User:Subsume/Category Articles editd by interested parties

I attempted to create this category but I don't believe its going to launch. VfD'd here.

I think this is unfortunate because I think the connection between the Marty Meehan, Adam Curry and JT LeRoy articles is very important to Wikipedia. Obviously the Red Herring thought so when they published an article with the title Online encyclopedia entries on U.S. senators and representatives are being rewritten by Congressional aides.

It expresses the general public anxiety over Wikipedia being available for "anyone to edit". Just so, Wikipedia is constantly bagged as completely untrustworthy, to be regarded with caution and taken with a grain of salt. I think the skepticism is healthy. Except that its isn't extended to the mass media at large; the implicit message is that one can be trusted, and one cannot.

I thought it would be helpful to create a category for articles that were found to have been edited anonymously by the subject of the article, an agent of the subject, or an otherwise invested person. My fellow Wikipedian's disagreed.

Reasons its being tanked

 * Belief that the article would reach an extreme and encompass "all car owners" and "all Christians".


 * I can understand that the category, as it is, may have been too vague and encompassing, but I also see a world of difference between a podcast fan giving their two cents with respect to POV and editor Adam Curry injecting into podcast an inflated sense of his involvement in the technology, and then anonymously turning to his own article for more of the same.


 * That the categorization fails to "assume Good Faith" and thus breaks a key Wikipedia tenet.


 * Assuming good faith about someone who was caught anonymously editing an article that involved them or a person they personally know, seems incredibly naive. Good faith happens all the time with people editing their own biographies&mdash;by first announcing their identity. Sure, I will assume good faith with all Wikipedia edits, but that assumption comes under incredible scrutiny when I find they have failed to be forthcoming about their role or stake in the issue at hand.


 * The categorized article would become stigmatized as being untrustworthy.


 * Exactly backwards. The article would gain a new level of trust because it openly and publically failed to become corrupted. The article, instead of becoming focused to the whim of the perpetrator, becomes focused on the perpetration. At the heart of this is the shared insecurity, here at Wikipedia, thanks to the news media constantly saying nothing here is valid. We've got to get over and acknowledge this, and that's what this category was all about.


 * This category was "poorly conceived" and redundant


 * A kick in the stomach. The 3 articles I placed in the category are 3 of a kind. I can't find any other examples of this happening and they have not been grouped before. That there are only 3 is because, I believe, most of the time the invested contributers get away with their injections. This transcends your average NPOV dispute because, I believe the editing itself is, in effect, encyclopedic. Just like if we discovered some reporter was paid by a lobbyist to write an opinion piece friendly to the lobbyist.

Conclusion
Wikipedia is growing exponentially in popularity and national attention and it has, is, and will be the medium for battles to influence public opinion&mdash;no differently than any other form of mass media. The news media is already documenting these incidents, and we should too.

Comments welcome.