if this "wikipedia" was created by a pornography goon why would anyone spend any time on it?

I've only been poking around this topic (wikipedia) for a couple days but my initial impression is that wikipedia entries may be censored by the system owners in a rather arbitrary manner

that doesn't surprise me much. but it has me wondering as to why there is so much concern over that censoring? after all it's their game, is it not?

given the reputation of the system owner why would we place any value on wikipedia greater than what we place on Hustler magazine, or similar trash?

The owner is an embarrassment more often than not. Saying that, there have been many good contributions and editors over the years, and generally WP can be read with caution. One of the big problems with the setup is that the throllers are running the show, and good editors are being harassed and being pushed out of editing. The POV-pushers usually have their way, as most good editors eventually become fed up and eventually leave. If WP continues like this, it will never improve, and is probably doomed, and then something better will replace it.

You raise completely reasonable questions.

It's sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy: Wikipedia matters to people because Wikipedia matters to people. You correctly recognize that Wikipedia doesn't deserve or warrant our respect (... and not just because the owner doesn't deserve it, if you hadn't figured that out already), but the sad fact of the matter is that it gets used a lot - if someone's blog presents a biased perspective on a matter, who cares? But Wikipedia is used by a lot of people, and if it presents a biased perspective on a matter - which it does almost without exception - then that starts to color people's opinions, sometimes with bad results.

So, if you would imagine that people often referred to Hustler magazine's commentary on health care reform in deciding their own opinion on it, you might get a reasonable idea of why people worry about what's on Wikipedia.



Fighting censorship is everyone's responsibility.

Thank you for taking a principled stand against immoderate censorship.

You and I may not always agree, but I will defend to the death of my posting privileges here your right to say things I disagree with, even when lamely sung off key with annoyingly antiquated Midi accompaniment.

Oh, wait...

You don't do that.

That's my unpardonable sin.

Never mind.

Hustler has never collected millions of dollars of tax-deductible donations on the legal premise that it is a non-profit educational organization.

If you can't see the higher legal responsibility that the Wikimedia Foundation must be held to, because of that fact, then I'm not sure we're going to make much headway here.

Greg

I thought Jimmy Wales was sort of a "pornography goon" with his Bomis.com website, but Wikipedia is a smash success with 10 million articles.

Interest in Wikipedia stems from the fact that it is by far the largest participatory website in the world, with hundreds of new contributors every day. Moreover, as a result of the number of links within its millions of pages, Wikipedia content systematically shows up as a high-ranking result when one searches for many topics and individuals. These facts give rise to a number of important questions, ranging from "does the Wikipedia model of collaborative editing produce reliable content?" to "how should Wikipedia be managed and governed, and are there any systematic abuses taking place?" to "how can one ameliorate the considerable potential of Wikipedia, like the rest of the Internet, to be used to defame or invade the privacy of innocent people?"

The "system owner" is an entity called the Wikimedia Foundation, which sets some basic policies, but (for better or worse) does not intervene very much with the actual article content. The role of the initial founder (or co-founder; accounts vary) of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, decreases each year; at this point, discussion of his personal background or actions is fairly remote from discussion of the current issues facing Wikipedia and its critics.

Welcome to WR Mike.

1. Top ten website;
2. Hundreds of thousands of biography's of living people (BLP);
3. Asserts Immunity from harm to reputations of BLPs;
4. Encourages anonymity/pseudonymity and a culture of no accountability;
5. Disproportionate effect on search engine results even in relation to high activity;
6. Flattens and debases the nature and coverage scholarly discourse;
7. Largest ever collaborative project allowing child and adult participation while lacking the most basic of child protection policies and safeguards;
8. Holds itself out as a non-profit charitable organization, but bears little relation to any common sense notion of a "charity";
9. Has a distorted form of governance (includes your pornographer as fading "Godking") that empowers an unaccountable "community", often acting as pseudonyms, while providing no voice to other significant stakeholders, and;
10. Wikipedians are the most arrogant and annoying people you will ever meet.

Interesting. I would say Wikipedia was a site for POV anarchists who operate in loose groupings and so control all articles of a historical or political nature (you'll find no arguments over the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean articles!) so that they reflect a quite biased point of view. The Polish and Balkan articles are great examples of local nationalists beavering away and then citing non-Enmglish language (nationalist) sources which presumably no-one on the English language Wikipedia can either source or read. I am very pleased that my son's college have said that Wikipedia must not be cited as a reference.



Very good. I agree. But if people as much as point out that Wikipedians are breaking the law on BLPs they are banned. They don't even have to be the person concerned. Vide: User:Sussexman.
You also forgot to add that whilst asserting no personal points of view thats all you really come across. Check out the rules on notability. Teams of anti-establishment types and left-wingers making sure that meritocracy is the only form of notability possible. So a British baronet is not notable (even though they are in Britain) but some utter moron from, say, the Sex Pistols is.

Er, I wish it was that much of a meritocracy. But such is the WP:Royalty interest that British baronets ARE notable, by virtue of being listed in Burke's (which gets you an automatic place in Who's Who). Ah, these titled English. I think baronets exist to prove that in English traditional society you don't have to be a peer to be a prick.

Unless you're Jewish, of course. There are currently five Jewish baronets and not one has an article.

You could upset the apple cart and make a category for that. *poke poke*

You epitomise what is wrong with Wikipedia - you cannot address fundamentals without being rude. (Baronets, by the way, do not automatically get listed in "Who's Who").

I was afraid you would tell me that. Alas. Manufactured "authorities" are nothing new and those who insist on getting quick answers to their questions will always be victimized by such scams.

The unfortunate part of that arrangement is that those quick answers sometimes end up as public opinion in which state they are not easily dislodged. But there is nothing new in that note, either.

All that we can really do is to help good folks to be aware of the source and nature of this "wickedpedia" ( tee hee ) -- and then to question our co-workers and friends if they try to reference that source as an authority.

What's new, though, is that almost all of it is anonymous and unaccountable. It's a propagandist's dream, and it's probably more thickly populated by agents of one sort or another than Berlin ever was during the Cold War.

Made me issue an audible chuckle.

from what I'm hearing though the thing that would be making it un-accountable is the heavy handed editors

from what i'm hearing wickedpaedia's editors junk any text they don't like and ban the perpetrators. which puts them in the can along with other propagandists

a bit more seriously though, i was arguing with my dearly beloved mother one night and she exclaimed"OH! the Internet is awful: anyone can say anything he wants!"

that is a very interesting thought and merits some consideration. personally I note from having used a number of BBS services over the years that when the discussion is open any bad statements are rather quickly corrected

there are a number of topics around where the issue is not settled,-- the assassination of JFK, the fate of TWA 800, whether global warming is Anthroprogenic or not-- and for such issues a general purpose ( "neutral" ? ) online reference ought best to provide only a summary introduction to the arguments and then offer references to additional sources. further, a truly open resource would be glad to allow additional references to be attached although there would be some concern as to how best to prevent this from getting into the extreme

I'll try wickedpaedia on a couple of those to see what they are up to