--- Lance Murdoch <lancemurdoch at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 1 Dec 2004 11:47:01 -0500, Jon Johanning
> <zenner41 at mac.com> wrote:
> > For politics and other controversial subjects,
> > the discussion ("talk") of an article is often
> more revealing than the
> > article itself.
> >
> > On these subjects, I think it should be regarded
> as an ongoing
> > conversation or dispute among people who care
> about the subject in
> > question, more than as a traditional type of
> encyclopedia. If you
> > really need to depend on what it says on a
> particular matter, use that
> > as a jumping-off point for your own research.
> Self-education is always
> > the best education.
> >
> > Of course, the same could be said of the
> traditional encyclopedia, but
> > it was always disguised by its hard copy (usually
> very expensive)
> > format, presenting its smorgasbord of "points of
> view" as the holy writ
> > of Experts carved in stone.
>
> I agree. I think Wikipedia is good for
> non-controversial subjects but
> I feel that due to the control of the "libertarian"
> millionaire Jimbo
> Wales, and his tilted right administrators, as long
> as the mostly
> white, white collar American constiuency of English
> Wikipedia, much of
> it is hopelessly biased. I've found it's gotten
> better over the past
> few months and it's easier to remove spurious
> allegations and insert
> apologetics with references, although this is not
> always the case. I
> have a lot of data about the Communist Party of
> Kampuchea, including
> Noam Chomsky's "After the Cataclysm", a Nuon Chea
> statement in 1978
> to the Communist Workers' Party of Denmark, but for
> almost a year the
> Khmer Rouge page has been just a baseless screed
> against the CPK, and
> has actually gotten worse. For example two pictures
> are up - one of
> 24 people the CPK executed and then a picture of the
> bones of someone
> they executed. I mentioned if a picture of 24
> people George W. Bush
> executed and then one of their bones was on his page
> or the Republican
> Party page it would be considered unfair.
> Wikipedia's bias,
> especially its more hidden and more heavy one from
> months ago drew me
> in, sort of like in Robert Benchley's "Making of a
> Red", and for some
> reason I've become a full-fledged apologist on the
> Khmer Rouge, Mao
> Zedong and Joseph Stalin pages. I find it is good
> as the
> counter-arguments, especially from the Eastern
> Europeans who are not
> super-nationalists are good and help me (and
> Wikipedia) sort Cold War
> propaganda to actual misdeeds of the CPSU. Some of
> it perspective,
> I'm more forgiving of Khrushchev's Virgin Lands
> campaign then others
> (including the Central Committee) were. Even
> Molotov in his exile
> thought it was a good idea to some degree.
>
> Anyhow, that's why I like Chuck0's wiki (
> http://www.infoshop.org/wiki
> ), Anarchopedia ( http://eng.anarchopedia.org ) and
> so forth. I think
> a wiki of left-wing users focused on history,
> philosophy, political
> economy and politics could be a good resource. I
> could look up
> Rwanda, Sudan and so forth and see what's really
> going on, not relying
> on what NBC News tells me. And of course, these
> could be niche
> wiki's, as we could rely on Wikipedia for mostly
> uncontroversial
> topics such as quantum mechanics.
>
> LM
> ___________________________________
>
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>
__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Dress up your holiday email, Hollywood style. Learn more. http://celebrity.mail.yahoo.com