Feeding The Fish

Rush also believed that being black was a hereditary illness which he referred to as ‘negroidism’. Wikipedia.

Reading this sentence you’re immediately stuck by a comment that seems positively racist, indeed knowing Benjamin’s Rush’s time period, it would neither be out of place or unexpected. However, the next sentence changes the meaning somewhat:

He also believed that since it was merely a skin condition slavery and racial discrimination should be abolished.

Now this turns the whole assumption on it’s head. Of course, all skin colour is a hereditary skin condition, it’s just rarely worded as such. The statement as a whole still jars with our modern sensitivities because of the word ‘illness’, which as being black itself does not cause negative symptoms (Of course, being black in that time and place would hardly have been beneficial to your health) and should not be seen as needing ‘cure’ is not strictly accurate. Replace it with the word ‘condition’ and you get:

Rush also believed that being black was a hereditary condition which he referred to as ‘negroidism’. He also believed that since it was merely a skin condition slavery and racial discrimination should be abolished.

Most of this statement would be almost redundant today, while being 100% factually true (but still carrying some unfortunate overtones). The idea that racial characteristics are hereditary is obvious, the word ‘condition’ still seem slightly out of place, but is a neutral word when used in the scientific sense (’a particular mode of being of a person or thing’) and so is correct without racists overtones. This brings us the Wikipedia problem: I have the ability to go in and change that one word and potentially change the opinion of someone quickly flicking through the page away from the more racist interpretation. However, I don’t know enough to be sure that Rush didn’t see being black as an illness. So while the revised statement would be more factually correct in itself, might it become a less factual account of what Rush believed? Is it right to add political correctness retroactively? I would argue only if the historical interpretation remains true. While in a scientific sense the word ‘condition’ almost certainly fulfills what Rush believed, if the word he actually used was ‘illness’ then that gives historians a more accurate insight into his character. So to change a single word without research would be misleading.

Looking into the legacy versions of the page it’s interesting to note the second sentence was added a long time after the first, meaning that for a period of time a radically different impression would have been drawn from the paragraph, as an incorrect impression may or may not be given now. So what’s the lesson here? That Wikipedia articles shouldn’t be taken at face value? In part, Wikipedia should always be used in conjuncture with another source and no-one using Wikipedia for serious research would disagree with that. Perhaps the second point demonstrated is that Wikipedia articles tend to follow a trend from less correct to more correct, factual errors are slowly eroded by the occasional informed reader who spots the difference, it is rare for a correct fact to be edited to a less correct version (ignoring the issue of vandalism for the moment). This is most true in a selection of articles that have been subject to more readers, and hence more correction than most. As Wikipedia grows (it’s important to remember that it’s only been around for five years), it’s content as a whole will doubtlessly mature in a similar slow trickle towards correctness.
The issue of Vandalism is perhaps of more concern, this progression towards correctness can only continue as long as occasional readers arrive at the page with a small amount of independent knowledge. Most vandals restrain themselves to replacing whole articles with hilarious messages and this vandalism can quickly be reversed and the vandals banned and ignored. What would be truly destructive is a class of vandals who make small changes on obscure pages but retain the impression of factualness and impartiality enough to fool the unknowing reader. As it would require a reader with external knowledge to correct the vandalism, it would become progressively unlikely to happen the more obscure the article. Indeed as it would be so hard to catch, it’s impossible to imagine that this is not happening. This leaves us with at least three potential classes of vandals:

• Petty article-defacing vandals who are irritating but relatively harmless.

• Vandals with an agenda who, for example, ‘correct’ opposition political party entries (or ‘enhance’ their own). These will usually be easily reconisable though, as the pages they edit tend to be fairly prominent and on which a biased viewpoint will quickly be spotted and have Wikipedia’s ‘neutrality’ flag hoisted on them.

• Vandals who make tiny alterations to articles, preserving the formal structure yet introducing errors for the sole goal of creative destruction.

It is this final category that I find to be most dangerous, as their actions would be almost indistinguishable from simply uninformed contributors their existence is hard to determine and it’s entirely possible that they don’t exist. However, simply the idea of a potential group dedicated to factual incorrectness brings home the importance of not taking Wikipedia at face value. Hopefully the changes being made to prevent casual vandals will take away some of this problem, but for the moment ‘cautious optimism’ is the only assessment I can make on the factuality of any given Wikipedia article. I hope Wikipedia in another five years will have an unrivaled quantity (and more importantly, high quality) of articles and still be providing them freely to the masses.

I wonder if it will still say ‘illness’.

E-Vote Rigging in Ohio.

If true, quite scary. E-voting may be more advanced, but it’s far less checkable.

Are there computer programs that can be used to secretly fix elections?

Yes.

How do you know that to be the case?

Because in October of 2000, I wrote a prototype for Congressman Tom Feeney [R-FL]…

It would rig an election?

It would flip the vote, 51-49. Whoever you wanted it to go to and whichever race you wanted to win.

And would that program that you designed, be something that elections officials… could detect?

They’d never see it.