Wikipedia Wars

[Dialectic]

A brief note:

All posts on Wikipedia content and discussion should go in this forum.

We also wouldn't mind seeing a list of 44-relevant Wikipedia entries, just so the interested parties can track how the content changes and evolves.

Hmm ... we should probably start and entry on us one of these days ....

[nskripchun]

Great idea!

So the contributors to the articles would like some more scholarly quotes... Frank Wu, Ron Takagi, Helen Zia, etc.

Time to dig out all my old AsianAm studies textbooks...

[SamuraiJack]

I made a few changes to Wikipedia before.

I once changed the entire speech of Al Quaida, replacing "Allah" with "God".

I think some of us should become members and editors before we make our submission.

[Dialectic]

BboyDestructiveD recently alerted me to our presence on Wikipedia under "Asian Fetish":

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

A related criticism involves the gendered application of this term, which many accuse of being sexist. Asian fetish is applied almost exclusively to WM/AF couples as opposed to AM/WF couples. The latter is usually tolerated and even promoted within certain segments of the Asian American community. Thus, there are accusations of hypocrisy--supporting one face of a harmful racial fetish while repudiating the other. For example, one notable Asian American community website, the Fighting 44s, coined the term CCB [12] to describe Asian women with a racial fetish for white men. No such term exists for Asian men with a fetish for white women. The collective ire is targeted primarily towards women who are thought to have "sold out." To many, this is evidence of a double standard.

HAHAHA, holy crap, we're NOTABLE!! We pulled a fast one on these motherfuckers, huh boys? :D

A few points:

1) We coined NOTHING. We didn't even coin the abbreviation "CCB." People simply took a term of Tojo's and blew it up.
2) We don't support no double-standard. We support evening the disparity and ultimately transcending ethnocentric notions of race.
3) We HATE the terms "sold out" and "sellout."
4) We HAVE a term for Asian men with a white fetish: BLOT, or "Badass Leaders of Tomorrow." :P :P :P ("I keed, I keed!" to quote ellencho, one of our many Asian female supporters.)

Now someone go tell them how cuddly we are and how WRONG they are about us. Cut and paste this and credit it to D. Stealthy if you're feeling lazy and scholarly :D

[wzhao553]

^^ As I recall, 3line was the one who wrote that paragraph and inserted in the definition of CCB. Don't expect it to last though. :) We really want to do a complete overhaul of that section.

Also, yes, we really want more references. Please post any that you have which you think may be relevant.

[blockthebox]

Wikipedia Tightens Submission Rules By DAN GOODIN, Associated Press Writer
51 minutes ago

Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia to which anyone can contribute, is tightening submission rules after a prominent journalist complained that an article falsely implicated him in the Kennedy assassinations.

Wikipedia will now require users to register before they can create articles, Jimmy Wales, founder of the St. Petersburg, Fla.-based Web site, said Monday. People who modify existing articles will still be able to do so without registering.

The change comes less than a week after John Seigenthaler, a one-time administrative assistant to Robert Kennedy, complained in an op-ed published in USA Today that a biography of him on Wikipedia claimed he had been suspected in the assassinations of the former attorney general and his brother, President John F. Kennedy.

Wikipedia, often cited as a prime example of the type of collective knowledge-pooling that the Internet enables, has some 850,000 articles in English as well as entries in at least eight other languages, including Italian, French, German and Portuguese.

Since it's launch in 2001, it has grown into a storehouse of information on topics ranging from medieval art to nanotechnology.

The volume is possible because the site relies on volunteers, including many experts in their fields, who submit entries and edit previously submitted articles.

Wales said he hopes the registration requirement will limit the number of articles being created.

While it would not prevent people from posting false information, the new process will make it easier, said Wales, for the site's 600 active volunteers to review and remove factual errors, defaming statements and other material that runs afoul of Wikipedia policy.

Wikipedia visitors will still be able to edit content already posted without registering. It takes 15 to 20 seconds to create an account on the Web site, and an e-mail address is not required.

"What we're hopeful to see is that by slowing that down to 1,500 a day from several thousand, the people who are monitoring this will have more ability to improve the quality," Wales said Monday. "In many cases the types of things we see going on are impulse vandalism."

The episode demonstrates the lack of accountability that often comes with articles posted by anonymous people over the Internet. Unlike content included in magazines, books and other traditional media, online material can be submitted by just about anyone, often without having to volunteer any identifying information.

"I sympathize with this person, but it's really not any different than a posting on an anonymous Web page," Eugene Volokh, a law professor specializing in the First Amendment, said, referring to Seigenthaler. Volokh added that Wikipedia provides casual readers with a valuable service but that he would never rely on it as a source for scholarly articles.

Seigenthaler, USA Today's founding editorial director and a former president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, said that after the op-ed was published Wikipedia's biography of him was changed to remove the false accusations.

But Seigenthaler said an entry on Monday still got some facts wrong, apparently because volunteers are confusing him with his son, a journalist with NBC News.

Also disturbing is a section of his biography that tracks changes made to the article, Seigenthaler said. Entries in that history section label him a "Nazi" and say other "really vicious, venomous, salacious homophobic things about me," he said.

Wales said those comments would be removed.

For 132 days, Seigenthaler said, the biography of him falsely claimed that "for a brief time, he was thought to have been directly involved in the Kennedy assassinations of both John, and his brother, Bobby."

The biography also falsely stated that he had lived in the Soviet Union from 1971 to 1984.

Seigenthaler said he wasn't convinced the new registration requirement would stop the practice of vandals posting content that is slanderous or knowingly incorrect.

Wikipedia will either have to fix the problem or will lose whatever credibility it still has, he said.

