Re-thinking "Wikipedia" Centroids: For some time -ever since my article for Pacifica Forum got nowhere- I have had serious doubts about the value of Wikipedia. Several subsequent cases of using Wikipedia articles added to my skepticism. But today I came across an article that pushed me over the line. On principle Wikipedia cannot be trusted. To repeat something else I have said on many occasions, some articles are quite good. If you have background in an area of interest you will know this for yourself as soon as you start reading. Indeed, now and then you will come across articles that are superlative. However..... The article in question was the subject of the Status of Forces treaty with Iraq. The essay in Wikipedia, while it is filled with facts, is grossly misleading and one-sided. It could have been written by some shill for the BHO administration in the White House. Among other things there isn't even a reference to the important Max Boot article on the subject published in the WSJ in 2011 in which all major details of the botched renewal of Status of Forces treaty led to complete US withdrawal from Iraq in 2011 are examined. As far as the Wikipedia article was concerned all that needs to be considered are official WH talking points and evidence that supports the BHO position. Nothing else even deserves the time of day. How many other articles like this are part of Wikipedia I cannot say. >From personal experience I know that there are at least a few; there probably are, out of about a million Wikipedia articles now available, several thousand. If you add in "stubs" -why they exist at all is a mystery- the number doubtless is in the tens of thousands. To use educated guesswork, 5% of all Wikipedia articles are worthless. This is a totally unacceptable rate of error in an encyclopedia. And if the real number is higher, say 10%, that would be just about fatal to any kind of overall credibility. We all know about Wikipedia articles that focus on celebrities, which are notorious for misleading or ersatz information. These articles may be the worst as a category but may be indicative of more general problems. In the case of Pacific Forum, the existing article on the subject was written by a Left-wing critic whose POV was anti-Pacifica and whose evidence was mostly (well over 80%) biased hearsay. Not that Pacifica doesn't merit criticism. As a participant for more than two years I would be the first to say that it merits a good deal of hard-hitting criticism. But there is a world of difference between objective criticism and Left-wing bitching based on the premise that if it isn't Marxist in some sense then it must be evil and wrong. Granted that my essay had subjectivity issues; those could have been "cleaned up" if there had been interest in doing so on the part of the editors. There was not. Therefore, the extant article stood, as written by a Leftist who took his cues from the SPLC, which is hopelessly biased. There are two problems with Wikipedia as it currently exists and together these problems are sufficient to discredit the project. (1) The editors are Leftists and/or libertarians with Leftist social values. This screens out many (not all, but many) articles written from a conservative or Independent viewpoint. Thus, on political or values subjects the encyclopedia really should be named "Marxipedia." (2) Anyone can contribute an article or edit an existing article. In the past there were other articles about Pacifica written from the perspective of people who were pro-Pacifica although some, at least, sought to be objective. In every case, no sooner were these articles posted than various Leftists or Anarchists edited the essays to turn them into caricatures of what Pacifica was really all about.This happens to all kinds of articles on other subjects; maybe you know about some cases yourself. This is the problem of any free-for-all system; it is nihilistic in design. The whole point is popularity; accuracy might be nice, and I think it exists in abundance in areas like paleontology, geology, gardening, sports information, and so forth, but be very wary if the subject is at all politically sensitive; much of the time you will get crap dressed up as scholarship. What can you expect from a system open to all comers? It necessarily will be uneven in quality and include numbers of very biased articles. This is not only true for politics per se, but related fields like journalism, some kinds of history, and all-too-often the social sciences. ------------- There is a solution, and it is even older than Wikipedia itself. This old solution needs some fine-tuning to make it work, but there is no reason it could not. It is this: A foundation underwrites an online encyclopedia project. Experts are contracted for areas of interest like the sciences, philosophy, sociology, psychology, current events, politics, history, futures research, and the like. These editors would be paid at professional rates and would be expected to act as editors for all articles coming in from others online. As much as possible editors should be political Independents. But in most cases there should always be at least three paid editors, one from the Left, one from the Right, and one "Other," preferably an Independent. All articles should be signed. Once an article is made available in the encyclopedia it would stay there, intact, unless serious errors of fact are pointed out. Also, some system of updating should be made use of such that, say, all articles should be updated at least every two years. Part of the responsibility of the paid editors would be to see that this happens. Readers would be permitted to suggest edits -for example, when an article is too sketchy and needs additional information, or when it omits a critical viewpoint that deserves discussion. Maybe even the overall philosophy of the writer is brought into question. But the professional editors should decide what gets included by way of new edits. There might be a feature that allows temporary posting of new material for discussion by the reading community, but this should never be for more than one month. If something does not pass the tests of the editors that would be that, it would be permanently deleted. All of this is said not only because of Wikipedia itself, but because of personal experiences as a guest on call-in radio or as a listener to some of C-Span's call-in shows. Yes, now and then someone will call in with really worthwhile comments. But most of the time -I think this is a universal phenomenon with call-in shows of all types- callers are grossly uniformed, political zealots, or just plain horse's asses with nothing worthwhile to say. I fail to see where this is "good" in any way. There needs to be screening, there need to be gatekeepers, viz editors. Why would a foundation underwrote such a project? I can't be sure but aren't there foundations with an interest in online "libraries"? What about online public education ? Or adult education ? Maybe funding would be less problematic if a foundation dealt just with political issues, or religion, or society. Then you could leave the hard sciences part of an encyclopedia to people at MIT or Cal Tech or IIT. There might even be $$ to be made. For instance, provide a service available for a price in which the editors would act as agents for talented writers who are experts in various fields. If, say, a business wanted a series of studies about US demography as projected state-by-state for 2020, 2030, 2040, the encyclopedia could set this up and receive an agent's fee. But there might be other kinds of ways to earn money through the project. The larger point would be providing the best available -RELIABLE- information to all Americans, however, a service that would mostly cost money but pay off in an informed citizenry. Billy
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