justice," the controversial online vigilante group that tries to lure online pedophiles out into the open (and is the group that is used by NBC Dateline's equally controversial "To Catch A Predator" show) is now claiming that Wikipedia is "a corporate sex offender." Apparently, if you follow the links from Wikipedia to Perverted Justice's site, it has a screed against Wikipedia -- claiming "each article on Wikipedia that deals with any issue relating to pedophiles or internet predators has been heavily targeted and edited by the online pedophile activist movement." Of course, there's a bit more to the story. Apparently, Perverted Justice's founder was recently barred from editing Wikipedia after people felt that he was flaming other users, deleting any negative reference to his organization, accusing others of being pedophiles without substantiation and when asked about it, replying "with invective." This suggests the anger at Wikipedia is a bit more about the guy being barred than any sort of official Wikipedia issue. If anything, it seems like yet another case where Wikipedia's neutral point of view has resulted in confusion. There's no doubt that Perverted Justice's reason for being is good -- but calling Wikipedia a sex offender seems quite extreme and unreasonable.

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