Is Wikipedia corrupt?

I am seriously starting to think that it is.
But first, let's define corrupt.

For some reason - OK, for good reasons - many people seem to equate the notion of corruption with greed, with money.

I am using the word here in a more general (but no less pernicious), core sense: as a state of contamination, i.e. removed from a pristine condition.
Perception of such a state often results in indignation on the part of those who haven't (yet) succumbed to the latest fashion in the prevalent mores.

It was precisely this "old fashioned" sentiment what drove a respected friend of mine to report to me that the venerable Wikipedia has been publishing photos and other images that he - my friend - deemed far too graphic to find a place on such an easily accessible site as Wikipedia, with no protective mechanisms to safeguard the visitors from visual contents that might be offensive to them.
In fact, he sent me a link - which I am NOT going to share with you - so he could prove his point.

Did he ever...!
I still regret clicking on it.
You think the offensive images were sex-related?
Think again.

Deep down, in its mediocrity-worshiping bourgeois heart, Wikipedia is far too conservative to allow such uncontentiously contentious subject matter as sex to occupy its very exposed pages, unless the encyclopedic entry in question absolutely demanded it.

No, it was obscenity of a different kind - perhaps the most terrible, most damaging kind: two (two!) photographs - BIG, impossible-to-miss photographs - of the carnage allegedly inflicted by "Jack the Ripper" on one of his alleged victims.

At this point, let me add that the scene captured on said photographs is known to have been extremely traumatic even for the policemen of the time.

Let me tell you, those policemen weren't pampered pansies. They saw A LOT during their years of service in the belly of London.
But none of them - or so they said - had witnessed anything nearly as horrific as that. It is said to have haunted them for the rest of their life, just as they thought it would.

And this is the kind of image that some Wikipedia "editor" deemed appropriate to post within the main article about the victim in question!
They are totally unnecessary, they contribute nothing to the scope or quality of the information; as a matter of fact, they defeat the purpose of the article, as they scare off genuine researchers who come looking for information, not an unexpected horror show.

And the fact that there are not one but TWO of them, betrays the probable true - deeply banal - intention of the "editor": to shock.

This suspicion may be corroborated by the incredible fact that the pictures appear to have been deleted a number of times - isn't that (along with the verbal complaints in the "discussion" section) a very clear message by the users regarding the usefulness of the images? - and yet, the "editor" keeps restoring them!

Now I want you to imagine that Wikipedia had posted the autopsy photo of Marilyn Monroe.

Having had the misfortune of stumbling upon said photo (that was before I upped my Google Image Search settings to "moderate"), I can tell you I found it extremely unpleasant.
I can also tell you that there is no visible blood on it (or maybe a few specks, I am not sure), there is absolutely no gore, nothing that could disturb the eye or the mind - except for the obvious fact that it is... well, an autopsy photo.

But what do you think would happen if Wikipedia posted that photo in its article about Marilyn Monroe?
I dare not imagine it. But I can actually hear the clamour in my mind - before the swift disappearance of the photo, of course (which would probably be a matter of minutes rather than hours, let alone days).

"Outrageous!"
"Why don't they let her rest in peace?!"
"Have they no respect for the poor woman's DIGNITY?!"

I can hear them because I know people - and because something very similar happened when a newspaper tried to publish a photo of Diana Princess of Wales taken while she was lying injured on the back seat of the car, after the fatal crash in Paris.
She wasn't dead, not yet.
And I am told she wasn't disfigured at all.
(The French doctor, Frederic Maillez, said she actually looked "very beautiful".)

But the idea - the perceived insult to the "dignity" of a dying woman - was enough to provoke outrage and, ultimately, prevent the publication of the photo.

And they were right - they are right, all of them.
What I want to know is, how come that poor wretch who lived a dismal life and died a horrific death in the slums of London does not seem to have any "dignity" to speak of?

How come HER right to "rest in peace" (however illusory it may be) is nobody's business?

Do human rights, including the right to "dignity", have an expiration date?

And what about MY dignity as a viewer - as an unsuspecting, well-meaning user who comes in search of information? What about my right to seek information without being assaulted - ambushed - by shocking images that I never sought out? (And once an image is burnt into my retina - and into my mind - it stays there. I may not dwell on it, but it is there, ready to ambush me at any time.)

Maybe the "editor" who originally posted those images did not realise just how offending they were, on all levels.
Fair enough.
(After all, it's not like Wikipedia is a real encyclopedia, with appropriately competent and sensitive editors.)

But what is their excuse for reposting them after the images had been removed, thus clearly rejected by users?
What is the core motive driving them to publish such images?

Because it can't be quality of information.

