| Yeah, that dude is deeeefinitely deserving of having antisemitism mentioned in the first sentence. My problem with Wikipedia is that some articles are fiercely gatekept by individuals who have clear bias and the community does little about it. A great example of this would be the Alcoholics Anonymous page. Any time someone tries to add information about the ineffectiveness of AA's all-or-nothing treatment of substance abuse, the abuse/harassment that goes on in groups, the documentary that revealed said abuse and harassment - one of a small handful of accounts, who rarely participate on any other page, immediately revert the edit with a gish-gallop of claimed wikipedia violations. Now, aside from the fact that reverting edits is supposed to be something of last resort - the reasons they cite for removing stuff strain credulity all the time. For example, they dismiss the documentary because it apparently wasn't screened in enough festivals and theatres. Which...might be a thing (it really isn't), if one were trying to cite it as a source...but you can't even mention the existence of the documentary, a demonstrable fact, without that being shot down as well due to the documentary not meeting their standards for a documentary. I believe they also cited a wikipedia rule that says that "both sides" type coverage of a subject needs to be proportionate to how mainstream/fringe each "side" is. So by their reasoning: because there aren't many people talking about the problems with AA, the AA article shouldn't have any mention of the problems with AA. They justify all this by claiming the AA is under "attack" and they are "defending" AA from the evil people (did I mention that AA is closely tied to Christianity?) Wikipedia is controlled by a very small number of people who use an exhaustive policy manual to justify whatever actions they want to take, defend viewpoints they like and attack those they don't. It's sort of like how US federal and state laws are extensive that just walking to your mailbox, you probably break some sort of law and could be detained by police for it. That's the core problem. Wikipedia isn't governed by the truth or fact, but by who knows the policy manual best. |
Especially when the example is a philosopher and the thing being described is one of their philosophies.