You may not believe it, but there are things I still like about Wikipedia. No, I don't mean Jimmy Wales or Sue "Barracuda" Gardner.
No, I like reading the front page and getting all the news stories that would not appear anywhere else. I like Wikinews too, but for really unusual, eclectic news coverage of events around the world, I can just hit the main page of Wikipedia for a decent rundown.
Until today, that is. You see, any idiot can tell you that the shit has hit the proverbial fan. The banking crisis in the US is quite possibly the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression, with an impact that will be felt around the world--that is being felt around the world. In fact, you don't need a PhD in history to see how the Crash of '29 impacted world history over the next two decades, and the events of the past week are often compared to Black Tuesday. Meanwhile, the government is talking about an unprecedented bailout in sums that none of us can even imagine (what does $700 billion even look like?). How will that impact all our lives, considering that someone, somewhere, will end up paying it?
And in the Arctic, as reported by The Independent, millions of tons of methane gas may be being released into the atmosphere. I am certainly not a climatologist, and lack the knowledge and tools to make a scientific assessment of the debates surrounding global warming, but from my layman's attempt to understand the issues, the problem seems pretty damning, and this newest bit of information is particularly worrying.
And yet, when I turn to the main page of Wikipedia to get some news, what do I learn? Well, there is no mention at all of these key stories. Instead, I can read about a school shooting in Finland and a new prime minister in Vanuatu, the Wasilla of the South Pacific. I'm not even going to talk about how the daily newspapers are more up-to-date than this. I am going to talk about priorities. Because with the world in economic and climatological upheaval, news about a golf tournament is about as relevant to me as the last time Levi Johnston scored (and for you with dirty minds, I meant in hockey!). Is Wikipedia dragging down news as well, and transforming it into a collection of arcane trivia. For a website with an ostensible mission to save the world through free knowledge, I can only wonder about what it means by knowledge.
One last note. I am sure that there may be some who will comment that I am taking an American-centric stand here. Actually, I am not, because believe it or not, the collapse of the world economy will have a greater impact on little Vanuatu (pop. 215,446) as a third-world nation than whoever is elected prime minister there (or in Japan, for that matter--who was Prime Minister of Japan during the Great Depression?). And if sea levels do indeed rise as a result of global warming, the only way people will find Vanuatu is with scuba gear.
With presence comes power. With power should come prioritization. Wikipedia, whether I like it or not, is a major web presence. Its main page is viewed by billions of people every month (and if we had a dollar for each of them, we still couldn't resolve the banking crisis). I just hope it reconsiders its priorities when it presents the headlines to the world.
P.S. This post is based on "In the news" as it appeared at 1:33 pm EST, on Wednesday, September 24.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
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4 comments:
I have heard (largely from complaints) that the more obscure news stories are to counteract systemic bias that comes with Americans and Europeans dominating the English language and therefore the English language Wikipedia.
In other words, shit --> mouth.
(what does $700 billion even look like?)
We've squandered more than that on the the latest Gulf War.
Hmmm... the thing is, the economic crisis is one particularly big thing spanning months and you cannot just keep that on the front page day in day out (unless there are specific news events like the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers and the bailout of AIG, which did receive front page time).
Anyway, go to [[Portal:Current events]] and see that under the "Ongoing events" sidebar section, there is a link to [[World economic crisis]] AND [[Subprime mortgage crisis]] for your perusal.
As for the methane item, I'm not that familiar enough with it to see whether that item does merit "air time" like you say.
Eugene, while I respect your answer, it seems to miss an important point. There are events going on each day that reflect the urgency of the larger crisis. Bush's speech, for instance, or McCain's suspension of his campaign, the FBI's investigation of the investment banks, etc. The list goes on and on. If this was the early 1940s, would we skip the daily coverage of key events in WW2 because they are part of a general theme, WW2, which is covered elsewhere. In the news should be about the most important news, and not just the tiny events that can be summarized in two lines. For people looking there for the headlines, with the economic crisis going on around them, the PM of Vanuatu or some gold tournament just doesn't measure up.
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