How gun buffs took over Wikipedia’s AR-15 page
theverge.com
theverge.com
>But those users didn’t find much information about mass shootings or political efforts. In fact, the Colt AR-15 page made no mention of gun control at all, instead spending over a thousand words describing the technical details of the gun’s various parts.
The Wikipedia userbase is anal across the board when it comes to information being in the relevant location. There are entire pages dedicated to the politics of gun control, and the author of this article seems to think that an article that has always been a technical description of an influential design would be the perfect political soapbox. Although the author's complaints about the NRA article on Wikipedia have a lot more weight, I am still under the impression that he may be misinterpreting what was being said or done, because he obviously seems to have some trouble understanding Wikipedia's (sometimes absurdly) strict scope policies.
It's also worth noting that the author seems to claim that Wikipedia and its user groups are a fairly neutral source in important political conversations. Powerful (in the sense of editorship) far-left user groups have publicly and genuinely suggested withholding information out of concern for the political stance of articles shifting out of their favor. Wikipedia is not "balanced, but only when I agree with it." It is human, and not infallible.
Noting the existence of this controversy doesn't seem like an inappropriate thing for the Wikipedia page on the AR-15 to do. If anything, keeping it out feels like an attempt to bias the discussion by deliberately omitting a significant fact. It's like the Wikipedia page about Bill Cosby not mentioning the sexual assault charges against him. It shouldn't take a position on that subject, but pretending it doesn't exist is a deliberate step away from a neutral point of view.
Excluding a controversy whereby that particular product model has been a major subject of discourse on US politics across the globe, with major news publications writing pieces with a primary focus on the AR-15, seems... remiss.
The attention given to this model by the public and media is a testament to the product's notability, a metric that's a tenet of Wikipedia editorial policy.
> Although, according to CBS News, "the AR plays an oversized role in many of the most high-profile shootings",[41] most killings by guns in the USA involve handguns rather than rifles.[42][43]
The statistic on handgun shootings is irrelevant as the paragraph is quoting CBS on "high-profile shootings". Only a single CBS article is referenced (there's tonnes out there), with two counter-references accompanying the irrelevant handgun mention.
Even ignoring all that, the very fact that the paragraph starts with the word "Although" belies its intent.
Funnily enough, the mentioning of the school shootings in which ARs were used actually seems superfluous. A balanced, unbiased article might exclude that section completely, but instead have a Controversy heading with something like:
"In 2018, following a, b, c events, this model became the subject of widespread pubic controversy in the US and worldwide due to x, y, z. {insert arguments espoused on both sides of media discourse}"
As it should be. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. The whole point is to provide information about the particular thing at hand.
No reference to gun control, just a decent description of the rifle and its variants.