November 8th, 2007
Fact and Opinion Have The Same Meaning
I have always been confused about the significance of Wikipedia. There is a wiki for just about everything because anyone can start a wiki regarding any subject they choose. One can write about their hobby, a favorite food, a historical event, or a famous movie star. Anyone who shares an interest or knows more information about your article can expand on your writing or disagree and rewrite it. It’s an ever changing, organic encyclopedia. But I have to ask, who gives the guy sitting next you right now the power to deem truth? With the power of community can we decide what is truth and make prove what is fact? Just one man deemed me unimportant and not worth a wiki.
The information found on the internet continues to grow, an ever expanding universe and I wanted a place in it. I started a wiki about myself. Before you judge how selfish that is let me state my reasons. I wanted to start a record of my life and preserve it for future generations. I wanted a fraction of that expanding information galaxy to be about me and my path in life. It was even suppose to be used as a unique online resume. My wiki currently may not be as important as Cary Grant’s or Friedrich Nietzsche’s but it could one day and that wiki will be the map when it happens. Unfortunately one day I pulled up my wiki only to be greeted by this:
11:40, 29 October 2007 Edgar181 (Talk | contribs) deleted “Justin Leavitt” (CSD A7(Bio): Biographical article that does not assert significance).
and also:
This has been done because the article appears to be about a person, group of people, band, club, company, or web content, but it does not indicate how or why the subject is notable: that is, why an article about that subject should be included in an encyclopedia.
Edgar181’s user profile states that he is a medicinal chemist with a PhD in organic chemistry. I guess this gives him the power to say which person in our current society has significance. What does Edgar181 know about me? He must know that my future will have no significance? He must be God? No he is not god, Edgar181 is a the director of future history. As a Wikipedia administrator with a Doctorate he routinely assists with “speedy deletions, always beginning with the attack articles, and blocking those who abuse their editing privilege” and since he can brag that he has started so many articles related to organic chemistry it gives him the power in wiki world to declare what is fact and what is fiction.
With Edgar181’s egotist power struggle aside I came to the realization that Wikipedia itself has no significance. Since a wiki article can be written by people who yell in their cellphones in quiet areas, by a homeless person, can even be written by serial rapists it becomes inessential as youTube. Its the one place you can be heard even when no one wants to listen to you. It becomes the refuge for failed writers and professors, your bus uncle, supporters of the donkey punch, Flatulists, or one’s unhealthy obsession for bagels. Wikipedia can never entirely be made up of a community of professors with doctorates. In the future these articles might be the records to a lost society and we are trusting it to people that believe the majority is always right. We never know if they qualify to write about their chosen subject. Why cant we just pick up a real encyclopedia that was written by people who have the qualification to write about such things? I can only assume one goes for the Wikipedia article because it’s easier to click on the link that is listed first on Google.
November 13th, 2007
In Hawaii a wiki is the bus that takes you to your ship. If this Edgar 181 knew you he would diffintly request you in his web sight.