I never expected to find myself in a "revert war" on the Wikipedia, but here I am, in the thick of it, with a line drawn in the Wikipedia sand.
Like many, I was moved by the life and death of Marla Ruzicka. Hers was a bright young life ended so pointlessly and violently. You'd think that the idea that her death was tragic would be universal, even in our age of extreme wingnuttery.
Unfortunately, at the Wikipedia, even the tragic death of a young heroine is fraught with wingnut controversy.
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There's no denying that most of the press reports covering Marla Ruzicka's life and death were adulatory. She was known personally to many people in the media and she was apparently well liked by most. That she was attractive and affable no doubt helped endear her to some and made reporting on her death even easier as her pretty pictures made the story that much more compelling.
Enter David Horowitz and his FrontPageMag.com.
First Horowitz publishes an article by extreme wingnut Debbie Schlussel that eviscerates Ruzicka, and even approves of her death calling it "poetic justice." It is an unbelievable polemic steeped in hatred. That it appeared on Horowitz's FrontPageMag.com should surprise no one.
Next, Horowitz himself pens an article on the topic. A bizarre screed that has every adult figure in Marla's life part of the vast Communist conspiracy. These subversives - Communists to the man - killed Marla, according to Horowitz.
Chalk this up to wingnuttery, right? Nobody takes Horowitz and his hatemongering seriously, do they?
You'd think not, but you'd be wrong.
The Wikipedia article on Marla Ruzicka is a straightforward affair. Birth, death, brief history, single photo, some links to obituaries... Nothing to see here, folks... Move on.
Unfortunately, with wingnuts in the night about, something as simple as a non-controversial encyclopedia entry about a dead young woman isn't safe.
The Wikipedia relies on NPOV - Neutral Point of View - to keep its entries, well, neutral... Out of the ideological gutter. NPOV is indeed one of the great things about the Wikipedia.
Unfortunately, for some, NPOV is misinterpreted to mean "balance," and "balance" is misconstrued as a shouting match between the extreme polar opposite ends of an issue.
In the case of the Marla Ruzicka article on the Wikipedia, an article that generally views her life favorably, this is a call for the wingnuts to "balance" the article's point of view by including links to the FrontPageMag hate pieces.
And so begins one of the Wikipedia's notorious "revert wars" where a wingnut adds a link to Horowitz and a liberal removes it. Rinse and repeat. Over and over and over again. I have been that liberal for the most part in this case. It is an inane game that eats at one's self worth. Why am I engaging in this silly battle? What does it all mean... (Sigh...) The problem is that in the face of Horowitz' rhetorical hatred, I can't walk away!
I've tried making the point that NPOV doesn't mean that the most extreme opinions must be included. The Wikipedia's article about Catholicism doesn't link to an article on the KKK's website condemning Catholics. The article on The United States doesn't link to a bin Laden fatweh against America or Ward Churchill's essay about our "Little Eichmanns." The Wikipedia article of Judaism doesn't link to the text of Mein Kampf. These aren't examples of NPOV or good scholarship. They are examples of accomodating the most hateful and vile detractors of any given topic.
Should Marla Ruzicka be able to rest in peace or should her memory include the Horowitz/Schlussel opinion that her death was, in fact, poetic justice? All the wingnuts need to do to keep "poetic justice" on the table is keep putting the links back into the article. In the end keeping the article from succumbing to them may prove to be akin to holding back the tide.