Here. Correct in all the main points (except for its faint suggestion that we might even begin to take Conservapedia seriously).
When I worked on Wikipedia, I was continually irritated by the politically correct view that, when it comes to philosophy, all cultures and all traditions had to be treated absolutely equally. So that, for instance, ‘Eastern philosophy’ had to receive equal coverage. There were two problems with this. First, the average Wikipedia editor knows even less about Eastern philosophy than about ‘Western’ philosophy (which is not very much). Second, there is no way that these subjects can be given the same sort of treatment. Eastern philosophy is so absolutely different to the Western variety that they are effectively different subjects, which happen to have the same name.
2 comments:
It isn't a very insightful analysis, in the end it boils down to:
"By definition, more authority was granted to individuals with the significant free time to devote to a volunteer, utopian endeavor to shape the world’s information into a unified “consensus.” By and large such individuals are more likely to be leftists than the general population."
which in turn really boils down to:
"wikipedia is edited by the people who edit it".
The bit about "more authority" is wrong, of course, and the article contains numerous other errors, but the basic "why" really does appear to be that simple.
>>in the end it boils down to:
"By definition, more authority was granted to individuals with the significant free time to devote to a volunteer, utopian endeavor to shape the world’s information into a unified “consensus.” By and large such individuals are more likely to be leftists than the general population."
which in turn really boils down to:
"wikipedia is edited by the people who edit it".
<<
It doesn’t boil down to that, because it contains the assumption that individuals with significant free time to devote to a volunteer, utopian endeavor to shape the world’s information into a unified “consensus” are more likely to be leftists. Whereas your boiled down bit "wikipedia is edited by the people who edit it" would be true even if everyone who edited Wikipedia read the Daily Mail.
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