Eating & Smelling

Sometimes the weaknesses of the Wikipedia system of documenting knowledge creep up and show themselves. I mean, I love me some Wiki, I think it's got great articles on a huge array of topics, but sometimes it has glaring errors of inconsistencies, owing to the communal nature of it's self-correcting processes.

 

Look up something obvious and open, like "Food". The first sentence is:

 

"Food is any substance that is consumed to provide nutritional support for the body, possibly to the point of excess."

 

That's not really a good definition. I mean, that last part about excess, why is that in there? It seems to be skewed towards humans for one thing, and especially western countries and our overeating habits. The base definition of food needs to be very generalized. Including the possibility of overeating at this point is just plain silly. It's about like saying:

 

"Food is any substance that is consumed to provide nutritional support for the body, and is sometimes later vomited up."

 

or

 

"Food is any substance that is consumed to provide nutritional support for the body, and is possibly green or brown in hue."

 

See, those kinds of exceptions don't belong in a basic definition.

 

Wikifail.

 

In Wiki's defense though, this article was slapped with a banner that says:

 

This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page.

 

So at least they suspect it was written by a dimwitted troglodyte.

 

One of the funniest instances of deliberate Wiki-hacking I have found was the article on rocker Ronnie James Dio. It had all kinds of facts about him and where he grew up and his schooling and it was all appropriate except the very last sentence which said:

 

And Dio smells very, very bad.

 

Lol. As in all things spoken or written or typed, evaluate what you are reading, check sources, and know that many pieces of data we encounter are just plain incorrect.

 

Although I suspect that, at times at least, Dio did smell very, very bad.