Ickypedia
You have probably all heard of Wikipedia. It is a free online encyclopedia. It encourages people to write articles on subjects they are familiar about, and the articles are made available online for those who want to research a particular topic. Sounds totally laudable, doesn't it.
Well, there is another side of Wikipedia that is not quite so laudable. This part of Wikipedia is not involved in posting articles, but rather in deleting them. These people are responsible for deciding whether a particular article is "noteworthy" enough for inclusion in Wikipedia, or whether it should be deleted for being "not sufficiently noteworthy".
Now this creates a problem. How does one decide if a particular article is "noteworthy" or not? And who is to make the decision? And, above all, how does one prevent articles from being either included or deleted on a purely arbitrary basis?
One organization which has fallen afoul of this process is the New Order of Druids. It is a fairly new organization, having been founded only three years ago. But it has all sorts of activities, including a free online college. Here is the website of the New Order of Druids, so you can check it out yourselves:
www.druidcircle.net/
Now, one of the reasons that the New Order of Druids (N.O.D.) has had problems with Wikipedia is that the N.O.D. is a fairly new organization. Wikipedia seems to have this prejudice that an organization has to have been around for a long time in order to be "noteworthy". Being only three years old makes it "not worthy of inclusion". There are other reasons as well - all equally arbitrary. Here is a link to show you the type of debate that is going on:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/New_Order_of_Druids
Now, what can YOU do about the problem? Well, there is an online petition available that you can sign if you feel that there is a problem. The link for the petition is here:
http://new.petitiononline.com/wikiped/petition.html
So, please, go to the links I have mentioned. If you feel the need, by all means do some additional googling on your own. And, if you feel it is justified, please sign the petition.
Remember, at some point in the future, YOU may need to look up something in Wikipedia? How will you feel if the article you need has been deleted due to not being "noteworthy"?