User:FuriousFreddy/Editorial

As a Wikipedia editor, Uncle Freddy has been somewhat disillusioned. He believes in the principle of Wikipedia, but also finds it (a) very addictive; (b) very time consuming, to the detriment of other recreational activities and even work; and (c) very very stressful, when encoutering stubborn, ignorant, rude, crass, or oblivious persons who either don't know about the ideals behind an encyclopedia, don't care, or just enjoy drama.

What Wikipedia really needs is some sort of quality-control system, that maybe puts a lock on poorly written articles and prevents them from being seen by the public until they are fixed. Another thing it really needs is a stricter set of rules. I know it sort of goes against the ideal of "open source", but open source programming is already aided by restricting its contributors to persons who are well-versed in programming skills, while any Joe Blow, from the intelligent scholar to the blathering idiot, can hit that "edit" button and make a change, good or bad. And Wikipedia's lean towards "consensus rule" has been shown to be easily abused, and I really can't put trust in it.

However, Wikipedia's like an abusive relationship sometimes...I just can't break away, no matter how badly it treats me. After several extended breaks and attempted retirements, I'm sticking around ot see if I can't get some of those proposed quality control policies set in motion.

Good luck to those of you who continue to fight the good fight...and as for the rest of you...may Someone or Something somewhere have mercy upon you...

''Unca Freddy, I don't see very many other black editors 'round here? Are they all at the water cooler or summin'?''

No, little one. There's only a handful of us. Sad, isn't it? Sit down whilst your Uncle Freddy tells you somethin', 'hear:

One area of particular frustration relating to Wikipedia is the lack of coverage of topics realting to African Americans - culture, history, etc. The systemic bias of the project seems to apparently attract people with racist or at least prejudiced tendencies, who edit articles accordingly. I feel that this is one of many reasons that Wikipedia cannot be taken seriously: it cannot be reasonably used as a good reference tool by everyone who would access it. I did my best to try and balance what I could, but, not only was the task arduous (to say the least), I was met at opposition at any number of times. There is no reason why I have to argue for the reason why Eddie Murphy or Rosa Parks should be identified as African Americans in their lead sentences, or why The Beatles had at least 100 articles deicated to them, but Sly & the Family Stone had not an article of their own. From what I understand, some of the (read: "White") people are afraid of offending the other (read: "Black", "Latino", "Asian", etc.) people. Uhm, I'm not offended by the labels, and I think it's a great thing that you can go to Category:African American musicians and see Benny Benjamin in the same category as ?uestlove, or Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds in the same category as Smokey Robinson.

''Unca Freddy, I wanted to look up some information on one a my favorite singers, Mah-ri-yah Carey. But when I got to the page, it was horrible! I couldn't read it, and none of the articles on her songs were any better! I thought Wikipedia strove for quality! Shouldn't somebody do something?''

Yeah, they should, but little is gonna get done. Your Uncle Freddy usta think he could, as the tutorials and stuff say, fix every article and bring it up to a high standard of quality. But, that wasn't the case. You gots all sorts of young boys and girls who take ownership of them articles, and won't allow edits by anyone they don't like, and revert any edit they don't agree with. Your Uncle Freddy also tried to reason with and talk to them, but he damn near typed his faingas off t' no good effect. Coverage of a lot of musicians -- Mariah Carey, them Britney and Christina girls, and so on -- is way over there on the bad side. Don't fret yo'self none over them articles; your Uncle Freddy's stress and blood pressure went sky-high dealin' with it until he realized that there's just no reasonin' with some folk. They even accuse your uncle of having personal vendettas against them and they favorite singers (your uncle likes at least some of the songs from each of them people). So if you need to look up information on them singers, go to allmusic.com, where you can find more verifiable and better-written information. If you insist upon tryin' to read those articles, mae sure to put on your gloves and overshoes as you enter that part of the rabbit factory.

Hopefully, somehow, someway, some sort of review team or something will come along and fix this problem and others, like The Simpsons, Star Trek, the Pokemon, and other such stuff. But until then, let the trash stay in the sun, until the stench makes somebody do summin'.

Gee, Unca Freddy, do you write articles anymore?

Ah, not like I used to. You see, your uncle's new job doesn't have no downtime where you can browse the internet. So you're uncle's pretty much resigned himself to just being the cleanup man.