The furious debate about the Cartoons of the prophet Muhammad is also active in Wikipedia entry "Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy". In only 8 days, from January 27 to February 3, the wikipediua entry has been edited almost 2000 times, that is, once every 6.th minute.
Comments on entry editing contains e.g.
19:08, 31 January 2006 84.44.218.127 (ALLLAAAAHHHUU AKKKBAAAR!!!)
19:10, 31 January 2006 BinaryTed (Undoing obvious vandalism from two edits ago.)
22:17, 1 February 2006 204.52.215.107 (ok, so there's no consensus, Big Deal)
19:39, 2 February 2006 Rgulerdem (We should discuss if it is not an insult first then cartoons can be posted. They are insults and can no way be posted here! See discussion.)
12:56, 3 February 2006 Gabbe (→Reactions in support of Jyllands-Posten - rm "Evidently, the right to charicature God doesn't actually exist.", not an unbiased statement of fact)
15:06, 3 February 2006 Ubi comp (copyright violation and provoking hatred..please respect. image-removed)
In the discussion part of the wikipedia for this entry, interesting points are made from both sides:
"Showing the figures of Mohammed is disturbing muslims. And it is a insult to Islam. In Islam making and also looking the figures of Mohammed is forbidden. Every time I enter the page I click as fastly as i can to the "discussion" to dont see the cartoon. That is raping the holy things of Islam. And putting this cartoon in the article is like "show the movie of a raped woman to her husband". And it is not about "freedom". If you want to show the cartoon you can give a link to Magazine site. That dont disturbs the muslims and people can see the cartoon if they want. "
"Nobody disputes the existence of the images. There is no hypocrisy in showing this image here. Wikipedia has both an article for the Holocaust and the Holocaust Denial. Don’t sensor the images and let people judge the truth for themselves"
"From an international understanding point of view, the cartoons are so upsetting to millions of muslims worldwide, that I believe this consensus to keep the cartoons is a wrong one. It is however, the decision of the body of Wikipedians, and I will protect the images in sorrow"
"I believe that the initial publication of these images does not exhibit very good taste. Yet given that the images have been published and became a focus of international discussion and tension, the publication here has significant encyclopedic value"
At February 1, the following message was issued from
Jimbo Wales, the founder and president of the Wikimedia Foundation:
"Ahem. Timeout. I've blanked this talk page momentarily because although there is some good discussion here, there's a lot of very bad discussion. This is not the appropriate place for a general philosophical discussion about Islam, freedom of speech, terrorism, religious tolerance, etc. Not only is this talk page not the right place for it, Wikipedia is not the right place for it. Here, we are polite, thoughtful, smart, geeky people, trying only to do something which is undoubtably good in the world: write and give away a free encyclopedia. Now, there are legitimate questions on both sides regarding this particular article, and I want to encourage a discussion of that. But please, do it with the very strong assumption of good faith on all parties to the discussion, and stick directly and purely to the editorial question at hand, rather than a general philosophical debate. Now, please, with kindness, start the discussion over?"
Clearly the concept of emergent product of many free sources of information is difficult when there exists no consensus among those who are contributing to the matter. In short, the process is in that case not converging to any result. The hopeful message is that the contributers are slowly reaching some consensus and that it is simply not evident yet, but it may also be that this kind of information distribution is not working very well in cases of large disagreements.