[WikiEN-l] Re: Articles about ourselves

Thu Nov 6 02:50:43 UTC 2003

You wrote:

>Right, well, we could talk about that offlist if you really want,

OK, whatever, but if you don't want to talk about it here, maybe you 
shouldn't have brought it up here.

>but
>that wasn't really the point.  The point was just that the entry about
>you that exists right now is biased, and I think that one of the
>reasons that it's biased is that people are reluctant to edit it.

If you think the article that exists right now is biased, CHANGE IT! 
I've said that several times now. If you don't, I have to assume that 
whatever bias you claim to perceive isn't really that much of a 
problem for you.

And what's your basis for claiming that people are "reluctant to edit 
it"? Ed Poor hasn't been reluctant, nor have several other people.

The only person here who seems to think the article is biased is you, 
for reasons that you don't want to discuss on this list. Based on 
what you've stated so far, it is impossible for anyone to judge 
whether the real problem is MY bias, the ARTICLE's bias, or YOUR 
bias. Personally, I vote for the conclusion that the problem is YOUR 
bias. But maybe that's just me. ;-)

>In general people are going to be reluctant
>to edit a biography of someone here, and more so if it's
>_autobiography_.

Of course, my bio isn't really an "autobiography." It's not written 
in the first person, and it actually has multiple authors. It's no 
more an "autobiography" than the Rev. Moon article is a "biography of 
Moon written by a member of the Unification Church." There's also 
nothing in the text of the article itself that would inhibit anyone 
from editing it. I suppose you might fantasize that someone would 
review its history, see my name there and get all inhibited, but 
that's a fairly fanciful speculation. (Wikipedians don't usually 
begin their editing by reviewing an article's history; at least, I 
know I don't.) And actually, it's equally plausible that seeing my 
name in the history would motivate people to edit it MORE 
aggressively, rather than less so. Try this thought experiment: If I 
had edited the article under an anonymous pseudonym instead of my own 
name, would Ed Poor have used the term "self-serving" to describe the 
paragraph he removed? I think his edit demonstrates that editing 
under my own name actually INCREASED the amount of critical scrutiny 
the article has received.

Your argument reminds me of something I used to hear from one of my 
feminist friends back in the 1980s. I knew a woman who complained 
that at meetings of a political group to which she belonged, men 
tended to dominate because they didn't hesitate to speak up, whereas 
women were shy about expressing themselves in front of a group. She 
thought that this phenomenon constituted some kind of male 
oppression. I pointed out to her that men were under no obligation to 
stifle themselves just because some women lacked the gumption to 
speak up. If women really are more shy in public than men (which may 
have been true at the time, but is probably less true now), the 
solution isn't for men to stifle themselves but for women to find 
their own voices.

Similarly, the solution to the problem you're posing isn't for me to 
stifle myself but for others to overcome their reluctance to edit 
boldly -- assuming that such reluctance even exists, which you 
haven't  demonstrated.
-- 
--------------------------------
|  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
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