Difference between revisions of "Wikispooks:About"

Revision as of 17:20, 6 December 2013

Site Rationale

Full article: Wikispooks:Site Rationale

WikiSpooks is an open source encyclopedia of deep politics, a repository of documents and information about deep political events and organisations. It compiles user contributed information to help people pursue alternatuve lines of research and explore ideas and opinions generally not explored in commercially-controlled media. Most of the content is from the last century or two. Analysis of historical events from earlier times is particularly welcome especially when it sheds light on the hidden purposes and practices of contemporary deep politics.

Naming

WikiSpooks acknowledges a certain plagiarism of both 'Wikipedia' and 'WikiLeaks' - but we're sure they can live with it. 'Wiki' - something, has become a sort of naming convention for many successful wiki-based projects, notably the Wikimedia Foundation ^[1] sites and WikiSpooks seeks to emulate that success.

The term 'Spooks' is an anglicisation of the Dutch word for 'Ghosts', used colloquially as a synonym for 'Spies' (as for example in the BBC series 'Spooks' ^[2]). So far as WikiSpooks is concerned, both meanings are apposite. Historically, it is often only the ghosts of deep political motivations that remain once the official narrative has been anointed as fact by relentless repetition and the passage of time - the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 in England is a solid example. As for the 'Spies' meaning; anyone who studies deep political events for long is bound to conclude that Secret Intelligence Services are always deeply involved one way or another and more often than not as puppet-masters.

So, after Wiki-This and Wiki-that, This-Wiki and That-Wiki - WikiSpooks it is.

Language

The site is English Language only for now. The MediaWiki platform has comprehensive multi-language facilities but operating them effectively uses both scarce resources and currently unavailable language resources. In other words "English-only" is a resources issue. It does mean that Non-English language documents and articles are not suitable candidates for the site unless competently translated and applicable to the English-speaking world. It is acknowledged that this does restrict the site's scope.

What Is Wrong With Wikipedia?

Full article: WikiSpooks:Problems with Wikipedia

Wikipedia is good at what it does. However, its editorial policies give it a blind spot around matters of deep politics, so information on such topics is superficial and fragmented at best and often more of a smokescreen. Wikipedia's adherence to the official narrative as promulgated by the 'reliable sources' of the commercially-controlled media effectively mean that, to use an astrological metaphor "the sun must always be represented as revolving around the earth".^[3]

The "Gunpowder Plot" of 1605 in England is an example of how it is possible to marshal copious undisputed facts but nonetheless minimise what is clearly a higher probability interpretation of the episode than "the official narrative". Popular perception of that event remains consonant with the "official narrative" which has it that the good brave authorities were caught off-guard by a dastardly Popish conspiracy to blow up parliament whilst in session, and that the plot was uncovered and foiled in the nick of time. Does that sound familiar? That is also the way it is presented in the Wikipedia main article ^[4] on the subject, where accusations of 'state conspiracy' are relegated to a single paragraph and copious evidence of agent-provocateuring and facilitating by the authorities of the day do not even warrant a mention.

Editorial Policy

Full article: WikiSpooks:Editorial Policy

The fundamental premise of WikiSpooks' editorial policy is that anything deemed a threat to Authority is generally successfully opposed by that authority because of the vastly greater resources which authority can bring to bear. This power imbalance becomes especially acute where matters of Deep Politics are involved. A good reference source on this syndrome in action is the small media-monitoring site Media Lens.^[5]

Although many articles on WikiSpooks use corresponding Wikipedia articles as their starting point, the fundamentally different guidelines of Wikispooks do not aim for a (status quo friendly) Neutral Point of View^[6] and do not assume that presentation by the commercially-controlled media of evidence to be any special indication of its reliability. Template:Ep

Acknowledgements

Full article: WikiSpooks:Acknowledgments

The site uses the MediaWiki software^[7] developed for Wikipedia. It is inspired and informed by several other open source collaborative projects, and is inspired by Cryptome, Wikileaks, The Deep Politics Forum, SpinProfiles, SourceWatch and last but not least, Wikipedia.