Clinamen

Eric Haas of Alternet asks: Will unethical editing destroy Wikipedia's credibility?

Does Wikipedia have credibility? If so, what kind of credibility? Credible for who? For what kind of use? Credibility is slippery, but for some reason we don't always treat it this way. Credible for me is not necessarily credible for you.

Alternet asks this:

"How then do we separate information that is truth from lies, damned lies, and statistics? Wikipedia has an opportunity to play an important role in answering this question in a way that reaches millions of people worldwide."

Yes, they have an important role to play here, but that role might be to resolve the undecidable line between "truth" and "opinion." Aren't we holding Wikipedia to a difficult standard here? Isn't this a bit too much to ask?

The main concern of the article is "whitewashing" - using softer, kinder words in place of harsh ones. Reworking syntax to make things sound not-so-bad. Here's an example:

"The original paragraph, with the key sentence in bold, read:

As with many US retailers, Wal-Mart experiences a high rate of employee turnover (approximately 50% of employees leave every year, according to the company). Wages at Wal-Mart are about 20% less than at other retail stores. Founder [Sam Walton] once argued that his company should be exempt from the [minimum wage]. (Palast, 121).

The new entry edited by Wal-Mart became this:

As with many US retailers, Wal-Mart experiences a high rate of employee turnover (approximately 50% of employees leave every year, according to the company). The average wage at Wal-Mart is almost double the federal minimum wage (Wal-Mart). However, founder [Sam Walton] once argued that his company should be exempt from the [minimum wage]. (Palast, 121)."

As Eric Haas notes, "Leaving aside Wal-Mart's violation of the self-editing guideline, both sentences pass the undisputed fact test. But they also violate the logic of Wikipedia's rule: undisputed facts equal neutrality which leads to truth."

Now, this is where I think we have to step outside of Wikipedia's rules (what they say/think they're doing) and look at Wikipedia in practice (what is actually happening). Wikipedia puts forth NPOV policies, but in actuality such a standard is impossible to maintain. Wikipedia seems to me to be perfect evidence there there is no "neutral point of view" from the "outside" which allows anyone to comment on any situation. We are all here, inside language, inside of any number of "biases." We deal with these biases best we can, but we can't shed them. Sure, Wikipedia claims NPOV, but if this were really the practice of the many people editing the text, there wouldn't be much going on on Talk pages or in the actual articles. Wikipedia is a space for argument and negotiation, a space of "becoming truth." To say that it presents truth ("is truth") is just flat out wrong, and it ignores the great thing about Wikipedia: that it's a great place to see ongoing conversations about what counts as knowledge. The wiki form enables this conversation and keeps things on the move.

For me, the ethical question is not necessarily (or, not only) the editing of pages by Walmart whitewashers. This is important, and it should be dealt with. However, the other ethical question we might ask is this: How ethical is it to stop the conversation, to cut things off, to freeze the text at any particular stage? What are the ethics of stopping the conversation in the name of a (fictional) NPOV policy? In my view, these ethical concerns are just as important as edits by Walmart or the Vatican.