[R-G] The Wikipedia thought police

[Anthony Fenton]

http://www.alterinfos.org/spip.php?article2449

http://machetera.wordpress.com/2008/07/01/the-wikipedia-thought-police/

Ariel Zúñiga seems to Machetera to be a little bit cranky. And if he  
doesn’t care for having his work posted at Rebelión without being  
consulted first, he probably won’t like being translated without  
asking either. But this is an excellent analysis that shouldn’t wait,  
so Machetera will translate first and ask forgiveness later. “Gusgus,”  
aka Mercedes, is one of the iron-fisted hierarchy over at Spanish  
Wikipedia, whose word is apparently law.

Wikipedia’s Censorship of Rebelión

Under the Lord of the Flies Syndrome

Ariel Zúñiga - Alterinfos

When the Wikipedia project was born, I immediately felt seduced and  
summoned to support it with the knowledge available to me. It was  
assumed that no-one would go around making selections based on the  
fame of the authors, but rather that the community itself would decide  
which knowledge was valid by contesting previous affirmations. Whoever  
wished to disagree should present their arguments rather than imposing  
academic credentials, and not only the topic, but the reader and the  
community would be enriched through involvement in the entire process.  
Being treated to different points of view would allow users to select  
that which they considered valid in the material found throughout the  
discussion. That’s how it works in the social sciences. No-one has the  
last word in them and what is said, in the humanities.

Very shortly in the project, two tribes emerged that through their  
actions laid the groundwork so that today, the free encyclopedia has  
transformed itself into a complex control system for knowledge and at  
the same time, the crude Inquisitor that we thought we’d banished. The  
first tribe is that of the extremely sensitive, that for the sake of  
political correctness, efficiency and utility, claimed that some users  
were abusing the freedom given them to transform certain articles into  
the equivalent of public bathroom walls; others, the megalomaniacs,  
aspired for Wikipedia to compete with other encyclopedias, therefore  
claiming that the contents should be controlled so that any ignorant  
user might find it useful. Both tribes converged over the risks  
implied by the divulging of false information, forgetting that this  
was exactly the characteristic that made Wikipedia unique. It was  
supposed that this needed to stop now that the Internet was going to  
reach the masses and the Wiki would be the teacher of billions of  
people.

And so we went from being an elitist but democratic Wikipedia to an  
ordinary encyclopedia, as overabundant and anti-democratic as all the  
rest. Now the knowledge police scan each article in search of  
“deficiencies,” “inconsistencies,” “errors,” and since the Internet  
went on without reaching the masses, the only ones harmed were the  
same initial users, since the others, if they wanted to know what 2+2  
was, would always have a pirated copy of Encarta on hand.

We’ve created new conscience police to protect the freedom of access  
to knowledge, forgetting that in doing so, we sacrifice the freedom to  
produce it. We’ve gone from being idealist communicative Habermasians  
to picayune Foucaultians. Now the dead bodies are surfacing and it’s  
not possible to hide the odor coming from the usual hypocrites with  
their banners for freedom of expression.

Rebelión isn’t a democratic site; it doesn’t publish comment nor  
criticism of its articles. They’ve published articles from my blog  
without citing it, and have re-titled others to make them follow their  
editorial line, all within the law since I tolerate and allow it. It’s  
not necessary to grab me by the throat to make me say what I think of  
Rebelión: it’s a website for the dissemination of leftist ideas, but  
also of propaganda, mainly Castrista and Chavista, where many  
defenders of the indefensible converge, as in respect to the FARC; and  
where articles are re-posted by noted specialists on the failure of  
the left, with very few exceptions.

However, as has been endlessly said in the Wikipedia forums, exposed  
to the obscene “editing” of the on-site police (who avoid calling it  
censorship), the reprehensible action against Rebelión can also be  
verified in Alterinfos for example (a site that publishes my articles  
under my express authorization) as in so many others where not only do  
they not publish my letters to the editor, but have had the audacity  
to pressure me academically for sending them (in 1998 El Mercurio  
demanded that I be expelled from the Universidad Diego Portales for  
having used the debate society fax to send criticism).

We all know that “official” media lie, make mistakes, create opinion,  
disseminate rumors, pressure, extort, veto and hound journalists,  
conspire against governments, excuse criminals, etc. The sins of the  
alternative media, those that they possess, are infinitesimal in  
comparison to those of the “official” media; the censorship of  
Rebelión is indefensible but it’s an expression of something even more  
serious: we should not forget that this censorship comes from the  
“free encyclopedia.”

What’s happening in Wikipedia is a glaring demonstration that the  
freedom of movement of ideas only matters in respect to those who  
collaborate with the accrual of power for some. Every time that  
knowledge is used to free minds for its own sake once in awhile, the  
custodians of order and hierarchy appear. In defense of Rebelión, for  
example, it is reiterated to the point of annoyance that the authors  
of its texts are known specialists, celebrated authors, who occupy  
senior positions in a principally western academic system. Nobody  
bothers with the garbage that is put out daily by the “official”  
media, signed by known personalities of worldwide renown; or with the  
weak pillars on which the sand castle of the social sciences and  
academia have been built.

Wikipedia is dead just as the Internet free press is a dead fetus.  
Here the arguments don’t matter, but rather the hierarchical position  
held by an official, paid or not, within a hierarchy, which empowers  
them to say brutish things and censor whoever expresses a contrary  
view. Hundreds of solid arguments, expressed with elegance and  
eloquence are worth three cherries and a pear in front of the  
bureaucrat called Gusgus who demands that Rebelión exhibit credentials  
that not even Harvard University is capable of offering (that  
everything it publishes is neutral, verifiable and authenticated) in  
order to reconsider his unilateral and preventive holy war.

Along with occupying ourselves with the censorship toward Rebelión, we  
should be coherent with our own words and say as clearly as possible  
that Wikipedia does much censoring, cutting, misrepresenting and  
controlling of knowledge. That its entire bureaucracy and police force  
reveal that the label of “free encyclopedia” is not just one more lie  
beyond the many it contains, but the most serious and the only  
intolerable one. Let’s not bother with arguing over whether the  
censorship is done well or badly, if it’s opportune or inopportune,  
consensual or unilateral; let’s concentrate only on reversing this  
situation and in proscribing all censorship, without names or  
euphemisms, neither with clauses nor exceptional cases.

See the (Spanish) discussion on the topic by the wikipedists, “edited”  
by those who executed and maintain the censorship.

Machetera is a member of Tlaxcala, the network of translators for  
linguistic diversity. This translation may be reprinted as long as the  
content remains unaltered, and the source, author, and translator are  
cited.