> Think about how drastically perspectives on figures like Christopher Columbus have changed over just the last generation from bringing more diverse viewpoints into the conversation.
In my view Wikipedia should not be a repository of value judgements or specific values that one should adopt - perspectives on Christopher Columbus is important and should be included but in no manner should those perspectives be made out to be incontrovertible or something other than value judgements and perspectives from specific points of view. I think it is valuable to understand the European perspective and native american perspectives at the time and throughout the following centuries for events.
But I don't think Wikipedia should be telling me I must think what Columbus did was good or bad - Wikipedia should not be trying to teach me morality - and as long as it does not do that I don't see how there is any problem with what topics Wikipedia covers and who writes it.
I think the only problem comes in when you attempt to do something which is impossible - like incorporate something which is fundamentally specific to specific people (morality) into something which purports to be valid for everyone.
Those judgments appear organically through mechanisms as simple as how much coverage a topic gets. The worst case is that a bunch of circa 1900 Europeans write this article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_history_of_indigeno... and the impact of colonialism is mentioned in half a footnote rather than taking up the bulk of the article. If systemic bias were completely unchecked, entire articles might not exist.
In my view Wikipedia should not be a repository of value judgements or specific values that one should adopt - perspectives on Christopher Columbus is important and should be included but in no manner should those perspectives be made out to be incontrovertible or something other than value judgements and perspectives from specific points of view. I think it is valuable to understand the European perspective and native american perspectives at the time and throughout the following centuries for events.
But I don't think Wikipedia should be telling me I must think what Columbus did was good or bad - Wikipedia should not be trying to teach me morality - and as long as it does not do that I don't see how there is any problem with what topics Wikipedia covers and who writes it.
I think the only problem comes in when you attempt to do something which is impossible - like incorporate something which is fundamentally specific to specific people (morality) into something which purports to be valid for everyone.