Wikipedia

Wikipedia's 9/11 ‘Edit Wars’

[An interesting factoid: "Wikipedia, created in the year the Sept. 11 attacks took place, was profoundly shaped by those events."]

Link by Link
On Wikipedia, Echoes of 9/11 ‘Edit Wars’
By NOAM COHEN
Published: September 11, 2011

AS the nation marked this terrible anniversary, people invariably turned to Wikipedia to learn about the events of Sept. 11, 2001. Nearly two million page views were registered last September for the article “September 11 Attacks,” a typically Wikipedian effort with exhaustive, even picayune, details of the events, bolstered by nearly 289 footnotes. This September, the total page view number could be something like six million.

Likewise, readers have repeatedly turned to the article “9/11 Conspiracy Theories.” The article — similarly detailed with 299 footnotes purporting to explain accusations of faked video footage or controlled demolition of the two buildings — had 400,000 page views last September, and is on pace to have more than a million views this year.

One thing is certain, however. Not one of those visitors got to the conspiracy theories page by making a hypertext leap from a link in the main article about the Sept. 11 attacks. There is simply no mention of these theories, deemed fringe ideas, which have been repeatedly and officially discredited. They are written up in a variety of articles on Wikipedia, but they are kept on the fringe of the site.

This is no accident, but rather a Wikipedia policy concerning a topic as fraught with emotion as the Sept. 11 attacks. Thus the so-called gatekeepers of the media world — prominent newspapers, television news programs, newsweeklies — have an unlikely ally in Wikipedia, which bills itself as the encyclopedia anyone can edit.

Wikipedia revision on controlled demolition article needed

Many people use Wikipedia to give them at least an overview of a topic.

Unfortunately, it appears the current Wikipedia entry regarding the controlled demolition theory is seriously out of date.

See

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

An effort is needed regarding planning and execution, and this effort may take several months to obtain results.

The effort needs to be:
Reasonable
Thoughtful
Coordinated
Persistent

Here is my proposal:

I am NOT calling for active attempts to submit revisions to Wikipedia at this time.

Planning and discussion must occur first.

A small group of persons should be responsible for the effort.

First, corrections and omissions need to be identified within the structure of the existing Wikipedia entry.

(It is not reasonable to expect they will create a brand new entry or category.)

Second, a person or committee chair who is familiar with the Wikipedia entry edit process would begin the formal revision process.

Each attempt at revision must be documented.

The Truth According To Wikipedia

"The Truth According To Wikipedia" is the title of the English version of a documentary from Dutch public broadcaster VRPO. Their documentary program "Backlight" addresses many different social, economic, political or scientific topics and is popular among Dutch intellectuals from both sides of the political spectrum. This time, the topic is Wikipedia and truth:


Google or Wikipedia? Those of us who search online -- and who doesn't? -- are getting referred more and more to Wikipedia. For the past two years, this free online "encyclopedia of the people" has been topping the lists of the world's most popular websites. But do we really know what we're using? Backlight plunges into the story behind Wikipedia and explores the wonderful world of Web 2.0. Is it a revolution, or pure hype?

Director IJsbrand van Veelen goes looking for the truth behind Wikipedia. Only five people are employed by the company, and all its activities are financed by donations and subsidies. The online encyclopedia that everyone can contribute to and revise is now even bigger than the illustrious Encyclopedia Britannica.

Does this spell the end for traditional institutions of knowledge such as Britannica? And should we applaud this development as progress or mourn it as a loss? How reliable is Wikipedia? Do "the people" really hold the lease on wisdom? And since when do we believe that information should be free for all? In this film, "Wikipedians," the folks who spend their days writing and editing articles, explain how the online encyclopedia works. In addition, the parties involved discuss Wikipedia's ethics and quality of content. It quickly becomes clear that there are camps of both believers and critics.

TruthAction Thread: Wikipedia editors livid over new [Active Thermitic Material] paper

Activist editors at Wikipedia have changed the name of the "World Trade Center Controlled Demolition Hypothesis" page to "World Trade Center Demolition Conspiracy Theories", are removing all links to the paper "Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe" recently published in the refereed Open Chemical Physics Journal (including from the 9/11 Truth Movement page and even Dr. Steven Jones' page), and have banned and/or restricted some users that re-add the links and question their policy.

