Word War III

The proof of this unfettered and often heated exchange of ideas is appended to each Wikipedia article's home page. There you'll find a discussion archive that captures all the online chatter about a specific topic, as well as a history archive that contains the running chronology of all text edits and reverts (reverse edits) that have been made. Every byte of minutia is preserved. Those transcripts are enlightening in their own right, offering a peek at scores of major and minor Wiki wars being fought behind the scenes.

"There are conflicts on topics that one would think are completely non-controversial," observes Kirill Lokshin, a 24-year-old software engineer from Rockville and avid Wikipedia editor. "We had a very long, very rough conflict about Charles Darwin being born on the same day as Abraham Lincoln and whether that needs to be mentioned in their articles." (That standoff ultimately wound up in Wiki mediation, where the birthday exclusionists prevailed.)

Florence Devouard, a 39-year-old agronomist who became a Wikipedian in late 2001, back when "it wouldn't even show up in a Google search," recalls "a huge edit war" over a French Wikipedia article about a vegetable: the humble endive. The root cause, if you will, was a dissident faction loyal to the word chicon, as endive is known in Belgium. A firefight ensued over which name deserved top billing. Endive advocates emerged victorious, but not before several members got so riled up that they were briefly suspended from French Wikipedia for rude behavior.

"It was very passionate and nasty," says Devouard, who lives in a small village in France and recently stepped down as chairman of the Wikimedia Foundation's board of trustees. "Food is very serious."

THE AHMADINEJAD ENTRY ATTRACTED LITTLE ATTENTION during its first week on English Wikipedia. Only two users materialized, making minor tweaks to Pournader's biographical sketch. By June 19, 2005, about a dozen people had weighed in. The text grew to 850 words. Readers now knew Ahmadinejad was the son of a blacksmith, objected to the veto power of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, and joined the Islamic Revolutionary Guard during the Iran-Iraq war. The last paragraph declared he "possibly had a hand in international assassinations" and "covert operations in Iraq" -- juicy but unsubstantiated tidbits that later would be dropped. The introduction noted that he was "considered by some to be an ultra-conservative hardliner."

All those cumulative details led to the removal of the stub designation by an anonymous Wiki administrator, a Canadian who identifies himself in his user profile as "a Wikipediaholic" with an interest in politics, religion, history and philosophy. There are about 1,500 Wikipedia administrators or "admins." These unpaid uber-editors are selected by their fellow admins, who entrust them with shepherding online discussions and with enforcing the rules of polite engagement. Admins, however, are supposed to tread softly. Wikipedia is a stubbornly egalitarian enterprise that depends on the magic of mass consensus.

Two hours and seven minutes after Ahmadinejad gained full-article status, a college student in Tehran who goes by the name "Sina" logged on and revised the opening to read "considered by some to be a fascist." Within three minutes, the admin from Canada resurfaced, striking the revision. "Please refrain from calling him a fascist unless you have a source which clearly shows that he adheres to the tenets of fascism," the Canadian admonished on the entry's history page. "Otherwise factual edits welcome."

Embedded in that reminder are Wikipedia's twin bedrock principles: One, no original research or hearsay are allowed in Wikipedia entries. All facts must be derived from reliable outside sources, primarily old-media magazines, newspapers and books. Two, objectivity rules. Articles must adhere to a neutral point of view, or "NPOV" in Wiki shorthand.

Despite those guiding-light edicts, subjectivity invariably rears its head. That's not surprising, since Wikipedia is such a labor of love. Wikipedians gleefully peck away at their keyboards for hours on end because they believe in Wales's free-information gospel or because they have a bubbling passion for some particular person, place or thing they want to see included in the sprawling encyclopedia. Some have agendas, not always benign ones.

As Ahmadinejad page traffic began to pick up, so did the differences of opinion. Pournader inserted the descriptive adjective "Islamist," which he didn't intend as a political put-down. That ever-watchful Canadian admin again overruled, insisting that Islamist has become "a widely controversial term" that "might give the wrong impression of who he really is."

Pournader took no offense. "In the Wikipedia community, it's lovely to see other people take what you've started and continue to expand it," he says. "It's a very good thing when you see an article grow into something else."

It was not such a good thing, in Pournader's opinion, when Ahmadinejad pulled an upset in the second round of voting on June 24, 2005, and was elected president of Iran. That night, Pournader turned his private blog into an SOS.: "The Iranian people have proved their idiocy . . . we have a religio-fascistic government now . . . according to the threats I have received before, specially about my work on the Wikipedia . . . I consider myself in some danger."