When Marie-Ève Rancourt withdrew her candidacy for Québec solidaire in the riding of Camille-Laurin because she had stolen Parti Québécois (PQ) leaflets, André Legault made his contribution by modifying a piece of data from the encyclopedia accordingly. online Wikipedia.
His resignation was announced on Twitter by Mr.me Rancourt itself on September 26 at 5:59 p.m. The next day, at 11:26 a.m., Mr. Legault modified the number of solidarity candidates in the summary table on the 2022 Quebec general election page to lower it from 125 to 124.
A small pica for the site, an actualization leap for reality. And this is how Wikipedia accompanies the great march of the world.
“It’s important to have well-designed pages in French that give the right facts,” said André Legault in an interview to explain his wikipedist involvement in general, and this correction in particular. “The pages related to the Quebec elections are consulted hundreds of times a day. »
He himself has already accumulated more than 23,000 more or less significant modifications on Wikipedia (17,500 times) and its satellite sites Wikidata (5600), Wikimedia (234) and Wikitionary (29), including some in English (576) , in German (14), in Spanish (7) and in Italian (4). He works mainly on networks concerning Quebec politics and cinema. The retiree now devotes 20 to 30 hours a week to this passion, often correcting errors in form, the standards of presentation of articles requiring dexterity.
Essentially, it is a secondary source based on validated primary sources. For a topical issue like an election, news articles are the bulk of the reference material.
He started this digital collaboration in 2006 and became very active in 2018, during the last general elections in Quebec. He then created the pages of several elected officials from different parties, and even those of Danielle McCann and Lionel Carmant as soon as their appointments as ministers were announced.
Incidentally, André Legault is the cousin of François Legault. He will not vote for the CAQ. “We are not on the same side,” he said.
Everything, everywhere, all at once
The shortcomings and shortcomings of this colossal and masterful success of the Web are known: Kim Kardashian’s page is as long as that of Charles III; errors can persist for years; the pool of contributors lacks diversity; and not all pages have been touched by linguistic grace.
That said and admitted, Wikipedia is about as reliable as other prestigious competing encyclopedias. It smashes them all with its responsiveness, popularity, volume (billions of pages) and global reach now covering over 300 languages.
“Wikipedia’s mission is to synthesize existing information,” explains Nathalie Casemajor, professor at the National Institute for Scientific Research (INRS) and specialist in digital culture. “There is no new information there. There is not even any scoop : Essentially, this is a secondary source based on validated primary sources. For a topical issue like an election, news articles are the bulk of the reference material. »
Professor Casemajor has been dissecting the colossus for ten years. She is particularly interested in the collaboration of contributors from multiple backgrounds. She also sat on the board of directors of the NPO in Canada for a few years.
She explains that the collaborative encyclopedia’s tags for trusted sources and neutral writing basically block partisan propaganda attempts while accepting factual information from activists. Behind the scenes of the pages provide the explanations. A discussion dating from April focused on the place to be given to marginal parties such as the NPD Quebec. The Conservative Party of Quebec, on the other hand, was included in the article, and even the Green Party of Quebec despite some protests.
“We discuss calmly, summarizes Mr. Legault. It’s not like the COVID pages, where conspirators have tried to infiltrate. »
The item “ 2020 United States presidential election (viewed 25 million times that year) has been the subject of countless discussions and disputes, including over timelines and source for declaring Joe Biden the winner against Donald Trump. The page is now semi-protected, and only registered contributors can edit it.
space odyssey
There are articles in English and Spanish on the current Quebec campaign. The English version does not reproduce the French version and offers its own relevant information, including a section on opinion polls, another on deputies who do not stand for re-election and yet another on the abandonment by the CAQ of the reform of the voting system that could have been put in place for 2022.
The Spanish language article was last edited a month ago. Articles in French do not all react at the same speed. The Prime Minister’s page does not refer to the current elections. That of Dominique Anglade offers only a mention in relation to the recent unveiling of his net assets of a dozen million dollars. The only reference to the campaign on Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois’ page recalls his appointment in September 2021 as spokesperson for QS.
The entry on the general elections of 2022 is modified several times a day, but remains very perfectible. The space provided for a dozen sub-themes related to political issues (health, security, pandemic, etc.) is still desperately empty. The page on the 2018 general elections in Quebec still contains two similar subsections still to be enriched. In contrast, the entry “ 2022 Ontario general election (held in June) seems quite comprehensive.
The Wikipedia work will continue after the elections. André Legault promises to be more active in October to register the results and modify the information on the elected officials, including his famous cousin who will again be Prime Minister, if the trend of polls relayed on the page in English continues…