User:Jimbabwean
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I have enjoyed using Wikipedia over the years, and decided to start contributing in order to add to the knowledge base that we all represent. I have a University Bachelor's Degree, but looking back on it all, I think that a degree basically tells you that you know how to study for exams, and how to complete projects. A degree in itself being a long project.
The concept of Wikipedia fascinates me! That there are so many of us adding stuff, enduring vandalism, and one another's diverse views, and yet this thing works!
Wikipedia professes a neutral point of view (NPOV). What is it that causes us to have a point of view? Are we capable of having a neutral point of view? Perhaps Wikipedia is not NPOV but rather reflects the dominant point of view in society as it stands today?
Consider an island of people remote to Western Civilization, with their own language, and also with internet access. They start contributing to Wikipedia, and because they're the only one's effectively running their language version of Wikipedia, they have articles in there about how the sky is filled with holes, which let in the rain, and appear as little white dots at night.
What is the authority on knowledge in Western Society? Having a PhD? One can easily find PhDs who will disagree with one another.[citation needed] Is it being in the majority? Perhaps. If there are 10 editors all saying that the sky has little holes in it where the rain gets in, then a lone dissenter will probably give up, after he is edited out of town, and let the sky hole theorists babble on.
It was Spike Milligan who alerted me to the thought that perhaps the sky does have holes in it where the rain gets in. But then he did have a mental breakdown at one point.[1] However he did know that "Education isn't everything; for a start it isn't an elephant."
Perhaps a mental breakdown is the result of trying to say something when the island is full of sky hole theorists?
