page191
wiKiPedia: a GeNuiNe
hg2g
— miNus the editors
169
pedia. [fn See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Xed/CROSSBOW
for more on this]
But
if
Wikipedia
is
authoritative,
how
does
it
get
there?
What alchemy turns the maunderings of “mouth-breathers with
modems” into valid, useful encyclopedia entries?
It all comes down to the way that disputes are deliberated over
and resolved. Take the entry on Israel. At one point, it charac-
terized Israel as a beleaguered state set upon by terrorists who
would drive its citizens into the sea. Not long after, the entry was
deleted holus-bolus and replaced with one that described Israel
as an illegal state practicing Apartheid on an oppressed ethnic
minority.
Back and forth the editors went, each overwriting the other’s
with his or her own doctrine. But eventually, one of them blinked.
An editor moderated the doctrine just a little, conceding a single
point to the other. And the other responded in kind. In this way,
turn by turn, all those with a strong opinion on the matter nego-
tiated a kind of Truth, a collection of statements that everyone
could agree represented as neutral a depiction of Israel as was
likely to emerge. Whereupon, the joint authors of this marvelous
document joined forces and fought back-to-back to resist the revi-
sions of other doctrinaires who came later, preserving their hard-
won peace. [fn: This process was just repeated in microcosm in the
Wikipedia entry on the author of this paper, which was replaced
by a rather disparaging and untrue entry that characterized his
books as critical and commercial failures — there ensued several
editorial volleys, culminating in an uneasy peace that couches the
anonymous detractor’s skepticism in context and qualifiers that
make it clear what the facts are and what is speculation.]
What’s most fascinating about these entries isn’t their “final”
text as currently present on Wikipedia. It is the history page for
each, blow-by-blow revision lists that make it utterly transpar-
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