User:KevinOKeeffe

My name is Kevin Riley O'Keeffe. I am presently a 2009 candidate in the Wikimedia Board of Trustees Election. I was born in Selma, Alabama, and presently reside in San Jose, Northern California, USA. I double-majored in (American) History and Political Science at San Diego State University, and in addition have studied at San Jose State University, the California State University at Stanislaus (in Turlock), West Valley Community College in Saratoga, California, and at Pacific Coast University School of Law in Long Beach, California. I am an amateur journalist with five published articles (in actual print, not merely online) to my credit. KevinOKeeffe 14:06, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

My candidacy is derived from my concerns pertaining to the issue of "freedom of speech", or perhaps more precisely, the objectivity of the administration of the WikiMedia Foundation's various projects, with particular emphasis on what I have come to perceive as a liberal-leftist bias (political correctness) with regard to the administration of Wikipedia. I do not claim this is a huge problem. On the contrary, I have a very high regard for Wikipedia, as well as for the Wikimedia Foundation's efforts as a whole. However, my experiences at Wikipedia, as well as what I have learned in conversations with various others who have had similar experiences, have led me to conclude that this has become an issue that requires redress, and it is one that can perhaps be best dealt with by having a sympathetic ear on the Board of Directors of the WikiMedia Foundation.

Since I have become active at Wikipedia, I have noted that while every single episode of South Park has its own article, numerous topics which are of interest, and genuine intellectual concern, to those of us on the far right, have been treated with apparent disdain, and have been subjected to seemingly arbitrary deletion. It often seems to me as if articles that are of interest to persons on the far right, are held to a significantly higher standard, for the purposes of achieving notability. Many other people feel similarly, and most of them are rather upset about it (I know many people who have abandoned their participation in WikiMedia Foundation projects, particularly Wikipedia, due to this perceived bias). Unfortunately, I made no long term plans to seek a seat on the Board of Directors, and have thus failed to keep a file on such articles, but off the top of my head, I can recall several that have been deleted in circumstances where, if they were not on political topics of interest to persons likely to identify with the far right, I sincerely do not think they would have been deleted. Articles I can readily recall, and which I would cite in that regard, include one on a book by author Thomas W. Chittum ie., Civil War Two, as well as articles on the topics of Kinism, Martin Lindstedt, and Metapedia. There have been a great many others, but it did not occur to me to note and record them at the time.

Additionally, I have noted repeated attempts to utilize redirect pages in order to steer people away from the information they were looking at, by in effect, preventing persons from doing a search for a given term, but instead directing them to some irrelevant topic. One example of this, albeit one which was resolved to my satisfaction, was when the phrase "Israeli Art Students" was redirecting searchers to the article, Culture of Israel. This was almost certainly a deliberate effort to prevent people from finding the information they were actually seeking, and which was present at such articles as 9/11 advance-knowledge debate and Justin Raimondo.

I also believe that in the year 2009, persons on the far right (including Christian and Islamic Fundamentalists) are, for all practical purposes, the only intellectual strain(s) within the Western world which are at times, and in various nation-states, subjected to laws which seek to prevent us from expressing our beliefs. Since freedom of speech would seem to be part and parcel to the mission of the WikiMedia Foundation's various projects, I believe it is important for persons who adhere to unfashionable, tabu, far right socio-political doctrines, to be represented in the halls of power, as it were, within the WikiMedia milieu. I believe this is not only true, but self-evidently so, and I would hope that persons of good will, who may strongly disagree with many or most of the views characteristically associated with persons such as myself, would be persuaded to agree. For the very concept of freedom of speech is completely meaningless with regard to speech that isn't regarded as repugnant by a substantial portion of the population-at-large, as that is the only kind of speech that requires protection from suppression. Ergo, I seek the vote of all persons committed to the abstract doctrine of ideological objectivity at Wikipedia, and the various other WikiMedia Foundation projects, and not merely the support of that narrow spectrum of persons who may find my views (whatever they are) to be personally agreeable. In the event I am elected, I swear that I shall do my utmost to always be objective, and to always seek to promote ideological neutrality in a proactive manner. KevinOKeeffe 12:55, 9 July 2009 (UTC)