Jimbo wrote:
Ed Poor removed that line with the comment "(moved
self-serving ...
text to talk)". And of course since then, famously, you two have been
at each others throats. I'm not suggesting a direct causal
connection, but just showing how articles about ourselves are fraught
with the possibility of conflict.
This causal connection doesn't exist at all. Ed Poor started the
article about me about a year before I ever heard of Wikipedia. I
didn't object to his original article or to his subsequent edits to
my edits of it. Our conflicts have revolved around other things, such
as his attacks on me here on wikien-l related to the global warming
article.
You're well-liked around here. I like you. But in
my local
newspaper, I read an editorial you wrote (an excerpt from _Weapons of
Mass Deception_, I believe) that almost made my head explode. :-) I
thought it wasn't just mistaken, but deeply misleading. And I think
that your posture in that piece as some kind of neutral arbiter
exposing PR spin was absurd -- the piece itself was a masterpiece of
spin.
You're entitled to your opinion, of course, but without knowing what
you think was specifically misleading in my article, I'm not prepared
to respond to these charges.
And for the record, I've never claimed to be a "neutral" arbiter of
spin. I don't even know what you mean by "neutral" in that context.
John Stauber and I, and the Center for Media and Democracy, are
watchdogs. It's impossible to be a "neutral" watchdog. If you had a
"neutral" watchdog in your house, it wouldn't bark at burglars
because it wouldn't presume to take a position on whether they had
the right to enter your home.
You may recall that part of my reason for establishing the
Disinfopedia as a separate project from the Wikipedia is that I
wanted to pursue an editorial policy of "fairness and accuracy"
rather than "neutral point of view." I strive to make my writings
fair and accurate, and if there was something in my article that you
thought was inaccurate (as opposed to merely "making your head
explode"), I would appreciate having you point it out to me.
And yet the article reads like pure hagiography.
It's a perfectly
appropriate self-biography for PR purposes, but it completely fails as
encyclopedia material. And I think that most people will naturally,
and rightly, refrain from adding criticism of your work there, _as a
matter of personal courtesy_, because you edit it yourself, and you
are known and liked here.
I have no objection to people adding criticism of my work there. (Of
course, they have a responsibility to make factually-based
criticisms.) In fact, the reason I mentioned the article here is
precisely because I want to go out of my way to make sure people feel
INVITED to revise it (as several have done). If you still think it
"reads like pure hagiography," go ahead and revise. My feelings can
take it.
Moreover, I think that some of the things I added to the article
myself are details that do NOT "read like pure hagiography." I'm not
personally thrilled about my history with the Mormon church, for
example, and the fact that I have been influenced by feminism and
peace activism is something that Ed Poor's camp might cite as
evidence of my political bias.
2. UNVERIFIABLE INFORMATION
You are an expert on yourself, to be sure. So, who could possibly
challenge you on such statements as "At the age of three, his family
moved to Las Vegas, Nevada, where his father worked as a musician"?
And you see that as a problem?
Of course, there ARE ways to verify that information. Someone could
look up my birth certificate or interview my father's co-workers if
they cared to take the trouble. In short, the information is as
verifiable as any other information on this earth. Moreover, I don't
see the question of when my family moved to Las Vegas as something
that terribly controversial or likely to create a big point of view
problem.
All information has some sort of provenance, beyond which nothing can
be done to further verify it. I don't think any of the information
I've added to my own article is any less verifiable than anything
else in Wikipedia. Frankly, I think it's rather silly to worry about
whether I might have added something inaccurate about the age at
which my family moved to Las Vegas. And if you think that information
is inappropriate for inclusion, feel free to remove it entirely.
Just for comparison's sake, in the biography of Sun Myung Moon, Ed
Poor has added a phrase which says that "word play on Rev. Moon's
name provides a source of merriment to Unificationist disciples."
This, of course, can only be verified by Unificationist disciples
such as Ed. Do you think that's a problem too? And should
Unificationist disciples then be expected to recuse themselves from
contributing to the biography of Rev. Moon?
3. GOOD TASTE
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, a reference work, not a tool for our own
self-promotion. I can easily envision a mocking criticism of us as a
non-serious work if we all start writing entries about ourselves. "Of
the 1,234 page-length biographies in wikipedia, fully 10% of them are
of Wikipedia contributors writing about themselves."
OK, but I didn't start the article about myself. Ed Poor did.
Evidently he thought that I was important enough to merit an article,
long before we had ever communicated personally and before I had even
heard of Wikipedia. I would not have created it myself, but since it
already existed, I think I'm entitled to edit it. And if someone else
wants to edit my edits, that's their right too.
Let me say it another way -- it isn't so much the
conflict-of-interest
that's a problem, it's that personal courtesy prevents people from
editing an article about you that you've edited yourself, with the
result being an entry that is not encyclopedic.
Oh, please. "Courtesy" didn't stop Ed Poor from deleting the
paragraph that he described as "self-serving" -- and as you've
noticed, I didn't challenge his change. I accepted his revision
without quarrel, and I don't bear him any ill will for having made it
(even though I've disagreed with him strongly about other things). If
you still think the article reads like "hagiography," don't wuss out
-- change it! I don't see how "courtesy" prevents you from doing that
any more than it has prevented people from editing the Rev. Moon
article or the article on global warming just because their edits
might be perceived as "discourteous" to Ed's beliefs.
My personal take on the question of "good taste" in this context is
that it obliges me to be more careful to respect others' edits than
if I were not the topic of the article. I've tried to do that, but I
don't think that I (or anyone else) should feel obliged to refrain
completely from editing articles that mention them.
--
--------------------------------
| Sheldon Rampton
| Editor, PR Watch (
www.prwatch.org)
| Author of books including:
| Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities
| Toxic Sludge Is Good For You
| Mad Cow USA
| Trust Us, We're Experts
| Weapons of Mass Deception
--------------------------------