"Sacred cows make the tastiest hamburger". - Abbie Hoffman
Yeah, so I’m a pretty big fan of Wikipedia. I mean, how could I not be? It has an almost completely non-hierarchical structure, and it allows for the rapid and free flow of information/data. It combines some of my favorite things, namely: anarchy, communism, altruism, technology, and knowledge. However, about a week ago, I experienced a serious case of disillusionment. Basically, the token asshole who works in my office (actually, through a strange twist of fate, he kind of ended up working under me, doing all the grunt-work of formatting all the crap that I wrote) got really upset about A) The fact that I defend New Jersey B) The fact that I use Wikipedia. So he decided to kill two birds with one stone and add a few highly classist comments to the entry on Camden, New Jersey. He intentionally made it as offensive and badly-written as possible, as well as adding it to a section of the entry where it would stick out like a sore thumb. I didn’t expect his edit to last for more than 24 hours. However, it nearly lasted a week.
After the entry was fixed, someone later added a line that Camden had a very low-voter turnout and cited a city webpage that reported 19% turnout in the 2005 municipal election. Now, I’m no expert on municipal election turnout data (I plan to talk to someone who is on Monday), but I do know that in the last two congressional mid-term elections, the average turnout for the country as a whole was in the low 30’s. It seems fairly plausible that most municipal elections don’t have turnout much higher than 19%. So yeah, while the data is correct, without context, it’s pretty misleading.
I guess my point is that Wikipedia remains incredibly vulnerable to intentional acts of disinformation, as well as old-fashioned bad reasoning. So yeah, see: The Title of This Entry. (Also, this is old news, but while I’m on the subject of voter turnout, did everyone else know that turnout among people aged 18-25 was higher in 2004 in the swing states, than for the total population in swing states?)
After the entry was fixed, someone later added a line that Camden had a very low-voter turnout and cited a city webpage that reported 19% turnout in the 2005 municipal election. Now, I’m no expert on municipal election turnout data (I plan to talk to someone who is on Monday), but I do know that in the last two congressional mid-term elections, the average turnout for the country as a whole was in the low 30’s. It seems fairly plausible that most municipal elections don’t have turnout much higher than 19%. So yeah, while the data is correct, without context, it’s pretty misleading.
I guess my point is that Wikipedia remains incredibly vulnerable to intentional acts of disinformation, as well as old-fashioned bad reasoning. So yeah, see: The Title of This Entry. (Also, this is old news, but while I’m on the subject of voter turnout, did everyone else know that turnout among people aged 18-25 was higher in 2004 in the swing states, than for the total population in swing states?)