On Fri, 24 Aug 2007 David Gerard wrote:
> On 24/08/07, Robert Brockway <robert(a)timetraveller.org> wrote:
>
> > Morning. The Australian foreign minister, Mr Alexander Downer, has been
> > quoted as stating that Wikipedia is "anti-government".
> It's fairly clear he was floundering and didn't have a clue.
In my opinion the real problem is the question made by the journalist.
It is not understandable and definitively incorrect. I would have
replied saying that the question was not understandable, but
politicians need to be more polite and diplomatic (although he said
that there was some problems in the question, even if in a polite way.
I can not do anything else than agree with his point that if anybody
could edit Wikipedia, than why reclaim if a person inside a
governmental agency has done it.
Of course there is the problem of self-promotion, but this is a
problem that can occur in any other fields.
There is then the problem if it is acceptable that people are paid
with citizen money to edit on wikipedia (but this is a problem that is
completely outside wikipedia).
I would not consider very serious his expression "a bit
anti-government.". First of all we would need to understand what he
means with this. Perhaps he is used that statements are written as
written by government, and that somebody could change the government
words is strange to him.
But one point he rose is rather interesting: "But I know they have
editorial control"
While at the beginning of Wikipedia, if I have understood correctly,
it was thought that the errors would be correct by the next editors,
it was later created an organized system of checking. Could it be
considered an editorial control, or at least an "internal" control?
And how this relate to the thought at the beginning that everybody
should be free to write?
AnyFile
