You may remember that a little while ago I posed the questions, do vehicle safety ratings and Wikipedia mix? How long would a vehicles safety rating remain on its Wikipedia page? Well, now I have the answers to both those question, no, and 7 days.

Seven days ago I posted both Used Car Safety Ratings and new car crash test results for the Holden Commodore on the Commodores Wikipedia page. The information was all accurate and sourced from publicly available information provided by independent authorities. It was not spam, it was not trying to sell something or drive traffic to a website. It was simply stating the facts.

So, why were the safety ratings removed? I don’t know. Checking the edit history it seems that you don’t need to provide a reason for why you have deleted something. So then, the safety ratings could have been removed for a whole host of reasons. Perhaps the most likely being that, someone just didn’t like seeing them there?

I realize safety isn’t a popular topic for a lot of people, car enthusiasts in particular, and I realize people like to gloss over this sort of thing. However, I also believe that it is important for people to have access to information that allows them to make an informed decision. What Wikipedia seem to allow is censorship of independent non-commercial information. If only they applied that level of censorship across the board…

In any case, I better run alone and re-edit the Commodore page to once again include the safety ratings!

Popularity: 25% [?]