Wikipedia Takes A Stand

On Wednesday January 18th, Wikipedia will shut down its website to protest the SOPA and PIPA Acts that are currently going through congress.  These acts, if you don't know much about them, would give the government more control over the Internet and limit online freedoms for the people.

We spent a lot of time earlier this year discussing when civil liberties, if ever, should be limited, and I, along with most everybody else, believe these acts are an unjust restriction on online freedoms.  Despite all the opposition to these acts, they still have not gone away because there has not been enough attention devoted to stop them.  There are not many ways to raise awareness against a bill effectively (OC once discussed ways this can be done), but I believe blacking out a tremendously popular site like Wikipedia for a day and instead informing readers about the acts and telling them how to voice their opinions to lawmakers is one of them.

Editors of Wikipedia, however, have questioned the decision to stage this protest.  "My main concern is that it puts the organization in the role of advocacy, and that's a slippery slope," said editor Robert Lawton,  who would prefer that the encyclopedia stay neutral. "Before we know it, we're blacked out because we want to save the whales."

This is a legitimate concern.  One of Wikipedia's five fundamental principles is that it "is written from a neutral point of view" so it can simply be an easy way for people to access correct information.  This blackout, however, is not meant to change their stance on neutrality at all.  Executive Director of Wikipedia Sue Gardner said their overall purpose is still just to be "helpful".

In response to the concern of losing neutrality, Gardner said, "Although Wikipedia’s articles are neutral, its existence is not."  She believes the site can maintain its credibility while staging this protest because they are only doing it because they "support everyone’s right to freedom of thought and freedom of expression" and "want the Internet to remain free and open, everywhere, for everyone."

Although Wikipedia is not used as a source that anybody is supposed to cite or quote, it is still used by nearly everybody as a cite to gather general factual information about a topic, and therefore has maintained a good reputation as a "reliable" source.

After staging this protest, do you think Wikipedia will lose credibility because it is now in a "role of advocacy"?  Or will it maintain its reputation as a useful source for general information because its overall purpose has stayed the same?