For the last two days The Colbert Report has pointed out the ease of inserting phony information in the open encyclopedia, Wikipedia He has managed to shut down one article in his demonstration of the absurdity of a reference source that anyone can debase so easily. What he is doing says much about this individual, but more about our culture, the Internet and the younger liberals who make up his audience.
I first heard of Wikipedia in January when there were widespread news reports of vandalism. I went on the site, and explored it, and discovered something that was amazing. Here was the work of thousands of bright individuals who were freely contributing their time and expertise anonymously for nothing other than making knowledge available to the world.
Wikipedia is sort of like Dailykos, if you could imagine every sentence that you write being subject to correction by the Federalist Society. But you could also amend their work. You would think this is a recipe for disaster; that the articles would become a battlefield, or mush. Well on Wikipedia they don't. On controversial subjects there is often a back and forth. What is amazing is that people on opposite sides of controversial issues find a common value in objective truth that transcends their ideologies. So there is an article on Intelligent Design, on Neo Cons, on Same Sex Marriage that actually manages to adhere to the norm of NPOV, neutral point of view. If there were a political site with this norm, if it could be made to work, what kind of country could we have? Politics just may not work that way, maybe should not work that way, but an encyclopedia can, and Wikipedia does.
After exploring the site I cautiously made some edits. Some were corrected, but over the months most stuck. This means that those who originally wrote the articles and made enhancements felt my statements were accurate and improved the article. I wrote in areas as diverse as statistical significance to centenarian
At this point I was going to insert the paragraph I added to the article, which would have given this diary more substance, but I won't. As Colbert has pointed out the very openness of Wikipedia, the ease that anyone can enhance any topic, also allows opportunity for vindictiveness. I could monitor those who wanted to remove meaningful information and substitute junk. I could revert and eventually protect a few articles that I care about, but the effort could wear me down. If Colbert's mentality were to spread, he could destroy this phenomenon.
Vandalism has that quality. A single individual can steal copper wires from communication nodes that will earn him a few hundred dollars. It may cost hundreds of thousands to replace and worse, during the outage it leaves the population unconnected to emergency services. But the vandal simply doesn't care.
When I talk about Wikipedia, I tell people, shamelessly, that it restores my faith in the human race. This open site, that is subject to vandalism and spreading of misinformation just doesn't happen to do that very often. One study showed that on scientific articles a panel of experts judged it equal or better than the Encyclopedia Britannica, but more current.
Stephan Colbert chose to ridicule this masterful and rare example of the potential societal benefit to be realized from the Internet revolution. He went for the laugh, as he always does, in repetitive tedious mind numbing regularity. There is no purpose, no societal danger so great that he would get out of character, be other than the cool guy who puts other people on. I know, I know, he needs to entertain to stay on television. But with this attack against Wikipedia he has upped the stakes. He directed his readers to find the vulnerability of Wikipedia so to destroy it. Ironically, this man is an icon of the left, as he is simply so cool, so subversive of those who he interviews.
Wikipedia is a model of how, under the right circumstances, there can be a cohesive benevolent brotherhood of caring individuals that is self perpetuating and self monitoring. The only authority is the value of truth and the advancement of knowledge. For Stephen Colbert the beauty of this is simply of a wavelength that he does not receive. He doesn't care that it is providing information to those who could not have access to it any other way. He is the ultimate hacker, getting joy in pure destruction. His cynicism is such that it leaves no capacity for the pure wonder of something as rare and magnificent as Wikipedia. It is so much more than a research tool, rather it is a university that never closes that is available at a keystroke to all the world. It is the gift of knowledge, that in a world of growing cynicism, deserves to be defended.
This was one of the comments to the diary:
The article for example on the Ku Klux Klan is written with massive sympathy to the Klan and is run with an iron hand by Klan sympathizers who play down all but the marginally offensive stuff the Klan did.
The article on Reconstruction (civil war), and a great number of articles that link from that article are reverted to pro-confederate sympathies by RJensen, a ReThug retired college teacher in Chicago. All of the history overturning the racist views of Reconstruction that enforced segregation dominate these articles.
The article, for example, on James S. Pike, a racist journalist who write the original narrative smearing Freedmen, and northern and southern whites who fought for justice, makes him sound like the arch angel. I corrected it to reflect that his biographer traces his lies and his racism, to no avail. The racist Rjensen removed most references to the biographer (Durden) and re-instated the racist narrative upon which much of the most vile and deeply segregationist Reconstruction myths are based.
Don't trust Wikipedia on the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki-- it is US apologist with many mainstream voices and nearly all Japanese voices excluded.
The article on No Gun Ri sounds like the massacre of Koreans was a boy scout jamboree. My point is vicious ReThugs are in firm control of many parts of Wikipedia, and there are not nearly enough progressives fighting them.
To the degree that Colbert was talking about articles such as this he certainly had a point. Are defective articles like that rare, and quickly corrected, as one commentor asserts saying that the KKK article is now balanced.
Maybe, by introducing and warning about the defects, he may have actually done a service. But his persona does not allow presenting a fuller picture. Many in the past, the golden age of TV, Steve Allen, Jack Parr and the like, were able to entertain, yet be serious when appropriate. Don't know whether it is the audience, the stars or the media that has changed, but we are worse off for it.