Wikipedia: A Threat To Civil Society, No More Monsieur Nice Guy Options Rating

[Jonny Cache]

No More Monsieur Nice Guy

After all this time, I get the feeling that many people, even many denizens of The Wikipedia Review, fail to comprehend the magnitude of the threat to Civil Society that is posed by Wikipedia and its ways.

And every time I get a glimmer of hope that Wikipedians themselves might just get their ways back on the path to recovery of humane good sense � well, they never fail to dash those hopes back into the mud of what they seem bound and determined to remain.

In order that some of you who know me best will understand the change in tactics that I must now undertake, I will try to lay out as clearly as I can why I think that Wikipedia and its ways pose the kind of danger to society that all people of good will must eventually oppose.

Jon Awbrey


This post has been edited by Jonny Cache:

[The Joy]

I'll admit that I've been editing WP more lately, but I'm hesitant to even try to make major contributions anymore.

It amazes me and saddens me that a project like WP which in its infancy held so many promises, but those promises have since been dashed by entrenched and egotistical individuals and a community more obsessed with maintaining a corrupted status quo all to keep those egotistical few happy at the expense of truly good faith contributors and the product of an exemplary reference/encyclopedia.

The fact that academics at my grad school see WP as a great and wondrous thing leaves me feeling that many do not look past the positives of Web 2.0 and see the negatives. There are blogs, wikis, podcasts, whatever that are done by competent individuals and communities well-versed in their respected subjects or at least are willing to research and learn about their subject. Even when such individuals and groups come to WP, their efforts can be smashed by one of the aforementioned individuals or their posse.

I'm beginning to see WP as more of the US Wild West. The law is sporadic, lawman can be bandits, gangs roam unchecked unless cheesing off the wrong people (i.e. the elite), and its not whether you're right but who you know and what power you possess socially or physically (block powers). I could also see WP as something of feudal Medieval Europe where Jimbo acts like Henry II and his loyal nobles willing to deal harshly with his enemies (i.e Thomas a Beckett). I'm willing to admit there are a few Pat Garretts and Galahads on WP with merit and good morals (not just dealing blindly with policy), but these few can do little to change the poisonous mentality maintained by the current Community and status quo.

We are strangely made. We think we are wonderful creatures. Part of the time we think that, at any rate. And during that interval we consider with pride our mental equipment, with its penetration, its power of analysis, its ability to reason out clear conclusions from confused facts, and all the lordly rest of it; and then comes a rational interval and disenchants us. Disenchants us and lays us bare to ourselves, and we see that intellectually we are no great things; that we seldom really know the things we think we know; that our best-built certainties are but sand-houses and subject to damage from any wind of doubt that blows.