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The WWW.
Weird World of Wikipedia

By Martin J. Walker
February 2006

With this in mind, most people dealing with this issue, attempt to mitigate the problem by understanding that all knowledge is `situated' knowledge, and that all judgements come from a particular standpoint. This means that it is understood that no one can claim to be 100% ‘neutral’ or ‘objective’, and that there are always power struggles involved when someone claims to be `objective` (especially whilst engaging in partisan behaviour).

Angela Kennedy & Jane Bryant, The One Click Group to Jimmy Wales. 
17 November 2005.
http://www.theoneclickgroup.co.uk/documents/ME-CFS_docs/More%20Wikipedia%20On%20Wessely.doc

One Click seems to me to be a bunch of paranoid zealots. And I   will state again that before I tried to tone down the shit they put on the Wessely page I had never heard of them or Simon Wessely.
 Just Z  G, you know? [T]/[C] AfD? 15:46, 
19 December 2005
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Simon_Wessely

A conservative estimate of the number of adults and children suffering from ME suggests that there are around 250,000 in the UK, yet it is rarely diagnosed by the medical profession, is fleetingly mentioned in government research funding documents, is seldom accepted by medical research workers, and is almost never admitted to by insurance companies. 

TABSince 1986, while gathering around him an entourage of like minded disciples which has become known as the Wessely School, Professor Simon Wessely, has almost single-handedly been responsible for the strategy of a moratorium on the investigation of ME as an illness  with a physically neurological cause. Professor Wessely is a psychiatrist, and for nearly twenty years he has promulgated the idea that ME and the broader groupings of chronic fatigue illnesses (CFS) are the product of ‘false illness beliefs’, mental aberrations, which can be diagnosed and treated with psychiatric based therapies and anti-depressants. 

TABProfessor Wessely carries out research mainly in the London-based Institute of Psychiatry which is situated in King’s College teaching hospital. He is a member of numerous research organisations and advisory groups, and is advisor to the British Armed Services. While his membership of an ‘official’ web of research organisations tell us a lot about his work, added substance to his views is to be found in his more informal and less renowned associations with a number of minority-view groups set up by, or aligned with US and British ‘quackbuster’ organisations. 

TABJust before Christmas 2005, the Wikipedia, an electronic and sometimes publicly edited encyclopaedia, was host to a small, anonymous entry about Professor Wessely. The entry appeared to have originated with someone opposed to Wessely’s psychiatric view of ME. On seeing this entry, Jane Bryant of the One Click (OC) campaign substituted a longer text, which contained not just biographical facts but a broader description of Wessely’s role in the politics of ME. 

TABWhen this longer text was seen by the Wikipedia ‘edit police’ who cruise the pages seeking ‘vandalism’ and 'skewed' edits, it was immediately considered to break most of Wikipedia’s self serving rules. On writing to the owner and founder of Wikipedia, ‘Jimbo’ Wales, in an attempt to put their case, the OC campaign received a personal communication from him. 

Although Wales, aimed at a slight up-beat and reconciliatory tone in his e-mail, the text was scattered with veiled insults. He accused One Click participants of ‘behavioural problems’, while stating that OC organisers had lied and purposefully made libellous statements in their posted piece on Wessely. He made clear even at this early stage of the exchange that Wikipedia would from then on act on the basis that ‘anything from your site (will be treated) with extreme scepticism.’ Jimbo Wales, ended his e-mail with an exhortation for everyone to settle differences and unit in the spirit of Wikichristmas. 

TABWhen, however, OC answered Jimbo with a rebuttal of his argument in favour of an orthodox objectivity and neutrality – ‘we are not going to be advocates for or against either side in this dispute’ - the debate entered another level.

TABIt seems possible that Professor Wessely, having been alerted to his Wikipedia entry began to liaise with Wikipedia and the business of drafting a  Soviet-style biographical text about him was given to the indulgently named Just Zis  Guy, you know? (Clearly I have no intention of using this onanistic sobriquet in this essay and so will refer to him as ZG)

TABThere ensued an argument, about One Click’s contribution to the Wessely entry, which though handled w