QUOTE(Herschelkrustofsky @ Thu 30th July 2009, 6:32am)
I think it would be more interesting than that. I can imagine factions forming to support the various versions of the story, each challenging the reliability of the sources used to support other versions. Then would come the allegations of sockpuppetry, incivility, and so on. You could write a very entertaining parody of Rashomon as re-told on Wikipedia. It might be entitled "Allegations of Rashomon."
That could very well happen, especially if the four witnesses or the parties to the event came from different countries or political parties. I have another example, this one from a famous battle from World War II. Please excuse the verbosity, but I want to make sure I don't leave out any important details:
One generally accepted fact of the Battle of Midway is that the air groups from the US carrier
Hornet performed abysmally. On the crucial day of battle, three out of the four carrier's squadrons failed to locate the Japanese fleet. The squadron that did locate the Japanese ships, Torpedo Squadron 8 (VT-8), was completely wiped-out during their attack without scoring a single hit (before anyone mentions it, their sacrifice did help enable the subsequently successful dive bomber attacks from the other two US carriers). Many of the
Hornet's aircraft, including 10 of its fighters, were unable to locate
Hornet after that failed mission and ditched in the ocean.
Most of the major western historians of the battle, such as Morison, Lord, Cressman, and Prange, apparently accepted the story from
Hornet's command staff, led by
Marc Mitscher that the squadrons' poor performance was due to bad luck and inexperience. It's only just recently that a different, and perhaps true, account of what really happened has come out, and it has yet to be reported on in Wikipedia.
The truth appears to be that Mitscher incorrectly decided that two of the Japanese carriers were in a different place from the reported position and ordered his squadrons to fly a heading towards that location. The only reason that VT-8 found the Japanese fleet is because its squadron commander deliberately disobeyed orders and turned his squadron to the correct heading. If the ship's two dive bomber squadrons had flown the correct heading and attacked the Japanese fleet with VT-8, all four of the Japanese carriers might have been sunk in the initial strike, which means that the
Yorktown would have survived the battle. Mistakes happen in war, but in this case Mitscher and his staff elected not to own up to it and deliberately covered it up. In their after-action report, they lied about the initial heading given to their squadrons.
Because the
Hornet's after-action report misrepresented the courses flown by its aircraft, the search for the 10 ditched fighter aircraft was sent to the wrong location. Several days later, by chance, 8 of the 10 fighter pilots were found by patrol aircraft and rescued. Another two pilots who had survived their crash landings were not found and disappeared. Thus, Mitscher's cover-up may well have sent two of his own men to early graves. Mitscher went on to become one of the top commanders in the US Pacific Fleet and is largely credited with the successful carrier-naval campaign which helped force Japan's surrender. Mitscher died in 1947.
The first reporting on this debacle and Mitscher's cover-up was by Bowen Weisheit, a fraternity brother of one of the two killed
Hornet fighter pilots. By careful research he discovered the truth of what happened and wrote it up in a self-published book called,
The Last Flight of Ensign C. markland Kelly, Junior, USNR, published in 1993. Because it was a self-published book, it was ignored by most interested historians and observers. (Actually, it appears that Lord knew something about this in 1967 but chose not to mention it in his book).
It wasn't until 10 years later that several other historians picked-up on the story, verified it with their own research, and gave it more publicity in non-self-published books. Alvin Kernan wrote about it in 2005's
The Unknown Battle of Midway: The Destruction of the American Torpedo Squadrons and recently ex-congressman Robert Mrazek covered it in detail in
A Dawn Like Thunder: The True Story of Torpedo Squadron Eight.
How does this apply to Wikipedia? Well, it goes into the realm of reliable sources. Let's say that Wikipedia existed since 1942. The first accounts of the battle would have been from propagandic press releases from US and Japanese governments and media. In the 50s, 60s, and 70, we would have had more complete accounts from the authors mentioned several paragraphs above. Now, if someone, in 1993 had tried to introduce this story from Weisheit's book, I think interested Wikipedians would have not allowed it in, saying things like, "Exceptional claims require exceptional sources" and "self-published books are not RS" and things like that. It's only now, since 2005,
63 years after the battle that this important story can be told in Wikipedia in a way that complies with Wikipedia's RS policy. Actually, based on my experience, a note on Weisheit's book might could have been mentioned in a footnote, but that's about the top exposure that would have been allowed for it.
The truth has been out there since 1993 (and perhaps 1967), but it wasn't reasonably verifiable until four years ago.
This post has been edited by Cla68: