Yonmei

Note: I'm not logging on to wikipedia much lately (for why, see below - got bored trying to battle the white conservative male POV endemic on wikipedia which is commonly referred to as NPOV) so if you have an urgent question, it's probably better to ask someone else.

Wikipedia Turns 10: Where Does it Go From Here?

See also: Nine Reasons Why Women Don't Edit Wikipedia

I just tried to add a page about a famous bestselling book by an internationally known writer. But a white male American editor has never heard of the book or of the writer, and decided to tag the page "not notable" - soon, doubtless, to be tagged for "speedy deletion", as the only author I could hastily add to the page was a famous Indian writer who had also been removed a couple of years ago as "not notable". So, there it is: Wikipedia wants to be a white American encyclopedia.

Briefly, I was logging on to Wikipedia again because there was an article I seemed able to contribute to (Orson Scott Card - you'll find my edits there end of January/February 2008). The argument had blown up between a bunch of typical American homophobes who don't like to see their views described as homophobic. What seemed to have been resolved was that: Orson Scott Card's views were described using his own words. Citations were made to a range of sources which verified that multiple people had described OSC's views as homophobic. End of story? No: the homophobes then turned to arguing that the sources used were not proper sources. I was attempting to keep cool - after all, they were - but I finally lost my cool when an editor (Relata refero) casually admitted both to having a book in their possession in which Orson Scott Card's homophobia was discussed (D. Michael Quinn, Same-Sex Dynamics Among Nineteenth-Century Americans: A Mormon Example, U. of Illinois Press) but declining to add the citation to the article because providing that information would be "taking sides" in the argument about whether or not Orson Scott Card's views had been/were widely referred to as homophobic. To which I reacted: "Wait, what? You say you have a citation to a source in which Orson Scott Card's views are referred to as homophobic. An article on Wikipedia needs citations to confirm that Orson Scott Card's views have been referred to as homophobic. You don't want to add your citation to the article because people are arguing over the quality of the current citations, and you don't want to "take sides" in an argument by providing a good-quality citation? I will never understand Wikipedians. Clearly, also, I will never become a Wikipedian. The notion that, in an abstract kind of way, an article ought to be improved for accuracy's sake alone, that Wikipedia ought to be a useful information resource - that was why I thought I would like to edit Wikipedia, before I actually did. To discover, over and over again, that Wikipedians see Wikipedia rather as a battleground in which fights are had for the sake of having them and people with useful information to add to articles won't add it because they don't want to take sides in a fight and providing information is seen as "taking sides". Oh, never mind. I'm off, again. Yonmei (talk) 15:01, 10 February 2008 (UTC)"

So, goodbye Wikipedia. Again.

A Scot editing an American encyclopedia. How weird is that?

Wikipedia is an American encyclopedia with some pages added/edited by non-US editors.

Memo to self: Non-US editors editing an American encyclopedia must learn to accept with good or bad grace that their material is added on the sufferance of Americans. If an entry is considered not-notable by Americans, it will be removed: if an account contradicts American "truisms" it will be edited until, from a US point-of-view, it is "neutral", however Americanised the result. In short: I need to learn not to keep bashing my head against a stone wall, and accept that Wikipedia is chiefly an American resource, and no non-US editor is going to be able to change that: we can only hope to introduce some internationally-useful pages while the Americans aren't looking.

See also: Why I Quit Wikipedia, and The Great Failure of Wikipedia, both of which I'm finding quite illuminating.

Also: Wikipedia - the encyclopedia administered by militantly ignorant Americans