The 'Undue Weight' of Truth on Wikipedia - Essay Example

The 'Undue Weight' of Truth on Wikipedia The famous events of the American Labor history still rings in the minds of most Americans and other people in the world. This is because the events shocked most of the people who since they could barely understand the cause and the real motive of the happenings. A number of authors who try to make people understand the happenings of during that time have written several books and articles. The large number of writings about the happenings has left the people more confused than ever since most of them have different interpretations of the events as they took place during that time.

The bomb thrown during the rally and in Chicago sparked a great scare in the America history and attracted an international recognition and a dramatic trial, the graves of those who died in that historic day still evoke fresh memories of the sad events of that day. The venue of this historic event is marked by a public sculpture so that people do not forget their bitter history. Of the several books and articles written about the event, Wikipedia source is the most elaborative and understandable for anyone (Messer-Kruse).

In most of the books and articles describing this very great and bitter event, the most discussed part is the trial directed by Julius Grinnell. Some assert that his prosecution was way much below the public expectation since it did not offer enough evidence to prosecute the case successfully. The major claim against the prosecution was that the trial went on for six weeks without presentation of any tangible evidence against the accused. Many mysteries surrounding the bombing have also not been solved leading to more questions than the answers.

Timothy Messer-Kruse has a lot of interest in the happenings and he has written several articles to support his claims about the bombings. He has gone further to experiment by editing some information that he believes is misleading in the Wikipedia concerning the bombings. His great interest was on the misleading claim that the prosecution lacked enough evidence to support their case against the accused during the trial periods (Messer-Kruse) According to Messer-Kruse, the trial was well presented with enough evidence to support the prosecutor’s claims against the accused.

He asserts that there were one hundred and eighteen witnesses who were called and delivered their testimony of what they know about the happenings. Kruse also explains that the witnesses produced very tangible evidences like the coded messages were placed in radical newspapers, and bombs were assembled in one of the defendants' rooms. The trial was also of very high profile since it involved one of the first uses of forensic chemistry in an American courtroom, something that has never been attempted anywhere else.

The city foremost chemist explained the nature of the metallurgical profile of the bomb to enable the court make an informed decision about the case. Messer-Kruse was not happy with the article in the Wikipedia so he decided to edit the part that claimed that there was no evidence in order to enable the readers to know the truth about the happening of that day. It took very few minutes and many charges were reserved for his editing, most of which wanted him to provide evidences of his assertions.

The accusations wanted him to provide very tangible evidences to support his changes or he should rather leave the Wikipedia article the way it was. Messer-Kruse tried to provide evidences to support his claims including the verbatim testimony from trial and from one of his peer reviewed articles in order to convince his critics. Due to lack of critical ideas, his critic then accused him of using minority ideas to delete views held by majority ideas. He called this the “undue weight” policy, where the majority views should not be replaced by the minority views to mean that the former is always rights.

The issue of “undue weight” elicited debate on whether Wikipedia is a place for publishing facts or a place for publishing the majority views. Messer-Kruse then wondered whether the minority views which are facts can ever find their place in the Wikipedia against the majority views which are a times false. After several attempts to edit the Wikipedia source, keen was told to consider reading the Wikipedia policy, which required all the evidences to come from secondary sources like the published books.

He never tired from his attempt; he went further to publish his book so that Wikipedia keepers do not accuse him for not using the published sources as evidence to support his claims. In his last attempt to hopefully edit what he believes are lies in the Wikipedia source, he was further instructed on the Wikipedia policies, which were still a stumbling blocks for his aims. Messer-Kruse is still hopeful that other scholars should join him in his attempts to rectify the some of the publications in the Wikipedia, which are just the majority views and not the truth.

Work Cited Messer-Kruse, Timothy. “The 'Undue Weight' of Truth on Wikipedia”. The Chronicle Review. 2012. Web. 1 Oct. 2013