"The marketplace of ideas ultimately will take care of the problem," Seigenthaler said. "In the meantime, what happens to people like me?"

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051206/ap_on_hi_te/wikipedia_rules;_ylt=Av0pBru0RmRedwmxNR8YkRdj24cA; _ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl

[wzhao553]

Wikipedia, often cited as a prime example of the type of collective knowledge-pooling that the Internet enables, has some 850,000 articles in English as well as entries in at least eight other languages, including Italian, French, German and Portuguese.

At least eight other languages, huh? Wow, that's quite a generous assessment. :D

[B the student]

i was doing research on the racial slur "chink" when i ran across this entry in wikitionary:
Chink

A narrow opening such as a fissure or crack
A slight sound as of metal objects touching each other
A chip or dent (in something metallic)
A rather pleasant term for a Chinese person

anyone can fix?

[Hater Depot]

It got fixed. Took 8 minutes. And now they're looking for someone to create an article on its use as a slang term.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Chink_%28slang%29&action=edit

[ZhuBaJie]

that Asian fetish article is a mess.

[BeTheReds]

It goes into an edit war every 5 minutes. I've tried to clean it up, but lots of white guys in IRs who are insecure about their IRs keep changing it back.

[doraemanhattan]

I found this article on wikipedia regarding the medical condition "micropenis": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micropenis

The article appears to insinuate that the Asian "small-penis" myth has validity.

Micropenis in Asian Populations
A high incidence of micropenis has been found in several Asian populations, including Japanese, Chinese (of varying ethnicity) and Vietnamese samples, considered due to a higher mutation rate for the SRD5A2 gene, which encodes for the enzyme 5{alpha}-reductase-2 and plays a role in male sex differentiation (Sasaki et al. 2003). The mutation led to decreased expression of the enzyme, which in turn results in penises with erect lengths of -2.5 standard deviations. In the case of the Japanese sample, hormone treatments were also studied and found to be effective, resulting in penis lengths at nearly the average of age-matched Japanese controls.



I am not well-read on the statistics regarding average penis sizes by race, but the above paragraph seems to be suspect. Can somebody with more statistics refute the claim, or at least amend the article with further information?

[nskripchun]

The article on the Japanese American internment is the latest victim. A couple of pro-internment nutjobs have resorted to edit-war to stick in their pro-internment, "THE JAPS WERE DISLOYAL", rhetoric.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Japanese_American_internment

[lopan]

Does anyone still have access to Wikipedia?

Can someone place a link to www.thefighting44s.com under "asian american"? It irks me that angryasianman, yellowworld and even model minority are there, but we're not.

Thanks, guys!

[nskripchun]

Does anyone still have access to Wikipedia?

Can someone place a link to www.thefighting44s.com under "asian american"? It irks me that angryasianman, yellowworld and even model minority are there, but we're not.

Thanks, guys!

done!

I just added the link now.

[Justin]

Dude, wikipedia sucks. I remember I had typed up a whole article on one of the Chinese Dynasty - went to the library and got books, sources, everything. I spent a good hour and a half doing that article and citing..then after about 45 mins, some idiot comes on there and feels the need to take out my sources and rewrite half of the article just because he lives in Taiwan. Give me a break. The best thing about it is that it informs you..but other than that...its garbage. :p

[ZhuBaJie]

there's also this:

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

[silkie]

I think wikis are great as a first place to go, like calling up a friend or stopping a stranger on the street and asking them their opinion. But I would never cite it. They usually contain links to other sources.

But I think the greatest thing about wikis is that if you are curious about something, chances are there are others who obsess about the same subject and wrote an entry into it. I remember when I was a kid, I would scour my cousin's entire encyclopedia Britanica collection looking for the origin of the word "fuck" and never comes across anything. As annoying as wikis are since half of it is written by people with no authority on the subjects, it is more democratic-- well... at least in comparison to the book encylopedia.

[Ike]

there's also this:

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

The examples and perspective in this article or section may not represent a worldwide view of the subject.
Please improve this article or discuss the issue on the talk page.

Some information in this article or section does not attribute its sources and may not be reliable.
Please check for inaccuracies, and modify and cite sources as needed.

This article or section may contain original research or unattributed claims.
Please help Wikipedia by adding references. See the talk page for details.

The neutrality of this article is disputed.
Please see the discussion on the talk page.

This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards.
Please discuss this issue on the talk page or replace this tag with a more specific message.
This article has been tagged since February 2007.

I have never seen so many quality control tags on one article. o.O

[Ike]

Fake professor in Wikipedia storm

Internet site Wikipedia has been hit by controversy after the disclosure that a prominent editor had assumed a false identity complete with fake PhD.

...Here's the rest of the article:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6423659.stm

So don't believe Wikipedia too much!

[awong]

I think wikis are great as a first place to go, like calling up a friend or stopping a stranger on the street and asking them their opinion. But I would never cite it. They usually contain links to other sources.

But I think the greatest thing about wikis is that if you are curious about something, chances are there are others who obsess about the same subject and wrote an entry into it. I remember when I was a kid, I would scour my cousin's entire encyclopedia Britanica collection looking for the origin of the word "fuck" and never comes across anything. As annoying as wikis are since half of it is written by people with no authority on the subjects, it is more democratic-- well... at least in comparison to the book encylopedia.

I agree about wiki being used like calling a friend or someones opinion. Personally I just use wiki for reading about tech stuff like vaporware, and stuff on TV shows like finding hidden facts of a show, to stuff about sports teams. I find for small things like that it works ok, like synposis of a tv show, or tech details of a device. But for research and contriversal stuff, it is always better to find verified sources.