Friday, October 3, 2008

AM Wikipedia case

Before my lecture in Seattle in 2006, a friend of mine decided that it would be cool for PR purposes to make a Wikipedia page about me.
It was pretty short article and was marked as a stub, of course.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Aleksandar_Ma%C4%87a%C5%A1ev&diff=153082625&oldid=110765556

Two months ago, I realized that it would be nice to lose that "stub" tag and to expand the article to a proper length. I gave my material to a writer that I know and he has written a new article.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Aleksandar_Ma%C4%87a%C5%A1ev&diff=236527517&oldid=236511758

Here are the changes made by "Wikipedia editors"
- "LGBT visual artist" tag is immediately removed. I provided a plenty of citations and proofs and they removed it again.
- "Atheist" category remained. Although they changed it to "Serbian atheists" where I found myself in the company of only two more persons. Slobodan Milošević, infamous president of Yugoslavia during nineties, and Stevo Žigon, an actor known for his loyalty to SPS (Milošević's Socialist Party of Serbia)
- After a while I've found myself in another category: Former Eastern Orthodox Christians. It was added by a guy with a nick "Vojvodaen".

Here's his user page:

Hello!

I am vojvoda from Serb wikipedia and I'll write articles about Serbian history. Visit my site [1]

I am interested in history, Christianity and arts. I believe that conflict betwenn science and Christian faith doesn't exist.

About Wikipedia I think that it is not only source of informations but also guide threw literature.

Here's the final version of the article
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandar_Macasev

Conclusion:
- it's easier to mark yourself "atheist" than "gay". I suppose you need to work your ass off to prove that you are gay (as I am). But being an atheist is easy because apparently it is still an ideological slur. Equal to communist. That's kinda American point of view, as I see it.
- On the other hand, Vojvodaen who's a Serb, quickly lumped me into a
Former Eastern Orthodox Christians category. Because if you state that you are an atheist you must be a traitor of the Christian faith, I suppose. Even if I am actually and officially still a member of the Orthodox Christian Church (I was christened as a kid).

All in all, loads of ideological bulshit. That, need I say, has got nothing with truth.

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