By H. Krustofsky
On March 14, Jimmy Wales took his travelling god-king act to the annual convention of the Independent Community Bankers of America at the palatial Wynn Las Vegas Resort. As the final performer on the bill, Jimmy played to a half-filled hall of die-hard community bankers who had managed to resist the siren song of the nearby casino. Many of them seemed impressed by what Jimmy had to say.
Jimmy was there to present Wikipedia as it wishes to be perceived, a magical place where NPOV (Neutral Point of View — a policy intended to prevent biased articles) is embraced by all, where there are no vendettas, malicious bannings, defamation, or plagiarism, where every policy means just what it says and no one is gaming the system.
Much of the presentation followed the format of “What Wikipedia Is Not” (WP:NOT, one of Wikipedia’s most widely ignored core policies.) Jimmy got ’em chuckling when he said that, for example, there are no “funny pet videos” on Wikipedia, because that wouldn’t be appropriate. The question of whether it is appropriate to have roughly 1,000 images of penises on Wikimedia (think twice before clicking this link) was not addressed in his presentation.
For a moment, it looked as if things might get interesting when Jimbo said,
…it is important to know who the Wikipedia editors are.
It stands to reason, for example, that if you were the target of a defamatory Wikipedia article, or you happened upon a propagandistic and misleading article on a controversial topic, you would want to know just who was responsible for putting this material at the top
…continue reading Jimbo does Vegas