Wikipedia Entry Turned Into Actual Encyclopedia

Ponca City, We love you writes "If journalism is the first rough draft of history, what does that make Wikipedia? Time Magazine reports that technology writer James Bridle has created a 12-volume compendium of every edit made to the Wikipedia entry for the Iraq War between December 2004 and November 2009. 'It contains arguments over numbers, differences of opinion on relevance and political standpoints, and frequent moments when someone erases the whole thing and just writes "Saddam Hussein was a dickhead.,"' writes Bridle. 'This is historiography. This is what culture actually looks like: a process of argument, of dissenting and accreting opinion, of gradual and not always correct codification.' The books presumably only exist in one copy, so they are not for sale."

Comments

More Pictures at BookTwo

[eldavojohn]

Time Magazine reports ...

It was BookTwo that originated this story because that's written by the guy who put the book together (which was picked up by a blog which was picked up by The Awl which was picked up by Time's NewsFeed). Of course, we are talking about Time here. I found the images of what's actually inside very interesting but I would bet that the guy who used some simple code to create the Creative Commons work is probably the only person to tender cash for a physical copy.

Here's another complete rewrite reducing the whole article to:

-
Iraq War, eh???
-
All your oil are belong to U.S.
-
Stup up stoopid Americans

But you know what's really interesting? When Bridle compiled this used their lexer to transform the XML, he kept the IP address in the upper right of each edit. So the above edit's IP address is forever in print: 68.162.123.240 Of course if you had used a username to make an edit, that was put in place of the IP address.

This whole thing reminds me of the time lapse video done of the Virginia Tech shootings. Creative stuff you can do with Wikipedia.

Re:More Pictures at BookTwo

[fyngyrz]

Indeed. Or, perhaps in the case of Wikipedia, "History is written by the whiners."

:o)

Re:More Pictures at BookTwo

[rednip]

I'm quite sure Wikipedia will give a skewed image of the past compared to what people actually thought.

As opposed to the totally inclusive image of history given by book publishers/editors/collectors though the ages?

Ah yes

[Pojut]

Never let facts get in the way of a poorly constructed opinion.

Of course, it's hard to tell what the facts are when your opinion is constructed of information told by people who refuse to divulge the facts...or something.

The iraq war?

[Thanshin]

It would've been much more interesting were it made with the discussion on malamanteau.

Saddam Hussein not a dickhead??

[captainpanic]

[...] and frequent moments when someone erases the whole thing and just writes "Saddam Hussein was a dickhead.

I searched the page, and I cannot find the entry that Saddam Hussein was a dickhead. Should I assume he was not?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_War

they say history is written by the winners

[circletimessquare]

now, with the internet, we get to see all of the opinions forming: the opinions that won out, the opinions that lost out, and of course, the trolls

internet: what is history without trolls?

Re:they say history is written by the winners

[Notquitecajun]

Actually, I think that what you stated is the true genius of wikipedia - not necessarily the finished product, but the PROCESS of how that product evolves over time.

On historical matters, it also shows that maybe we CAN'T know the whole story because, even in today's world, facts can be dubious things.

Re:"This is historiography."

[Notquitecajun]

Wow, you missed something in college. Historiography is essentially "checking your sources" and looking at how history was written. It's not some off-the-wall media term or something. Every historian does (or should do) it.

A shame it was such a contentious issue.

[VShael]

Even at this late stage, there are
1) People who still claim there were WMDs.
2) People who say there were WMD's but don't actually believe it anymore.
3) People who say we genuinely thought there WMD's and there was never any reason not to think so.
4) People who say we genuinely thought there WMD's but we were misled by bad intelligence.
5) People who say we genuinely thought there might be WMD's, but if we were wrong, we didn't really care.
6) People who say we never actually thought there were WMD's, but they made a good excuse to invade.
7) People who now say there were no WMD's, but pretend that they knew this all along.
8) People who claim that there never were WMD's, but no one would listen to them.

At any one time, any one of these subsects could be winning the ongoing flame war.

I can't help but think this exercise might have been more meaningful, had it been conducted over a page with less competing factions.

Re:A shame it was such a contentious issue.

