A lot of people don't trust Wikipedia, and here's a perfect example of why:

The death of former Enron chief Ken Lay on Wednesday underscored the challenges facing online encyclopedia Wikipedia, which, as the news was breaking, offered a variety of causes for his death.

Lay, 64, died of a heart attack early Wednesday, a family representative said, just six weeks after a jury found him guilty of fraud in one of the biggest corporate scandals in U.S. history.

Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia that anyone can edit, added news of Lay's death to his online biography shortly after news outlets began reporting it at about 10 a.m. EDT.

At 10:06 a.m., Wikipedia's entry for Lay said he died "of an apparent suicide."

At 10:08, it said he died at his Aspen, Colo., home "of an apparent ((heart attack) or suicide.)."

Within the same minute, it said the cause of death was "yet to be determined."

At 10:09 a.m., it said "no further details have been officially released" about the death.

Two minutes later, it said: "The guilt of ruining so many lives finally led him to his suicide."

At 10:12 a.m., this was replaced by: "According to Lay's pastor the cause was a 'massive coronary' heart attack."

By 10:39 a.m., Lay's entry said: "Speculation as to the cause of the heart attack lead many people to believe it was due to the amount of stress put on him by the Enron trial." This statement was later dropped.

By early Wednesday afternoon, the entry said Lay was pronounced dead at Aspen Valley Hospital, citing the Pitkin, Colo., sheriff's department. It said he apparently died of a massive heart attack, citing KHOU-TV in Houston.

Officials at Wikipedia did not immediately return phone and e-mail requests for comment.

Still, I use Wikipedia a lot -- especially to provide background on historical matters that are largely uncontested. As to recent or controversial matters, the more time people have had time to hash things out, the more information will have accumulated on Wiki -- along with links -- which often means no particular viewpoint will be able to maintain permanent ideological hegemony. For example, this excerpt from a post about Yasser Arafat's death provides both "sides" of the AIDS speculation:

In September 2005, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that French experts could not determine the cause of Arafat's death. The paper further quoted an Israeli AIDS expert who claimed that Arafat bore all the symptoms of AIDS, a hypothesis later rejected by the New York Times. Dr. Ashraf al-Kurdi, personal physician of Arafat for the past 20 years, later declared that nothing in Arafat's medical report mentioned the existence of such a disease. Another "senior Israeli physician" claimed in the Haaretz article that it was "a classic case of food poisoning", probably caused by a meal eaten four hours before he fell ill on October 12 that may have contained a toxin such as ricin rather than the standard bacterial poisoning. However, in the same week that the Haaretz report was published, the New York Times published a separate report also based on access to Arafat's medical records which claimed that it was highly unlikely that Arafat had AIDS or food poisoning. Both Haaretz and the New York Times further speculated that the cause of death may have been an infection of an unknown nature or origin. However, rumors of Arafat's poisoning have remained popular especially in the Arab Community, but also in the rest of the world. Dr. Ashraf Kurdi, which also follows the Hashemite kings, lamented the fact that the leader's wife Suha had refused an autopsy, which would have answered many questions in the case. Calling for the creation of an independent commission to carry out investigations concerning Arafat's suspicious death, dr. al-Kurdi declared to Haaretz on September 9, 2005 that "any doctor would tell you that these are the symptoms of a poisoning" 3.

I use Wiki to provide background -- not truth! It is what it is, and it is often quite helpful. I think it's even helpful to know what partisan ideologues and crackpots are thinking, but skepticism is of paramount importance. Anyone who thinks Wikipedia = truth needs to start with a course in basic logic and then move to common sense. (The problem is that the latter cannot be taught.)

I also like Wiki because in general, the links linger over time. There's nothing more infuriating than spending hours finding a link to something I feel is important in one of these posts, only to discover when go back a year later because I need the cite again that the site is gone and some damned XXX swinging singles popup site is in its place! Wiki has never done that to me or my readers, and I appreciate it.

But what about the fact that any kook can come along and post nonsense? That's bad, right?

Well, let's take a typical crackpot conspiracy theory -- the 9/11 Bush-blew-up-the-towers stuff. Many people (including me) have lamented the fact that this found its way into Wiki -- but which is worse: the fact that a crackpot can manage to insinuate his theory into a Wikipedia article, or the fact that a leading American university would hire -- as a "professor" -- a crackpot promoting the very same theory?

Isn't it better to be able to express skepticism and laugh at the theory online than shell out a hundred grand to have it taught to your son or daughter in a classroom and regurgitated at the family Thanksgiving dinner table (amidst particles of reflux from Margaret Cho's anti-Thanksgiving prayer)?

The optimist in me would hope that Wikipedia might just encourage skepticism in a young mind in advance of encountering such a professor.

Might not a skeptical mind be a harder thing to indoctrinate?

UPDATE: Commenter Mike mentions some scathing comments on the occasion of Ken Lay's death which can be found here.

I'll say. Here's a sample:

Death by heart attack, in ASPEN of all places, was too easy and dignified for Ken Lay. He was a convicted felon and he should have died IN PRISON, preferably by hanging, burning, beheading, gassing, electrocution, dismemberment or (ideally) all of the above simultaneously, but if by natural causes then at least by something that involved long and painful suffering, like cancer unrelieved by expensive treatments that our taxes should not have to pay for. Justice will not be complete until Ken Lay's widow, children and grandchildren are all stripped of all their property and reduced to the life of migrant farm workers.

But really, wouldn't Lay's death by torture have also been too lenient? As the commenter suggests, why should Ken Lays wife and children get off scot-free? After all, don't we believe in inherited guilt in this country?

I think the author of the above (one "TomHillinMass") has the right stuff to be a college professor today!