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Wikipedia vs Congressional Staffers [Update]
There has been quite a bit of recent reporting on the recent troubles between Wikipedia and certain Congressional staffers. In response, abdulzis mentions that "an RFC, Wikipedia's mediation method to deal with 'disharmonious users', has been opened to take action against US Congressional staffers who repeatedly blank content and engage in revert wars and slanderous or libelous behavior which violates Wikiepdia code. The IP ranges of US Congress have been currently blocked, but only for a week until the issue can be addressed more directly."
Am I the only person who avoids Wikipedia like the plague because of these skewed entries and slanderous edit wars? I know I'm missing out, but after an entry I collaborated was "attacked" by someone who held a different opinion (read: blanked the article until Wiki delete minions got at it) I lost faith in its general ability to harbor legitimate information. I know it's there, but I don't want to have to sift through it. That's what the internet is for.
I added a contentious bit of information to an extremely contentious article once. It was outright deleted, reverted, spell checked, deleted, grammer fixed, reverted, opened up an enormous discussion with rabid opponents on both sides. Eventually it was split into a separate article that was renamed a few times, with the original article linking to it.
The quality of the article improved quite dramatically over time, and the POV portions that I didn't even realize I was bringing to the table were quickly killed off. The facts were *heavily* cross-checked and what's left now, despite being nothing like what I originally posted, is a satisfying contribution, even though none of what I wrote exists today.
Wikipedia rules.