Wikipedia mania

Being just a little bit of a Librarian, in the past I have edited (mainly for typos) and created records on Wikipedia. I have also defended it and the accuracy of its contents and even donated money to it.

So with a cheery heart, when I came across the Wikipedia entry for the last Australian federal election and finding that it failed to mention at all the very strong impact in the campaign of the Internet, YouTube, social networking, Kevin07 etc. I thought I would add a few sentences (thinking myself somewhat of an expert in the area). So I add away only to find next day it's deleted, with a note saying it's opinion and needs editing. OK thinks I and edits it and posts again. Once more it's gone the next day. I wouldn't mind but the entry is already full of crap - i.e listing all the presenters of the tv coverage on election night - as though that's important in an encyclopedia.

So I won't obviously bother again. However the problem is that this is happening increasingly. Some self appointed editors see fit to demark a page of their interest or that they have created and disallow anything they feel like. The strength of Wikipedia it seems to me is that anyone can add and edit. So one person writes something, someone else edits, someone else adds some more etc. This is great as through many people working on an entry it becomes distilled and a better entry. However what we have now is a situation where someone writes something, and then some busybody deletes it, so no editing, no refining by others, it either is approved and stays or is gone.

This is particularly the case with Australian entries. For some 'cultural cringe' reasons Australian busybodies seem to crawl all over Australian entries, creating, deleting and generally worrying that Australia isn't being represented well enough. I can't think which other country would be so pathetically obsessed with what other people think of them. As though Wikipedia was the sole medium through which Australia is represented.

The upshot is, if you want to write anything new on Wikipedia about Australia, don't add to an entry, start a new one, or don't write about Australia, which is what I'll be doing.