Wikipedia Letdown: When the Feral Cat Debate Shows Up in Encyclopedias
It's a sad, sad day when you're going around minding your own business and writing an article and looking up stuff to support your facts you know, and so, to look up a definition, you go to Wikipedia and find the exact same bias and argument surrounding feral cats throughout the ENTIRE article.
No joke. Anything that supports Trap-Neuter-Return was "quoted as claims" and anything else was stated as fact.
On study I looked up after they cited it they even wrote their conclusion wrong! The whole article is written by anti-cat people!
I have to admit, my niche is a little controversial because some people feel the need to hate feral cats with a passion of a thousand suns and will actually verbally abuse people who care for managed colonies. I'm not kidding. People feel the need to stop when they're driving buy and scream and holler at people who are feeding a colony of feral cats, all fixed or not.
People who feed and manage feral colonies aren't stopping and yelling at bird enthusiasts who feed them or photograph them. They will scream and holler if you're killing ANY animal, especially their cats, of course, but we don't go trolling the bird boards for arguments. But they feel the need to go trolling for TNR enthusiasts.
Even on Wikipedia!
So I suggested an edit where I showed the CDC has had no known cases of rabies from cats in humans in a DECADE, and I believe the last reported case was like 35 years ago that someone caught rabies from a cat. Anyway, THEN I went to their 'talk' page and expressed my disappointment (politely) with the clear bias in this article.
Now I'm here, venting.
I mean seriously.
There are people trying to save dogs from a meat market in Vietnam or Korea or wherever and get them homes in the US (when, no offense to them, there are hundreds and thousands of unadopted dogs in the US euthanized in shelters every year).
If it wasn't for the fact feral dogs are a very real threat to human beings and don't usually roam around the US in the millions because that was nipped in the bud ages ago, if this problem was affecting dogs and people were advocating for the destruction of MILLIONS of them, the US would be in an UPROAR. But for cats, that's okay.
It seriously irks me off. Cats are almost no threat to humans, even feral cats. They avoid humans. Unless you're playing in their feces, you are NOT going to catch parasites from them. They haven't transmitted rabies to a human in over a decade, if not THREE.
TNR and euthanasia are both effective at reducing the population, but TNR is the humane choice and it is more effective when the immigration of outside cats isn't controlled. I've SEEN this with my own eyes.
And the majority of Americans support TNR because people in America do NOT want to be destroying 70 million (or however many unowned) cats by killing them. The US is not going to be passing a law to destroy cats anytime soon. TNR is gaining momentum.
So when I'm looking for UNBIASED information on the definition of feral cats, I do NOT want to be shown a clearly BIASED article that can't be sourced because it's so biased it just pissed me right the freaking heck off.
I don't even mind studies that actually prove a cat is destructive (like they really are in Australia and New Zealand, they aren't ecologically able to handle the predator the cat is with the type of animals they have).
I DO mind complete bias in what is supposed to be an unbiased source.
Like, seriously.... what the crappity crap!?
My faith in the multiple people editing an encyclopedia has taken a nosedive. You'd think having multiple editors that would make it work out, but yeah, not so much.
One little definition search turned into four hours of searching through their 'sources' and then crafting a 'polite' suggestion of an edit to reduce the bias. I was mad, but I had to edit that carefully.
A whole evening of writing down the drain. Sigh.
Thanks for reading my rant!
Lovies!
Recent Comments
8
Wikipedia is a source of unknown and insecure knowledge. It can be rewritten by anyone and of course, some people are going to put their own slant on an article.
Derek
They most definitely can, but the idea is that other people are supposed to be able to edit it and thus reduce the bias.
I've looked up controversial subjects before and never saw such blatant bias before.
Are you able to edit the Wikipedia page to include a section on Trap-Neuter-Return TNR and the other excellent points you make in your post here?
I have never attempted to edit, correct, or update a Wikipedia page and never looked up how to do that, but I had assumed that was possible to improve a Wikipedia page.
Keep up the great work!
Kate
You can, and I did add a comment about there hasn't been a known case of rabies in humans from a cat in a decade from the CDC. The problem is it takes a lot of citing of sources and I haven't edited a wikipedia article before and the back end is a little different to me. It would take me ages to go through and check every single source and reword stuff AND there is also a chance they'd screw my edits. There was a summery of changes made by one member who called TNR Trap-Neuter-Reabandonment like the crackpots at PETA do. They actually suggest that euthanizing ferals is more humane than being in their outdoor home. It would be a HUGE project that I don't have time for as the TNR entry in wikipedia is exactly the same type of bias as the feral cat entry.
You are welcome, Rochelle.
Blogs are meant for you to write what you have gone through.
It is good for releasing pent-up feelings like frustrations.
I wish you all the best, Rochelle.
See more comments
Most feral cats will become sociable with the right set of circumstances and be very loyal.
Jerry
Actually, feral kittens can be socialized easily. But older ferals are much harder and take quite some time IF they ever do. It can happen definitely, but it's not most ferals. It's actually most ferals are unadoptable. I'm talking about ferals, not strays. Ferals have never been socialized to humans.
That said, community cats do make excellent and loyal pets. Even ex-ferals. I socialize them to be adopted, if possible. I return them to their outdoor homes if they can't be socialized.