In a move that will reverberate in the world of new media, Wikipedia has indeed banned The Church of Scientology from editing articles from within Wikipedia itself.
I heard this on NPR this morning and the news quickly had me awake. The news was apparently broken by The Register,
Wikipedia has banned the Church of Scientology from editing any articles. It’s a punishment for repeated and deceptive editing of articles related to the controversial religion. The landmark ruling comes from the inner circle of a site that prides itself on being open and inclusive.
Closing out the longest-running court case in Wikiland history, the site’s Arbitration Committee voted 10 to 0 (with one abstention) in favor of the move, which takes effect immediately.
I am a firm believer in the wisdom of the crowd, but I can see the need for a set need of boundaries, but have always thought that a wiki itself had provided all the boundaries needed. But when there is a team, such as what has been found with The Church of Scientology, hell bent on self serving edits of this online Encyclopedia, then one must be cognizant for the need of limits.
Especially when you also realize that Wikipedia is the eighth most popular site on the internet, consistently on top of the search engine listing for numerous subjects and topics, it is important indeed that entries remain unbiased.
I do not rely on Wikipedia a lot myself, except for the occasional need for basic information on certain topics or even persons of interest. But Wikipedia has a big weight on its shoulders, it is the source of information for many individuals, especially after the fact that its long standing rival in the industry, Microsoft’s Encarta, recently folded. It is important that such a space of information maintain high standards, encourage the community of contributors, and keep biased edits in check.
According to the same Register article,
According to evidence turned up by admins in this long-running Wikiland court case, multiple editors have been “openly editing [Scientology-related articles] from Church of Scientology equipment and apparently coordinating their activities.” Leaning on the famed WikiScanner, countless news stories have discussed the editing of Scientology articles from Scientology IPs, and some site admins are concerned this is “damaging Wikipedia’s reputation for neutrality.”
The need to set boundaries, even in new media, and even in something as community generated as Wikipedia has been met with much pushback. But I myself have come to the realization, that without boundaries, the inane, inept, and ludicrous, and even corrupt will also have free reign.
This is why, in all societies, laws of men are created in order to bring order, and stave away from chaos. This is why in a Free Market, such as the one that inevitably lead to the downfall of many of the largest financial firms, and quickly touched on the world market itself, the clear lesson of the day is that unregulated markets can sometimes be the downfall of any market.
It’s a controversial decision, one that is hard to grasp at the moment, but it must be said, that for an internet institution such as Wikipedia, an “online encyclopedia”, bias must always be kept in check, because it is information of facts that is being put out there, and not merely opinion on matters.
Popularity: 1% [?]
What are you talking about? This is simply logical. If the Christian Scientists or the Catholic Church were as keen to edit Wikipedia pages they’d be banned too.
BrianB, read my entire article, and the conclusion I come to, we’re on the same page.
The Wikipedia ban is NOT against folks posting advertisements about themselves or on a Renato Ha!Ha!Ha! posting Ha! Ha!Ha! criticisms about Pinas or pekeng-peryodistas. The ban is because the scientologists were EDITING the postings of other people that were critical of Scientology.
what i don’t get is that why arent the scientology critics banned too?
aren’t the critics guilty of the same thing, editing of other peoples views?
Here is another write-up on who has been banned.
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/05/wikipedia-bans-church-of-scientology/
You can’t use an encyclopedia to proselytize unless you publish your own church encyclopedia like what the Catholics did.
Proselytism is one limit
I say it should not be a big deal, wiki has the right to say no to any topic its their site.
I agree. I even go to say that “Property rights” gives wiki the right to push a right-wing agenda or to plaster junky “Ha!Ha!Ha!Ha!-our-readers-are-all-Flunky-heads”
messages all over their wiki-pages because if this were to happen, then the wisdom of the crowd will see their audience disappear within days.
The point is the extreme and unthinking vigilance of the scientologists. Some of those facts they edited were actually factual.
FilipinoVoice is not a news-provider or information-provider like Wikipedia , Slate or even Inquirer -dot-net. BUT… but if Nick is now thinking again about how to make more sophisticated, to improve the readability and to raise the quality of the material that gets into his “FilipinoVoice” blogsite, he can imitate the McClatchy site, which posts this notice:
thank you for the suggestion.
Commenters editing blog articles is one thing.
Commenters commenting on a blog article is another thing.
