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

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

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.