Wikipedia

There’s a fascinating piece on the Wikipedia in the NYTimes today.

One of my more favorite excerpts:

"There was, of course, already a Jerry Falwell article on Wikipedia, but the day of his death in May saw a predictable spike in traffic. When I first logged on, I didn’t have to scroll far before coming across an obvious bit of teenage vandalism, concerning an unprintable cause of death that the writer evidently felt would, if true, have meted out a certain poetic justice. That bit of editorializing, a matter of fewer than a dozen words in all, was gone from the page in two minutes.

“I’m actually surprised it took that long,” Sean Barrett, a Los Angeles-based I.T. consultant and Wikipedia admin, told me. “I went to the Falwell page myself as soon as I heard that he was dead; high-profile things like that, breaking news, we’ve learned to be proactive. I’m sure hundreds of administrators put Jerry Falwell on their watch list.”

But it wasn’t just the longtime admins who were hashing out the complexities of how to give this polarizing figure his neutral due. A furious dialogue went on all day on the discussion page that shadows that (and every) Wikipedia entry; one comment from a user named Shreveport Paranormal read, in part: “Despite my personal dislike of him, the man did just pass away. . . . This is a place that is supposed to give accurate information. . . . The only way we can keep to the purpose of Wikipedia is to remain unbiased.” Not that extraordinary a sentiment, perhaps, until you take into account that Shreveport Paranormal (according to his user profile) is a teenager, and Roman Catholic, and gay. And that he had been a Wikipedia user, at that point, for two days."