A Caveat

Misplaced Pages is a technology-driven enterprise. As a result, it is skewed toward a white, male, under-50 demographic -- and any hack with a computer and Internet access can edit virtually anything. This has resulted in both misinformation and disinformation; appalling subject matter deficits; and various biases vis-à-vis subject matter treating people of color, the Third World and, most notably, African peoples. The nature of such biases runs the gamut from simply naivete and a kind of youth-driven myopia/provincialism, to a pervasive Eurocentrism/cultural bias, to racism (both mindless and calculated, subtle and blatant/virulent). I have found the project's self-policing mechanisms likewise riddled with some of the same problems, resulting in governance structures the members of which often function without integrity or accountability, who are often hostile, antagonistic, hypocritical and unjustly and unfairly punitive. And when the admins abuse their authority in the most blatant and egregious fashion, they are not held accountable -- while those guilty of lesser offenses often are dealt with excessively harshly.

I recently was blocked after making legitimate changes to a document -- this after another, edit-warring editor, User: Stbalbach, openly and blatantly invited others to engage in tag-team edit warring, a favorite tactic on Misplaced Pages to censor the writings of other editors who don't toe the party line of a numerically superior editorial faction. Because I focus on subects dealing primarily with black people, it has been my experience that this dynamic is an exceedingly common one on Misplaced Pages when the subject in question treats people of color. The matter at issue in this case? A cabal of editors who repeatedly have tag-team edit-warred about the insertion of adequately sourced and perfectly appropriate material on the "Negroid" nature of face of the Great Sphinx of Giza. They refuse to allow any inclusion of well-documented, widely known observations of various learned writers throughout history, or that of a former Harvard professor. At first, they relegated the information to a subsection dealing with crackpot theories. Then they deleted it altogether, claiming the source, which recapitulated information (also alluded to in other articles) printed in The New York Times, was unreliable. The most persistent edit warrior in this case, (again, User: Stbalbach), in an another article related to black people repeatedly, however, inserted preposterous information contained in a Stormfront website. On Misplaced Pages, an editor can decide some hack whose material appears on a neo-Nazi website is a reliable source, while a published Harvard professor writing in The New York Times is not.

Am I calling User:Stbalbach a racist? Nope. I'll let the reader draw his or her own conclusion.

The same dynamic was at work on an article about Black people, where essentially a team of white (certainly non-black) contributors has determined that only they are allowed to define who black people are. Contributions by black editors have been reverted (deleted) summarily and repeatedly -- wholesale -- including corrections of grammar, fact and capitalization. And one of these very same offending editors had the gall to visit my user page to tell me to stop editing, because my edits were "not helping."

In response to my recent block in the matter of the sphinx article, I received the following e-mail from a banned Misplaced Pages user. It is excerpted and reproduced below with the writer's permission.

Anyone who belongs to the dominant block of opinion on any subject can get anyone else blocked. Misplaced Pages has no policies, applied consistently.

All the admins who talk on En-l openly admit counting any shred of personal fairness as mattering less than developing Misplaced Pages as they wish. Blocking of only 1 side when 2 sides have done exactly the same thing that the block is supposed to have been for, is routine. It's what happened to me, and claiming to have any rights against a biased 2-day block actually was the offence that got me permablocked, after only 5 weeks' membership. Look at all these:

a voice from within Misplaced Pages's own system describes how the ArbCom and dispute resolution systems are rigged with discretionary catch-alls that always enable admin to win on how force of group numbers dictates Misplaced Pages pages' content this is actually called "don't bother reporting abusive admins."

I was wary of how the umpiring of pages the whole world can fight over could possibly work well, but I was drawn into Misplaced Pages by a friend who was briefly (and no longer is, already!) having good experiences with sharing his medical concerns on a couple of pages on medical subjects. My Wiki name was Tern, and here are 2 administrators saying to me saying "You are not entitled to anything" and "Misplaced Pages is not a democracy."

