Wikipedia: George Orwell/Talk

It seems to me that this very site is reminiscient of one aspect of the book 1984. See, the content of this page in particular can always be changed so that I could write here; "We have always been at war with the Klingons", but at a later time someone could come back and change the word "Klingons" to "Romulans." Thus, the truth of who we always have been at war with can easily be erased and changed to suite the needs of the site. However, it is different in that anyone can make the change, not just the Ministry of Truth, and there are not consoles in our walls with cameras watching us... or are there...
--Shaun

How about the Recent Changes list?

That is a good point. Although things can be changed, we are able to look at what has been changed, when, and by whom. Still, I think that this site is a great experiment. --Shaun

ps: I learn how to edit web pages while having fun... isn't the internet great?

The Recent Changes list is not as good a way to track changes as you might think.

In wikipedia, history of the article's edition can be easily buried by renaming the article with a different case e.g. From 'Muslim Language' to 'Muslim language' or simply do a redirect, all the history just disappears. The history of the articles also periodically get truncated, so if one floods the history with enough editions, one's tracks of altering the 'truth' can be erased. Another trick is to justify the paragraphs differently from time to time so that the diff will show overwhelming differences that are actually not changes. Others will not be able to spot one word change amongst hundred of lines of fake changes.

I guess the only safeguard is that sooner or later an expert would review the article from scratch. However, not all the experts have the time to review the article over and over again.

: "You have nothing to lose but your aitches"

What is this 'aitches' thing ? --Taw