Via Instapundit comes this series of Volokh Conspiracy guest-posts on the topic of Wikipedia by an administrator of Wikipedia – an electronic entity that many if not most of the readers of this site don’t particularly trust*. The author (one Newyorkbrad) knows this himself, which is why he has been providing TVC with basic explanations of the internal self-monitoring system, what the various levels of access are, and some of the philosophical disputes going on inside the site. Essentially, he’s trying to demystify the whole thing for people.
If I had been asked for advice on this topic – which I wasn’t – I would have to say that the best way for people to handle perceived flaws in Wikipedia would be roughly similar to what I counseled people to do with the GOP; join up, make yourself useful, then start providing balance to the discussion. They’ll probably be overjoyed to see you and you can finally set the record straight on 18th Century coal mining techniques.
Moe Lane
*This statement is equally accurate for RedState.com & MoeLane.com.
Crossposted to RedState.
I look at Wikipedia the same way as I would look at The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy.
I read something a long time ago that stuck with me. It’s a proposition that any group or organization that is not explicitly conservative will move to the left over time. The examples at the time were the various eco-groups like the Sierra Club, which started as an organization of hunters, and is now about as far left as you can get, and the various foundations like the Ford Foundation. The reason given was that, conservatives, by and large, have jobs and lives, and don’t do ‘movements’, so they don’t tend to end up in leadership positions in organizations. As such, the leadership of organizations will always be to the left of the membership.
This certainly applies to the wiki community, and I believe it applies to the Republican Party as a whole.
So how to move the party back to the right? Moe’s right, but only partly right, in that we’re our own cavalry. The last successful move to the right (and really the only very successful one) in the Republican party was accomplished by Reagan. But Reagan wouldn’t have been able to do so without the Goldwater conservatives that had been energized, working at the local and state level. So we need conservative ground troops, and we’re going to need a general. And I’m not sure that I really see one right now, especially since the party as a whole is doing everything it can to keep that from happening.