On the nature of Misplaced Pages: tag "Misplaced Pages"

And a former admin, leaving Misplaced Pages just recently, on 6 Oct 06:

"Too many admins whose first course is to insult a new user in order to see if they get a 'reaction' so that they can spank the new user for talking back to an admin. I've seen too many admins block accounts for infinite duration on flimsy evidence or mere whim.

I've seen more accusations thrown around of someone being a "sockpuppet" of another user. Time and again, I looked through the edits, and I didn't see it. Instead, what I saw were users who were systematically hounded until they finally broke down and broke the civility rules, and then as an afterthought someone came up and said "oh, it doesn't matter, they were a sockpuppet of X anyways", thereby removing all culpability on the part of the abusive users who had spent time hounding and abusing the newbie....

"The Wiki is broken. ... We, the admins of wikipedia, broke it. We broke it by being stuck-up jerks. We broke it by thinking we are better than normal editors, by getting full of ourselves."

We're actually developing a reputation as a place of arrogance and nastiness, a place of heavy-handed thugishness, a place where people treat each other quite badly. That's bad for the project.

"You are not the only one who has had problems with Misplaced Pages taking sides in a dispute, and being blatantly unfair to the other side without even giving them a chance to defend themselves." from FAMSecretSociety, a Yahoo group: "Yes ... this is my opinion of Misplaced Pages. It suppresses anything that may be considered 'more than marginally controversial'. It's definitely in the same boat as the mainstream media without any shadow of a doubt. " - the forum of the British anti-ID cards site http://www.1984brigade.com/

"Of late I've noticed that some independent contributions have been either radically edited or censored. I've not had time to check articles on 9/11, the London Bombings, the assault on Falluja etc, but judging from the way content was edited promptly out of articles on SSRIs, schizophrenia and Asperger's, there definitely seem to be operatives in place ready to clamp down on anything that may cast doubt on establishment canards." from Medialens, http://www.medialens.org/board/

In short, Misplaced Pages is all too often an unreliable source riddled with systemic bias.

Personally, I do not believe Misplaced Pages is an effective venue for treating fairly or accurately subjects related to African peoples. Misplaced Pages is a noble idea, but inherently and fatally flawed. It has its pluses, but plenty of minuses as well. Don't believe the hype and proceed with caution.

So, in short, dear reader, I give you fair warning:

DON'T BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU SEE IN PRINT.

On crashing and burning and "the wages of sin"

Writing a check his butt can't cash:

• In response to a black heckler: "Shut up! Fifty years ago we'da had you upside down with a fucking fork up your ass."
• Pointing and screaming as if inciting a mob to action, "Throw his ass out! He's a nigger! He's a nigger! He's a nigger! A nigger! Look! There's a nigger!"
• After being admonished that his racist insults were "uncalled for": "That's what happens when you interrupt a white man."
• Mockingly, disdainfully in response to widespread audience disapproval, "They're going to arrest me for calling a black man a nigger."

What an idiot. And didn't anyone ever tell this guy (with hair near 'bout nappy as mine) that he ain't white either? I mean where does he think Italians got their swarthy skin and all that wavy, frizzy, nappy hair? Mother Africa, baby. The Moors left their mark in the bloodlines of Southern Europeans that are evident to this day. In fact, Italians weren't considered "white" in the U.S. until about 150 years ago.

Ignorant. Blatant. Vicious. Words calculated to intimidate, demean, insult, humiliate. Persistent and unrepentant in the face of public criticism and disapproval. Liar. (Promised club management he'd make an apology that never happened.)

And after the sh*t hit the fan:

• On Letterman's show, looking victimized, like he'd just soiled himself) "I'm not a racist."

(Looks like someone needs a dictionary.)

Uh-huh. Tell your pathetic, pleading lies to someone who gives a damn.

Oh. An' one more thing. God help u if ur car breaks down anywhere near the 'hood. Time to ante up, 'cuz u betta believe they sum fo'ks who believe ur hate-filled, white bwoi wannabe ass is fair game.