See the discussion thread at TruthAction.org- many links to relevant pages at Wikipedia; the "Talk" page is very revealing of their bias, hypocrisy and intellectual dishonesty:

Wikipedia editors livid over new paper
http://truthaction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5195&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

The new paper has pulled the rug out from under the wikipedia front lines defending the official story and they have now suddenly changed the title of the demolition page from --

Controlled demolition hypothesis for the collapse of the World Trade Center

to --

World Trade Center controlled demolition conspiracy theories

The Lynn Margulis wikipedia page -- all 9/11 references continually deleted

Just putting a call out to people to help get even a single reference to Lynn Margulis' views on 9/11 onto her wikipedia page. The same guy - Arthur Rubin -- that deletes everything meaningful about challenges to the official story, continually deletes any mention of her views on 9/11 off of her page. He also continually deleted all 9/11 info off of Jesse Ventura's page -- claiming that the news stories were not real! -- but eventually he lost out. Persistance can pay off if the sources exist. Jesse Ventura continued to do interviews in numerous venues and so soon it became undeniable.

If you post anything by Alex Jones, wikipedia generally considers that source to be not reliable and numerous admins will delete it, so you have to post news stories from mainstream sources. One person posted a college newspaper story on Margulis' views, but it referenced the Alex Jones interview so wikipedia admins like Rubin say that that isn't enough and delete it.

It's important to get 9/11 info onto the pages of real scientists, so please help out by getting her info onto there.

PSST! Over Here!

There is an ongoing Request for Comment on the proposed renaming of the Wikipedia article 9/11 conspiracy theories to '911 alternative theories.' Naturally the RFC is being spammed by the resident sophists and shills, so we need your help. Here is the latest comment:

"Strong support in favor of renaming. The title is objectively pejorative, as evinced by the fact that many editors who oppose the change have pointed out it accurately describes folklore and urban legend; however, these are not the subject of the article. Moreover it abuses the term 'theory,' by prescribing the colloquial meaning of that word while some of the contents address theories in the scientific sense. The term 'Conspiracy theories' excludes scientific theories, but accurately describes the plot that is the subject of the 9/11 attacks article. However, the term 'Alternative theories' potentially embraces both folkore and science, but like the article excludes the mainstream theory. Hence '9/11 alternative theories' is a more accurate title."

Should Wikipedia matter?

As someone belabored, truthers haven't been able to even add a link to a WTC 7 collapse video to Wikipedia's WTC 7 article, and I decided to try to do something about it. Here's Wikipedia's WTC 7 page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7_World_Trade_Center

Interestingly, the WTC 7 article has been selected as

"a current featured article candidate. A featured article should exemplify Wikipedia's very best work, and is therefore expected to meet several criteria." (see the discussion page)

Anyway, I added this to the section entitled "Collapse":

There are numerous resources for viewing the collapse of 7 World Trade Center on the Internet, including [http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=collapse+of+wtc+7 Google Video].

I also added a link to a Google video of WTC 7's collapse to the External Links section.

Finally, to test the waters, I added NIST's statement that "No steel was recovered from WTC 7" to a relevant section.

Wikipedia help requested

I'm asking for some VOTES here.

I created an ae911truth entry on Wikipedia. It has been "nominated for deletion" because it is "non-notable." I need other people to come vote to KEEP it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Architects_and_engineers_for_9/11_truth

Using Federal Government Equipment to Modify Wikipedia

Using Federal Government Equipment to Modify Wikipedia

August 27, 2007

By Ralph Smith

URL: http://www.fedsmith.com/articles/articles.showarticle.db.php?intArticleID=1347

Wikipedia is an internet phenomenon. It is a quick way to find out information about almost anything. It describes itself as "a multilingual, web-based, free content encyclopedia project. Wikipedia is written collaboratively by volunteers from all around the world. With rare exceptions, its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the Internet...."

Federal agencies spend hundreds of millions (or billions) of dollars on projects and missions. Many federal employees are engaged in providing accurate information on these programs to Americans and others throughout the world.

