[WikiEN-l] A counterpoint to the mobilization of Stormfront

Wed Feb 9 13:42:58 UTC 2005

Catherine Munro (artslave at usa.net) [050210 00:08]:

> OK, so it's not nearly as compelling as Neo-Nazis breathing hard outside 
> the door, but I ran across this today on the "Excessive Sweating and Facial 
> Blushing" site (it was linked from the talk page of another WP user):
> A group with an agenda (opposition to a drastic type of surgery to treat 
> sweating disorders) discovered Wikipedia, said, "hey, we can support our 
> agenda there"...."but wait, they have an NPOV policy"...."that's ok, we can 
> do that"..."in fact, let's invite the doctors who support the treatment to 
> come work on it"....
> http://www.esfbchannel.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl?board=ETS_General&action=display&num=1100250508
> And now, two months later, we have a fairly balanced little article on 
> [[Endoscopic thoracic sympathectomy]], which the group is now telling other 
> ETS/anti-ETS sites they can use and copy (WITH proper GFDL linking and 
> credit, no less!):
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endoscopic_thoracic_sympathectomy
> Obviously these are rational people, and not ideologues of any stripe -- 
> still, I thought it would be a nice bit of evidence that the system /does/ 
> usually work.  :)

Yep.

It's an important point to remember: talking about Wikipedia on an activist
(i.e., POV-pushing) mailing list, and even responding to a recruitment call
to come to Wikipedia, *is not* evidence of POV-pushing edits. Only the
edits themselves are.

Even then, the editors should generally be cluifiable. Most people aren't
actually out to wreck things in the name of their cause, but to do good.
Assume good faith.

- d.