Censored Wikipedia Articles Appear On Protest Site

Gregory Rider writes "According to a recent article in The Guardian, a group of disenchanted Wikipedia administrators has been going through back channels on Wikipedia and retrieving articles deleted by Jimbo Wales or other higher-ups. Now they're putting them back up on a website for everyone to see. This includes articles on Justin Berry, Paul Barresi, and, most strangely, Brian Peppers, which has been solicited for deletion off of Wikipedia 6 times with mixed success and is now banned from being edited on for a whole year."

Comments

Re:Forking

[caffeination]

There are two possible stances, I guess:

1. Make SQL dumps or something similar available at intervals to enable forking in the name of freedom.
2. Make forking difficult in order to keep effort focused in spite of spats over differences.

I'm going with number 2 myself. By now, hundreds of self-important dipshits would have forked by now, just because their pet article was a candidate for deletion (for example). But Wikipedia needs to keep those same dipshits around for the sake of the other useful things they can do.

Does this Happen with "Real" Encyclopedias too?

[DavidD_CA]

I'm certainly no expert, but I would have to assume that even encyclopedias like Britannica have had their share of articles which deliberately left information out or included something that others disagreed with.

In fact, such a process has probably been going on for hundreds of years. We know it happens with mainstream media, why do some assume that encyclopedias are not prone to the same editorialization?

What about all the history textbooks that we read as children and later learned the truth?

It's for that reason why I think Wikipedia is great. Sure, you occasionally get someone filling an article for their own gain or beliefs, but at least the majority of those edits are made public and the audience can decide what they believe.

In the cast of the "real" books -- that is hardly the case.