[bsDaemon]

The thing is, Iraq really did have WMDs at one point. This is a verifiable, widely known fact. The use of them is documented. However, they bought them from the US who was willing to sell chemical weapons to the lesser of two evils in order to create a bullwork against Iran, after our Iranian puppet fell in revolution. I make no claim to have any knowledge of whether or not Iraq had any WMDs at the time of the invasion, and frankly its almost sort of irrelevant at this point.

This is all just fallout from the breakup of the Ottoman Empire following World War I. The British encouraged Arab nationalism against the Turks, since Istanbul was allied with the Germans. Then the Brits took over administration of the region, and in World War II, the Germans backed the Baathists against the British. Then the Americans took their turn, and now we have this crap. Its all just failed attempts at managing an empire without the benefit of a heavy boot.

Re:A shame it was such a contentious issue.

[sorak]

I'd like to see a compendium of the PR fallout. For example, remember all the anti-France hatred, because they dared to question our information? Remember "Freedom Fries" and "Freedom Toast"? I actually saw "Freedom Ticklers" in a gas station vending machine a couple of years ago. I'd like to see a record of how much anti-world sentiment was generated against countries that questioned us, and how much of that sentiment still exists.

I wonder how many people there are who now believe that Iraq had no WMD, but still have a distrust of France because they voted against us.

Re:A shame it was such a contentious issue.

[GooberToo]

And even all that ignores the fact that WMDs were found. The were basically remnants of their previous stockpiles. Of course they were invaded because of supposed, massive levels of new production. It didn't matter that none was actually found as Saddam was more than happy to play the cat-n-mouse/shell game with inspectors which played right into intelligence reports. Reports, which seemingly, indirectly, verified Saddam has biological weapons to hide, much of which was on the basis of Saddam's cat-n-mouse/shell game.

The morale of the story? When your country is on the brink of invasion, don't play games which create the illusion you have what they are looking for, when people are looking to avoid the invasion in the first place.

Re:A shame it was such a contentious issue.

[Antony T Curtis]

It was obvious, even at that time, that Saddam was playing a shell game in order to create the perception of strength for both his country's civilians and his neighbours. By maintaining the illusion of strength, the Iraqi population was less likely to revolt and he would make Syria and Iran less likely to consider invading. He also had to maintain the illusion to prevent Kuwait from resuming their directional drilling scheme which sparked the whole 1990 Gulf War.

The fact is that the first Gulf War left Iraq hugely weakened and Saddam did not want to look weak.

It was clear from a very early time in the second Gulf War that Saddam did not have even half as much resources as he had at the start of the first Gulf War. The UN sanctions did work: He was not able to rebuild the military technology he had before.

Not that he had much military tech before - his efforts to clone and mass produce replenishments to his US-supplied chemical weapons was largely a bust. Allied forces in both wars suffered more health complications from the anti nerve-agent and other anti chemical and biological agents than they did from anything Saddam threw at them.

Re:A shame it was such a contentious issue.

[TubeSteak]

I make no claim to have any knowledge of whether or not Iraq had any WMDs at the time of the invasion, and frankly its almost sort of irrelevant at this point.

I find this conclusion distressing.
You do realize that history tends to repeat itself unless we learn from it the first time around?
Iraq's lack of WMDs at the time of the invasion will be relevant for as long as the USA has a military.

Re:A shame it was such a contentious issue.

[GooberToo]

in order to create the perception of strength for both his country's civilians and his neighbours.

I've heard that said endlessly at this point and I still don't buy it all. It doesn't make sense at all. Never has. Not one bit. Had he not played his game, inspectors would have come, verified, left, and that would have been the end of it.

Unless you're position is that the only reason his neighbors hadn't invaded and the population hadn't revolted is they feared use of biological weapons by Saddam. I've never heard that suggested before. Is that your position?

The reality is, the people were completely terrified on Saddam. The number of people killed in the Iraq war is a drop in the bucked compared to the deaths inflicted by Saddam every year. He was a modern day Stalin. And that's not counting the roaming terror squads who would randomly pick someone up. Frequently they were murdered. Torture was always used - typically involving meat hooks. Mass rape occurred every day. The chance of civil revolt was zero. For it to be non-zero means the population would have revolted and overthrown the government at the start of of the invasion. The population was frozen in terror. There was zero chance of revolt. US had actually hoped it would happen during the days of the invasion. It never did.

