So this guy with an impulse control issue, Rep. Joe Wilson, shouts at President Obama during the President’s address on health care. The event has set off a secondary battle at wikipedia.
What is at stake is what can be said on Wilson’s wikipedia page regarding the event. The NYTimes blog post seems to imply that initial references to the outburst were removed and the page then locked. I checked and there is now a brief comment
Previously “a little-known Republican”, he gained widespread attention in September 2009 for heckling President Barack Obama during a speech to Congress.
This is a tough call for Wikipedia and this represents only a recent example. What does the source want to be? I suppose one could claim that any source reflects the biases of the authors but accountability can be lost when anyone is an author. Or – perhaps wikipedia might learn something from historians (or at least my nonhistorian take on what I think historians accept). There is no single history because the individuals who live events each experience an event from different perspectives. The “facts of the case” do not capture the stories as lived by individuals.
Wikipedia assumes the “facts of the case” somehow will emerge from multiple “stories as lived”. Not going to happen. A flaw in “wisdom of crowds” logic.