Naalala ko si Imelda,
tinago ang mga squatter para ipalabas na developed ang Pilipinas. who are you kidding? :lol:
the fact na tinago yung mga iskwat, says a lot :lol:
To edit important informations for making your Church look better
is outright Dishonesty. We are tired of Propagandas from all levels.
Churches, politics, social groups, countries, etc. It is what those
Authoritarian governments do, to stay in power. They make people
disconnected from the Truth and from free societies. We want True
and Factual informations. For us to derive good opinions on everything. TRUTH INDEED WILL MAKE US ALL FREE…
Susmaryosep!
All religion/occult/cult is for the weak minded. The bible thumpers are not about your salvation. Far from it. It’s about getting rich quick.
These people would do anything to get your bucks, with the least effort.
Nick,
This remains YOUR site. The path is clear. You can let is flourish or be freely gutted by arsonists.
When civility and decency are lost the discourse become trash. The evidence is abundant.I am sure you detect how quite a number of decent and sober commenters are no longer on the table.
“…let it flourish…”
It is the Quality of the Posts. Not the Quantity of Posts, that
matter. You cannot Police the Opinion or Thoughts of everybody.
Unless, you go on Censorship for each Post.
To Nick :
Are you still thinking about possible steps re “Quality of Posts”/deleting adhominem comments/banning if necessary repetitive commenters?
Consider this as you continue your analysis. Primer’s last blogpost submission posted on FV received more comments than the combined comments for the past 5 “articles” that DingG posted onto his “midfield” site (where Ding can delete any comment not to his liking). Same results — near-zero if not zero comments —- when DJB posts his ‘articles’ on his phil-commentary site.
And just look at the number of comments that followed spark’s blogpost on FV, and compare that to the total comments posted over the past 5 months on DingG’s “midfield” or Mangubat’s “revolution”.
back on the subject.
I read being a neutral editor does not work either, it is ” that you are either with us or against us” thing.
I think that exacerbated it.
I also read that even bios of living people are a point of contention.
I experimented on John Travolta regarding the death of his son Jett.
I found out that news regarding the relation of seizures to autism was not on the JT wiki bio,but it is in the news that people opined that it might have been seizures due to autism.
Well, the author must not have found it necessary to include unverified claims.
Well I got something to tell all of you.., your all wrong!! in the first place, let me ask you a question, if ever these holy figures (jesus, bhudda, krishna etc..) did really exist, did even one of them tell people to make a religion in their names?? the religion Jewish, Christianity is a fraud, it is based upon astrological events (too long to explain, watch “ZEITGEIST” documentary on “WWW.SPRWORD.COM” and you balance it out yourself if you believe in it.) personified by thousands of years of imaginative thinking and was & is used by political agendas led by the Illuminati since ancient times.. The Illuminati, this group who calls themselves the enlightened ones, had gained positions of power through control of the banking system, Billions of people on planet earth are living in ignorance. Before your very eyes, politicians are advancing a global plan. Since the time of Napoleon, secret societies have been influencing politicians to take over and conquer Europe. Now, in the 21st century, their work of ages is coming to fruition. The New World Order is about the centralization of power. It’s about silencing any public criticism of the system. It’s about commercializing and selling everything as a product. It’s about letting China torture students and still allowing them to host the Olympics. It’s about closing down government owned schools and hospitals, turning them into apartments, and then letting private companies make profits from teaching your children or selling you drugs, just a bunch of masons of the highest degree who are devil worshipers and crazed for death, world domination and control. I’m not saying theres no God I’m a very spiritual man and I believe God is everywhere in nature just if all of us could see and hear him as I do,, but that would be hard in noisy and polluted cities, but that’s just me. I just don’t want to worship and kneel to a Jesus God or whatever, who has all the power in the world to do anything and creates a heaven where all the good people who follow him go to when they die but creates a hell! for those who disobey him where they will burn, suffer, be mutilated and rot for all eternity!!? but he loves you?? what a joke!! So there’s this God Christianities God who’s all powerful but somehow he can’t handle money,, and by Gods name he needs a lot of it!! hahaha.., forgive me people for laughing but if all that money of the church really did go to the poor the word “poor” will be no more. It’s not about money anymore people, control is what they want and they have done a pretty good job doing so in the past century, think about it, truth shall set you free as it has done for me.., ….