Arguably the most profound result of the growth of the internet, and by extension, that of on-line journalism, is our ability to immediately connect to any “whats” or “whos” that we seek. And more and more often, the availability all of this information comes courtesy of collaborations, such as Crowdsourcing.
Jeff Howe apparently coined that term in Wired in 2006, writing that the access to technology now means “the gap between professionals and amateurs has been diminished.”
How do I know this? I read it on Wikipedia.
Wikkipedia is now the 7th ranked website in the world, that one-stop source for term papers everywhere, the bastion of on-line collaboration.
Except when certain facts are left out. 
My small-time, local, perhaps pathetic story has me wondering where else in our universe 0f information other more important holes exist.
As owner of a hyperlocal that’s big on local news, two years ago I checked Wikipedia to see if we were listed on the Wiki page of one of the towns that we serve here in New York. I found a list of external links to all of of the legacy media sites. So being the Promotion Director, as well as the Editrix, Publisher and cleaning staff on theLoop, I registered and added a link to the site.
The next day it was gone.
I tried again. Thinking I may have done something wrong, I logged in with a different email and posted it again. This continued for several days. The link would be there and then it would be gone. I asked my friend JM to help. He had no luck either. So I did what any self-respecting reporter would do when faced with insurmountable odds. I wrote a little story: Larcenist Lifts Loop from Larchmont Wiki.
Soon, I was blacklisted:
Over the next few weeks, I tried to figure it all out: who has the power to blacklist someone, and on what grounds?
In Loop Larcenist Still at Large, I write about learning the identities of a couple of these Wiki editors (one, on my own, another in the comments to my story.) And when I contacted one “Enric,” who demanded to know why my publication deserved mention in Wikiland, he suggested, not edited for spelling, syntax or lack of reason, “… one advice, contract a profesional (sic) graphical designer (not a web designer) and tell him to design you a more serious corporate image.”
So I was serving a sentence for bad design ? Does this look so bad to you?
As it turned out, my attempts to re-post the link under different email addresses did not help, either.
I continued as far up the miasma of bureaucracy at Wikipedia as I could in an attempt to glean some more understanding of this (democratic, collaborative) process…even to beg forgiveness…but after a flurry of emails back and forth, the Wikkans seemed to dig their heels in further, and I decided that I had more important things to do.
A year passed. One day, a reader wrote in saying that Wikipedia had begun censoring almost any stories or links about Westchester County, NY (almost one million people.)
I published another piece, writing, “Just for fun, I just added theLoop back into the Larchmont, NY page where local news publications are listed, and within seconds, it was whisked away by someone whose IP address indicates he is in the Netherlands:
IP: 80.57.57.134 [Ripe.Net] – [DNS] – [Tracert]
Domain: g57134.upc-g.chello.nl [Whois]
Country: NL – Netherlands
Fourteen comments from readers confirmed similar problems, including one who listed 50 local place names he said had been purged.
Whatever.
A few weeks ago, I told the whole, sordid, two-year saga to my webmaster, Jenn, who went exploring up the Wikipedia food chain. “These people are HARDCORE!,” she wrote.
She was finally able to engage someone behind the curtain to ask if we could possibly be white listed (and go on to live a useful and productive life.)
“A white listing to a specific link might be considered if it came from an established editor, but we generally don’t remove entries from the blacklist at the request of someone affiliated with the site or a single purpose account,” he wrote her.
Anyone know an “established editor”? I have to go–I have the sudden urge to read some Kafka. Maybe I’ll just look it up on Wikipedia.
