User:PolitiCalypso

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[edit] A Rant

I would like to use this page to express my extreme sadness and disapproval with the direction that Wikipedia is taking. (I can still do that, right?)

It seems that the "powers that be" went into panic mode after the brief, forgettable news story about inaccuracies in Wikipedia articles and the banning of the encyclopedia by some universities as a reference source. The result of this panic attack has been the cracking down on frivolity, individualism, personal expression, and even talk page discussions that are actually about the subject matter of the article in question. The new "policy" for talk pages is that the only acceptable discussion is for the upkeep of the article. Not even the subject matter itself.

This is absolutely insane.

It is unnatural, at that. Sociability, and "off-topic" discussions, are human nature. We do it without even thinking about it.

And the new rules won't have any impact on what the mainstream media personalities think of Wikipedia.

What the "powers that be" have completely failed to grasp is that there is an ongoing battle between the longtime establishment and everyday people. The Internet has made it possible for it to escalate the way it has in recent years, but these types of battles take place whenever a new technology arises that gives more power to regular people and less to the established sources. When the printing press was invented, it took power away from the monasteries and feudal lords, who had previously had a monopoly on the production and distribution of books. The printing press was attacked in its day. Same for the Internet. Wikipedia seems to have become one front for this battle, but there are others.

Witness the attacks on political bloggers. Mainstream media sources--whose profit margins are threatened if people start looking to blogs for news and opinion--have impugned the credibility of the authors, despite their own inability to get things right all the time. They have impugned their ethics if bloggers have any connection to specific campaigns, despite that such sources are necessary and that the media itself has numerous charges of bias levelled against it.

Witness the pooh-poohing of open source software as a "security threat" by certain large software companies, despite how frequently they must patch their proprietary code for security flaws. Firefox is a safer browser to use, for all its code availability.

Yet the blogging and open-source communities have either thumbed their noses at their attackers or shrugged off the false and hypocritical smears. However, it seems that the editors of Wikipedia have buckled to the criticism and agreed to play the establishment's game. I offer a warning: You will never satisfy them. But you have established a dominance relationship now. They know that they have power over you and they will not forget it.

It's deeply depressing that the editors of an encyclopedia of all things would not be aware of this pattern of history. But there you have it.

I've heard that some self-appointed stoogesenforcers have taken to editing user pages that they feel "violate the policy." This rant may well be targeted at some point. You know who you are, and if you're one of them, then fine--go ahead and delete it. It can be reverted. However, before you do, you should consider whether this is something you could proudly tell your partner, or mother and father. "Today I wiped out an opinion piece that I didn't like from a Wiki user's personal page." Doesn't that sound a bit pathetic?


[edit] About Me

Hurricanes I have been in:

Maybe you should steer clear of me if you don't like hurricanes. I seem to attract some bad ones.

Hurricane Katrina
May we never forget…

Subpages: Major Hurricanes, Userpage items