[ Don't Cc: me unless you take this discussion off imc-tech ]
On Mon, Nov 15, 2004 at 04:26:42PM -0800, Stan Shebs wrote:
That's
what I do best. I'm a librarian, media activist and
anarchist. My role is to ask questions and be a curmudgeon.
I've written criticism about Wikipedia on my blog, both positive and
negative. As a librarian, I think that it is an awesome project,
which really should be better appreciated by people who are stuck in
past paradigms about "information accuracy." As an anarchist,
Wikipedia troubles me. While the open source nature of the project
is very anarchistic, I'm really pissed that right wing assholes are
allowed to post falsehoods to the entry on "anarchism." This problem
forced me to discontinue my participation in the project.
"*Allowed* to
post"? Maybe you're not quite as much of an anarchist as
you thought. :-)
Or maybe he's more of an anarchist than you think there might be :-)
The way I see it, anarchism is not about allowing anyone to do anything
to you. It is more about opposing the power, which also can be expressed
as not allowing anyone to excercise power over anyone else.
If it was really the case that Wikipedia moderators allowed to present
right-wing opinion about anarchism as a neutral fact and dismissed
Chuck0's objections, that would be a clear example of excercise of
power, i.e. something anarchists oppose.
As for the original question, I share Chuck0's concerns about Wikipedia:
I also noticed that its NPOV tends to favor mildly right-wing opinion.
However, I see this problem as something that can be and should be dealt
with: if anarchists and Indymedia activists can get an equal voice over
moderation issues (through sufficient transparency and accountability),
that would be a great improvement over commercial media who misrepresent
or in best case quietly ignore our efforts. It is not a problem that our
position is labeled as "opinionated" -- as long as the opposite position
is also labeled as such.
--
Dmitry Borodaenko