TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Re: Bias, Sabotage Haunt Wikipedia's Free World

Re: Bias, Sabotage Haunt Wikipedia's Free World

Mark Crispin (mrc@CAC.Washington.EDU)
Mon, 13 Feb 2006 11:56:24 -0800

On Mon, 13 Feb 2006, Monty Solomon wrote:

> In five years, Wikipedia has amassed a mountain of impressive
> articles, written by thousands of anonymous contributors. But the dark
> side of that freedom is that Wikipedia's articles are becoming
> battlegrounds, pitting writers with biased viewpoints and vandals
> trying to sabotage entries against a volunteer band of 'Wikipedians'
> who constantly seek to set the record straight.

Some of those individuals in the "volunteer band" themselves have
political axes to grind, as I observed with the biographies of two
foreign politicians in different parties. One of the two resigned in
disgrace; the other is still in office.

The "volunteer band" member is in the political party of the disgraced
politician. He removes important text related to the actions of the
disgraced politician as being a "minor incident", yet has spurious text
about how the party is getting away from the shadow of that individual (he
can't get away with the fact that the politician left office as perhaps
the most unpopular person ever). He also has written copious amounts of
highly-critical text about the in-office politician; and has glossed over
why he got re-elected.

I decided that it wasn't worth fighting.

-- Mark --

http://panda.com/mrc

Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what to eat for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.

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