Wikipedia approaches its limits - guardian.co.uk Options

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Guardian: Wikipedia approaches its limits

[Kelly Martin]

The "struggle" between "inclusionists" and "deletionists" is irrelevant to the more serious struggle between all the pitched camps of ideologues in Wikipedia. Both "inclusionist" and "deletionist" are reasonable philosophical attitudes that one can take toward the activity of editing an encyclopedia. However, the ideologues are neither, because they're in favor of including content that favors their personal agendas, and in favor of deleting content that opposes that agenda.

Sadly, the author of this article fails to recognize that Wikipedia's use as a ideological battleground is the perhaps the single largest problem Wikipedia faces, nor does he recognize that the protected status that the elite enjoy tends to further this problem as many of the elites are actively engaged in ideologically-driven editing. And it's the infighting between these groups that is creating the friction and the exclusiveness, not the dispute over inclusionism and deletionism.

[gomi]

The "struggle" between "inclusionists" and "deletionists" is irrelevant to the more serious struggle between all the pitched camps of ideologues in Wikipedia ... Sadly, the author of this article fails to recognize that Wikipedia's use as a ideological battleground is the perhaps the single largest problem Wikipedia faces, ...

This is completely true, but reporting on the subject is hampered by a lack of objective evidence. You, I, or anyone can look at articles on Israel (T-H-L-K-D)/Palestine (T-H-L-K-D), Scientology (T-H-L-K-D), Evolution (T-H-L-K-D), or any number of other subjects and find skew, slant, demagoguery, and outright lies. However, these are all anecdotes. The cornerstones of modern journalism are (dare I say it) the "expert source", in this case, the PARC guy with the data, and the "human source", in this case some random editor.

If someone could figure out how to measure the POV-pushing and ownership of various articles, that would go a long way toward highlighting the inherent unreliability of Wikipedia over a multitude of subjects. But measuring POV is problematic. The first step, I venture would be to simple compile a list of biased and/or battleground articles, from Armenia (T-H-L-K-D) to Ireland (T-H-L-K-D) and from Evolution (T-H-L-K-D) to PETA (T-H-L-K-D). Some statistics on those articles and their owners might be illuminating.

Even so, this analysis might miss much. I came across an amusing ideological poke the other day on List of birds of Palestine (T-H-L-K-D), where well-known anti-Islamic editor (and former Jayjg (T-C-L-K-R-D) crony) IronDuke (T-C-L-K-R-D) passive-aggressively asks "can you say what is meant by "Palestine" in "Birds of Palestine"?" I had to laugh.