OBSERVER
FOR the past 10 years I’ve im- mersed myself in the details of one
of the most famous events
in American labor history,
the Haymarket riot and
trial of 1886. Along the
way I’ve written two books
and a couple of articles
about the episode. In some
circles that affords me a
presumption of expertise
on the subject. Not, however, on Wikipedia.
The bomb thrown during an anarchist rally in
Chicago sparked America’s
first Red Scare, a high-profile show trial, and
a worldwide clemency
movement for the seven
condemned men. Today
the martyrs’ graves are
a national historic site,
the location of the bombing is marked by a public
sculpture, and the event is
recounted in most American history textbooks. Its
Wikipedia entry is detailed and elaborate.
A couple of years ago,
on a slow day at the office,
I decided to experiment with editing
one particularly misleading assertion
chiseled into the Wikipedia article.
The description of the trial stated,
“The prosecution, led by Julius Grin-
nell, did not offer evidence connect-
ing any of the defendants with the
Coincidentally, that is the claim
that initially hooked me on the topic.
In 2001 I was teaching a labor-his-
tory course, and our textbook con-
tained nearly the same wording that
appeared on Wikipedia. One of my
students raised her hand: “If the trial
went on for six weeks and no evidence
was presented, what did they talk
about all those days?” I’ve been work-
ing to answer her question ever since.
I have not resolved all the mysteries that surround the bombing,
but I have dug deeply enough to be
sure that the claim that the trial was
bereft of evidence is flatly wrong.
One hundred and eighteen witnesses
were called to testify, many of them
unindicted co-conspirators who detailed secret meetings where plans to
attack police stations were mapped
out, coded messages were placed in
radical newspapers, and bombs were
assembled in one of the defendants’
rooms.
In what was one of the first uses of
forensic chemistry in an American
courtroom, the city’s foremost chem-
ists showed that the metallurgical
profile of a bomb found in one of the
ing that I would forever
have to wear the scarlet
letter of Wikipedia van-
dal, I relented but noted
with some consolation
that in the wake of my
protest, the editors made
a slight gesture of recon-
ciliation—they added the
word “credible” so that it
now read, “The prosecu-
tion, led by Julius Grin-
nell, did not offer credible
evidence connecting any
of the defendants with the
bombing. … ” Though
that was still inaccurate,
I decided not to attempt
to correct the entry again
until I could clear the
hurdles my anonymous
interlocutors had set be-
fore me.
MARK SHAVER FOR THE CHRONICLE REVIE W
The ‘Undue Weight’ of Truth
on Wikipedia
By TIMOTHY MESSER-KRUSE
anarchists’ homes was unlike any
commercial metal but was similar in
composition to a piece of shrapnel
cut from the body of a slain police
officer. So overwhelming was the
evidence against one of the defendants that his lawyers even admitted
that their client spent the afternoon
before the Haymarket rally building
bombs, arguing that he was acting in
self-defense.
So I removed the line about there
being “no evidence” and provided a
full explanation in Wikipedia’s be-
hind-the-scenes editing log. Within
minutes my changes were reversed.
The explanation: “You must provide
reliable sources for your assertions to
make changes along these lines to the
article.”
That was curious, as I had cited
the documents that proved my point,
including verbatim testimony from
the trial published online by the Li-
brary of Congress. I also noted one
of my own peer-reviewed articles.
One of the people who had assumed
the role of keeper of this bit of his-
tory for Wikipedia quoted the Web
site’s “undue weight” policy, which
states that “articles should not give
minority views as much or as detailed
a description as more popular views.”
He then scolded me. “You should not
delete information supported by the
majority of sources to replace it with
a minority view.”
The “undue weight” policy posed a
problem. Scholars have been publish-
ing the same ideas about the Hay-
market case for more than a century.
The last published bibliography of
titles on the subject has 1,530 entries.
ITRIED TO EDI T the page again. Within 10 seconds I was in- formed that my citations to the primary documents were
insufficient, as Wikipedia requires
its contributors to rely on secondary
sources, or, as my critic informed me,
“published books.” Another editor
cheerfully tutored me in what this
means: “Wikipedia is not ‘truth,’
Wikipedia is ‘verifiability’ of reliable
sources. Hence, if most secondary
sources which are taken as reliable
happen to repeat a flawed account or
description of something, Wikipedia
will echo that.”
Tempted to win simply through
sheer tenacity, I edited the page again.
My triumph was even more fleet-
ing than before. Within seconds the
page was changed back. The reason:
“reverting possible vandalism.” Fear-
Timothy Messer-Kruse is a professor in
the School of Cultural and Critical Studies at Bowling Green State University.
He is author of The Trial of the Haymarket Anarchists: Terrorism and
Justice in the Gilded Age (Palgrave
Macmillan, 2011) and The Haymarket
Conspiracy: Transatlantic Anarchist
Networks, to be published later this year
by the University of Illinois Press.
B20 THE CHRONICLE REVIEW
FEBRUARY 17, 2012
