User-created information and tools

The Neutral Point of View in Practice

A neutral point of view (NPV) is a fundamental policy of Wikipedia to maintain objectivity of the articles. From Wikipedia:Neutral point of view:

"All Wikipedia articles must be written from a neutral point of view, representing views fairly and without bias. This includes reader-facing templates, categories and portals."

When anyone on the Internet can edit an article instantaneously, it is of course impossible to guarantee this. The Wikipedia material holds a high standard, though, as several examinations have shown (see for example Nature's comparision between Wikipedia and Brittanica). How can this be?

In theory, Wikipedia is self-regulated, based on the fact that it is both easier and faster to revert to an old version of an article than to vandalise it (see for example IBM's History Flow results). Information and tools like recent changes, watchlists, related changes, page histories and user contribution lists are used by the Wikipedia community to maintain it (Wales, 2004). For most of the Wikipedia content this is enough, but for some controversal subjects other regulating mechanisms are needed.

One recent example is the Wikipedia page of Wal-Mart, the worlds largest reatail company. According to Demsyn (2006), the wiki page has been edited by Wal-Mart lobbyists, trying to hide critisism towards the company. Among the comments to the article, some commenters argue that Demsyn's critisism is unfair while others agree with him. It is also still debated whether Wal-Mart officials really were involved in the editing. What the discussion shows though, is that a neutral point of view is very far from easy fetched, if not impossible to hold. As an action to prevent vandalism and to inform readers about the current status, the Wal-Mart page is currently flagged to possibly violating the neutral point of view and editing is restricted to registered users (see picture below).


Another well known controversy is that of US Government officials editing pages of several senator biographies as well as other US Government related articles (BBC News, February 9, 2006). As a result of "inappropriate contributions", the Congressial computer network's IP numbers were banned for edits for some short periods of time. Banning users and IP numbers is another way for the Wikipedia community to handle vandalism from known sources. Although one can argue that it might be unethical to edit pages where one holds a vested interrest, it can also be benificial in terms of information availability.

References

Demsyn, R. (2006). Wal-Marts Wikipedia War. Whitedust Security. http://www.whitedust.net/article/55/Wal-marts_Wikipedia_War/

Giles, J. (2005) Special report: Internet encyclopaedias go head to head. Nature 438, 900-901 (15 December 2005)

Wales, J. (2004) Wikipedia Sociographics. Talk at the 21C3-Conference, December 27, 2004, Berlin. http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&se=gglsc&d=5008697163

Web links
BBC News: Congress 'made Wikipedia changes'. February 9, 2006. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4695376.stm

IBM Collaborative User Experience Research Group: History Flow: results. (2002). http://researchweb.watson.ibm.com/history/results.htm

Wikipedia: Wal-Mart. May 5, 2006. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walmart

Wikipedia: Neutral point of view. May 5, 2006. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view

posted by Jimmyroq @ 01:01