Last August I began taking on Wikipedia’s heavily-biased (even by its own standards) entry on Arudou Debito, pointing out some systemic flaws in the media: among other things, how all manner of anonymous people can launder quotes and alleged criticisms by citing websites as if they were genuine publications (and their authors as if they were established authorities in the field), yet omit published third-party sources and comments by true authorities just because they were archived on Debito.org (or just because they don’t fit in as “Criticisms”, wink). It was a good discussion, but now that it’s died down, the Wikipedia entry is just steadily reverting back to the same old biased and laundered references, and losing impartiality all over again. (And I’m not even bothering with the Japanese version of the entry — there’s no saving it from anonymous net denizens without even an inkling of integrity.) So forget it. Wikipedia as a medium is probably unredeemable in its present form.

Meanwhile, arising is an alternative — Citizendium, where contributors must have verified identities. and articles cannot be so easily defaced at whim. I like how the article on Arudou Debito has come out so far there. Reproduced below. I suggest readers start switching to Citizendium particularly when it comes to information on contentious topics and people.

UPDATE: After this blog entry appeared, I appealed to Wikipedia to do something about what I considered issues of unfairness and inability to abide by its own rules. The editors then went on the offensive, hurling accusations at me of altering my own article (untrue) and of trying to make their article on me in to an “advertisement” and a “micro-managed resume” (not the intention). Then they refused to police one of their own editors regarding issues of identity and a potential conflict of interest regarding a source (I suspect one of the “guardian editors” is in fact not only policing the entry but also adding their own (unpublished and biased) source against the rules). The motives eventually came out: To quote one “editor”, who demanded that a positive book review in a national newspaper (The Japan Times) be removed: “…we can’t have just praise. Either a reliably sourced criticism needs to be added, or the praise needs to be removed.” Come again? We can’t have PRAISE in a biography? Unless there’s criticism? Even though there’s been almost nothing but criticism Wikied there for years now?

Thus several weeks after first raising this issue, Wikipedia still refuses to clean up its own act — instead treats the subject of their own biography of a living person with derision and contempt. How nice. And biased. Hence Citizendium.