[WikiEN-l] Re: Articles about ourselves

Wed Nov 5 21:29:27 UTC 2003

Jimbo wrote:

>Ed Poor removed that line with the comment "(moved self-serving ...
>text to talk)".  And of course since then, famously, you two have been
>at each others throats.  I'm not suggesting a direct causal
>connection, but just showing how articles about ourselves are fraught
>with the possibility of conflict.

This causal connection doesn't exist at all. Ed Poor started the 
article about me about a year before I ever heard of Wikipedia. I 
didn't object to his original article or to his subsequent edits to 
my edits of it. Our conflicts have revolved around other things, such 
as his attacks on me here on wikien-l related to the global warming 
article.

>You're well-liked around here.  I like you.  But in my local
>newspaper, I read an editorial you wrote (an excerpt from _Weapons of
>Mass Deception_, I believe) that almost made my head explode.  :-) I
>thought it wasn't just mistaken, but deeply misleading.  And I think
>that your posture in that piece as some kind of neutral arbiter
>exposing PR spin was absurd -- the piece itself was a masterpiece of
>spin.

You're entitled to your opinion, of course, but without knowing what 
you think was specifically misleading in my article, I'm not prepared 
to respond to these charges.

And for the record, I've never claimed to be a "neutral" arbiter of 
spin. I don't even know what you mean by "neutral" in that context. 
John Stauber and I, and the Center for Media and Democracy, are 
watchdogs. It's impossible to be a "neutral" watchdog. If you had a 
"neutral" watchdog in your house, it wouldn't bark at burglars 
because it wouldn't presume to take a position on whether they had 
the right to enter your home.

You may recall that part of my reason for establishing the 
Disinfopedia as a separate project from the Wikipedia is that I 
wanted to pursue an editorial policy of "fairness and accuracy" 
rather than "neutral point of view." I strive to make my writings 
fair and accurate, and if there was something in my article that you 
thought was inaccurate (as opposed to merely "making your head 
explode"), I would appreciate having you point it out to me.

>And yet the article reads like pure hagiography.  It's a perfectly
>appropriate self-biography for PR purposes, but it completely fails as
>encyclopedia material.  And I think that most people will naturally,
>and rightly, refrain from adding criticism of your work there, _as a
>matter of personal courtesy_, because you edit it yourself, and you
>are known and liked here.

I have no objection to people adding criticism of my work there. (Of 
course, they have a responsibility to make factually-based 
criticisms.) In fact, the reason I mentioned the article here is 
precisely because I want to go out of my way to make sure people feel 
INVITED to revise it (as several have done). If you still think it 
"reads like pure hagiography," go ahead and revise. My feelings can 
take it.

Moreover, I think that some of the things I added to the article 
myself are details that do NOT "read like pure hagiography." I'm not 
personally thrilled about my history with the Mormon church, for 
example, and the fact that I have been influenced by feminism and 
peace activism is something that Ed Poor's camp might cite as 
evidence of my political bias.

>2.  UNVERIFIABLE INFORMATION
>
>You are an expert on yourself, to be sure.  So, who could possibly
>challenge you on such statements as "At the age of three, his family
>moved to Las Vegas, Nevada, where his father worked as a musician"?

And you see that as a problem?

Of course, there ARE ways to verify that information. Someone could 
look up my birth certificate or interview my father's co-workers if 
they cared to take the trouble. In short, the information is as 
verifiable as any other information on this earth. Moreover, I don't 
see the question of when my family moved to Las Vegas as something 
that terribly controversial or likely to create a big point of view 
problem.

All information has some sort of provenance, beyond which nothing can 
be done to further verify it. I don't think any of the information 
I've added to my own article is any less verifiable than anything 
else in Wikipedia. Frankly, I think it's rather silly to worry about 
whether I might have added something inaccurate about the age at 
which my family moved to Las Vegas. And if you think that information 
is inappropriate for inclusion, feel free to remove it entirely.

Just for comparison's sake, in the biography of Sun Myung Moon, Ed 
Poor has added a phrase which says that "word play on Rev. Moon's 
name provides a source of merriment to Unificationist disciples." 
This, of course, can only be verified by Unificationist disciples 
such as Ed. Do you think that's a problem too? And should 
Unificationist disciples then be expected to recuse themselves from 
contributing to the biography of Rev. Moon?

>3.  GOOD TASTE
>
>Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, a reference work, not a tool for our own
>self-promotion.  I can easily envision a mocking criticism of us as a
>non-serious work if we all start writing entries about ourselves.  "Of
>the 1,234 page-length biographies in wikipedia, fully 10% of them are
>of Wikipedia contributors writing about themselves."

OK, but I didn't start the article about myself. Ed Poor did. 
Evidently he thought that I was important enough to merit an article, 
long before we had ever communicated personally and before I had even 
heard of Wikipedia. I would not have created it myself, but since it 
already existed, I think I'm entitled to edit it. And if someone else 
wants to edit my edits, that's their right too.

>Let me say it another way -- it isn't so much the conflict-of-interest
>that's a problem, it's that personal courtesy prevents people from
>editing an article about you that you've edited yourself, with the
>result being an entry that is not encyclopedic.

Oh, please. "Courtesy" didn't stop Ed Poor from deleting the 
paragraph that he described as "self-serving" -- and as you've 
noticed, I didn't challenge his change. I accepted his revision 
without quarrel, and I don't bear him any ill will for having made it 
(even though I've disagreed with him strongly about other things). If 
you still think the article reads like "hagiography," don't wuss out 
-- change it! I don't see how "courtesy" prevents you from doing that 
any more than it has prevented people from editing the Rev. Moon 
article or the article on global warming just because their edits 
might be perceived as "discourteous" to Ed's beliefs.

My personal take on the question of "good taste" in this context is 
that it obliges me to be more careful to respect others' edits than 
if I were not the topic of the article. I've tried to do that, but I 
don't think that I (or anyone else) should feel obliged to refrain 
completely from editing articles that mention them.
-- 
--------------------------------
|  Sheldon Rampton
|  Editor, PR Watch (www.prwatch.org)
|  Author of books including:
|     Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities
|     Toxic Sludge Is Good For You
|     Mad Cow USA
|     Trust Us, We're Experts
|     Weapons of Mass Deception
--------------------------------