At its 2nd annual roost, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, shared a closely guarded secret with his 300 pediaphiles. Wikipedia’s not up to Encyclopedia Britannica quality.

This undoubtedly will come as a shock to the editors of Nature. In December 2005, they concluded that Britannica was only slightly more accurate than Wikipedia, though Wikipedia’s co-founder claimed it contains articles that are “horrific crap.”

Regardless, Wales wants his army of Wikipeers to commence working on style, as well as a new-fangled technique called sourcing… which probably should not be confused with such bourgeois notions as footnotes or bibliographies.

With any luck, the newly disciplined scribes will start by cleaning up some old hatchet work. As we told you before, among the already documented victims of biographical vandalism are John Siegenthaler, who was falsely accused of involvement in Robert Kennedy’s assassination and Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg who learned from his Wikipedia bio that he’s a pedophile who served time in prison.

And don’t get me started on fake bios by sex offenders, defacing rivals’ bios or alleged truth twiddling by Mr. Wikipedia Himself.

More recently, Wiki-academics turned ex-Enron chairman Ken Lay’s intriguingly mottled career into a single dimensional political hit-piece.

With 1.2 million wacky articles in woeful need of repair, Wikipediacs would do well to forget style and focus on substance.