Tuesday, May 01, 2007

No Gun Ri wiki entry

I updated the No Gun Ri wikipedia entry. The base article was very detailed already, there were no new major sections for me to add, but the tone of the article was not neutral in the areas where it should have been neutral, such as the background information. There were two competing perspectives to the events at No Gun Ri presented in the entry, the AP argument and the US military argument. The arguments differ in the degree of culpability they put on the US military. It seemed as though much of the entry sided with the US military account, particularly the Bateman argument.

I focused on three things in updating the page:

1) Rewriting sections whose bias in tone was obvious - making the statements more neutral and reordering the evidence presented to give basic facts before delving into the controversial facts.

2) Adding 2 maps (one South Korea map with the No Gun Ri area marked, and one map of the No Gun Ri vicinity, pointing out the rail overpasses and the strafed areas), and 4 area images taken by aerial cameras (the images I showed in class) to provide a visualization to where the events occurred.

3) Expanding the US Army report's section by writing an introductory paragraph and pulling out the five most important key conclusions (from the pagelong list that was there in the initial entry).


One thing I learned about wiki entries - even if they are sourced correctly, they can tell remarkably different stories depending on whose side the author takes. This article was sourced in some places well, and in others not well at all, but regardless it was clear that the author of a majority of the content sided with the US military account.

Any comments or feedback is welcomed!! Thank you =)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

That is sort of why I myself try to stay out of things there.

Bob Bateman
(Author of No Gun Ri, A Military History of the Korean War Incident...and Capitol Hill resident.)