Wikipedia is powerful. I just read an AP story that "Sarah Palin defended her claim that Barack Obama 'pals around with terrorists,'" and found myself typing "William Ayers" into Wikipedia and then clicking over to Obama–Ayers controversy. I have no idea how accurate and complete this article is, and a quick browse through the talk page doesn't really tell me too much.
If I didn't know that any idiot capable of using a keyboard (which apparently excludes John McCain) could have come along and screwed around with this article, it'd be by far the greatest resource on stuff like this. Long-breaking news stories is something Wikipedia excels at. But as it stands, the usefulness certainly goes down. I'm not sure how much. The fact that the article proudly advertises that "This article or section has been nominated to be checked for its neutrality." doesn't really affect my opinion one way or another, because I realize that anyone can add or remove that tag for essentially any reason.
Is this something that could even be solved? I guess in theory it's possible. If a particular version of this article had been rated a "good article", and I saw the names of a few people I trusted signing off on it, I'd feel a whole lot more comfortable about it, anyway. Is this a job Wikipedians are capable of? Or is this something better offered as a value-add by a mirror site (such as Veropedia)?
On a somewhat related point, I've turned on a cool gadget called "Article assessment" which puts at the top of the article "An unassessed article from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia". So I quickly know that no version of this article has been assessed at all.
Sunday, October 5, 2008
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3 comments:
That's not really correct; the article has been assessed a lot, and there's a community of editors who are really concerned about keeping their pet articles neutral and accurate -- it just hasn't been formally assessed under the particular system that that gadget ties into; very few articles have.
Wikipedia articles on political subjects tend to be pretty accurate because they're so widely read and edited -- as soon as anyone inserts misinformation, someone else removes it, or puts a "citation needed" tag on it.
"Wikipedia articles on political subjects tend to be pretty accurate because they're so widely read and edited -- as soon as anyone inserts misinformation, someone else removes it, or puts a "citation needed" tag on it."
While articles on political subjects might "tend to be pretty accurate", inaccuracies aren't *always* removed "soon". See http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=psAWteTSyixEB98YcV-5VEw
Anyway, for this type of article I'm just as worried about what has been *excluded* as what has been *included* (if not more so). I guess formal assessment isn't as important if you come to Wikipedia looking a specific fact - it's easy to fact check that once you've found it. But I've seen too many edit wars over topics like this where an article goes out of balance quite often, sometimes even bouncing from one out-of-balance position to the other and never hitting that elusive NPOV. And a quick look at the size of the talk page, the neutrality template, and the article probation tag, should be enough to scare anyone.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, how can I easily determine whether or not I've just landed on The Wrong Version? (Assuming you agree with me that, despite the sarcasm in that essay, there really are significant periods of time when an article is seriously out of balance/biased.) [[Obama–Ayers controversy]] is certainly not an article which has reached a consensus of all editors.
Here's an example of something that has been excluded. According to ABC, "Ayers admitted planting bombs at a number of government installations in the 1960s as part of protests against the Vietnam War, but he was never convicted for any crime related to these activities and no one was hurt in the incidents. In a New York Times article that, coincidentally, happened to be published Sept. 11, 2001, Ayers said 'I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough.'"
I'd say that's a pretty important thing to be in the article. Instead, the article says "they [Ayers and Dohrn] have not been embraced everywhere due to their past leadership of the Weather Underground, a 1960s radical organization that placed bombs at a number of government institutions, causing damage, but no deaths or injuries." They "have not been embraced everywhere"? If I were assessing the article, I certainly wouldn't sign off on that bit of phrasing.
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