Wikipedia Germany being sued for “Nazi sympathies”
My, my, this is turning into a bad news week for Wikipedia. First we have the secret mailing list fiasco and now Wikipedia Germany is being sued by a German politician.
Katina Schubert from the Left Party (so nobody important then) is alleging that the German Wikipedia site promotes Nazism by having “too much symbolism and imagery”, especially towards the Hitler Youth.
The whole issue of Nazi symbols is a very touchy subject here in Germany (understandably). After the war, laws were passed which makes it a criminal offence to glorify the Nazi regime as well as display Nazi symbols such as the Swastika, the uniforms or anything connected to Nazism. The exception would be, for example, teachers and educational tools to teach people about the period in question - it would be OK to show the symbols in that kind of context.
So in my mind, no law has been broken because Wikipedia is merely an encyclopedia providing educational information on the Nazi era.
But Schubert is going further by claiming there is a “Nazi plot to take over Wikipedia”. So in essence, she is saying that it goes beyond merely educating people but it is now turning into outright right-wing racist propaganda, which is being hijacked by the Neo-Nazis for their own ends.
Of course it goes without saying that I don’t condone this sort of thing, if indeed it is going on, but the bottom line is that Wikipedia is a user-generated content site. If there is indeed Nazi propaganda on the site, why is no-one else editing the page and removing the false and racist information? Where’s the supervisory process at Wikipedia to have objectionable material removed?
The fact that there may be racist material on the site - and no-one is bothering to have it changed or removed - is very telling.
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