Wilipedia Censors Us! Woohoo!
The text following is from a discussion on Wikipedia which drifted from why the SPUSA was being neutrality-challenged to why David Schaich believes thesocialistparty.org. in particular, should be censored. Some of the material Shaich deleted includes a description of what is on the SPO site, which contradicts Schaich's story, and also a timing matter: Schaich ruled against the net neutrality challenge before reading what the challenge was.
== Why nominated for check of neutrality? ==
Would redeagle688 care to explain the reason for nominating this article for a non-neutrality check?
I can; the article is promotional, and not *about* the SPUSA. The function of an encyclopedia is to document and not to foist propaganda. Time and again, links that are not popular with the most dominant political factions within the Party are deleted, even if they are factual. For example, the Party has an affiliate in Oregon. That affiliate is not popular with the SPUSA for having lampooned a "political discussion" and maintains records that the SPUSA finds embarrassing on its web page. The SPUSA has cut links from its own web page to Oregon; fair enough. The information in Wikipedia should be neutral and factual: the disagreement between SPUSA and its Oregon affiliate is not that Oregon is/is not a chartered local, but that the information archived on the Oregon website is factual but embarrassing to the current elected officers.
The introductory explanation lays out characterizations between various factions and ascribes motives to different sides; those may or may not be accurate for some individuals, but certainly a general case can not be made from a few people.
Many of the affiliates maintain local publications, which are banned (I guess?) by the SPUSA censors, because their links go up... and come down... and go up... and come down... There is no disagreement over whether these are publications from chartered affiliates -- the publications popular with the current officers are the ones that, mysteriously, do not get deleted over and over again.
Wikipedia does not belong in the political arguments within the Party -- the article should document facts, and not the opinion of whatever the current dominant faction is. —The preceding [[Wikipedia:Sign your posts on talk pages|unsigned]] comment was added by) 02:33, 12 February 2007 (UTC{{{3|}}})
:I too initially wondered why the links to thesocialistparty.org were being removed. After restoring them a time or two, I inquired here, as you can see below, and was satisfied by the answer: that this Web site is the work of one individual who, although connected to the SP, used it primarily to harass other members. Apart from that, the site has no connection with the Socialist Party USA, the subject of this article, and as a result no need to be included in it. You can address these deliberations below, where they've been sitting for eight months or so without comment. -[[User:David Schaich|David Schaich]] [[User talk:David Schaich|Talk]]/[[Special:Contributions/David_Schaich|Cont]] 02:42, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
The membership of Oregon is closer to 25 than 1. The site contains articles by David McReynolds, a prominent Party member; archives of news of interest to Socialists; is the official web site of the chartered SPUSA affiliate in Oregon; and the Party has an history of playing rough, as with the attacks launched against the Party's own 2004 Presidential campaign on the Michigan site. We have newsletters archived dedicated to activism and our work in Portland and in Oregon, generally. There are several resource directories dedicated to local activism, to Internet tools, and, well, it's quite an exhaustive site. I'm not sure how much of the theory and history sections are linked in, but those are there, also. What is it you claim we are lacking, compared to other web sites? -Maxim Var —The preceding [[Wikipedia:Sign your posts on talk pages|unsigned]] comment was added by [[User:02:56, 12 February 2007|02:56, 12 February 2007]] ([[User talk:02:56, 12 February 2007|talk]] • [[Special:Contributions/02:56, 12 February 2007|contribs]]).
:I was not discussing the Socialist Party of Oregon, I was discussing the Web site in question, which to my knowledge is the work of one individual. This person does happen to be a Socialist Party member, but other than that the site has no connection to the Socialist Party USA, indeed has been officially repudiated by it, as mentioned below. That is what makes it special. Note that the Socialist Party of Oregon's article has been linked from this one for some time. This shows that the issues with this site don't have to do with the SPO itself. -[[User:David Schaich|David Schaich]] [[User talk:David Schaich|Talk]]/[[Special:Contributions/David_Schaich|Cont]] 03:06, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
That the SPUSA has affiliates with which it officially disagrees is an important part of the SPUSA: people who read the article deserve to know what the SPUSA is really all about. That they have locals whose web sites they have banned for documenting "political discussions" which were mostly childish sniping on public e-mail lists documents the tradition of censorship in the SPUSA.
Come to think of it, this message documents the censorsip of Wikipedia... -Maxim Var
A more useful question might be: "Is politically-motivated censorship typical of Wikipedia?" -- or, perhaps, "Does Wikipedia represent the democratization of knowledge -- or the suppression of same?" Here are some other articles on the topic:
Wikipedia Censorship, Corruption Deletes Criticism
Censorship at Wikipedia
Wikipedia and the art of censorship
Spitzer Watch: Wikipedia Censorship?
The Truth Seeker - Why is Wikipedia Censoring Me?