Wikipedia is Open Edited: Shroud of Turin FAQ

Wikipedia is Open Edited

Wikipedia's content is created by its users. Any visitor to Wikipedia can edit its articles, and many do, although in practice about half of all edits are done by just 2.5% of the users. Pages are always subject to editing, so no article is ever 'finished'. Edits made by people without a Wikipedia username make up around 18% of all edits. For editors not logged in, their IP address is used instead of a username. Wikipedia generally blocks open proxies.

Ciffolilli (2003) argues that the low transaction costs of participating in wiki software create a catalyst for collaborative development, and that a "creative construction" approach encourages participation. Former Wikipedia editor-in-chief Larry Sanger has said that having the GFDL license as a "guarantee of freedom is a strong motivation to work on a free encyclopedia."[3] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia#fn_Britannica) Tech author Jon Udell created a movie documenting the revisions which Wikipedia's heavy metal umlaut article went through, available here (http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/gems/umlaut.html).

Authors

Multiple levels of users exist within Wikipedia. Fundamentally, every user may edit a page in any way and is on equal footing with all others. However, there are administrative positions as well. Sysops, or administrators, the lowest level, are elected by the community and expected to lock or delete pages and block users in accordance with policies or consensus. Less prevalent are bureaucrats, who set sysop privileges; stewards, who are multi-project bureaucrats; and developers, who have direct access to the software. Edits may also be done by automated or semiautomated bots.

Policies<./b>

Wikipedia's participants (Wikipedians) commonly follow, and enforce, a few basic policies.

Neutral point of view (NPOV): Because there are potentially a huge variety of participants of all ideologies and nationalities, Wikipedia is committed to making its articles as unbiased as possible. There has been criticism that the shared systemic bias of participants can color the neutrality of an article. According to advocates of the NPOV policy, the aim is not to write articles from a single objective point of view, but rather, to fairly present all views on an issue, attributed to their adherents in a neutral way. However, establishing a consensus on what views should be thus attributed can require much heated discussion and debate, and at any rate the attribution never extends to every single statement within an article. Thus, some people have claimed that NPOV is more of an ideology than an actual policy.

No original research: Because there is no explicit peer review for content submitted to Wikipedia, submissions must be verifiable by readers and other contributors; unverifiable information, or facts newly discovered that have not been published elsewhere (and therefore cannot be qualified by "according to source, ..."), are not welcome.

Limit discussion to "talk" pages: Wikipedians use "talk" pages or other "out of band" methods to discuss changes to articles, rather than discussing the changes within the articles themselves. This marked a break from other wikis of the time, such as Ward Cunningham's Portland Pattern

Repository.

Focus on encyclopedic content: There are a number of kinds of entries which are generally discouraged, because they do not, strictly speaking, constitute encyclopedia articles. For example, Wikipedia entries are not dictionary definitions, and the wholesale addition of source material such as the text of laws and speeches is generally frowned upon. However, some of Wikipedia's sister projects, such as Wiktionary and Wikisource, are designed to be repositories for many alternative forms of reference material that do not fit well into Wikipedia. There are a variety of rules, guidelines, policies, and common practices that have been proposed and which have varying amounts of support within the Wikipedia community. When these proposed rules are violated, the community decides on a case-by-case basis whether they should be more strictly enforced or not.

There are also a number of important style conventions, particularly with respect to article naming; for example, when several names exist, the most common one in the respective Wikipedia language is preferred.

Neutral point of view

Wikipedia is grounded in the idea that all of its articles need to be written from a neutral point of view. The neutral point of view attempts to present ideas and facts in such a fashion that both supporters and opponents can agree. Of course, total agreement is not possible; there are ideologues in the world who will not concede to any presentation other than a forceful statement of their own point of view. But Wikipedia seeks a type of writing that is agreeable to essentially rational people who may differ on particular points. According to Jimbo Wales:

"Perhaps the easiest way to make your writing more encyclopedic, is to write about what people believe, rather than what is so. If this strikes you as somehow subjectivist or collectivist or imperialist, then ask me about it, because I think that you are just mistaken. What people believe is a matter of their perception of fact, and we can present that quite easily from the neutral point of view." The neutral point of view policy states that one should write articles without bias, representing all views fairly. However, like all collaborative projects, Wikipedia has a built-in bias derived from the demographic make-up of its participants. In Wikipedia's case, this manifests itself in a tendency for contributors to create articles that relate to the interests of computer-literate American and British editors. An example of this effect can be seen by comparing the article on Coronation Street, a British soap opera — which at the start of 2005 totalled 6,933 words, not including the other 14 articles (4,746 words) devoted to its actors and characters — to the article on the Rwandan Genocide — 2,840 words on how 800,000 people died in 100 days. There are similarly long articles on U.S. television programs, actors, characters, pop groups, albums, and video games.

This bias has few defenders on Wikipedia. The presence of articles written from an exclusively U.S. or British point of view is largely a reflection of the fact that there are many Americans and British editors working on Wikipedia. Greater diversity can be achieved by active collaboration from people outside these areas, of whom there are many.

The Shroud of Turin article, on any different day, or in any particular paragraph, different points of view.

SHROUD OF TURIN

proven FACTS