Re: <nettime> what makes a notable life? [wikipedia]

[dj lotu5 <lotu5@resist.ca>]

Leutha Blissett wrote:

>  be altered at a moments notice. This of course has its ups and
>  downs. But providing solid references does enable the reader
>  to follow up sources and form their own opinion. The fact that
>  many people aren't interested in doing so, and maybe have not
>  developed a critical approach to the acquisition of knowledge is
>  perhaps their own short coming, not something that can or should be
>  projected onto wikipedia.
>

In the case I posted, I included a number of solid references for the
information, including news paper and magazine articles as well as
published papers, most of which do not appear in google news.

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_policy#Courtesy_bla 
> nking). However Wikipedia adopts a "Neutral Point of View"          
> position, which means that individuals using it as place to post    
> their own CV is not regarded as                                     

This is the most ridiculous and offensive claim, and the whole point
of my posting. Wikipedia is clarly not neutral in any way, unless
you're trying to claim that Google, a for profit corporation is,
because in this case Google News is the benchmark for evaluating the
worth of an entry. Nothing is neutral and wikipedia is clearly the
product of mostly geeks who get their ideas of what is important from
the internet, so dragonball z is clearly more important that the
treaty of guadalupe hidalgo. Wikipedia is also mostly heteronormative,
just take a look at the discussion page of the entry for "sexual
positions" to see some of the comments there. The very claim at
nautrality implies that some sort of absolute truth lies in wikipedia
and belies the arrogance in thinking they should speedily delete a
page about anyone. Why isn't a good policy to have information about
everyone, instead of only information about people who appear in
google news? And do you really think wikipedia would be considered
a neutral point of view, by say, an indigenous person in bolivia? I
think not, since even the judaeo-christian calendar by which things
are dated in wikipedia and the very assumptions about time and its
structure are products of colonialism.


  lotu5




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