Title: ORourke54.htm
It is
well known outside of their cloistered environment.
Why do they keep having to lock down the George W. Bush
article??
David
"There is no virtue in compulsory government
charity, and
there is no virtue in advocating it. A politician who
portrays himself as
"caring" and "sensitive" because he wants to expand the
government's charitable programs is merely saying that
he's willing to try to
do good with other people's money. Well, who isn't? And a
voter who takes pride
in supporting such programs is telling us that he'll do
good with his own money
-- if a gun is held to his head."--P.
J.
O'Rourke
On 6/14/2013 8:37 PM, [email protected] wrote:
Wikipedia's unacknowledged problems
Wikipedia has decided not to
publish my revision of their extant article
about Pacifica Forum.
This has several consequences :
( 1 ) The decision of the
editors lets stand an existing article that is
defamatory to several
people associated with Pacifica. Inasmuch as
I am one of those people
this does not make me very happy.
( 2 ) It would have been an advantage for many people to
have had
a greatly revised account of the Forum to refer to if,
for no other reason.,
far greater accuracy / objectivity about the group. This
will not be happening
any time soon, so it seems, and false impressions of PF
will persist.
( 3 ) E-mail
"conversations" with two of the editors have convinced me
that
the Wikipedia conception
of objectivity is far less than optimal. For some
types of articles their
conception may be adequate; in this
category
should go stories about
the sciences ( some sciences, anyway ), stories
about cities or states or
countries, etc, strictly factual stuff, and
anything else that relies
just about entirely on hard data. But beyond
that, "buyer beware."
Wikipedia is Left-wing in
its outlook and its
editors regard "objective"
to mean "in sync with the
views and values
of the Democratic Party" or,
perhaps, with the views
of non-affiliated
Leftists, but Leftists nonetheless.
About this, I should have
guessed. Wikipedia is San Francisco based.
Duh, few cities in
America are as politically Left-wing, and local media
is completely in the tank
for Political Correctness, the Leftist version of
multi-culturalism,
opponents of conservatism, irreligion --except faiths
"approved" by Hollywood,
the viewpoint of the New York Times,
and etc.
What MUST be kept in mind
is the fact that all of this is conceived by
Wikipedia's editors as
unbiased, truthful, objective, and so forth.
They simply are unable
--because of their mindset-- to conceive
that their worldview and
ideas are anything but unbiased. Hence they
use the vocabulary of
even-handedness, objectivity, truthfulness, etc,
all the while actually
meaning this : Wikipedia reflects the
views of
some approximation of the
scholarly community which is Left of Center
or, in cases, hard Left.
If something is not
Leftist in outlook, maybe better, which can be interpreted
as Leftist in outlook by
the editors, then it is, by definition, Right-wing,
neo-conservative, or even
extremist and highly biased.
Also keep in mind a value
of the academic Left, a value that I share and
which I think is
generally all for the good: Encyclopedic
knowledge is
essential, valuable,
useful, etc, and the more of it the better. I'm not sure
how far to go in
generalizing this principle but do have the sense that
it is not nearly as much
a factor
