Tuesday, December 27, 2005

In all the hubbub and hectic preparations leading up to the Frankmas season, I missed another Wikipedia brouhaha.  Shelley posted a typically discerning article on Wikipedia in which she pondered how few female bloggers had found their way into that collection of information.  A "Shelley Powers" entry was posted and, according to standard practice, marked for potential deletion.  There seems to be a vetting process, and the Wikipedians go through a classic thumbs-up or thumbs-down ritual, a ritual that makes those of us on the outside resent the insiders for their willingness to judge.

But wait… I’m an insider too.  I have no clue how long I’ve had a Wikipedia log-on in my own name.  I’ve touched up a few articles.  Any touch-ups I’ve done have been anonymous though, not associated with my log-on, but if I wanted to play the Wikipedia game, I could.  I think I’d rather do Sudoku puzzles than sort out the complexities of Wikipedia community membership and content creation.

But let me return to the gated community aspect of Wikipedia content screening.  In Shelley’s original post, a woman or three scuffed toes in the dirt and looked down all humble at the ground and allowed as how she didn’t necessarily rate an article, but she could see that Shelley does.  And indeed Shelley deserves an article.  But the nature of encyclopedicity is that we are in the business of collecting knowledge and making it accessible to readers.  So why wouldn’t we create pages for interesting people?  Why should the gates close behind public persons (from Finkelstein to Seigenthaler) and not easily and readily admit Julie Leung?  For example.

Since I don’t contribute to the Wikipedia, I suppose my opinions are not too important.  I’m confident that were I to take on Wikipedianism as a project I would be welcomed, and eventually I’d learn the boundaries, the rules.  At Shelley’s Burningbird Blog someone pointed out that when we’re looking for info on people we’re more likely to Google them than look them up on the wiki.  That’s so, and the observation itself seems to foster some kind of competitive value judgment.  Actually, ain’t we the lucky ones to have all these great resources at our fingertips?

Shelley’s initial post has been followed by a few more, "Yo! Sock Puppets!" and "The Pedia Me." 

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