Originally posted by
[email protected] 10 2006, 06:31 PM
It's rather ironic to say that Wikipedia is "disreputable", esspecially in this forum, as it is, in fact, an experiment with electronic socio-anarchy and self-governance ( :rolleyes: ); it really astounds me when leftists say they dislike Wikepedia, when it is what they've been speaking of for decades: a classless, egalitarian, anti-authoritarian, intelecual society. :lol:
Quite the contrary. There are admins who have authority over others and over the content of the encyclopedia.
The biggest problem with the Wikipedia, I think, is its striving for a neutral point of view. I don't really think such a thing is possible or desirable. For instance, Wikipedia must present all viewpoints practiced by a significant number of people as potentially true, even if they are demonstrably wrong. Thus the article about Holocaust denial has to be carefully worded so as to not openly state the demonstrable fact that the Holocaust happened. The article about intelligent design cannot state the demonstrable fact that it is not a scientific theory. Instead "both sides of the issue" must be treated equally with equal space and an equal number of arguments, even though the evidence is very one-sided. However, in other articles it is standard procedure to explicitly state that the Holocaust or evolution happened, thus negating their pretention of presenting all points of view equally.
Of course it would be a waste to include in every article about a Holocaust victim "some people don't believe this story is authentic because they claim the Holocaust never happened, however is a large body of historical evidence suggesting otherwise..." It would also be a waste to include creationist viewpoints in every article about geology, astronomy or biology. It is far better to just ignore the Holocaust deniers and the creationists, explaining things according to the known facts instead. If you're writing in a factual manner, you have to ignore those points of view which are plainly wrong. And that means discriminating between people's points of view. You can't possibly present things in an objective manner while treating all beliefs equally, since many people's beliefs conflict with objective truth.