It seems logical that Wikipedia would be used for this purpose. Why not use a free service to tell people more about a project, an agency or a program? Agencies do it and routinely update information on their organizations.

Wikiscanner Catchs PM's Editing Staff

Source: news.com.au

August 24, 2007 12:55am

THE Prime Minister's staff have been editing Wikipedia to remove details that might be damaging to the Government.

Staff in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet have made 126 edits on subjects ranging from the children overboard affair to the Treasurer Peter Costello, Fairfax reports.

A new website - Wikiscanner - traces the digital fingerprints of those who make changes to entries in the online encyclopedia.

The website points to the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet as the source of the edits.

Wikiscanner also identifies Department of Defence employees as the most prolific Wikipedia contributors in Australia.

Wikipedia is promoted as the “free encyclopedia that anyone can edit”.

The Department of Defence yesterday said it would ban defence staff from accessing the encyclopedia.

Defence computers were found to have made more than 5000 edits to Wikipedia entries, including articles to the “9/11 truth movement”, the Australian Defence Force Academy and the Vietnam War-era Pentagon papers.

Conversion to 9/11 Truth for the lazy

If your friends and family are too skepitcal to spend time investigating 9/11 for themselves, perhaps a simple questions and answers session is the best approach, backed up with links for further reading, often using Wikipedia. I Dedicate this blog to my brother, whose main objection to the idea of a conspiracy is the question concerning the French Newspaper Le Monde.

The Government would never kill their own people, would they? Conspiracies are just a new Internet-fad thing.

A philosopher once wrote:

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it

Wikipedia Mixing Us In With LaRouche

Wikipedia Mixing Us In With LaRouche

If enough people get on wikipedia and edit the pages, they won't be able to continue to do edits with the goal to discredit us, like adding Lyndon La Rouche to the template of people challenging the official version of events to make us look nutty. He should not be on a 9/11 template.

As it is, that template goes on the bottom of every single page covering the "conspiracy theorists."

The template is here -

Template:911ct

And it's simple to edit. Just click on 'edit this page' at the top and start editing text.

Other good pages to edit are here -

9/11 conspiracy theories

(Locked! There is a war going on there, so only people who login can edit, but logging in only takes a moment)

$20 bucks

Five minute video comparing WTC 7 fire to other skyscraper fires, and also to controlled demolition. The video is set to The Blue Danube. A vivid example for just about anyone out of the blue who might be questioning 911. It's brief, easy to listen to, and for the coming holidays and the year ahead, it's a great way to send $20 bucks to everyone you know and love.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2364206678564389150&pr=goog-sl

911 Press for Truth
www.911pressfortruth.com

Help get Disputed Tag Placed on Wikipedia 9/11 Article

If you want something to do in your free time, you could help get a disputed or POV tag placed on the 9/11 Wikipedia article. Why should we do this. It is often one of the top two results in a Google search for 9/11. This article is guarded by three or four admins, who don't seem to have a understanding of what Wikipedia was created for. Everytime a change is suggested, and evidence and reasons for the change is given, they won't respond to dispute the evidence. They just say they are not interested. They say that this is a stable article, which clearly goes against the idea of a wiki.

Here's some things to do. Create a Wikipedia account. Agree that the article should be unprotected or that a disputed tag should be placed on the article because it it is being protected because of the clear disputes. Read the September 11th attacks article, and find mainstream sources that can be used to dispute information in it.

Help Keep September 11th Listed On Wikipedia as a Pyroclastic Flow

Every attempt to list the collapse of the WTC as an example of a pyroclastic flow on wikipedia has been deleted. They have tried to hide behind a noble call for sources, but when sources are given they still delete the post.

Pyroclastic flows are important because they are another smoking gun that proves there was a large amount of explosives in the towers and the official theory breaks fundamental laws of physics. If anyone has any better sources for the fact that pyroclastic flows were present in NYC following the collapse please add them to the wikipedia entry.

Wikipedia entry for Pyroclastic Flows

You can also leave your comments on the discussion page letting the admins know you think the page should keep its new additions.

Wikipedia entry for Discussion of the entry on Pyroclastic Flows

RSS