The New York Times has a fascinating story about the kidnapping of one of its reporters, Pulitzer prize winner David Rohde. He, along with his interpreter and driver, were kidnapped by the Taliban in Afghanistan on Nov. 10., and for 7 months - until Rohde managed to escape - the NYT kept the news from breaking out to increase his chance of survival. The hardest part of it? Keeping the news off Wikipedia.
Anyone that's ever worked in a media publication knows that however tense or difficult their relations between other media publications may be, when a horrible accident happens or when human lives are at stake, it's generally not hard to keep the news a secret. A couple of phone calls to other editors should do the trick, but what do you do when you want to keep the news off a site like Wikipedia, which has thousands of editors?
According to the NYT, you call Jimmy Wales, and he, with the help of some admins, makes sure the relevant entries are erased and fixed every time someone tries to edit them and add the information that may compromise David Rohde's safety. The New York Times and Wales are happy with how they handled the situation, and if indeed these efforts helped save Rohde's life, it's quite an accomplishment.
But there's a problem: this is exactly the opposite of what Wikipedia stands for.
Wikipedia is supposed to be a democratic system; editors fix each other's work until a consensus about the correctness of an article is reached. On this particular occasion, it wasn't; an invisible hand of the Wikipedia overseers simply erased a part of the truth. Of course, had the editor(s) who edited the article in question known that Rohde's life may be at stake here, they might've acted differently. And herein lies the problem. As Jimmy Wales puts it:
“We had no idea who it was. There was no way to reach out quietly and say ‘Dude, stop and think about this.’”
That's the thing with semi-anonymous editing: since anyone can edit Wikipedia without providing their correct real life info and contact, you can't even reach out to them, let alone persuade them to do this or that. In most cases, it ensures that the democratic process of editing on Wikipedia is preserved. In some cases, including this one, it's a problem.