My Dad recently got upset by an article on Wikipedia that was close to my family's heart.
It was a good article, but it did have to do with family business. Unfortunately, this business was both very personal and very, very public. The public element (which was to do with maintaining safety in the community for innocent people) was the only thing the article documented.
I thought it might help if I explained more about how Wikipedia works and why it matters. This is what I told him.
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I'm sending you this as some info about how wikipedia works, and specifically, how much no-one is in charge (and how very, very seriously the wikipedians take that.) Personally, I really think that the decentralised control is beyond a doubt the best thing about wikipedia. It's what makes it good. It's the thing that means it can never be taken over by anyone, not for politics, not for religion, not for anything. I really, really think that it is a good thing that no-one controls wikipedia, because it will always be more-or-less right (even if it's never *totally* right). No government could ever turn it into a propaganda tool, and that matters. It really matters. And it really matters that people take it seriously.
To demonstrate this very important point about people taking wikipedia seriously, I'm going to use a really, really stupid example. Let me introduce Bryan Peppers.
The only thing that matters about Bryan Peppers is that he is very, very ugly. (If you click the link below, you'll see - he's very, very, very ugly.)
Bryan Peppers turned into an internet 'meme' - something that lots of people know about for no really good reason (in this case, the (bad) reason was because he's ugly). Eventually someone made a wikipedia article about him. And another person (a lot of people, actually) argued that the article should be deleted. Someone else (a lot of people, again) said it should stay. More people said it should be deleted. And so on. After a LOT of argument, Jimmy Wales Himself - the Founder of Wikipedia - stepped in. He said that the article would come down for one year, and if anyone cared after that, they would review.
Here's the thing - LOTS of people cared. Hence Brian Peppers day.
In 2008, a whole bunch of people Kicked Up a Fuss on the anniversary of the Brian Pepper takedown. They didn't particularly care about Brian Peppers. They didn't care what he was 'famous' for. They didn't necessarily approve of him being famous (i.e. most of them didn't). But they all cared that wikipedia shoudl stay free. They all cared that no-one, not even someone powerful and important, could remove information that other, not-powerful people had decided was important.
This has nothing to do with Mr Peppers. It has to do with powerful people vs. not-powerful people, censorship vs. freedom, all that stuff. And the Brian Peppers thing is stupid, but the point is not. The point matters. A lot.
Personally, I don't think there should have been a Brian Peppers article on Wikipedia. But I do believe that no-one should be able to take it down.
Much love always, big hug,
Zoe
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