2015-04-17

Wikipedia pussies out on Cranberries

If you want a great example of why Wikipedia's lily-livered far-left NPR-style writing is a detriment to the truth (and there are lots to chose from you just need to look at this Wikipedia article about the Warrington bomb attacks during The Troubles.

In 1994 Irish rock band The Cranberries released the song "Zombie", which was written in protest at the bombings. The song went on to become one of their biggest hits.
One of? One of? "Zombie" reached #1 on the charts in Australia, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, and the U.S. Hot Modern Rock. It reached Top 5 in Ireland and Norway, Top 10 in Scotland, and Top 20 in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. It spawned countless Europop remixes, was performed on Saturday Night Live, won "Best Song" at the MTV Europe Music Awards, and been viewed 200 million times on YouTube. What are you saying was a bigger hint? "Linger" is the word most coming to mind, and while it charted higher in the U.S. than "Zombie" and was the band's breakthrough hit, can there really be any doubt as to which is the bigger hit?

But the Wikipedia/NPR method of smarmy ass-covering lazy writing ensures that the two people who thought "Linger" was a bigger hit than "Zombie" don't immediately slap [citation required] on the passage, while the rest of the readers instantly remember "oh yeah, Wikipedia is not necessarily interested with telling me things that are true."

Bonus Irish Wikipedia silly fact: Oliver Moran, a top Wikipedia admin, thinks it's condescending to think people can't learn the complex and silly Wikipedia hypertext language because people on Twitter "pick up the hashtags and @ signs right away". Does he have any idea how many mentions and hashtags are invisible because the complex "you need a space or punctuation mark before the symbol" rule?