Posted on 10/18/2005 7:13:42 PM PDT by Dan Nunn
American Airlines and Southwest Airlines have used advertising campaigns, catchy slogans and dueling consultant studies to settle a dispute over air service in North Texas, and now their eye-gouging fight has spilled over to an online encyclopedia.
Someone using an Internet service provider registered to American edited online encyclopedia Wikipedia last week to describe Southwest Airlines Co. as "a notoriously litigious company constantly seeking to change laws to gain an advantage."
For a time, the site also said Dallas-based Southwest is "known for its PR machine and litigious nature."
Wikipedia's volunteer monitors deleted the phrases within hours and traced them to someone using a domain registered to American, a unit of Fort Worth-based AMR Corp.
(Excerpt) Read more at mercurynews.com ...
Anyway, I found this article funny. I take no sides in the American vs. Southwest battle brewing in Dallas, and I've flown both airlines. I think the Wright Amendment is not exactly the epitome of free-market capitalism, but both airlines are making money now (as of last quarter), so messing with this formula won't do well for the numbers game.
This goes to show how opinionated people in Dallas are one way or another on this issue!
Fact is, the Wright Amendment is an insult to capitalism and the concept of competition in a free-market.
Southwest should be allowed to fly into any airport they want.
Your point about Wikipedia is on point, though. A utopian reference source is going to be inherently inaccurate.
I agree, it is anti-Capitalist. I'd hate to have to make the decision to start messing with the decades-old policy.
My only experience in the issue is recently visiting DFW. It's a beautiful airport, and it'd be a shame to see it lose even more traffic (as Delta bailed early this year).
Not being a Texan, I won't be the one making the decision, fortunately.
As for Wikipedia, their "NPOV" (Neutral Point of View) is a joke and lends every crack-pot theory a mention. I tried, several times, to de-bias some articles regarding President Bush and his administration, but it was pointless as it got blown out time after time.
How come most techies are such flaming liberals? My bet is they've got the most time on their hands, but there's got to be more to the equation than that.
The WIki[pedia article on FreeRepublic is interesting.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Republic
Hey, I got a mention!
The FR entry on Wikipedia is actually pretty straightforward, IMHO. Of course, I'm feeling pretty charitable this evening.
Although the more telling story is the History page that allows us to see all the previous edits of the entry.
Quite a lot of vandalism goes on at the Free Republic page. It kind of makes me proud.
"Many consider the site to contain hate speech regarding certain groups of people, such as liberals, homosexuals, and Muslims. For this reason, the site is blocked by several leading child-protection filters.
It is also worth noting that Jim Robinson, who is often less than tolerant of users who speak disparagingly of the current administration, said of George W. Bush on August 20, 1999:
"Well, by God, if you people insist on electing another cokehead as President, you damned well better throw open all the prison cell doors and free every man, woman, and child you're holding on drug charges. And if you're gonna elect another drug felon as President, you'd better rescind each and every one of your unconstitutional drug laws now on the books, including all of your unconstitutional search and seizure laws, and your asset forfeiture laws, and your laws that enable your unconstitutional snooping into our bank accounts and cash transactions. Well, I don't know whether to laugh or cry. You people are sick! Conservatives my ass. You people are nothing but a bunch of non-thinking hypocrits! You're a shame and a disgrace to the Republic!" [3]"
and this...
Lately Freepers heads have been exploding because their beloved tyrant George Bush has had an approval rating of below 40% along with the fact that 500,000 protesters to attended an anit-war rally at the mall in DC, while only 400 freepers were able to be scraped together to attend their pro-war rally. The site has been up in arms about their other beloved leader, Tom Delay, who is no facing prison time for a first degree felony of money laundering. Efforts are now underway at FR to try and avert the trend sweeping the nation of moving towards the left, that will bring liberals both the house and senate in 06, but many see FR's efforts at this as futile, since America stopped listening to them long ago.
"And the whole idea of locking a wiki page makes me a bit sick.
If it's that bad that they'd have to lock the page, maybe you're the one doing something wrong."
Not to say the Wikipedia concept isn't flawed--I've seen my share of outrageous entries myself.
All I'm saying is that it isn't clear whether the concept is fatally flawed or just flawed. The current iteration of the FR entry was fairly even-tempered (at least the one I read--it could have changed by now. That's the flawed part.)
Except it overstates the online poll FReeps and ignores that other groups do it in larger numbers (DUping, DUmping, and ISLAMming occurs).
Compare it to the Democratic Underground entry.
That's funny.
I'm obviously too new here to know much about the history but I don't see how anybody could spend even one day here and not realize that plenty of debate about the Bush43 administration goes on and is quite lively.
I seemed to have caught on to this wikipedia news a little belatedly... that said, I'm not sure why people are so quick to try and abolish the status quo in Dallas so quickly.
Don't NYC and DC have very similiar airport sets ups to Dallas?
Sadly, I am not familiar enough with the situation to answer that. I have some involvement with Wikipedia but not on this topic. Sorry about that.
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