When it started out, Wikipedia was a poster child for everything that mainstream media outlets wasn’t – decentralized control and editing abilities (“anyone can edit anything!”) and filled with obscure yet fascinating pieces of information. Is it the same today? Yes, yes it is but the limits under which Wikipedia (like most other organizations) must operate have become clearer. Because yes, there are limits. A free-for-all editing structure requires more rules, not fewer.
The first signs: banning Church of Scientology IP addresses from editing Wikipedia. So, not such a big deal after all – Wikipedia routinely bars most open proxy IPs from editing pages, after repeated and sustained editing abuse. This is all part and parcel of Wikipedia practice, made necessary because of the anonymous internet. Perhaps it was the first time that Wikipedia had performed an organizational IP block, though (although I doubt it).
But this most recent case? Much worse, depending on your perspective. The New York Times is reporting that Wikipedia voluntarily suppressed news about a kidnapping in order to prevent the ransom value from going up.
Times executives believed that publicity would raise Mr. Rohde’s value to his captors as a bargaining chip and reduce his chance of survival. Persuading another publication or a broadcaster not to report the kidnapping usually meant just a phone call from one editor to another, said Bill Keller, executive editor of The Times
Mmmm. Collusion to prevent the publication of items with legitimate news interest to the public? check. Self censorship? check.
And then it gets better.
The Wikipedia page history shows that the next day, Nov. 13, someone without a user name edited the entry on Mr. Rohde for the first time to include the kidnapping. Mr. Moss deleted the addition, and the same unidentified user promptly restored it, adding a note protesting the removal
…
Around that time, Catherine J. Mathis, the chief spokeswoman for the New York Times Company, called Mr. Wales and asked for his help.
And then there is a (not very) interesting story of cat-and-mouse, of editorial freezings of pages and so on.
What does this all mean? The person asked by the article author seems to think that –
[Wikipedia] role in suppressing news about Mr. Rohde would [probably not] prompt an outcry among longtime editors, because in the Rohde case, lives were at stake
That’s probably true. I don’t think there was any other choice for Jimmy Wales and his administrators, even if they had contemplated alternatives. But on the other hand, the media is responsible for the destruction of lives too. What made the life of a random reporter (who must have known about the risks going in) more important than media witch hunts which bring down so many?
Part of the appeal of a true crowd sourcing was that interests were diluted. No single person is accountable, no single point of view pushed (but then again, we all know that with Wikipedia editorial politics, that was never true at any point anyway). What if the next people who’s lives are at stake don’t have Jimmy Wales on their rolodeck to call and ask for a special favour? Democracy didn’t die with the publication of this story. The illusion that any crowd sourced site is more powerful than the administrative cabal probably did though. And not a moment too soon.
