Freedom of speech and information

A quote from Wikipedia:

"Freedom of speech is being able to speak freely without censorship. The right to freedom of speech is recognised as human right in under Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and recognised in international human rights law under Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). The ICCPR recognises the right to freedom of speech as "the right to hold opinions without interference. Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression". Furthermore freedom of speech is recognised in Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights which establishes human rights law on a regional level.

The synonymous term freedom of expression is sometimes used to denote not only freedom of verbal speech but any act of seeking, receiving and imparting information or ideas, regardless of the medium used. Freedom of speech and freedom of expression is closely related to, yet distinct from, the concept of freedom of conscience and freedom of thought."


A quote about Wikipedia:

"At the bottom are anonymous contributors, people who make a few edits and are identified only by their IP addresses. On the next level stand Wikipedia's myriad registered users around the globe ... the next level – administrator ... can delete articles, protect pages, and block IP addresses. Above this group are bureaucrats, who can crown administrators. The most privileged bureaucrats are stewards. And above stewards are developers, 57 superelites who can make direct changes to the Wikipedia software and database. There's also an arbitration committee that hears disputes and can ban bad users." (Pink 2005, as found on http://scan.net.au/scan/journal/display.php?journal_id=81).

Is there anything to add to this? Wikipedia became the reference for all of us with access to the Internet. Wikipedia is praised for its anarchic structure and its independent sources of information. Nobody is editing it ...... oops, yes it is being edited continuously and there ís that never failing pyramid of power. Freedom of speech is better guaranteed in a Blog that cannot be edited by others. Wikipedia became a tool in mass manipulation and lost its value as a source of clear information because of its success.

You don't believe me ? Try editing something of major importance following the rules of Wikipedia with your educated and elaborated point of view (as described in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability) and see what happens if you happen to enter from a different angle on a certain subject. Or, for the easy way, just read the Wikipedia page about one of the co-founders, Jimmy Wales (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Wales). If some truly personal stuff is good enough to be manipulated, how about the truth of a government?