***

There is an interesting - flawed, but memorable - film called Time After Time(1979). 

One of the main characters is precisely Jack the Ripper.
Having escaped to the future, by means of H.G. Wells' time machine, Jack finds himself in 1979: safe, sound - and every bit the beast he was back in 1889.
So he resumes his activities.
Anticipating the thrill of publicity (some things never change), he buys a newspaper to read about his own exploits...

At this point, let us just say that he is bitterly disappointed.
And this is the conclusion he draws after having read the newspapers of 1979:

"One hundred years ago I was a monster.
Today, I am an amateur."

EDIT (2. I. 2010):
Here's a link to a post by a "disgruntled" Wikipedia ex-editor.

See Jane go mad. See Dick chop head.

Being somewhat familiar with human psychology - and with the inner works of the media - I always found it profoundly irritating when I heard self-important "pundits"and "media experts" (even some "psychology experts") deny any lasting impact of behaviours - particularly recurring patterns* of violence and/or graphic gratuitous sex - depicted on TV and in cinema (and now the internet) on the viewers, especially those in the formative stages of their development.

I found them either disingenuous - which would inevitably lead to rather sinister conclusions regarding their intentions - or... well, stupid. There is no other word for it.

In either case, such "experts" had no business lecturing the public - even overtly mocking those who were concerned.

But, interestingly enough, I have noticed such opinions becoming more and more muted, less and less prominent in the past few years - in the first years of this not-so-brave new millenium. (BTW, do you know anyone who loves the new millenium so far?)

What made them pause?

Was it the many school shootings, in the USA and other places of the globe?

Or would those "experts" still insist and perhaps attribute the swift spread of this cultural phenomenon (yes, we are at a point when we actually have to call school shootings a "cultural phenomenon") to some sort of virus?
A contagious insanity? 
What spreads it? Rats? Pigeons? What?
And I wonder how would those same people respond to the same question today.

Because this is today's news:

Skinheads plan killing 88 people and beheading 14 African-Americans


Beheading?
My, it's becoming quite a fashion, isn't it?

I haven't been really counting, but it strikes me there has been a remarkable increase in the popularity of this practice, which was once upon a time, not so long ago, considered (and often misinterpreted) in modern Western societies as an especially gruesome, culturally alien - "barbaric" in the true meaning of the word - way of terminating someone's life.

I am not going to count them even now, but I can think of at least three or four cases of people parading someone else's detached head - in public - in the past few months alone.

But, interestingly, no such cases occurred prior to the early 2000's, which brought to our TV screens the infamous, gut-rending sight of kidnapped individuals in orange jumpers, with their abductors wielding sables in the proximity of their necks - and more than that, FAR more than that, on internet sites that feed on morbid curiosity.

(Not that it matters - not one bit - but yours truly has never watched such a video, nor do I intend to.)


This is not the place to discuss the reasons for and against airing such videos. Some other time, perhaps.
But I would like one - just one! - of those anything-goes apologists of yore to come and tell us that the media does nothing to desensitise the viewing public, that people do not imitate what they see on their screens; that the media does not influence people's view of what is acceptable - and what is shocking.

Would they still have the dubious guts of looking people in the eye and claiming that there is no such influence?

I am not sure they would. And, frankly, I don't care.

The damage has been done. Thresholds of tolerance have been breached - long ago - and there is no going back.

"Shock value" is more than a term. In a society that craves notoriety at all price, even "shock value" really is a - value. We see that every day, in seedy pictures everywhere. Only, starlets publicly displaying their very private parts and other such cultural "icons" is just the tip of an iceberg. And tastelessness is the least dangerous of the shocking "values" currently in use.

Now, confronted with an increasingly global culture of violence, we have to find a way of radically healing the minds, of young people especially (and I don't know how this could be done) - or else, the world as we once knew it will sink in its own violence.

Who needs "terrorists" to bring down the "Western civilisation"?

This civilisation will behead itself.With its own sword, by its own hand.

***

For a somewhat more sedate - and coherent - expose on the same subject, go here:

The media doesn't influence us... except when it does

(and related articles)


NOTE (*)
When there are no recurring, systematically observed - i.e. memorable and thus easily mimicked - patterns, when gratuitous violence (and other excessive behaviours) is dispersed in a variety of "random" manifestations, any excesses are much more likely to remain outside the frame of the common cultural code of expression (In every group or society there are thresholds, progressively transgressed, of behaviour - i.e. of what "we DO" and what "we do NOT do". Even destructive, "negative" behaviour has its code of general acceptability.)

They are still potentially damaging, but at least they don't spread as easily - and they are far less alluring to would-be "copycats".

RELATED CONTENT:
The Right to Violence and Cynicism