Wikipedia is about to change the way it does business, making it harder to update information on living people. In the future, editors who belong to a special rank will have to approve changes to these entries. The site is responding to a genuine concern about accuracy. At the same time, this new rule will limit the effect of crowdsourcing, which has been Wikipedia’s greatest strength.
So how will this affect conservatives? Given O’Sullivan’s Law — organizations that are not actually right-wing will become left-wing over time — the answer is: probably not well.
Wikipedians have beat up on conservatives for a while. A year ago, I wrote an article on Wikipedia’s liberal bias:
A Wikipedia entry is only as good as the person who wrote it or the last person who edited it — and if that person is a liberal who isn’t committed to the Wikipedian principle of objectivity, conservatives can suffer. “I used to monitor my boss’s page,” says a former staffer to a Republican congressman. “The people who set it up were obviously on the other side.” A section on “notable stances,” for instance, included data from pro-labor and pro-abortion groups — and no alternative views. “I tried to offer some balance,” says the staffer. “I didn’t take down any of the liberal material, but I did add content from a more conservative orientation.” He became a Wikipedian, editing the entry from home or a public library.
The answer to the problem is obvious: More conservatives need to follow this person’s example and become Wikipedia editors. This would be a good project for the Media Research Center or a similar media watchdog group. Tracking the liberal statements of Chris Matthews remains useful, though less useful than it once was, given the diminished standing of the mainstream media. Making sure that Wikipedia has fair and balanced entries on everything from Jim DeMint to global warming may be more important.