Wiki, wiki, wow

About a year and a half ago I discovered Wikipedia. Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia that, theoretically, anybody can edit. People from all over add or edit articles and perform a variety of tasks to build the content. I jumped into it quite happily and started writing some articles about areas I knew something about.

Of course, when you have thousands of people working on something you are going to run into idiots. There are a lot on Wikipedia. Since my tolerance for obnoxious idiots is low, I didn't last too long. And now I must rant.

My first conflict came when I was looking over the article on Senator J. William Fulbright. Fulbright was a powerful liberal Senator from Arkansas. While I don't agree with Senator Fulbright's positions, there is a policy on Wikipedia about position neutrality. In other words, it is supposed to be an encyclopedia, not a political screed.

The latest editor of the article had inserted several paragraphs that essentially gave Senator Fulbright's position on George W. Bush and the Iraq war. This is an amazing feat since Senator Fulbright has been dead for many years. Seeing this as a bit of a violation of the overall concept I proceeded to reword the paragraphs. I created a more generic description of Senator Fulbright's positions on war and foreign relations in a neutral voice. I imagined that a thoughtful reader could apply his 1967 views to the current conflict if they chose to do so. Of course, the original author blew his stack. I fully expected that my more neutral version would naturally be supported by the "Wikipedia community". Naive aren't I? I viewed it just as I would if I went to a Theodore Roosevelt article and found his quotes being used to deride Bill Clinton. An anachronism. The "Wikipedia community" didn't exactly see that.

For a while, there was an effort by some users to insert something about George Bush and the Iraq war into a ton of articles no matter how tenuous the linkage. But as long as you keep a neutral voice, the content is neutral right?

A second conflict came in regard to a Civil War article. The article had the obligatory statement that the war was caused by slavery. I really have no problem with that since slavery was THE major cultural and moral obstacle between the two regions. However, there were an assortment of economic, cultural, religious, and geographic differences that caused friction as well on a more minor level. It was my opinion that a thorough encyclopedia article would at least make mention of these briefly and in proper context. Naive aren't I? My few sentences added to the article were viewed as a dilution of the slavery issue and removed forthwith. Avoiding an imagined dilution of the slavery issue was more important than some facts.

The final straw for me was a host of "articles" which were really political attacks disguised as articles. One of these was an article about the so-called word "Santorum". This "word" was coined by a disc jockey to refer to a substance which is the result of anal sex. It was coined specifically as an attack against Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania. Now I'm not a big supporter of the Senator from Pennsylvania, but it was my opinion that the "article" was pretty much unworthy of something purporting to be an encyclopedia. Obscure morning shock jockeys do things like this every day and all of their pronouncements and giggly anal-sex references do not deserve to be referenced in encyclopedias. The "Wikipedia community" agonized over this little gem for a great length of time arguing its relative merits. Frankly, there are no merits to it. The fact that it had to be debated for an extended period of time and go through various incarnations says a lot about the "Wikipedia community".

Similarly, someone decided that there needed to be a list of derogatory nicknames for George Bush. You know, Chimpy, Shrub, Moron, Bushitler, and the like. This did raise eyebrows somewhat and a lengthy debate was entered into whether it was "encyclopedic". Some conservative wag decided to enter a list of bad nicknames for Hillary Clinton in retribution. It was not as well received of course. The fact that such entries are not quickly recognized as trash says a lot about the "Wikipedia community".

At one point a user chose the screen name "JesusIsLord". Granted, its a pitiful screen name. But to the Wikipedia community it violated their "Offensive Screen Name Policy" and the user was forced to change. The user "AllahIsGreat" had a similar experience. Its interesting that one can have a username like "DruidWitch" or "Zen-master" but "MightyLordAndKing" is deemed offensive. Frankly, anybody who pitches a fit over a username "AllahIsGreat" or "JesusIsLord" is an intolerant ass. This says something about the "Wikipedia community".

All of this led me to abandon Wikipedia a while back. But recently I got the itch again and went back to try again. This time I vowed to stay out controversial topics, not bother trying to keep political articles neutral, and stay out of the way in an obscure area. My chosen area was Arkansas historical figures. Sure enough, nobody gave a darn about that category since it really didn't exist at all anyway. I was able to edit for a few weeks before running into.......the encyclopedia police.

Yes, I got a ticket from the category police. It seems that I had put my articles into TOO MANY categories. The policeman reverted my categorizations because I had placed the articles into "redundant" categories. My intent was to place the articles in as many categories as applied. But that was too many. You see, the "community" has decided that there is no need for a broad category of "People from Arkansas" in alphabetical order. Instead, if you go to that category you will see a list of lists of types of people from Arkansas. I didn't know. Okay, thats fine I said, just create an alphabetical list then and change the categorization. But thats not how it works. Creating a new alphabetical list to replace my social faux-pas would be too much like work and not enough Barney Deputy Encyclopedia Sheriff fun...so the categorization gets changed and the alphabetical list is just not available any more.

They used to have a page titled "Why Wikipedia Sucks". It was an irreverent look at themselves that included the points I have made here and many more. It made the statement that Wikipedia did not take itself so seriously and that it could look at itself without flinching. Any frustrated user could add their complaint to the page. It said a lot about what Wikipedia was.

Recently they changed the name of the page to "Replies to Common Objections" and reworked the page to become more of an official defense of themselves. Today it reads more like something put together by a corporate lawyer. That says a lot about what Wikipedia has become and where it is heading.

Now don't get me wrong, there are some good people writing some good articles on Wikipedia. But there are many more people who spend a vast amount of time picking at others, lording it over their fiefdoms, and trying to insert propaganda into the encyclopedia under cover of a neutral voice.

The encyclopedia itself is growing quickly, has a lot of useful articles. It is still a very interesting experiment. But don't be naive, and be ready to battle various bureaucrats, little tin-gods, trolls, and masquerading partisans.