Wrestling with Wikipedia

As I mentioned in my previous post, I have created a wikipedia account and will now attempt to write an entry for political knowledge.  Do a search for that phrase now and you're sent to political philosophy, which strikes me as unfair.

So the question is, how to begin?

One easy approach is to break the phrase to its two component words, link to wikipedia entries on that.  Political actually takes you to politics.  Knowledge has an entry, as I mentioned previously.  But this is a clunky way to do it and to be honest it doesn't tell us very much.

Another approach is to focus on the conceptual and operational, going all PhDweeb on the issue.  I think this is the way to go, but it's going to mean a lot of stuff in my head I take for granted (like which single malt Scotch is best) needs to be pulled out and actually used.  There are good books or seminal studies on the topic and I could build the article around them.  Obviously I'll mention this blog because hell, shameless self promotion is all the rage today and I'm not about to miss an opportunity to join the fun.

Finally, I should think about what someone is likely to need if they're searching for political knowledge, because there's a damn good chance a Google search will hit the wikipedia page fairly early on.  Why would someone search for this?  Research?  Wacky fun?

So I think I'll start by building a list of great books, articles, and cites.  Then I'll pick a few, use this as my skeleton or outline.  And it'll get messy as I get into misperception, such as WMDs or whether Obama is Muslim.  Those may bring out the crazies, but there's not much I can do about that.

Media and Knowledge

Since this blog is all about media and knowledge, it seems only fair we examine that source of all information -- wikipedia -- to see what it has to say on the subject.

• Media: This wikipedia article is a big category and, as such, has a lot of subcategories. Indeed, there isn't a basic definition offered.  Think about it.  There's everything from advertising media to social media and several others that fall between A and S.  Nothing beyond this, no Yak Media or Zebra Media.  So I followed Mass Media and learned it's media designed to reach a large audience.  Fair enough.
• Knowledge -- Interesting, but the wikipedia article about knowledge begins with an old media technology, the Oxford Dictionary, to define it.  Basically, knowledge is expertise and skills learned through experience and education, especially facts and information.

I'm a big fan of Wikipedia.  After all, I'm even mentioned (here, but scroll down a bit to the Political Polls section).  From above, we can't take a lot from media and knowledge.  If you try to search for "political knowledge" you get bounced to "political philosophy."  Read that and you pick up bits and pieces of how knowledge fits into various political philosophies.  For example:

For Locke, knowledge is neither innate, revealed nor based on authority but subject to uncertainty tempered by reason, tolerance and moderation. According to Locke, an absolute ruler as proposed by Hobbes is unnecessary, for natural law is based on reason and equality, seeking peace and survival for man.

Reason, tolerance, and moderation are concepts rarely demonstrated in today's media environment, especially on cable TV.  Philosophers have long wrestled with how knowledge and a just society fit together, but again we don't see a lot of that today outside of philosophy classes.  I'm sure Glenn Beck will get to it soon.

Other than an exercise in filling blogspace, there's not a lot we can learn from wikipedia's offering.  Which means someone needs to get cracking.  Maybe I'll create an entry there on political philosophy and blog about it here.  Might be an interesting experience.