The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Can Fauxcohontas Delete the Internet?

Posted on | January 10, 2013 | 11 Comments

Wikipedia expert Leigh Thelmadatter guest-blogs at Legal Insurrection:

On January 7, 2013, Legal Insurrection noted that the entire section about controversy surrounding Elizabeth Warren’s asserted Native American heritage had been wiped fromher Wikipedia page. That assertion was seen by Wikipedia and responded to, with the section reinstated, albeit in a  different form than before. , , ,

 

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Comments

11 Responses to “Can Fauxcohontas Delete the Internet?”

  1. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    January 10th, 2013 @ 10:14 am

    Delete the internet? No. Deleting Wikipedia only requires a little help from her Wikipedia editor administrator friends.

  2. dwduck
    January 10th, 2013 @ 10:17 am

    That can’t be true. As Wikipedia tells me every time they hit me up for money, they’re absolutely unbiased.

  3. Shawn L.
    January 10th, 2013 @ 10:38 am

    Quit bitching about wikipedia and fix it. ANYONE can edit their pages. (Which is part of the problem) It’s not conspiracy of the Wikipedia organization. It’s just that politically controversial figures and topics are often edited back and forth between varying points of view. Which is why the history of edits is available, as well as discussion on the edits, you can see what and when things were changed, and get some idea of why.

    This isn’t a centrally controlled publication.

    Posts like these would be better if they were calls for readers to keep an eye on these pages and make sure that white-washing contributors don’t get the last word.

  4. McGehee
    January 10th, 2013 @ 10:51 am

    Quit bitching about wikipedia and fix it. ANYONE can edit their pages.

    Yup. Until pages get locked and editors get tossed. The phrase “edit war” is a Wikipedia original, and it only takes one determined edit-warrior seeking to protect The Narrative from assault by the facts, to make it impossible fior the casual observer to tell the good guys from the bad guys.

    Anyway, most conservatives have more important things to do than monitor websites for accuracy.

  5. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    January 10th, 2013 @ 11:02 am

    I hope you do what I do when Wikipedia does that: Hit TOM’s tip jar!

  6. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    January 10th, 2013 @ 11:03 am

    Shawn L. I have. Many times. Try editing something fair and see how long it lasts? A left leaning self appointed editor comes, changes it and you cannot change it back. McGehee describes it well. Life is too short to get involved in the Kafkaesque drama at Wikipedia.

  7. Finrod Felagund
    January 10th, 2013 @ 11:11 am

    It’s important though to keep an eye on the wikipedia pages for prominent Republicans and conservatives, to keep trash out of them. Just a couple weeks ago I deleted some unfounded accusations from Stacy’s wikipedia entry.

  8. Finrod Felagund
    January 10th, 2013 @ 11:13 am

    I haven’t gotten into wikiwars, but there are ways to flag things as a NPOV (neutral point of view) violation.

  9. Finrod Felagund
    January 10th, 2013 @ 1:50 pm

    By the way, Stacy, I’d like to converse with you sometime about some of the stuff in your wikipedia entry so that I can edit it appropriately, but I’m guessing a disqus conversation is probably not the optimal way to handle it.

  10. Adjoran
    January 10th, 2013 @ 3:28 pm

    Wikipedia is a great source of basic background on noncontroversial topics, but even these can be infected by bias.

    The fact that “anyone can edit” isn’t any more a feature than a bug: senior editors can lock in bias, and there is no way to know whether some leftist hack has just edited the page when you land on it.

    Anyone who relies on Wikipedia for anything but a starting point of research is a moron.

  11. Thane_Eichenauer
    January 10th, 2013 @ 3:42 pm

    There are certainly pluses and minuses to Wikipedia. There *are* alternatives to Wikipedia.
    http://conservapedia.com/Elizabeth_Warren
    http://www.wikinfo.org/English/index.php/Main_Page