Re:A shame it was such a contentious issue.

[stephanruby]

He can be seen inside pointing what looks like a gun of some sort out his windows at the neighbors

But that's the thing, after the invasion of Kuwait, the US went in front of the UN and said that they had satellite pictures clearly showing that Saddam Hussein was amassing troops and tanks in the desert near the border of Saudi Arabia, so as to prepare to invade Saudi Arabia. It turns out that the satellite pictures didn't show any of those troops. And former Secretary of State Powell did say a few years later in the most unambiguous terms that the the satellite imagery at the time were a complete fabrication and a complete lie.

So if your friends are dubious of your analogy, they certainly should be. This is not the case of large governmental organizations making possible misinterpretations/honest mistakes from time to time in the heat of the moment. And yes, I am sure that those cases of misinterpretation still do happen from time to time (that's simply life). But it's the case of not be able to take supposed "very clear" evidence at face value, because we know that when it comes to entering a war (or entering a conflict if you prefer that watered down term), our government has lied to us in the past, and will certainly lie to us in the future as well. So then, it becomes very difficult for us as mere citizens to distinguish when our government is telling us the truth, simply making an honest mistake, or completely lying to us.

Re:Cathedral vs. Bazaar

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you may need to spend more time reading history books. Historians are not content to assume that every document from a verifiable is the "truth".

If you scan through any history textbook, you will always find a debate on the accuracy of all of their sources, as well as discussions on the motivations of the author, and the weaknesses in their account.

Only very poor historians ever assume a documented "fact" is the absolute truth.

So

[JustOK]

Saddam wasn't a dickhead?

Re:Cathedral vs. Bazaar

[Izhido]

Okay, this is all good and all that. But, I think the real question in here is: *WHO* is the real owner of the Brooklyn bridge? Who should I call to make a bid for it? I mean, I'm so tired of giving money to the wrong people for it... sigh...

Bad summary

[Improv]

This wins the award for the day for being the post where the title disagrees most with the article content. Yay!

Re:Cathedral vs. Bazaar

[Rysc]

Historians are not content to assume that every document from a verifiable is the "truth".

However the people who read history books, by and large, tend to assume that what they read is true. Or, at least, based on facts. It's an interesting mental trap: I know fact X about history because I read it in a respectable history book. But was that fact based on a highly reliable source, multiple reliable sources, hearsay, speculation? As the end-reader it's hard to know. It's even somewhat difficult for the historian to really verify something, if that's what he's trying to do. If enough people after the fact begin asserting a certain narrative about what happened or what it meant then this can "drown out" contrary accounts, especially if it is not due to a centrally directed conspiracy.

What the historian eventually writes down as his best estimate of the truth is going to be presumed to be correct by his readership, absent someone discovering something that makes it obviously untrue. Even in such a case many will continue to cling to the correctness of the account they read first, denying evidence that now proves it incorrect. This happens all the time.

Re:Is this something actually useful?

[carp3_noct3m]

Why does it need a commentary to be useful? There is plenty of value in seeing the timeline and content of edits as they progress, being able to see what entries survived and remain and which have been done away with. It can give us insights into the process, the type of people that actually take the time to work on a wiki, the value of knowing multiple edits came from a single IP range. Some people like to say Wikipedia is a democracy, but there are people whose sole purpose is to raise the level of quality, that, tempered with the large amount of information coming from all over the globe (the internet is a relatively border-less society) can teach us a whole lot. Now, this is just one article, but I imagine for scientific value many articles of a varying nature would have to be looked at.

!encyclopedia

[Doc Ruby]

That's a big book at 12 volumes, but it's not an encyclopedia. An encyclopedia is "training in a circle", the "full circle" of knowledge of the world. "Iraq War Jr" is not a full circle; even "everything about its Wikipedia entry" is merely a small point of knowledge in a full education.

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. Indeed, it's more like a cylinder, since its circle is stacked atop the previous circle of revisions. It's an encylindropedia.