Forward from Wikipedia list anyone want to comment? (AN/I ad infinitum)

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Ronald Chmara ron@opus1.com Date: 14-Jul-2007 04:10 Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Sensitive subjects on some Wikipedias To: wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org

On Jul 13, 2007, at 4:53 PM, Steven Walling wrote:

There's always idiocy, on every wiki. But Turks being allowed to use a WMF wiki to continue to deny what was, lexicographically, the world's first genocide isn't simple stupidity...it's evil. If such a word carries any real meaning.

FWIW, the word "genocide" didn't enter the lexicon until 1943, according to several articles on en:wp....

But that's not really the point/problem, per se.

Since I know my own culture the best, I'll use articles from its space, to demonstrate that this is possibly a universal human failing.

The english language wikipedia, for example, doesn't really take the perspective that the biggest number of civilians ever outright slaughtered by an external government in *one single event* is really a nightmarishly terroristic, immoral, and wrong thing, to do. Instead, it equivocates and quibbles, repeating old party lines *justifying* the action, and combines articles on two separate events: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki

How about the United State's first major genocidal policy? Is it called a genocide? Nope. Again, Quibbling and equivocation, and an "official policy name": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Removal

How about the deplorable white supremacist, ignorant, racism, of a man who said he was "not in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races" and "If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it"? Is he condemned for it? Nope. Instead, there's non-stop hagiography and justification for his blatant racism, and a blatant cultural white- washing (*cough*) of both his character and actions: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln_on_slavery

I could keep going on, but I'd better get to my point. Within cultures, there is usually a dominant language (and languages is where wikipedia divides), and those cultures each carry their own narrative style, and with it, their own perspectives on history.

Where wp is *very good* is that those narratives actually get stored, and carried forward, to future generations.

Where wp can be argued as 'bad' (on these kind of topics) is that different cultures, through their language spaces, are allowed to actually display their different perspectives.

This tends to upset folks who want *their* perspective, *their* cultural narrative, to dominate the narrative landscape *across all cultures and languages*. That's not gonna happen until we have one global mono-culture, and whoo boy, we are nowhere near that.

-Bop

_______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l