[Wikimedia-l] Breivik: My Biggest Influence Was Wikipedia

[Mike Dupont]

On Wed, Apr 18, 2012 at 11:27 AM, George Herbert
<george.herbert at gmail.com>wrote:

> Does an open content, liberal open encyclopedia sound like we'd be his
> friend?
>
Well I agree that this guy was out to do harm, and that we cannot trust
anything he says as being truthful.
People will use radicals like this for pushing more controls and less
freedom.


On the other side, I think that wikipedia has a lot of work to do in
cleaning up.  warning, now comes my chip on the shoulder, you can skip this
if you want.
RANT BEGIN
there are a great deal of inconsistencies on fringe topics (and i wont bore
you with the name of my favorite topic right now, but you can guess) where
both sides of the argument are equally twisted.  there is a lack of
experienced moderators and also the problem is that you dont want to throw
the baby out with the bathwater. So really I think for my favorite topics
the neutrally is really lacking and radicals reign. this inspires more
radicals and causes a total lack of trust in wikipedia on the other side of
the POV. I have met people who think that wikipedia should be boycotted
because they are seen to be supporting one side of the argument, and this
is just because no one has the time to deal with the large number of
organized radicals. I try to tell them that they can also get involved and
make things better, but my personal experience in the wikihounding has also
made me lose all interest in continued editing on some topics. How can I in
good faith ask a total noob to walk in the lions den?
RANT END


thanks,
mike


-- 
James Michael DuPont
Member of Free Libre Open Source Software Kosova http://flossk.org