Well, this one is not a philosophical tract, or an attack on the underlying principles of Wikipedia. This is actually just the observation that once again, those who tell us they know best, those who claim to be above the fray and from their Olympian position are able to tell us how to run things, are often just as tacky and sleazy as those of us down in the muck.

In this case, the dolt who came up with the incredibly flawed philosophy and absurdly simple program that became Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, may have used his clout to alter the web page on Rachel Marsden while they were dating.I missed this story when it broke in March, as I am not much for following tech gossip, but as Ms. Marsden is now appearing on Townhall I got curious about her credentials, so I did a bit of searching. Besides some rather seedy stories on Salon, what I found was an article on how the founder of Wikipedia both used his creation to dump Ms. Marsden and may have previously edited out some of the more unseemly stories of her past.

Now, I am not going to say anything about Ms. Marsden here, or TH's choice to run her. They run Pat "I Heart Bormann" Buchanan still, and after his pro-Hitler historical rants I can't really find anything more objectionable. And, to be fair, TH tends to run a selection of (somewhat nominally) conservative pundits. Ms. Marsden appears to be an up and comer, or at least the syndicate that backs her is pushing her as such, a sort of Kanuckistan Coulter, and so to see her in TH is not that surprising. That she has a rather sordid past is beside the point. For that matter, had I been a more public figure, I am sure my past would be extremely unseemly. I never stalked anyone, nor accused anyone of rape under rather dubious (read as "Duke like") circumstances, but there are some bits of my past that, should, G-d forbid, I ever become famous, would be rather unpleasant to have aired in public. So I am adopting a glass houses and stones kind of philosophy.

On the other hand, Mr. Wales invites comment.

He promoted his flawed theory and became famous thereby, but part of that was his elevation of himself into the arbiter of his absurd NPOV philosophy. And yet, where he would deny others the ability to edit a page relating to an event in which they were personally involved, he applied no such brakes to himself. Then again, that is hardly surprising. When has someone who enjoys telling others what to do ever applied those rules to themselves? From congress exempting themselves from OSHA to televangelists opting out of the whole "no adultery" thing, it seems those who are fond of controlling others do not like to have any limits set upon themselves.

Which actually brings me back to one of my favorite topics, and, no, not bashing Wikipedia. What I am thinking of is my favorite topic of how our beliefs are determined by our view of others. Those who see people as basically their equals tend to adopt a hands off policy, and they tend to abide by the same rules they wish to see imposed on others. On the other hand, those who think they are above others, be they left wing politicians or Wikipedia editors, tend to want to tell others what to do while exempting themselves from the same strictures. It seems if you think most people are idiots, you believe you know better than they do how to run their lives, but that does not mean you apply to them the same rules as you do yourself.


POSTSCRIPT

By the way, don't read into my statement "had I been a more public figure" any sort of delusional over-valuation of myself. I know I am in no way a public figure. However, as the Mad Hatter said, you can always have more than nothing, so by being a complete unknown it is very easy to be more public a figure than I currently am.

POSTSCRIPT II

Since I have been so critical of Wikipedia, allow me to explain why I find the founders to be so arrogant.

You see, technically there is nothing innovative about Wikipedia, in fact, except for managers who think it is brilliant to "put up a wiki" about any given topic, no one who programs would argue that it is a great idea. The entire concept was to create a very simple program which allowed editing and kept a record of modifications. The only real technical changes Wikipedia (with a capital W) made were the modifications to run on a larger distributed system and the added editorial control. (The original design was even more egalitarian.)

So, the only real "innovation" involved in Wikipedia is the absurdist egalitarian ethic, largely stolen fromt he most extreme thinkers of the free software movement.

Wait, some are saying, how can an egalitarian be elitist?

Rather than just write "Lenin" or "Robespierre", I suppose I should offer an explanation. The people pushing the extreme egalitarian position are elitists for the simple reason that they aren't really all that egalitarian. You see, the real free and open market developed an old paradigm, the top-down controlled encyclopedia with various tiers of editors. That is why free people created and thought best. But, the "egalitarians", despite their nominal faith in "the people" decide they know better and reject the decision people actually reached in favor of a theoretically "ideal" egalitarian solution.

And that, in a nutshell is why I reject egalitarians' claims to being modest and humble. As with the left's claims to represent "the little guy", egalitarian claims to be "for the people" are just a smokescreen to substitute their theoretically ideal solutions for what people actually want. And so, I feel perfectly justified in calling them arrogant.