Editing ~= Censorship (Reblog)

While the wiki can be a fine tool for sharing information in a relatively collegial environment, it is really vulnerable to those who wish its information ill. The Wikileaks folk are talking about an uncensorable wiki that will bring freedom of speech documents to the world.

Is this a sound concept? Is it even possible for uncensorable peanut butter to stick to the wiki bar? From where I sit, once you remove the emotional baggage from the word, censoring is actually a fundamental part of an evolving wiki. How can a communally-maintained work prevent any form of censorship?

I guess I don't understand how the wiki concept enters into the otherwise cogent goal of disseminating information which some powerful organizations don't want disseminated. It seems much further off target than some of the distributed file sharing systems that have tackled that problem, Freenet being one familiar example.

Of course some commentary at Cryptome indicates that Wikileaks may be more interested in shilling a product than actually building one. The architecture of that enterprise I can understand.

Slashdot seems to be nattering about this same topic.