Pointing people to Wikipedia concerns
This morning, while catching up on my RSS feeds for the week, I noticed this item where Jason Kottke was pointing to the Wikipedia definition of "sock puppet," which a lot of user group and social bookmarking site users will recognize and be familiar with. It's something that sites such as Netscape and Digg are surely dealing with on a regular basis, and that Wikipedia feels very strongly about.
The reason I wanted to call attention to this, however, was that when looking through that definition, was the portion of the page addressing meatpuppets. What I find most interesting here, and this is not at all in the sense of my position in the public relations community, but as a very regular user and periodic editor (for my own purposes, not clients) was that there was a request that people do not "invite" others to the site when there are articles being debated. I definitely agree with the sentiments that "the arrival of multiple newcomers, with limited Wikipedia background and predetermined viewpoints arriving in order to present those viewpoints, rarely helps achieve neutrality and most times actively damages it, no matter what one might think," I think that a small part of that goes against what Wikipedia is about. I would hope that not every single person who was directed to see something that was causing a stir at Wikipedia wouldn't just open up an account and edit freely or comment in a negative way, but I don't see how users of Wikipedia, who might not be overly regularly watching every single item being edited, shouldn't be made aware of things that could have an effect on what the future of Wikipedia's pages might hold.
While I'm sure that this is done so that people aren't inciting a riot of sorts on the pages of Wikipedia - something I would agree with - I'm sure there have been plenty of times when a blogger or forum user has published a notice saying that there was a large debate over something. Should those notices, innocent as they might be, not be published? Say that there is a debate forming over whether or not someone is "important" enough to stay in Wikipedia or not (I've seen this happen with Peter Rojas, for instance), is the link in to the debate of this something negative, or only if it's done if the suggestion that people should start participating?
I know it's written there that it's "highly inappropriate" to do so to "attract users with known views and bias, in order to strengthen one side of a debate," but if I post this on my blog when it's regarding something important to me, isn't that going to do just that, whether I am trying to do that or not? If so, does that mean that only the "usual" editors of Wikipedia should be having their say?
I only ask this because I know of far fewer "participants" in Wikipedia than I do regular users, the latter of which I'd say would be a lot of my friends and colleagues, especially those younger than myself.
Thoughts? Hate mail? Discussion points?
Update: In other news, Slate's Timothy Noah is probably getting evicted from Wikipedia, and he's taking it pretty well.
