Note: Stephen Ewen responds; see the end of this post.
If you’re like me, you’re a member of Barack Obama’s social network my.barackobama.com mostly for informational purposes. That is, to see what they’re saying. Today on a semi-public (anyone is free to join) listserv associated with a group called “Obama Rapid Response”, I found this curious suggestion from one member:
As frequent readers know, I take vandalism of Wikipedia seriously, especially when it’s political in nature. So who would recommend such a thing? I Googled his name, and this was the first result:
Which leads to this:
And then to this:
Ewen’s identity appears to be no real secret (nor is his e-mail address, for that matter), but what he doesn’t volunteer is that he is also an editor and advocate of the Citizendium, a would-be rival to Wikipedia founded by the co-founder of Wikipedia who isn’t Jimmy Wales (it’s Larry Sanger). And he has a bit of a chip on his shoulder. In fact, it appears Ewen’s account exists only to defend Citizendium’s honor on Wikipedia and on Wikimedia Commons, maintaining a template to note articles there that are based on Citizendium articles, among other activities. I could only find one, and the article is, perhaps appropriately, Vinegar.
But Ewen appears to be not so much a loyal Citizendium user as a loyal Wikipedia critic, because it seems he also took a considerable amount of time last month to write a page for Google’s recently launched semi-competitor, Knol, about Barack Obama’s Trinity United Church. The article is very long and appears to be quite informative, except for its one-sided account of the Jeremiah Wright controversy:
News and political commentary outlets repeatedly broadcast brief excerpts from several sermons by Trinity’s thirty-six-year former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, which especially conservative political commentators interpreted as anti-American and supportive of several conspiracy theories. The repeated airings brought the Obama campaign into crisis until, days later, Obama responded by delivering a speech, A More Perfect Union, that was widely lauded across the political spectrum. Obama later completely severed his ties with Wright and Trinity, although some of his political opponents have continued to try to use the matter as a political wedge.
For what it’s worth, the same incident on Wikipedia is described in neutral language and appears one paragraph earlier.
And what of his suggestion that Obama supporters “tussle” (as Jennifer Lopez memorably did with (or rather to) Isaiah Washington in Stephen Soderbergh’s Out of Sight) on the Political positions of Sarah Palin article? Well, the article in question has been edited nearly 100 times today, and not clearly by any new Palin antagonists. The only reversions this afternoon are to the edits of one user, Booksnmore4you, active just since late August. This account appears primarily concerned with adding tendentious arguments against the Republican vice presidential nominee to this article and the main Sarah Palin entry. There is only one exception to this pattern: Booksnmore4you’s Wikipedia career began by editing three random articles before editing Trinity United Church three times, in one case to include text similar to that found on Stephen Ewen’s Knol page.
So there you have it: Stephen Ewen is a sometime critic of both Wikipedia and Sarah Palin, as of recently an active opponent of the governor on Wikipedia and, as of today at least, an activist using tools provided by the Obama campaign to suggest that fellow supporters make life difficult for the dozens of editors doing real work to improve the article. One can’t hold the Obama campaign responsible for Mr. Ewen’s actions, but one hopes they agree that his advice should not be followed.
Update: And because I take Wikipedia seriously, I’ve added a note about this on the Talk page associated with Political positions of Sarah Palin.
Update, Tuesday: Stephen Ewen responds in the comments:
The above is outrageous and slanderous. Since the overwhelming preponderance of authors at the article appeared to be Palin supporters, I sent out a few email requests for people to go and collaborate at the article, if they were so inclined to deal with the back and forth debate at Wikipedia, so as to hopefully produce a more neutral outcome. This is routinely done at Wikipedia, and in fact, there would be few quality science articles there without users doing such. Wikipedia’s fundamental philosophy is that balancing viewpoints produce better and more neutral articles. That’s the point. I am requesting you kindly take down this blog post in this light.
Naturally, I won’t be removing the post. Without getting into the details of his edits, all it takes is a glance at Ewen’s recent contributions to determine that his edit summaries are highly uncivil, which is always a red flag. He is right insofar that balancing viewpoints are supposed to produce a better Wikipedia. But if he really believes that inviting partisans unfamiliar with the customs, to say nothing of guidelines, at Wikipedia is the way to accomplish this, then he really is better off focusing his attentions elsewhere.
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