Wikipedia is both a boon and a bane to the 21st century journalist and academic alike.
The fact that it can be edited by anybody is, in theory, magnificently Egalitarian, but in practice mean that any self-opinionated idiot can write whatever they want; something that has irritated me on many occasions. I have had people claim, on my page, that I am married to an American called Lisa. I have changed this on a number of occasions, pointing out that I only know one American called Lisa, and she is married to a friend of mine. Whilst I did -indeed- have a girlfriend called Lisa for a few months about 20yrs ago, I have been married to a lovely lady called Corinna for the past 10yrs. At one time, my Wikipedia page also claimed that I was a communist; something else that is completely untrue.
But these sorts of complaints are sadly common these days, and can be seen across the internet from academia at the top to 4chan at the other end of the spectrum, so I’m saying nothing new.
One of the things that I, however, have big problems with, is the way that the references system works. It was only whilst working on our edition of George Eberhart's two books on cryptozoology that I found out quite how many of the websites sited in the original were now non-existent, or -at the best- at different addresses. This took a long time to rectify but -as far as I can see- there is nobody doing this at Wikipedia, so an irritatingly high number of their references are useless.
However, the thing that I want to focus upon now is one specific page: List of mammals of Great Britain, which is so inaccurate, it beggars belief.
Just a few examples:
Lagomorpha – it only sites there being one species in Britain; the mountain hare. What about rabbits? What about the brown hare?
Rodentia – it has red squirrels, but what about grey squirrels? I am sure that somebody will say “but they were introduced”. Well, so are three other rodents in this list.
Moose on the loose? Not really...
But it is the ungulates that have caused me to come the closest to apoplexy. It is a bit different to know where to start. But I will try:
I truly find the inclusion of various ponies highly questionable. They are not wild, but their owners allow them to roam free for much of the year. It is the same with sheep on Dartmoor, Exmoor and other places.
It completely ignores fallow deer, but includes moose because a private nature reserve in Scotland released a pair in 2008.
The Atlantic grey whale is listed even though it was extinct in European waters over 1500 years ago, but a whole list of other mammals that were also extant within that time frame have been ignored.
The references are cursory and mostly irrelevant and all in all, the page is a disgrace.
As an experiment, I am not going to even attempt to edit the page myself, rather deciding to watch and wait and see what happens.
Watch this space.
Postscript: And so, as I said I would, I sat and waited. Three weeks later and some of it has been fixed, and it is considerably less horrible than it was. However, it still includes the nonsense about the pair of moose released into a private nature reserve in Scotland in 2008.
As far as I’m concerned that is, by no sensible set of criteria, any sort of introduction, any more than are the lions of Longleat, or the pelicans in St James’ Park.
Unfortunately, because the species is now included on Wikipedia as being part of the British mammal list, it provides grist to the mill for people that believe that Scottish lake monsters are actually misidentified sightings of this species.
This may well be the case in Scandinavia, or in North America where there is no doubt that this species exists.
But they do not exist in the United Kingdom, and, to the best of my knowledge, have not done so in historic times, although there are fossil remains of related species in various collections.
I am going to continue to keep an eye on this page and see what develops.
